Читать книгу Neighbourhood: A year's life in and about an English village - Edwardes Tickner - Страница 6

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It is not difficult to understand why indoor work is at most times tolerable in cities, fair weather or foul. For in cities earth and sky have long been driven out of their ancient comradeship. Stifled by pavements and masonry, the earth cannot feel the touch of the sunbeams, nor the air enrich itself with the breath of the soil. The old glad interchange is prevented at all points. There is no lure in the sunshine, no siren voice in the gale. Summer rain does not call you out into the open, to share the joy of it with the drinking grass and leaves. Amidst your dead, impenetrable bricks-and-mortar, you can plod on with your scribbling or figuring without a heart-stir; no vine-leaf will tap at your window, no lily-of-the-field taunt your industry, nor song of skylark dissipate your dreams.

But indoor work, carried on in a village deep in the green heart of some beautiful country-side, is on an entirely different plane. At times, perhaps, it becomes the hardest work in the world. With one lavish hand life gives you the things most necessary for close, unremitting application, and with the other she ruthlessly sets all manner of obstacles in your path. On such a day as now dawned crystal-clear over Windlecombe, with the first warm wind of the year blowing new life into everything, there was no stopping indoors for me. I got down to my work punctually enough, even a little before the wonted time. But good resolutions could make no headway against such odds. The south-west wind boomed merrily in the elm-tops. The sunbeams riddled my old house through and through. Out in the garden robins and thrushes had formed themselves into a grand orchestra; and when the breeze lulled for a moment, I could hear the larks singing far overhead, as though it were a summer’s day. An hour of half-hearted tinkering saw my fortitude break like a milldam. Five minutes later I had shut the house-door behind me, and was off up the village street, gulping down deep draughts of the sweet morning air.

I chose the path that led to the Downs. Mounting the steep, chalky track in the arms of the gale, with the misty green heights looming up before me against the blue of the winter’s morning, one fact was borne in upon me at every step. Though I must needs write winter—for January was but three parts done—it was no longer winter, but spring. A few days’ sunny warmth had worked what seemed like a miracle. In the hedges and trees the buds were swelling. Birds were pairing. Young green spears of grass showed underfoot. Across the path clouds of midges danced in the sunshine. I heard the first low love-croon of a wood-dove; and, when I stopped for breath in the lee of the hazel-copse, there drifted out upon me a song never yet heard on winter days—the mellow voice of a blackbird calling for a mate.

But the more we study Nature out of doors, the more we come to disbelieve in winter altogether. Winter is in truth a myth. From the moment the old year’s leaves are down, the earth is in vigorous preparation for the new year’s life and growth. Nature lies by quietly enough during the cold spells, but each awakening is a stronger and more joyous one. While they last, the long frosts seem to hold all the life of things suspended. Yet, with every return of the south-west wind, it is easy to see that this is not really so. Though the visible sunbeams have had no power for progress, those stored in the earth have been slowly and steadily at work. And when the thaw comes, Nature seems to take up the slack of the year in one tremendous forward pull.

I reached the crest of Windle Down, and made over the springy, dew-soaked grass, content to go wheresoever the tearing wind should drive me. The long, billowing curves of the hills stretched away on all sides until they lost themselves in distant violet haze. Here and there flocks of sheep made a grey patch in the sunlit solitude, and a low clamour of bells was in the air blent with the unending song of the larks. On the combe-sides the gorse spread its darker green, and, near at hand, I could make out its gold buds already bursting under the touch of the sunbeams The next hill before me was topped with a ring of fencing, near which stood a solitary figure, clear cut against the tender blue of the north.

Shepherding on the South Downs is an hereditary family calling, and old George Artlett, the shepherd at Windlecombe farm, had trained up two at least of his four sons to follow in his own tranquil steps. In village life, though the essence of neighbourliness is that it must be exercised impartially to one and all, worthy or unworthy, there are ever some about you with whom the daily traffic of genial word and deed comes more aptly than with the rest. In all the years I had known the Artletts, there had been scarce a day when I had not encountered one or other of that sturdy clan, and generally to my profit. If it was not the old shepherd himself placidly trailing along in the rear of his flock with his shining crook, it was ‘young’ George, the fifty-year-old under-shepherd, his pocket bulged out with a Bible; or Dewie, the shepherd’s boy; or John, the sporting handy-man, tramping off to covert with his pack of mongrels; or quaint ‘Mistus’ Artlett, carrying her household basket to and from the shop. Of Tom Artlett—the ‘Singing Ploughman,’ as he was called in the neighbouring market town—I got a glimpse sometimes in the early grey of morning, or more often of late afternoon, as he journeyed between home and farm. He ploughed his acre a day conscientiously, walking the usual twelve miles in the doing of it; and all the while his rich, powerful voice made the hills about him echo with the songs he loved.

Why he sang these songs, and why young George’s pocket always bulged, would have been at once evident to you if you could have looked out of window with me any Sunday morning about eight of the clock. Punctually at that hour, the two brothers strode by in their scarlet guernseys and blue, braided coats, on their way to the town; and there they passed a seventh day more toilsome than all the other six, coming home at nightfall hoarse and weary, yet plainly as happy as any men could be.

Young George Artlett stood on the hill-top, leaning upon his crook. The wind fluttered his coat about him, and lashed his haversack to and fro. He stood with his back in my direction, bare-headed, his grey hair streaming in the breeze. It was not until I had almost come up with him that I marked his uplifted face, his closed eyes, his moving lips; and then I stopped irresolutely, ashamed of the blunder I had committed. But before I could turn and retreat, the dog at his side had signalled my presence. The old tarpaulin sou’wester hat was returned to its place. Young George wheeled round, and looked at me with eyes of welcome.

‘I knowed by th’ bark o’ him, who ’twur,’ he said, in his slow, deep, quiet voice. ‘Rowster, ’a has a name fer all o’ ye. That there little happy shruck, ’tis yerself an’ nane other. When ’a perks up an’ bellers, ’tis th’ poodle-dorg an’ Miss Sweet. An’ when ’a grizzles, I an’t no call to look around; there be a black coat no gurt ways off, sure as big apples comes from little uns.’

He smiled to himself, as though the memory of some recent encounter with the black coat had returned to him. Then he took a quick glance at the sun.

‘Drinkin’-time!’ said he.

His sheep were all on the far hill-side, half a mile off perhaps, feeding—as sheep always do on windy days—with their heads to the breeze; and shouldering together in long, straight lines, roughly parallel—as, again, sheep generally will, in spite of the prettily ordered groups on painters’ canvases. It is only on days of perfect calm that grazing sheep will head to all points of the compass, and on the South Downs such days are rare indeed.

George Artlett put his hands to his mouth funnel-wise, and sent the shepherd’s folding-call ringing on the breeze.

‘Coo-oo-oo-o-up! Coo-oo-oo-o-up! Coom along—coo-oo-up!’

The shrill, wild notes pealed out, drawing an echo from every hill far and near. At once all the ewes on the distant sunny slope stopped their nibbling, and looked round. Again the cry rang forth. This time the foremost sheep moved a step or two in our direction, hesitated, then came slowly on. A moment later the whole flock was under way, pouring steadily up the hill-side and filling the air with a deep, clamorous song.

But two or three of the younger sheep had stayed behind in a little bay of grass beyond the furze-brake. Rowster looked inquiringly at his master, got a consenting wave of the arm, and was off with the speed of light. We watched him as he raced down the hill in a wide semicircle, and, taking the malingerers in the rear, drove them helter-skelter after the rest. Yelping and snapping behind them, he brought the whole flock up to the dew-pond at what seemed an entirely unnecessary pace.

‘’Tis allers so wi’ dorgs,’ observed young George reflectively. ‘Ye can never larn them as shepherd work ought to go slow as the sun i’ the sky. All fer hurry an’ bustle they be, from birth-time to buryin’—get the hour by, sez they, the day over, life done, an’ on wi’ the next thing!’

We turned our shoulders to the blustering wind, and leant over the rail together, watching the sheep drink. These dew-ponds on the Sussex Downs are always a mystery to strangers coming for the first time into the sheep country; and they are never quite bereft of their miraculous quality, even among the shepherds themselves. That in a land, where there are neither springs nor natural pools of water, man should dig hollows, not in the lowest sink-points of the valleys where one would reasonably make such a work, but on the summits of the highest hills, and then confidently expect Nature to fill them with water, keeping them so filled year after year, in and out of season, no matter what call was made on their resources—must appear little else than downright ineptitude to one who has never had the feasibility of the plan demonstrated under his very eyes. Yet the seeming wonder of the dew-pond has a very simple explanation. It is nothing more than a cold spot on the earth, which continually precipitates the moisture from the air passing over it; and this cold spot is formed on the hill-top because there it encounters air which has not been robbed of its vapour by previous contact with the earth.

The best dew-pan makers are the men of Wiltshire, as all flockmasters know. The pond, having been excavated to the right depth and shape, is lined first with puddled clay or chalk, then with a thick layer of dry straw; finally, upon this straw a further substantial coating of clay is laid, and well beaten down. Nothing is needed then but to bring a few cart-loads of water to start the pond, and to set a ring-fence about it to keep off heavy stock. The action of the straw, in its waterproof double-casing, is to intercept the heat-radiation of the earth at that particular point, so that the pond-cavity and its contents remain colder than the surrounding soil.

How the dew-pond came to be invented has often been the subject of wondering speculation. No doubt there have been dew-pond makers for untold centuries back, but at one time, however far distant, a first discovery of the principle underlying the thing must have been made. Probably the dew-pond, in some form or other, had its origin in those remote times when all the high-lying chalk-lands of southern England were overrun by a dense population. But then, as now, the region must have been waterless; and the people, living there for security’s sake, must, nevertheless, have been constrained to provide themselves with this first daily necessity of all life. We read of the manna given in the Wilderness, and the water struck from the Rock. These were miracles worked, as miracles ever are, for children: they were grown men, evidently, in mind and heart, to whom the dew-pond was given. For though the thing, in essence, was set to shine about their feet wherever men trod, so that none could forbear seeing, its adaptation to human need was left to man’s own labour and thoughtful ingenuity. To-day, as in those far-off ages, the dwarf plume-thistle studs the sward of the Downs, each circle of thick, fleshy leaves, matted together and centrally depressed, forming a perfect little dew-pond, that retains its garnered moisture long after all other vegetation has grown dry in the heat of the mounting sun. Even if there were no such thing as a dew-pond on all the Downs to-day, and every flock must perforce be driven miles, perhaps, down into the valley to be watered, it is inconceivable that no one of prime intelligence, wandering the hills alive to the need of the thirsty thousands around him, would mark the natural reservoirs of the thistles, reason out the principles they embodied, and straightway set brain and hand to work on the first dew-pond—using perchance, in earliest experiment, the actual thistle-leaves for the indispensable heat-retarding layer.

I had often talked the matter over with George Artlett, and now we drifted into the old subject. But he was never to be cajoled out of his belief in the miraculous nature of the affair.

‘Him as sent th’ fire down to th’ could altar,’ he said, his long arm going up to heaven, and his voice taking on that deep, vibratory chime so familiar to Sunday loiterers in Stavisham marketplace, ‘He knaws how to send watter to faith an’ a dry pan. Ay! but I ha’ seed it comin’, many’s the time. An’ th’ first time, I ’lowed as ’twur High Barn ricks burnin’. We was goin’ hoame to fold, and there afore me, right agen th’ red night-sky, I seed a gurt topplin’ cloud o’ summut as looked like smoke ahent th’ hill. Sez I, ’tis High Barn ricks afire! But it warn’t. It wur jest Gorramighty gatherin’ together His dew from the fower winds o’ heaven, an’ pourin’ it into Maast’ Coles’s pond.’