When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw
the muscles of the man's limb knot themselves and stand out in bold relief. The smooth contour of Cicely's arm never varied. Mrs. Luckett, talking about cheese as we watched Cicely one morning, said people's taste have much altered; for she understood they were now fond of a foreign sort that was full of holes. The old saying was that bread should be full of holes, cheese should have none. Just then Hilary entered and completed the triad by adding that ale should make you see double.
So he called for the brown jug, and he and I had a glass. On my side of the jug stood a sportsman in breeches and gaiters, his gun presented, and ever in the act to fire: his dog pointed, and the birds were flying towards Hilary. Though rude in design the scene was true to nature and the times: from the buttons on the coat to the long barrel of the gun, the details were accurate and nothing improved to suit the artist's fancy. To me these old jugs and mugs and bowls have a deep and human interest, for you can seem to see and know the men who drank from them in the olden days.
Now a tall Worcester vase, with all its elegance and gilding, though it may be valued at 5,000l., lacks that sympathy, and may please the eye but does not touch the heart. For it has never shared in the jovial feast nor comforted the weary; the soul of man has never communicated to it some of its own subtle essence. But this hollow bowl whispers back the genial songs that were shouted over it a hundred years ago. On the ancient Grecian pottery, too, the hunter with his spear chases the boar or urges his hounds after the flying deer; the women are dancing, and you can almost hear the notes of the flute. These things were part of their daily life; these are no imaginary pictures of imaginary and impossible scenes: they are simply scenes in which every one then took part. So I think that the old English jugs and mugs and bowls are true art, with something of the antique classical spirit in them, for truly you can read the hearts of the folk for whom they were made. They have rendered the interpretation easy by writing their minds upon them: the motto, 'Prosperity to the Flock,' for instance, is a good one still; and 'Drink fair; don't swear,' is yet a very pleasant and suitable admonition.
As I looked at the jug, the cat coughed under the table. 'Ah,' said Mrs. Luckett, 'when the cat coughs, the cold goes through the house.' Hilary, returning to the subject of the cheese, said that the best was made when the herd grazed on old pastures: there was a pasture field of his which it was believed had been grazed for fully two hundred years. When he was a boy, the cheese folk made to keep at home for eating often became so hard that, unable to cut it, they were obliged to use a saw. Still longer ago, they used to despatch a special cheese to London in the road-waggon; it was made in thin vats (pronounced in the dairy 'vates'), was soft, and eaten with radishes. Another hard kind was oval-shaped, or like a pear; it was hung up in nets to mature, and traded to the West Indies.
He looked to see when the moon changed in 'Moore's Almanac,' which was kept for ready reference on the mantelpiece. Next to Bible and Prayer-book comes old Moore's rubric in the farmhouse—that rubric which declares the 'vox stellarum.' There are old folk who still regret the amendments in the modern issue, and would have back again the table which laid down when the influence of the constellations was concentrated in each particular limb and portion of the body. In his oaken cabinet Hilary had 'Moore' from the beginning of the century, or farther back, for his fathers had saved them before him. On the narrow margins during his own time he had jotted down notes of remarkable weather and the events of the farm, and could tell you the very day cow 'Beauty' calved twenty years ago.
I thought the ale good, but Hilary was certain it was not equal to what he used to brew himself before he had so large an acreage to look after, and indeed before the old style of farm-life went out of fashion. Then he used to sit up all night watching—for brewing is a critical operation—and looking out of doors now and then to pass the long hours saw the changes of the sky, the constellations rising in succession one after the other, and felt the slight variations of the wind and of moisture or dryness in the air which predict the sunshine or the shower of the coming day. He seemed to have thought a good deal in those lonely watches; but he passed it off by referring to the malting. Barn barley was best for malting—i.e.that which had been stored in a barn and therefore kept perfectly dry, for ricks sometimes get wet before they can be thatched. But barn barley was not often come by nowadays, as one by one the old barns disappeared: burned perhaps, and not rebuilt. He had ceased to brew for some time; Cicely could, however, remember sipping the sweet wort, which is almost too sweet for the palate after childhood.
They still baked a batch of bread occasionally, but not all that was required. Cicely superintended the baking, passing the barm through a sieve with a wisp of clean hay in it. The hay takes off any sourness, and ensures it being perfectly sweet. She knew when the oven was hot enough by the gauge-brick: this particular brick as the heat increased became spotted with white, and when it had turned quite white the oven was ready. The wood embers were raked out with the scraper, and the malkin, being wetted, cleaned out the ashes. 'Thee looks like a gurt malkin' is a common term of reproach among the poor folk—meaning a bunch of rags on the end of a stick. We went out to look at the oven; and then Mrs. Luckett made me taste her black-currant gin, which was very good. Presently we went into the orchard to look at the first apple-tree out in bloom. While there a magpie flew across the meadow, and as I watched it Mrs. Luckett advised me to turn my back and not to look too long in that direction. 'For,' said she, 'one magpie is good luck, but two mean sorrow; and if you should see three—goodness!—something awful might happen.'[1]
1See Notes.
One lovely June afternoon as Hilary and I strolled about the fields, we passed some lambs at play. 'Lamb is never good eating without sunshine,' said Hilary. Not only wheat and plants generally but animals also are affected by the absence of sun, so that the epicure should hope as devoutly as the farmer that the dull and overcast season of 1879 will not be repeated. Hilary's remark was founded upon the experience of long years—such experience as is only to be found in farmhouses where kindred succeed each other, and hand down practical observations from father to son.
The thistles were showing rather strongly in the barley—the result of last year's rain and the consequent impossibility of proper clearing. These thistles he thought came from portions of the root and not from seed. Last year all the farmers had been Latter Lammas men. The 1st of August is Lammas Day; and in the old time if a farmer had neglected his work and his haymaking was still unfinished on August 13 (i.e.old style), he was called in reproach a Latter Lammas man. But last year (1879) they were all alike, and the hay was about till September; yet Hilary could recollect it being all done by St. Swithin's, July 15.
Sometimes, however, the skilled and careful agriculturist did not succeed so well as the lazy one. Once in seven years there came a sloven's year, according to the old folk, when the sloven had a splendid crop of wheat and hardly knew where to put it. Such a harvest was as if a man had gone round his farm with the sun in one hand and the watering-pot in the other! Last year there had been nearly as much mathern (wild camomile) and willow-wind (convolvulus and buckwheat) as crop, and he did not want to see the colt's tail in the sky so often again. The colt's tail is a cloud with a bushy appearance like a ragged fringe, and portends rain.
I remarked that it was curious how thunderstorms sometimes returned on the same day of the week and at the same hour for a month running. Hilary said they had been known to return every day at the same hour. The most regular operation on a farm is the milking: one summer his fogger declared it came on to thunder day after day in the afternoon just as he took his yoke off his shoulders. Such heavy and continuous downpour not only laid the crops, but might spoil them altogether; for laid barley had been known to sprout there and then, and was of course totally spoiled. It was a mistake to associate thunder solely with hot weather; the old folk used to say that it was never too cold to thunder and never too warm to snow.
A sweet yet faintly pungent odour came on the light breeze over the next field—a scent like clover, but with a slight reminiscence of the bean-flower. It arose from the yellow flower of the hop-trefoil: honey sometimes has a flavour which resembles it. The hop-trefoil is a favourite crop for sheep, but Hilary said it was too soft for horses. The poppies were not yet out in the wheat. When in full bloom some of the cottagers gather the scarlet flowers in great quantities and from them make poppy wine. This liquor has a fine colour and is very heady, and those who make it seem to think much of it. Upon the hills where furze grows plentifully the flowers are also collected, and a dye extracted from them. Ribbons can thus be dyed a bright yellow, but it requires a large quantity of the flowers.
A little farther a sheep-dog looked at us from a gateway; and on coming nearer we found the shepherd busily engaged cutting the feet of his sheep one by one with a keen knife. They had got the foot-rot down in a meadow—they do not suffer from it on the arable uplands where folded—and the shepherd was now applying a caustic solution. Every shepherd has his own peculiar specific, which he believes to be the only certain remedy.
Tar is used in the sheepfold, just as it used to be when sweet Dowsabell went forth to gather honeysuckle and lady's-smock nearly three centuries since. For the shepherd with whom she fell in love carried
His tar-boxe on his broad belt hong.
His tar-boxe on his broad belt hong.
His tar-boxe on his broad belt hong.
So, too,
He leared his sheepe as he him listWhen he would whistle in his fist;
He leared his sheepe as he him listWhen he would whistle in his fist;
He leared his sheepe as he him list
When he would whistle in his fist;
and the shepherd still guides and encourages his sheep by whistling.
Hilary said that years ago the dogs kept at farmhouses in that district did not seem of such good breeds, nor were there so many varieties as at present. They were mostly sheep-dogs, or mongrels of the sheep-dog cast; for little attention was paid to breed. Dogs of this kind, with shaggy black coats and stump tails, could be found at most farms, and were often of a savage disposition; so much so that it was occasionally necessary to break their teeth that they might not injure the sheep. From his description the dogs at the present day must be far superior; indeed, there seems to have been no variety of dog and no purity of breed at that time (in that neighbourhood); meaning, of course, outside the gamekeeper's kennels, or the hounds used for hunting. Shepherds like to keep their flock in hurdles, folded as much as possible, that they may not rub their wool off and so get a ragged appearance. Once now and then in wet weather the ground becomes so soft that a flock will not move, their narrow feet sinking so deeply in the mud. It is then necessary to 'dog them out'—to set the dog at them—and the excitement, fright, and exertion have been known to kill one or more of the flock.
Passing on to the lower grounds, we entered the meadows, where the men were at haycart. The cart-horses wore glittering brazen ornaments, crescent-shaped, in front of the neck, and one upon the forehead. Have these ornaments a history?[2]The carters and ploughmen have an old-world vocabulary of their own, saying 'toward' for anything near or leaning towards you, and 'vrammards' for the reverse. 'Heeld' or 'yeeld,' again, is ploughman's language; when the newly sown corn does not 'heeld' or 'yeeld' it requires the harrow. In the next field, which the mowers had but just cut, the men were 'tedding'—i.e.spreading the swathe with their prongs. Hilary said that hay was a safe speculation if a man could afford to wait; for every few years it was sure to be extremely dear, so that the old people said, 'Old hay, old gold.'
2See Notes.
As we returned towards Lucketts' Place, he pointed out to me a distant house upon which he said slates had been first used in that neighbourhood. Fifty or sixty years since no slates were to be seen there, and when they began to be introduced the old folk manifested great opposition. They said slate would never last—the moss would eat through it, and so cause holes; and, in fact, some of the slate that was brought up did decay and become useless. But that was, of course, an inferior kind, quite different to what is now employed. In so comparatively short a period has everything—even the mode of roofing—changed that the introduction of slates is still in many places within the memory of man. Hilary had still a lingering preference for thatch; and though he could not deny the utility of slate, his inclination was obviously in favour of straw. He assured me that good straw from a good harvest (for there was much difference in it), well laid on by a good thatcher, had been known to keep out the weather for forty-five years.
We looked into the garden at the Place, where Hilary particularly called my attention to the kidney-beans; for, said he, if the kidney-beans run up the sticks well, with a strong vine, then it would be a capital hop-year. On the contrary, if they were weak and poor, the hops would prove a failure. Thus the one plant was an index to the other, though they might be growing a hundred miles apart, both being particularly sensitive to the same atmospheric influences.
In a distant tree beyond the rickyard there was something hanging in the branches that I could not quite make out: it was a limb of a dead horse. A cart-horse belonging to a neighbouring farmer had met with an accident and had to be killed, when, according to old custom, portions were sent round to each adjacent farmstead for the dogs, which then had a feast. Thus, said Hilary, according to the old saw, the death of a horse is the life of a dog.
CHAPTER IX.
THE WATER-MILL. FIELD NAMES.
'Our time be a-most gone by,' said the miller looking up from his work and laying aside the millpeck for a moment as he rubbed his eyes with his white and greasy sleeve. From a window of the old mill by Okebourne I was gazing over the plain green with rising wheat, where the titlarks were singing joyously in the sunshine. A millstone had been 'thrown off' on some full sacks—like cushions—and Tibbald, the miller, was dexterously pecking the grooves afresh.
The millpeck is a little tool like a double adze, or perhaps rather like two chisels set in the head of a mallet. Though age was stealing upon him, Tibbald's eye and hand were still true, and his rude sculpture was executed with curious precision. The grooves, which are the teeth of the millstone, radiate from the centre, but do not proceed direct to the edge: they slant slightly.
'There bean't many as can do this job,' he said, 'I can put in sixteen or twenty to the inch. These old French burrs be the best stone; they be hard, but they be mild and takes the peck well.' Ponderous as the millstones appear, they are capable of being set so that their surfaces shall grind with extreme accuracy. The nether, called the 'bed stone,' is stationary; the upper millstone, or 'runner,' revolves, and the grain crushed between the two works out along the furrows to the edge.
Now and then the miller feels the grain as it emerges with his pudgy thumb and finger, and knows by touch how the stones are grinding. It is perceptibly warm at the moment it issues forth, from the friction: yet the stones must not grind too close, or they 'kill' the wheat, which should be only just cracked, so as to skin well. To attain this end, first, the surfaces of the stones must be level, and the grooves must be exactly right; and, secondly, the upper stone must be hung at the exact distance above the other to the smallest fraction of an inch. The upper millstone is now sometimes balanced with lead, which Tibbald said was not the case of old.
'We used to have a good trade at this mill,' he continued, as he resumed his pecking; 'but our time be a-most gone by. We be too fur away up in these here Downs. There! Listen to he!' A faint hollow whistle came up over the plain, and I saw a long white cloud of steam miles away, swiftly gliding above the trees beneath which in the cutting the train was running.
'That be th' express. It be that there steam as have done for us. Everything got to go according to that there whistle: they sets the church clock by he. The big London mills as be driven by steam does the most of the work; and this here foreign wheat, as comes over in the steamers, puts the market down, so as we yent got a chance to buy up a lot and keep it till the price gets better. I seed in the paper as the rate is gone down a penny: the steamers be going to ship the American wheat a penny a bushel cheaper. So it bean't much good for Hilary to talk about his wheat. I thenks that'll about do.'
He laid down the millpeck, and took his millstaff to prove the work he had done. This was made of well-seasoned oak, two pieces put together so that they should not warp. He rubbed the edge with ruddle, and, placing the millstaff on the stone, turned it about on its shorter axis: where the ruddle left its red mark more pecking would be required. There was but one small spot, and this he quickly put right. Even the seasoned oak, however, is not always true, and to be certain on the point Tibbald had a millstaff prover. This is of rigid steel, and the staff is put on it; if any daylight is visible between the two the staff is not accurate—so delicately must these great stones be adjusted for successful grinding.
The largest of them are four feet two inches diameter; and dangerous things they are to move, for if the men do not all heave or 'give' at the same moment the stone may slip, and the edge will take off a row of fingers as clean as the guillotine. Tibbald, of course, had his joke about that part of the machinery which is called the 'damsel.' He was a righteous man enough as millers go, but your miller was always a bit of a knave; nor could he forbear from boasting to me how he had been half an hour too soon for Hilary last Overboro' market.
He said the vast water-wheel was of elm, but it would not last so long up so near the springs. Upon a river or brook the wheel might endure for thirty years, and grind corn for a generation. His millpond was close to the spring-head, and the spring-water ate into the wood and caused it to decay much quicker. The spokes used to be mortised in, now they used flanges, ironwork having almost destroyed the business of the ancient millwright. Of all manual workers, probably the old style of millwright employed the greatest variety of tools, and was the cleverest in handling them. There seemed no end to the number of his chisels and augers; some of the augers of immense size. In winter time the millwright made the millstones, for the best stones are not in one piece but composed of forty or fifty. The French burrs which Tibbald preferred come over in fragments, and these are carefully fitted together and stuck with plaster of Paris. Such work required great nicety: the old millwright was, in fact, a kind of artist in his handicraft.
I could not help regretting, as Tibbald dilated on these things, that the village millwright no longer existed; the care, the skill, the forethought, the sense of just proportion he exhibited quite took him out of the ranks of the mere workman. He was a master of his craft, and the mind he put into it made him an artist. Tibbald went on that he did not care for the Derby or Welsh millstones. These were in one piece, but they were too hard for the delicate grinding necessary to make the fine flour needed for good bread. They answered best for barley meal. Now, the French burr was not only hard but mild, and seemed to feel the corn as it crushed it. A sack of wheat lost 4 lb. in grinding. I asked about the toll: he showed me the old measure, reckoned at the tenth of a sack; it was a square box. When the lord's tenants in the olden times were forced to have their corn ground at the lord's mill, the toll was liable to be abused in a cruel manner; hence the universal opinion that a miller must be a knave. Even in much more recent times, when the labourers took part of their wages in flour, there is said to have been a great deal of sleight-of-hand in using the toll-box, and the miller's thumb grew fat by continually dipping into other folk's sacks.
But Tibbald had an argument even here, for he said that men nowadays never grew so strong as they used to do when they brought their own wheat to be ground at the mill, and when they made their bread and baked it at home. His own father once carried the fattest man in the parish on his back half a mile; I forget how much he weighed exactly, but it was something enormous, and the fat man, moreover, held a 56 lb. weight in each hand. He himself remembered when Hilary used to be the strongest man in the place; when the young men met together they contended who should lift the heaviest weight, and he had seen Hilary raise 5 cwt., fair lifting, with the hands only, and without any mechanical appliance. Hilary, too, used to write his name with a carpenter's flat cedar pencil on the whitewashed ceiling of the brewhouse, holding the while a ½ cwt. of iron hung on his little finger. The difficulty was to get the weight up, lifting it fairly from the ground; you could lift it very well half-way, but it was just when the arm was bent that the tug came to get it past the hip, after which it would go up comparatively easily.
Now this great strength was not the result of long and special training, or, indeed, of any training at all; it came naturally from outdoor life, outdoor work, plain living (chiefly bacon), and good bread baked at home. At the present time men ate the finest and whitest of bread, but there was no good in it. Folk grew tall and big—taller than they used to be, he thought—and they could run quick, and so forth; but there was no stamina, no power of endurance, of withstanding exposure like there was formerly. The mere measure of a man, he was certain, had nothing to do with his strength; and he could never understand how it was that the army folk would have men precisely so high and so many inches round. Just then he was called away to a carter who had brought up his team and waggon at the door, and as he was gone some time I went up under the roof, whence there was a beautiful view down over the plain.
The swifts, which had but just arrived, were rushing through the sky in their headlong way; they would build presently in the roof. The mill was built at the mouth of a coombe on the verge of the Downs; the coombe was narrow and steep, as if nature had begun a cutting with the view of tunnelling through the mass of the hills. At the upper end of the coombe the spring issued, and at the lower was the millpond. There is something peculiarly human in a mill—something that carries the mind backwards into the past, the days of crossbow and lance and armour. Possibly there was truth in Tibbald's idea that men grow larger in the present time without corresponding strength, for is it not on record that some at least of the armour preserved in collections will not fit those who have tried it on in recent times? Yet the knight for whom it was originally made, though less in stature and size, may have had much more vigour and power of endurance.
The ceaseless rains last year sent the farmers in some places to the local millers once more somewhat in the old style. Part of their wheat proved so poor that they could not sell it at market; and, rather than waste it, they had it ground at the village mills with the idea of consuming as much of the flour as possible at home. But the flour was so bad as to be uneatable. As I parted with Tibbald that morning he whispered to me, as he leaned over the hatch, to say a good word for him with Hilary about the throw of oak that was going on in one part of the Chace. 'If you was to speak to he, he could speak to the steward, and may be I could get a stick or two at a bargain'—with a wink. Tibbald did a little in buying and selling timber, and, indeed, in many other things. Pleased as he was to show me the mill, and to talk about it by the hour together, the shrewd old fellow still had an eye to business.
After a while, in walking along the footpaths of the meadows and by the woods, a feeling grew upon me that it would be pleasant to know something of their history. It was through inquiring about the age of the rookery that this thought took shape. No one could tell me how long the rooks had built there, nor were there any passing allusions in old papers to fix the date. There was no tradition of it among the oldest people; all they knew was that the rooks had always been there, and they seemed to indicate a belief that there the rooks would always remain. It seemed to me, however, that the site of their city was slowly travelling, and in a few generations might be found on the other side of the Chace. Some of the trees where the nests were most numerous were decaying, and several were already deserted. As the trees died, the rooks moved to the next clump, and thus gradually shifted their city.
This inquiry led to further reflections about the past of the woods and meadows. Besides the birds, the flowers, and animals that had been there for so many, many centuries, there were the folk in the scattered homesteads, whose ancestors might have left some record. In these times history is concerned only with great cities or strategical positions of world-wide renown; interest is concentrated on a siege of Paris or a march towards Constantinople. In days of yore battles were often fought in or near what seem to us mere villages; little places whose very names are uncertain and exact site unascertainable were the centres of strife. Some of these places are buried under the sward as completely as Herculaneum under the lava. The green turf covers them, the mower passes over with his scythe and knows not of them.
Hilary had observed in one of his meadows that the turf turned brown or burnt up in squares during hot summer weather. This he conjectured to be caused by the shallowness of the soil over some ancient foundations; and some years before he had had the curiosity to open a hole, and soon came upon a hidden wall. He did not excavate farther, but the old folk, when they heard of it, remembered a tradition of a village having once existed there. At present there were no houses near; the place, whatever it was, had disappeared. The mention of this meadow led to some conversation about the names of the fields, which are often very curious.
Such names as Lea, Leaze, Croft, and so on, are readily explained; but what was the original meaning of The Cossicles? Then there were Zacker's Hook, the Conigers,[3]Cheesecake, Hawkes, Rials, Purley, Strongbowls, Thrupp, Laines, Sannetts, Gaston, Wexils, Wernils, Glacemere, several Hams, Haddons, and Weddingtons, Slades, and so on, and a Truelocks. These were quickly put down; scores of still more singular names might be collected in every parish. It is the meadows and pastures which usually bear these designations; the ploughed fields are often only known by their acreage, as the Ten Acre Piece, or the Twelve Acres. Some of them are undoubtedly the personal names of former owners. But in others ancient customs, allusions to traditions, fragments of history, or of languages now extinct, may survive.
3See Notes.
There was a meadow where deep trenches could be traced, green now, but clearly once a moat, but there was not even a tradition about it. On the Downs overlooking the Idovers was an earthwork or entrenchment, of which no one knew anything. Hilary believed there was an old book—a history of Overboro' town—which might perhaps contain some information, but where it could be found he did not know. After some consideration, however, he thought there might be a copy at the Crown, once an old posting-inn, at Overboro': that was about the only place where I should be likely to find it. So one warm summer day I walked into Overboro', following a path over the Downs, whose short sward affords the best walking in the world.
At the Crown, now no more an inn but an hotel, the archway was blocked up with two hand-trucks piled with trunks and portmanteaus, the property of commercial gentlemen and just about to be conveyed to the station. What with the ostler and the 'boots' and the errand-boys, all hanging about for their fees, it was a push to enter; and the waiters within seemed to equally occupy the passage, fetching the dust-coats and walking-sticks and flourishing coat-brushes. Seeing a door marked 'Coffee-room,' I took refuge, and having ordered luncheon began to consider how I should open my subject with the landlord, who was clearly as much up to the requirements of modern life as if his house had been by a London terminus. Time-tables in gilt-stamped covers strewed the tables; wine lists stood on edge; a card of the local omnibus to the station was stuck up where all could see it; the daily papers hung over the arm of a cosy chair; the furniture was new; the whole place, it must be owned, extremely comfortable and the service good.
But it was town and not country—to-day and not the olden time; and I did not feel courage enough to ask for the book. I believe I should have left the place without mentioning it, but, fortunately looking round the room while the lunch was prepared, I found it in the bookcase, where there was a strange mixture of the modern and antique. I took down the history from between Rich's thin grey 'Ruins of Babylon' and a yellow-bound railway novel.
Towards the close of the eighteenth century a learned gentleman had taken much pains to gather together this account of the town. He began with the story of Brutus, and showed that one of the monarchs descended from the illustrious Trojan founded a city here. Some fossil shells, indeed, that had been dug up furnished him with conclusive proof that the Deluge had not left the site uncovered, since no how else could they have got there: an argument commonly accepted in his day. Thus he commenced, like the monks themselves, with the beginning of the world; but then came a wide gap down to Domesday Book. The hides and yardlands held by the conquerors—how much was in demesne, how many acres were wood and how many meadow—the number of servi, and what the mill paid were duly translated and recorded.
The descent of the manors through the monasteries and the persons who purchased them at the Dissolution filled several pages, and was supplemented with a charter recognising rights of infang and outfang, assize of bread and ale, and so forth. Finally, there was a list of the mayors, which some one had carried on in manuscript on a fly-leaf to within ten years of date. There was an air of precision in the exact sentences, and the writer garnished his tale with frequent quotations from Latin writers. In the midst was a wood-cut of a plant having no sort of relevancy to the subject-matter, but for which he returned thanks for the loan of the block.
But he had totally omitted his own times. These quotations, these lists and charters, the extracts from Domesday, read dry and formal—curious, and yet not interesting. Had he described the squires and yeomen, the townspeople of his own day, their lives and manner of thinking, how invaluable and pleasing his work would have been!
Hilary said that in these little country towns years ago people had to be very careful how they acted, lest they should offend some local magnate. He remembered a tradesman telling him how once he had got into great disgrace for putting a new knocker on his private side door, without first asking permission and sending round to obtain the opinion of an old gentleman. This person had nothing whatever to do with the property, but lived retired and ruled his neighbours with a rod of iron. The old knocker was quite worn out, but the new one had scarcely been fastened on when the unfortunate owner was summoned to the presence of the irate old gentleman, who demanded with great wrath what on earth he meant by setting himself up above his station in this way. It was only by a humble answer, and by begging the old gentleman to walk down and look at the discarded knocker, promising that it should be replaced if he thought proper, that he could be appeased. A man then hardly dared appear in a new hat without first suggesting the idea to his social superior.
CHAPTER X.
THE COOMBE-BOTTOM. CONCLUSION.
'There is "two-o'clock bush,"' said Cicely, pointing to a large hawthorn; 'the shepherds look from the corner of the entrenchment, and if the sun is over that bush they know it is two o'clock.' She was driving me in the pony-trap over the Downs, and we were going to call on Mrs. Luckett's brother, who had a farm among the hills. He had not been down to Lucketts' Place for more than twelve months, and Cicely was resolved to make him promise to come. Though they may be in reality much attached and affectionate, country folk are apt to neglect even their nearest and dearest. The visit is put off from month to month; then comes the harvest, and nothing else can be thought of; and the longer the lapse the more difficult is the remedy. The footpath of friendship, says the ancient British triad, if not frequently travelled becomes overgrown with briars.
Those who live by the land forget the passage of the years. A year is but a harvest. After the ploughing and sowing and cleaning, the reaping and thatching and threshing, what is there left of the twelvemonth? It has gone like a day. Thus it is that a farmer talks of twenty years since as if it was only last week, and seems unable to grasp the flight of time till it is marked and emphasised by some exceptional occurrence. Cicely meant to wake her uncle from this slumber.
We started early on a beautiful July morning—partly to avoid the heat, and partly because Cicely wished to be away when young Aaron shortened the tails of the puppies in the rickyard. (This he did in the old-fashioned way, with his teeth.) Besides we thought that, if we waited till later, Uncle Bennet might be gone to market at Overboro'. We passed several farmers leaning or sitting on the stiles by the road, watching for a friend to come along and give them a lift into town. Some of them had waited like this every market morning for years. There were fewer on the road than usual, it being near harvest, when many do not so much care to leave home.
Upon reaching the foot of the Downs, Cicely left the highway and entered a narrow lane without hedges, but worn low between banks of chalk or white rubble. The track was cut up with ruts so deep that the bed of the pony-trap seemed almost to touch the ground. As we went rather slowly along this awkward place we could see the wild thyme growing on the bank at the side. Presently we got on the slope of the hill, and at the summit passed the entrenchment and the shepherds' timepiece. Thence our track ran along the ridge, on the short sweet turf, where there were few or no ruts, and these easily avoided on that broad open ground. The quick pony now put out his speed, and we raced along as smoothly as if the wheels were running on a carpet. Far below, to the right, stretched wheatfield after wheatfield in a plain between two ranges of the hills. Over the opposite slope, a mile away, came the shadows of the clouds—then down along the corn towards us. Stonechats started from the flints and low bushes as we went by; an old crow—it is always an old crow—rose hastily from behind a fence of withered thorn; and a magpie fluttered down the hill to the fields beneath, where was a flock of sheep. The breeze at this height made the sunshine pleasant.
Cicely said that once some snow lingered in the fosse of the entrenchment we had left behind till the haymaking. There was a snowstorm late in the spring, and a drift was formed in a hollow at the bottom of the fosse. The weather continued chilly (sometimes even in June it is chilly, and the flowers seem out of harmony with the temperature), and this drift, though of course it was reduced, did not melt but became consolidated like ice: a part still remained when the haymaking commenced. The pony now slackened his pace at a sharp ascent, and as he walked up we could hear the short song of the grasshoppers. There was a fir copse at the summit through which the track went; by the gateway as we entered there was a convolvulus out. Cicely regretted to see this sign that the sun had reached his greatest height: the tide of summer was full. Beyond the copse we descended by a deep-worn track into a 'coombe-bottom,' or valley, where were some cottages.
Cicely, who knew some of the old people, thought she would call, though most probably they would be away. We stopped at a garden-gate: it was open, but there was no one about. Cicely lifted the latch of the door to step in, country fashion, but it was locked; and, hearing the noise, a cat came mewing round the corner. As if they had started out of the ground, a brown-faced boy and a thin girl suddenly appeared, having come through the hedge.
'Thaay be up to barken' (rickyard), said the boy: so we went on to the next door. It was locked too, but the key was in the lock outside. Cicely said that was a signal to callers that the wife had only gone out for a few minutes and would return soon. The children had followed us.
'Where is she?' asked Cicely.
'Hur be gone to dipping-place,' replied the boy. We went to a third door, and immediately he cried out, 'Thuck's our feyther's: the kay's in the thatch.' We looked and could see the handle of the key sticking out of the eave over the door.
'Where are they all?' I said.
'Aw, Bill's in the clauver; and Joe—he's in th' turmuts; and Jack be at public, a' spose; and Bob's wi' the osses; and——'
'They will be home to luncheon?' said Cicely.
'Aw, no um wunt; they wunt be whoam afore night; thaay got thur nuncheon wi' um.'
'Is there no one at home in all the place?' I inquired.
'Mebbe Farmer Bennet. Thur beant nobody in these yer housen.'
So we went on to Uncle Bennet's, whose house was hidden by a clump of elms farther down the coombe. There were cottagers in this lonely hill hamlet, not only old folk but young persons, who had never seen a train. They had not had the enterprise or curiosity to walk into Overboro' for the purpose. Some of the folk ate snails, the common brown shell-snail found in the hedges. It has been observed that children who eat snails are often remarkably plump. The method of cooking is to place the snail in its shell on the bar of a grate, like a chestnut. And well-educated people have been known, even in these days, to use the snail as an external medicine for weakly children: rubbed into the back or limb, the substance of the snail is believed to possess strengthening virtues.[4]
4See Notes.
We found Uncle Bennet just taking his lunch in the stone-flagged sitting-room, which, however, had a square of cocoa-nut matting. He was getting on in years, but very active. He welcomed us warmly: still I thought I detected some uneasiness in his manner. His conscience warned him that Cicely was going to attack him for his remissness; and how was he to defend himself?
Without any preliminary, she at once demanded why he had not come down to see them.
'Mary,' said he, calling the servant, as if he did not hear her, 'Some ale, and the ginger wine, and the grey-beard—mebbe you'd like a drop a' shart'—to me; but I declined. She repeated her question, but Uncle Bennet was looking towards me.
'The wuts be very forrard,' said he, 'I got some a-most ready to cut.'
'Do you hear?' cried Cicely, angrily.
'Niece,' replied the farmer, turning to her, 'there's them summer apples as you used to like, there be some ready; will 'ee have one?'
'I don't want your apples; why didn't you come down?'
'Aw; that's what you be a-talking about.'
'Yes, that's it.'
'The turmots wants some rain terrable bad' (to me)—'you med see the fly a-hopping about 'em.'
'I hope they will spoil your turnips,' said Cicely; 'you are a very rude man not to answer a lady when she speaks to you.'
'You be a-coming on nicely, Cissy,' said he. 'Have 'ee got are a gage-ring yet?'
'How dare you!' (blushing). 'Tell me instantly why have you not been to see us? You know how angry it makes me.'
'Well, I was a-coming,' deliberately.
'When were you coming?'
'Well, I got to see a man down your way, Cissy; a' owes me for a load a' straw.'
'Then why don't you come down and get the money?'
'I telled 'ee I was a-coming. He wants some of our sheep to feed off a meadow; s'pose I must see about it'—with a sigh, as if the idea of a decision was insupportable.
'Why didn't you come before?'
'Aw, I don't seem to have no time'—farmers having more time than anybody else.
'You could have come in June.'
'Bless 'ee, your feyther's got the hay about; a' don't want no strangers bothering.'
'As if you were a stranger! Well, why didn't you come in May?'
'Lor bless 'ee, my dear.'
'In April?'
'Us was main busy a-hoeing.'
'In March?'
'I had the rheumatism bad in March.'
'Well, then,' concluded Cicely, 'now just change your coat and come to-day. Jump up in the pony-trap—we will make room.'
'To-day!' in hopeless bewilderment, his breath quite taken away at the idea of such sudden action. 'Couldn't do't—couldn't do't. Got to go down to Thirty Acre Corner: got to get out the reaping machine—a' wants oiling, a' reckon; got some new hurdles coming; 'spects a chap to call about them lambs;' a farmer can always find a score of reasons for doing nothing.
'All rubbish!' cried Cicely, smiling.
'Nieces be main peart now-a-days,' said he, shutting one eye and keeping it closed, as much as to say—I won't be driven. Then to me, 'There won't be many at market to-day.'
'I am hungry,' said Cicely softly; 'I should like some bread and honey.'
'Aw; should 'ee?' in gentler tones; 'I'll get 'ee some: will'ee have it in th' comb? I got a bit left.'
She knew his pride in his bees and his honey; hill farmers still keep large stocks. He brought her a slice of home-baked bread and a piece of comb. She took the comb in her white fingers, and pressed the liquid gold from the cells; the luscious sweetness gathered from a thousand flowers making her lips still sweeter. Uncle Bennet offered me a jar full to the brim: 'Dip your vinger in,' said he.
'Why is the honey of the hills so much nicer?' asked Cicely, well knowing, but drawing him on.
'It be th' clover and th' thyme, and summat in the air. There bean't no hedges for um to fly up against, and so um carries home a bigger load.'
'How many hives have you?' I inquired.
'Let's see'—he counted them up, touching a finger for each twenty—'There be three score and sixteen; I have a' had six score years ago, but folk don't care for honey now sugar be so cheap.'
'Let us go and see them,' said Cicely. We went out and looked at the hives; they were all in a row, each protected by large 'pan-sherds' from heavy rain, and placed along beneath the wall of the garden, which sheltered them on one side. Uncle Bennet chatted pleasantly about his bees for an hour, and would, I believe, have gossiped all day, notwithstanding that he had so little time for anything. Nothing more was said about the delayed visit, but just as we were on the point of departure, and Cicely had already taken the reins, he said to her, as if it were an afterthought, 'Tell your mother, I s'pose I must look down that way next week.'
We passed swiftly through the little hamlet; the children had gathered by a gateway to watch us. Though so far from the world, they were not altogether without a spice of the impudence of the city arab. A tall and portly gentleman from town once chanced to visit this 'coombe-bottom' on business, and strolled down the 'street' in all the glory of shining boots, large gold watch-chain, black coat and high hat, all the pomp of Regent-street; doubtless imagining that his grandeur astonished the rustics. A brown young rascal, however, looking him up—he was a tall man—with an air of intelligent criticism, audibly remarked, 'Hum! He be very well up to his ankles—and then a' falls off!'
That evening was one of the most beautiful I remember. We all sat in the garden at Lucketts' Place till ten o'clock; it was still light and it seemed impossible to go indoors. There was a seat under a sycamore tree with honeysuckle climbing over the bars of the back; the spot was near the orchard, but on slightly higher ground. From our feet the meadow sloped down to the distant brook, the murmur of whose stream as it fell over a bay could be just heard. Northwards the stars were pale, the sun seems so little below the horizon there that the glow of the sunset and the glow of the dawn nearly meet. But southwards shone the dull red star of summer—Antares, seen while the wheat ripens and the ruddy and golden tints come upon the fruits. Then nightly describing a low curve he looks down upon the white shimmering corn, and carries the mind away to the burning sands and palms of the far south. In the light and colour and brilliance of an English summer we sometimes seem very near those tropical lands.
So still was it that we heard an apple fall in the orchard, thud on the sward, blighted perhaps and ripe before its time. Under the trees as the months went on there would rise heaps of the windfalls collected there to wait for the cider-mill. The mill was the property of two or three of the village folk, a small band of adventurers now grown old, who every autumn went round from farm to farm grinding the produce of the various orchards. They sometimes poured a quantity of the acid juice into the mill to sharpen it, as cutting a lemon will sharpen a knife. The great press, with its unwieldy screw and levers, squeezed the liquor from the cut-up apples in the horse-hair bags: a cumbersome apparatus, but not without interest; for surely so rude an engine must date back far in the past. The old fellows who brought it and put it up with slow deliberative motions were far, far past the joy with which all the children about the farm hailed its arrival. With grave faces and indifferent manner they ground the apples, and departed as slowly and deliberately as they came; verily men of the autumn, harbingers of the fall of the year.
As I dreamed with the honeysuckle over my shoulder, and Antares southwards, Hilary talked at intervals about his wheat as usual and the weather, but I only caught fragments of it. All the signs were propitious, and as it had been a fine harvest under similar conditions before, people said it would be fine this time. But, unlike the law, the weather acknowledged no precedent, and nobody could tell, though folk now thought they knew everything. How all things had changed since the Queen ascended the throne! Not long since Hilary was talking with a labourer, an elderly man, who went to the feast in Overboro' town on the day of the coronation. The feast was held in the market-place, and the puddings, said the old fellow regretfully, were so big they were brought in on hand-barrows.
It was difficult since he himself remembered even to learn the state of the markets. So few newspapers came into country places that before service on Sundays the farmers gathered round anybody in the churchyard who was known to take in a paper, to get particulars from this fortunate individual. Letters rarely came to the farmhouse door then. The old postman made a very good thing of his office—people were so eager for news, and it was easy to take a magpie glance at a newspaper. So he called at the butcher's before he started out, and in exchange for a peep at the paper got a little bit of griskin, or a chop, and at the farmhouses as he passed they gave him a few eggs, and at the inns a drop of gin. Thus a dozen at least read scraps before it reached the rightful owner.
If anything very extraordinary had happened he would shout it out as he went through the hamlet. Hilary said he well remembered being up on the roof of the house one morning, mending the thatch, when suddenly a voice—it was the postman's—cried from the road, 'Royal Exchange burned down!' In this way news got about before the present facilities were afforded. But some of the old folk still regretted the change and believed that we should some day be punished for our worship of steam. Steam had brought us to rely on foreign countries for our corn, and a day would come when through a war, or a failure of the crops there, the vast population of this country would be in danger of famine. But 'old folk' are prone to prophesy disaster and failure of all kinds.
Mrs. Luckett chimed in here, and said that modern ways were not all improvements, the girls now were so fond of gadding about. This was a hint for Cicely, who loved a change, and yet was deeply attached to the old home. She rose at this, doubtless pouting, but it was too dusky to see, and went indoors, and presently from the open window came the notes of her piano. As she played I dreamed again, till presently Mrs. Luckett began to argue with Hilary that the shrubs about the garden ought to be cut and trimmed. Hilary said he liked to see the shrubs and the trees growing freely; he objected to cut and trim them. 'For,' said he, 'God made nothing tidy.' Just then Cicely called us to supper.
NOTES.
The following interesting correspondence has been received.