Chapter 5

Let me then take the case of the man who has trained his eyes, or rather whose vision has unconsciously trained itself, to look at every face he meets, to find in most cases something, however little, of the person's inner life. Such a man could hardly walk the length of the Strand and Fleet-street or of Oxford-street without being startled at the sight of a face which haunts him with its tragedy, its mystery, the strange things it has half revealed. But it does not haunt him long; another arresting face follows, and then another, and the impressions all fade and vanish from the memory in a little while. But from time to time, at long intervals, once perhaps in a lustrum, he will encounter a face that will not cease to haunt him, whose vivid impression will not fade for years. It was a face and eyes of that kind which I met in the samphire gatherer on that cold evening; but the mystery of it is a mystery still.

XI

A SURREY VILLAGE

Through the scattered village of Churt, in its deepest part, runs a clear stream, broad in places, where it spreads over the road-way and is so shallow that the big carthorses are scarce wetted above their fetlocks in crossing; in other parts narrow enough for a man to jump over, yet deep enough for the trout to hide in. And which is the prettiest one finds it hard to say--the wide splashy places where the cattle come to drink, and the real cow and the illusory inverted cow beneath it are to be seen touching their lips; or where the oaks and ashes and elms stretch and mingle their horizontal branches;--where there is a green leafy canopy above and its green reflection below with the glassy current midway between. On one side the stream is Surrey, on the other Hampshire. Where the two counties meet there is a vast extent of heath-land--brown desolate moors and hills so dark as to look almost black.

It is wild, and its wildness is of that kind which comes of a barren soil. It is a country best appreciated by those who, rich or poor, take life easily, who love all aspects of nature, all weathers, and above everything the liberty of wide horizons. To others the cry of "Back to the land" would have a somewhat dreary and mocking sound in such a place, like that curious cry, half laughter and half wail, which the peewit utters as he anxiously winnows the air with creaking wings above the pedestrian's head. But it is not all of this character. From some black hill-top one looks upon a green expanse, fresh and lively by contrast as the young leaves of deciduous trees in spring, with black again or dark brown of pine and heath beyond. It is the oasis where Churt is. The vivifying spirit of the wind at that height, and that vision of verdure beneath, produce an exhilarating effect on the mind. It is common knowledge that the devil once lived in or haunted these parts: now my hill-top fancy tells me that once upon a time a better being, a wandering angel, flew over the country, and looking down and seeing it so dark-hued and desolate, a compassionate impulse took him, and unclasping his light mantle he threw it down, so that the human inhabitants should not be without that sacred green colour that elsewhere beautifies the earth. There to this day it lies where it fell--a mantle of moist vivid green, powdered with silver and gold, embroidered with all floral hues; all reds from the faint blush on the petals of the briar-rose to the deep crimson of the red trifolium; and all yellows, and blues, and purples.

It was pleasant to return from a ramble over the rough heather to the shade of the green village lanes, to stand aside in some deep narrow road to make room for a farmer's waggon to pass, drawn by five or six ponderous horses; to meet the cows too, smelling of milk and new-mown hay, attended by the small cow-boy. One notices in most rural districts how stunted in growth many of the boys of the labourers are; here I was particularly struck by it on account of the fine physique of many of the young men. It is possible that the growing time may be later and more rapid here than in most places. Some of the young men are exceptionally tall, and there was a larger percentage of tall handsome women than I have seen in any village in Surrey and Hampshire. But the children were almost invariably too small for their years. The most stunted specimen was a little boy I met near Hindhead. He was thin, with a dry wizened face, and looked at the most about eight years old; he assured me that he was twelve. I engaged this gnome-like creature to carry something for me, and we had three or four miles ramble together. A curious couple we must have seemed--a giant and a pigmy, the pigmy looking considerably older than the giant. He was a heath-cutter's child, the eldest of seven children! They were very poor, but he could earn nothing himself, except by gathering whortleberries in their season; then he said, all seven of them turned out with their parents, the youngest in its mother's arms. I questioned him about the birds of the district; he stoutly maintained that he recognised only four, and proceeded to name them.

"Here is another," said I, "a fifth you didn't name, singing in the bushes half a dozen yards from where we stand--the best singer of all."

"I did name it," he returned, "that's a thrush."

It was a nightingale, a bird he did not know. But he knew a thrush--it was one of the four birds he knew, and he stuck to it that it was a thrush singing. Afterwards he pointed out the squalid-looking cottage he lived in. It was on the estate of a great lady.

"Tell me," I said, "is she much liked on the estate?"

He pondered the question for a few moments, then replied, "Some likes her and some don't," and not a word more would he say on that subject. A curious amalgam of stupidity and shrewdness; a bad observer of bird-life, but a cautious little person in answering leading questions; he was evidently growing up (or not doing so) in the wrong place.

Going out for a stroll in the evening, I came to a spot where two small cottages stood on one side of the road, and a large pond fringed with rushes and a coppice on the other. Just by the cottage five boys were amusing themselves by throwing stones at a mark, talking, laughing and shouting at their play. Not many yards from the noisy boys some fowls were picking about on the turf close to the pond; presently out of the rushes came a moorhen and joined them. It was in fine feather, very glossy, the brightest nuptial yellow and scarlet on beak and shield. It moved about, heedless of my presence and of the noisy stone-throwing boys, with that pretty dignity and unconcern which make it one of the most attractive birds. What a contrast its appearance and motions presented to those of the rough-hewn, ponderous fowls, among which it moved so daintily! I was about to say that he was "just like a modern gentleman" in the midst of a group of clodhoppers in rough old coats, hob-nailed boots, and wisps of straw round their corduroys, standing with clay pipes in their mouths, each with a pot of beer in his hand. Such a comparison would have been an insult to the moorhen. Nevertheless some ambitious young gentleman of aesthetic tastes might do worse than get himself up in this bird's livery. An open coat of olive-brown silk, with an oblique white band at the side; waistcoat or cummerbund, and knickerbockers, slaty grey; stockings and shoes of olive green; and, for a touch of bright colour, an orange and scarlet tie. It would be pleasant to meet him in Piccadilly. But he would never, never be able to get that quaint pretty carriage. The "Buzzard lope" and the crane's stately stride are imitable by man, but not the moorhen's gait. And what a mess of it our young gentleman would make in attempting at each step to throw up his coat tails in order to display conspicuously the white silk underlining!

While I watched the pretty creature, musing sadly the while on the ugliness of men's garments, a sudden storm of violent rasping screams burst from some holly bushes a few yards away. It proceeded from three excited jays, but whether they were girding at me, the shouting boys, or a skulking cat among the bushes, I could not make out.

When I finally left this curious company--noisy boys, great yellow feather-footed fowls, dainty moorhen and vociferous jays--it was late, but another amusing experience was in store for me. Leaving the village I went up the hill to the Devil's Jumps to see the sun set. The Devil, as I have said, was much about these parts in former times; his habits were quite familiar to the people, and his name became associated with some of the principal landmarks and features of the landscape. It was his custom to go up into these rocks, where, after drawing his long tail over his shoulder to have it out of his way, he would take one of his great flying leaps or jumps. On the opposite side of the village we have the Poor Devil's Bottom--a deep treacherous hole that cuts like a ravine through the moor, into which the unfortunate fellow once fell and broke several of his bones. A little further away, on Hindhead, we have the Devil's Punch Bowl, that huge basin-shaped hollow on the hill which has now become almost as famous as Flamborough Head or the Valley of Rocks.

At the Jumps a shower came on, and to escape a wetting I crept into a hole or hollow in the rude mass of black basaltic rock which stands like a fortress or ruined castle on the summit of the hill. When the shower was nearly over I heard the wing-beats and low guttural voice of a cuckoo; he did not see my crouching form in the hollow and settled on a projecting block of stone close to me--not three yards from my head. Presently he began to call, and it struck me as very curious that his voice did not sound louder or different in quality than when heard at a distance of forty or fifty yards. When he had finished calling and flown away I crept out of my hole and walked back over the wet heath, thinking now of the cuckoo and now of that half natural, half supernatural but not very sublime being who, as I have said, was formerly a haunter of these parts. This was a question that puzzled my mind. It is easy to say that legends of the Devil are common enough all over the land, and date back to old monkish times or to the beginning of Christianity, when the spiritual enemy was very much in man's thoughts; the curious thing is, that the devil associated in tradition with certain singular features in the landscape, as it is here in this Surrey village, and in a thousand other places, has little or no resemblance to the true and only Satan. He is at his greatest a sort of demi-god, or a semi-human being or monster of abnormal power and wildly eccentric habits, but not really bad. Thus, I was told by a native of Churt that when the Devil met with that serious accident which gave its name to the Poor Devil's Bottom, his painful cries and groans attracted the villagers, and they ministered to him, giving him food and drink and applying such remedies as they knew of to his hurts until he recovered and got out of the hole. Whether or not this legend has ever been recorded I cannot say; one is struck with its curious resemblance to some of the giant legends of the west of England. Near Devizes there is a deep impression in the earth about which a very different story is told: it is called the Devil's Jumps and is, I believe, supposed to be an entrance to his subterranean dwelling-place. He jumps down through that hole, the earth opens to receive him, and closes behind him. And it is (or was) believed that if any person will run three times round the hole the Devil will issue from it and start off in chase of a hare! Why he comes forth and chases a hare nobody knows.

It was only recently, when in Cornwall, the most legendary of the counties, that I found out who and what this rural village devil I had been thinking of really was. In Cornwall one finds many legends of the Devil, as many in fact as in Flintshire, where the Devil has left so many memorials on the downs, but they are few to those relating to the giants. These legends were collected by Robert Hunt, and first published over half a century ago in his _Popular Romances of the West of England_, and he points out in this work that "devil" in most of the legends appears to be but another name for "giant," that in many cases the character of the being is practically the same. He believes that traditions of giants, which probably date back to prehistoric times, were once common all over the country, that they were always associated with certain impressive features in the landscape--grotesque hills, chasms and hollows in the downs and huge masses of rock; that the early teachers of Christianity, anxious to kill these traditions, or to blot out a false belief or superstition with the darker and more terrible image of a powerful being at war with man, taught that "giant" was but another name for Devil. If this is so, the teaching was not altogether good policy. The giants, it is true, were an awesome folk and flung immense rocks about in a reckless manner and did many other mad things; and there were some that were wholly bad, just as there are rogue elephants and as there are black sheep in the human flock, but they were not really bad as a rule, and certainly not too intelligent. Even little men with their cunning little brains could get the better of them. The result of such teaching could only be that the Devil would be regarded as not the unmitigated monster they had been told that he was, nor without human weaknesses and virtues. When we say now that he is not "as black as he is painted" we may be merely repeating what was being said by the common people of England in the days of St. Augustine and St. Colomb, and of the Irish missionaries in Cornwall.

XII

A WILTSHIRE VILLAGE

"What is your nearest village?" I asked of a labourer I met on the road one bleak day in early spring, after a great frost: for I had walked far enough and was cold and tired, and it seemed to me that it would be well to find shelter for the night and a place to settle down in for a season.

"Burbage," he answered, pointing the way to it.

And when I came to it, and walked slowly and thoughtfully the entire length of its one long street or road, my sister said to me:

"Yet another old ancient village!" and then, with a slight tremor in her voice, "And you are going to stay in it!"

"Yes," I replied, in a tone of studied indifference: but as to whether it was ancient or not I could not say;--I had never heard its name before, and knew nothing about it: doubtless it was characteristic--"That weary word," she murmured.

--But it was neither strikingly picturesque, nor quaint, nor did I wish it were either one or the other, nor anything else attractive or remarkable, since I sought only for a quiet spot where my brain might think the thoughts and my hand do the work that occupied me. A village remote, rustic, commonplace, that would make no impression on my preoccupied mind and leave no lasting image, nor anything but a faint and fading memory.

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, And tempted her out of her gloom-- And conquered her scruples and gloom.

And fortune favoured her, all things conspiring to keep me content to walk in that path which I had so readily, so lightly, promised to keep: for the work to be done was bread and cheese to me, and in a sense to her, and had to be done, and there was nothing to distract attention.

It was quiet in my chosen cottage, in the low-ceilinged room where I usually sat: outside, the walls were covered with ivy which made it like a lonely lodge in a wood; and when I opened my small outward-opening latticed window there was no sound except the sighing of the wind in the old yew tree growing beside and against the wall, and at intervals the chirruping of a pair of sparrows that flew up from time to time from the road with long straws in their bills. They were building a nest beneath my window--possibly it was the first nest made that year in all this country.

All the day long it was quiet; and when, tired of work, I went out and away from the village across the wide vacant fields, there was nothing to attract the eye. The deadly frost which had held us for long weeks in its grip had gone, for it was now drawing to the end of March, but winter was still in the air and in the earth. Day after day a dull cloud was over all the sky and the wind blew cold from the north-east. The aspect of the country, as far as one could see in that level plain, was wintry and colourless. The hedges in that part are kept cut and trimmed so closely that they seemed less like hedges than mere faint greyish fences of brushwood, dividing field from field: they would not have afforded shelter to a hedge-sparrow. The trees were few and far apart--grey naked oaks, un-visited even by the tits that find their food in bark and twig; the wide fields between were bare and devoid of life of man or beast or bird. Ploughed and grass lands were equally desolate; for the grass was last year's, long dead and now of that neutral, faded, and palest of all pale dead colours in nature. It is not white nor yellow, and there is no name for it. Looking down when I walked in the fields the young spring grass could be seen thrusting up its blades among the old and dead, but at a distance of a few yards these delicate living green threads were invisible.

Coming back out of the bleak wind it always seemed strangely warm in the village street--it was like coming into a room in which a fire has been burning all day. So grateful did I find this warmth of the deep old sheltered road, so vocal too and full of life did it seem after the pallor and silence of the desolate world without, that I made it my favourite walk, measuring its length from end to end. Nor was it strange that at last, unconsciously, in spite of a preoccupied brain and of the assurance given that I would reside in the village, like a snail in its shell, without seeing it, an impression began to form and an influence to be felt.

Some vague speculations passed through my mind as to how old the village might be. I had heard some person remark that it had formerly been much more populous, that many of its people had from time to time drifted away to the towns; their old empty cottages pulled down and no new ones built. The road was deep and the cottages on either side stood six to eight or nine feet above it. Where a cottage stood close to the edge of the road and faced it, the door was reached by a flight of stone or brick steps; at such cottages the landing above the steps was like a balcony, where one could stand and look down upon a passing cart, or the daily long straggling procession of children going to or returning from the village school. I counted the steps that led up to my own front door and landing place and found there were ten: I took it that each step represented a century's wear of the road by hoof and wheel and human feet, and the conclusion was thus that the village was a thousand years old--probably it was over two thousand. A few centuries more or less did not seem to matter much; the subject did not interest me in the least, my passing thought about it was an idle straw showing which way the mental wind was blowing.

Albeit half-conscious of what that way was, I continued to assure Psyche--my sister--that all was going well: that if she would only keep quiet there would be no trouble, seeing that I knew my own weakness so well--a habit of dropping the thing I am doing because something more interesting always crops up. Here fortunately for us (and our bread and cheese) there was nothing interesting--ab-so-lute-ly.

But in the end, when the work was finished, the image that had been formed could no longer be thrust away and forgotten. It was there, an entity as well as an image--an intelligent masterful being who said to me not in words but very plainly: _Try to ignore me and it will be worse for you: a secret want will continually disquiet you: recognize my existence and right to dwell in and possess your soul, as you dwell in mine, and there will be a pleasant union and peace between us._

To resist, to argue the matter like some miserable metaphysician would have been useless.

The persistent image was of the old deep road, the green bank on each side, on which stood thatched cottages, whitewashed or of the pale red of old weathered bricks; each with its plot of ground or garden with, in some cases, a few fruit trees. Here and there stood a large shade tree--oak or pine or yew; then a vacant space, succeeded by a hedge, gapped and ragged and bare, or of evergreen holly or yew, smoothly trimmed; then a ploughed field, and again cottages, looking up or down the road, or placed obliquely, or facing it: and looking at one cottage and its surrounding, there would perhaps be a water-butt standing beside it; a spade and fork leaning against the wall; a white cat sitting in the shelter idly regarding three or four fowls moving about at a distance of a few yards, their red feathers ruffled by the wind; further away a wood-pile; behind it a pigsty sheltered by bushes, and on the ground, among the dead weeds, a chopping-block, some broken bricks, little heaps of rusty iron, and other litter. Each plot had its own litter and objects and animals.

On the steeply sloping sides of the road the young grass was springing up everywhere among the old rubbish of dead grass and leaves and sticks and stems. More conspicuous than the grass blades, green as verdigris, were the arrow-shaped leaves of the arum or cuckoo-pint. But there were no flowers yet except the wild strawberry, and these so few and small that only the eager eyes of the little children, seeking for spring, might find them.

Nor was the village less attractive in its sounds than in the natural pleasing disorder of its aspect and the sheltering warmth of its street. In the fields and by the skimpy hedges perfect silence reigned; only the wind blowing in your face filled your ears with a rushing aerial sound like that which lives in a seashell. Coming back from this open bleak silent world, the village street seemed vocal with bird voices. For the birds, too, loved the shelter which had enabled them to live through that great frost; and they were now recovering their voices; and whenever the wind lulled and a gleam of sunshine fell from the grey sky, they were singing from end to end of the long street.

Listening to, and in some instances seeing the singers and counting them, I found that there were two thrushes, four blackbirds, several chaffinches and green finches, one pair of goldfinches, half-a-dozen linnets and three or four yellow-hammers; a sprinkling of hedge-sparrows, robins and wrens all along the street; and finally, one skylark from a field close by would rise and sing at a considerable height directly above the road. Gazing up at the lark and putting myself in his place, the village beneath with its one long street appeared as a vari-coloured band lying across the pale earth. There were dark and bright spots, lines and streaks, of yew and holly, red or white cottage walls and pale yellow thatch; and the plots and gardens were like large reticulated mottlings. Each had its centre of human life with life of bird and beast, and the centres were in touch with one another, connected like a row of children linked together by their hands; all together forming one organism, instinct with one life, moved by one mind, like a many-coloured serpent lying at rest, extended at full length upon the ground.