Part 11

‘Trew agen,’ returned the Captain serenely.

‘Ha, hum! well! a good plucked-un ye be, anyways. Now then, Dickie!’

The first small boy set forth over the sunny stretch of grass that lay between the tent and the waiting team. Very small and insignificant he looked in his school-corduroys, and leg-pads that reached well-nigh up to his waist. His advent was greeted with ribaldry from all parts of the field. We heard Daniel Dray admonishing the boy as he came smiling up to the pitch.

‘Now, Dickie, doan’t ye dare run ’til I shouts to ye, an’ then run as if _He_ wur after ye. Hould your bat straight, ye young varmint! Now then, look hout! There! what did I tell ye?’

Dickie’s wicket was down, and Dickie himself was running back to the tent vastly relieved.

‘Out wi’ ye, Georgie Huggins! An’ do as well as your faather!’ cried Tom Clemmer encouragingly. ‘’Tis hover, an’ Dan’l’s got th’ play now. Oh, Dan’l, Dan’l! if only ’twur you an’ me!’

But, playing with the ingenuity as well as the courage of despair, young Daniel Dray now began to show his true mettle. Odd runs he refused, taking only even numbers, so that each time the bowling fell to his lot again. At the end of the over, he stole a desperate single with the same object in view. He reached home safe enough, but Georgie was run out. Boy Number Two had been disposed of at the cost of a gallant six.

Following the same tactics, young Daniel eked out the remaining three boys with still more crafty skill. When at length old Stallwood, the last man, launched out into the sunlight to show the town what he remembered of cricket, the score had risen to forty-nine, and our spirits with it. We cheered him lustily as he went.

‘Wan more,’ quoth Tom Clemmer, ‘jest wan, an’ I’ll light me pipe. There be allers a chaance wi’ fifty. Lorsh! Look at th’ Cap’n!’

Three times on his way to the pitch he had stopped, turned, and waved his cap in acknowledgment of the ovation given him. And now he was greeting the Stavishamites each by name, and shaking hands with the wicket-keeper. He got to the crease at last and grounded his bat. The next moment the whole field had left their places and run for the tent, leaving the Captain standing alone and amazed at his wicket.

‘’A doan’t knaw ’a be hout,’ said Tom. ‘D’ ye onnerstand? ’A never heerd th’ bawler shout, an’ never seed th’ ball acomin’. Belike ’a thinks they be all gone fer a drink, to hearten ’em at the sight o’ sech a crickutter!’

And being free for a time, I took upon myself the task of walking out to the Captain, and breaking the news to him as gently as I could.

It was now Windlecombe’s turn to take the field, and Tom Clemmer led out his team with a good heart, in spite of its tail of juveniles. Daniel Dray and the Rev. Mr. Weaverly were our first, indeed our only bowlers. One of the first batsmen for Stavisham was Daniel’s ancient foe, the grocer; and we watched the beginning of play with breathless interest, for we knew Daniel would aim to kill. He grubbed savagely in the sawdust, then sent the first ball hurtling down the pitch.

The old men were still upon the benches outside, and in that quarter sympathy with Windlecombe was as staunch as ever. But in the scoring tent I sat amidst enemies now. The townsmen crowded behind me, a humorously sarcastic crew.

‘Fifty to beat? My ould Aunt Mary! D’ ye reckon we’ll do it, Bill?’

‘Dunno. ’Tis ser’ous fer Stavisham. Only eleven on us, there be. Likely March wunt do ’t off his own bat—no, not ’arf!’

‘That there tinker-cove’s agoin’ to bowl fust. There ’ee goos! Wot a —’

The rest was drowned in a thunderclap of shouting. There was a general stampede among the spectators. For the grocer had driven Daniel’s first ball clean into the tent.

It was a bad beginning for Windlecombe, and bad rapidly changed to worse. Young Daniel bowled steadily and coolly for the first over, in spite of continuous punishment; but thereafter he lost first his temper, and then his head. The smiling grocer played him to all points of the compass; and the more the grocer smiled, the more wildly erratic Daniel’s bowling grew. As for the Rev. Mr. Weaverly, he could do no more than send meek, ingenuous balls trundling diffidently up the pitch; and he was skied with heartrending regularity. The batsmen kept continually running. The little tent seemed to belly out on all sides with the cheering, as a sail with wind.

‘Thirty up!’

‘Thirty fer nauthin’!’

‘Thirty-one! And another’! Thirty-two! Garn, March! Wot a wazegoose! Thirty—’

‘Five! ’Ooray!’

The shout went off in my ear like a punt gun. And then there fell a sudden silence about me, as all strained eyes and ears out to the field. Some altercation was going on, but not between members of the opposing sides. ‘Drop ut, ye ould fule!’ I heard Tom Clemmer roar; and, peering over the crowd, I saw Captain Stallwood, ball in hand, walking up to the pitch. He rolled up his sleeves as he came.

‘Drop ut, I tell ye!’ cried Tom once more, ‘’tis crickut we be playin’, not maarbles, man! Gimme that ball, Stall’ard, or I’ll— Lorsh! what be come to th’ ould—’

The rest was a confused wrangle amongst the whole team. Presently, to our amazement, we saw all drift back to their posts, and old Stallwood take his place triumphantly at the bowling-crease. In the dead quiet that followed, I heard the grocer chuckle richly, as he got ready to smite the Captain all over the field.

The old man stood stock still on the crease, eyeing the batsman solemnly, the ball held low down between his knees. So long he remained in this posture, that at length impatient exclamations began to break out on all sides.

‘Well! now ye ha’ got un, Stall’ard, let ’n goo, mate!’

‘’Tain’t i’ church ye be, Cap’n. ’Tis crickut!’

‘Bawl up, gaffer! We warnts to get hoame afore daark!’

And from the grocer, leaning with exaggerated weariness on his bat:

‘Doan’t ye be i’ no sorter hurry, ould bluebottle! But when y’ are ready, just send us a postcard, will ye?’

The Captain’s hand went slowly up, the ball held curiously against his wrist. He launched it with a sudden sidelong twist. As it rose high into the air, I could see that it went wide and off, even from my position in the tent. With a laugh the batsman strode out half a dozen yards to meet it. A moment later he was gazing back aghast at his splayed wicket. The Captain’s rich husky voice pealed out above the din:

‘There be a poun’ o’ butter fer ’ee!’

And now we were the frantic spectators of a drama that gained in thrilling interest with every moment. The new batsman arrived at the wicket, and again old Stallwood sent the ball sailing down the pitch, wide as ever, but this time to leg. I watched it more carefully now. Though it made a high curve, it rose not a hair’s-breadth after touching ground, but shot straight in. Again we saw the glint of a falling bail behind the wicket. The Captain thrust both bare arms deep in his trousers-flap, and silently grinned. The third man did little better. He succeeded in blocking a couple of the balls; but the next, more crooked than any, sent him dumbfounded back to the tent.

There was no more ribaldry about me now. The fourth batsman sallied out amidst a rustle of whispered apprehension and hard-drawn breaths, and returned almost immediately to the same tense atmosphere. Outside on the benches, the old men were rocking on their seats with delight, like trees in a wind. Bleak, the cobbler, was careering up and down, beside himself with joy.

‘Fower in a hover!’ he shouted. ‘I reckons I knaws summat about leather, but I ne’er seed it do the like o’ that! ’Tain’t bawlin’, I tell ye: ’tis magic!’

And now young Daniel Dray was bowling again, and bowling with renewed courage and skill. All his old command of length and break had returned to him. By the end of his over, another wicket had fallen, and the score had risen no higher than forty-three. The Captain took the ball once more, this time without any opposition. At once the fearsome whispering in the tent grew still. Almost we forgot to breathe, as the great dark hairy fist came slowly up into the sunlight.

But the Captain had changed his tactics. Instead of the leisurely, high-curving delivery with which he had done such execution hitherto, the ball left his hand straight and low and as quick as light. It pitched no more than an inch or two in front of the waiting bat, then struck vertically upward. A crack resounded through the field. The batsman staggered—clapped a hand to his head. A moment more and he was picking an uneven course towards the tent, thoroughly satiated with the Captain’s magic.

Very slowly the next man set out for the pitch. He stopped on the way to tighten a strap of his leg-guard, and again unconscionably long to adjust his batting-glove. Once he turned back a tallowy face, and seemed to be in two minds about something. But at length he got to the wicket and grounded his bat. The long arm uprose again, and the ball sped. It proved to be the last bowled that day. For once more that terrible upward break ended with a thud and a yell, echoed from nine panic-stricken men about me. The luckless batsman fled with as gory a visage as his companion had done, and none would take his place, though the grocer charmed and stormed never so wisely. Windlecombe had won by six.

Later by an hour the victorious eleven gathered in the parlour of the Three Thatchers Inn, old Stallwood grimly smiling in their midst. Tom Clemmer shook his fist at him, delight in his eyes.

‘But ’twarn’t crickut, Stall’ard!’ he said reproachfully.

‘Noa,’ returned the old man, ‘not crickut, leastways not all on’t. That there sing-chin-summat or other—Red Hot Ball, I calls un—that wur a trick as I larned in Chaney.’

III

How fast time flies you can never truly estimate until you go step and step with it through the summer woods and fields. In a sense, town-life—where there is so much of permanence in environment—puts a drag on time, and not seldom pulls it up altogether. Moreover, in towns time is estimated by events, by experiences. You hear a great musician, see a great play, look on at some magnificent pageant, or are shocked by some catastrophe; and straightway there is half a lifetime of emotion thrust between two strokes of the clock. By so much in very truth your life has been lengthened; for it is the intensity of living that counts in the civic tale of years. If you find an old man not only declaring that he has lived long, but believing it, it is a great chance but he tells you so in the close-clipped cockney tongue of the town.

And yet it is better to live in some far-away country nook like Windlecombe, and be reminded with every gliding summer hour that time flies and life is short, if only because of the undoubted fact that such a frame of mind carries a belief in eternal youth as a necessary implication. Between life’s dawn and the dusk of its western sky, there is literally no time to grow old in a natural, aboriginal environment. So inextricably interwoven are the threads of human existence and that of the green world round about, that the annual rejuvenation of the one infallibly communicates itself to the other. With every spring we start life afresh. Though we may live to threescore years and ten, we are children still; and come upon death at last like an unexpected gust at a corner, old age unrealised to the very end.

In the weeks that are closing now, I have heard and seen more of the galloping hoofs of this swift, high-stepping jade, summer, than is good for entire peace of mind. Years ago I made a vow that I would never again eke out the fleeting golden days, like a miser to whom spending is not pleasure but only pain. I vowed that I would always squander time at this season; let it drift by unthinkingly; get my fill of sunshine, and fill and fill again to my heart’s content; yet do it as a strayed heifer in the corn, wantoning over an acre to each mouthful. But this time, as ever, the good resolution has been forgotten. The old parsimony has dogged the way at every step. I must be up with the sun in the small hours of each morning, fearful of losing a single beam from the millions. To waste in sleep the blue, spangled summer nights, when all the country-side is resonant of life and fragrant with the scent that comes only with the darkness, has seemed like sacrilege. Yet, for all my industry, July is nearing its end, and I know that I have drunk but a drop or two out of its vast ocean. And already I have renewed the old vow, to be disregarded as ever, doubtless, when July again comes round.

On all the high-lying corn lands now, harvest has begun; and the fields in the valley are fast taking on that deep tinge of gipsy-gold which is the sign of full maturity. Scarce had the shrill note of the mowing-machine stilled in the meadows, when the deeper voice of the reaper-and-binder began on the hill. All day long I sat in this cool quiet nook of a study, and the steady jarring sound came over to me from the hillside, filling the little room. I saw the machine with its pair of grey horses, waiting at the field-gate, while the scythe-men cut a way for it into the amber wall of the grain. Steadily hour after hour it worked round the field, until at last, looking forth towards noon, I saw that only a small triangular piece remained uncut in the middle of the field.

Now there were a score or so of the farm folk waiting hard by, each armed with a cudgel; and with them seemingly every dog in the village. As the machine went round, every time making the patch of standing corn smaller, I could see rabbits bolting in all directions from the diminishing cover; and there uprose continually a hubbub of voices from dogs and men. Towards the end, the stubble became alive with the little dark scurrying forms, fleeing to the surrounding fields, the most of them escaping harmlessly for want of pursuers. But even then, as I afterwards learned, some eight or nine dozen were killed.

I have always kept away from these harvest battues, as indeed from all scenes of sport and congregations of sportsmen. I am willing enough to profit by these activities, and receive and enjoy my full share of the furred and feathered spoil admittedly without one humanitarian qualm. But this much confessed, I would gladly welcome the day when everywhere, save in the rabbit warrens, the sound of the sporting gun should cease throughout this southern land. Rabbits must be kept down to the end of time; but, for the creatures that require preservation, too great a price is paid, and paid by the wrong class. It is not the owner of game-preserves who bears the main cost of his thunderous pleasuring. It is the lover of wild life, who sees the hawks and owls and small deer of the woodlands growing scarcer with every year; and the children who, in the springtime, are cheated out of their right to wander through the primrose glades.

To many this may seem a wearisomely trite point of view, affecting a grievance as old as the hills, and even less likely of obliteration. But though the point of view is ancient enough, the grievance is no longer so. Of late years the ranks of village dwellers have been very largely reinforced from the classes who care little for sport and a great deal for all other allurements of the country-side. Rural England is no longer peopled by sportsmen and the dependents of sportsmen; but, slowly and surely, a majority is creeping up in the villages, composed of men and women both knowing and loving Nature, and to whom the old-time local policy of endurance under deprivation of rights for expediency’s sake, is an incomprehensible, as well as an intolerable thing. All the vast-winged, beautiful marauders of the air that I love to watch, are ruthlessly shot down by the gamekeepers on a suspicion presumptive and unproved; but the fox that, in a single night, massacres every bird in the villager’s hen-roost, must go scatheless because poor profit may not be set before rich pastime.

One day, almost the hottest so far, I was out in the meadows, and came upon a curious thing. The path, or rather green lane, ran between high hedges. On either hand there was a great field of flowering crops, the one red clover, the other sainfoin. There must have been twenty or thirty acres of each stretching away under the tense still air and light, much of a colour, but the sainfoin of a softer, purer pink. Both fields seemed alike attractive to the bees; but while, to the right, the sainfoin gave out a mighty note of organ music, the red clover on my left was utterly silent. Looking through a gap in the foliage, I could not see there a single butterfly or bee. The truth, of course, was that the nectar in the trumpet-petals of the clover was too far down for the honey-bee to reach; nor would even the bumble-bees trouble about it, with a whole province of sainfoin hard by, over-brimming with choicer, more attainable sweets.

As I wandered along, between these great zones of sound and silence, the air seemed to grow hotter and more oppressive with every moment. There was something uncanny in the stillness of all around me. The green sprays in the tops of the highest elms lay against the blue sky sharp and clear, as though enamelled upon it. Not a bird sang in the woodland. Save for the deep throbbing melody from the sainfoin, all the world lay dumb and stupefied under the noontide glare. And then, chancing to turn and look southward, I saw the cause of it. A storm was coming up. Close down on the horizon lay a bank of cloud like a solid billow of ink. It was driving up at incredible speed. Though not a leaf or grass blade stirred around me, the cloud seemed tossed and torn in a whirlwind’s grip. Every moment it lifted higher towards the sun, changing its shape incessantly, black fold upon fold rolling together, colliding, giving place to others blacker still. And flying in advance of all this, borne by a still swifter air-current, were long sombre streamers of cloud rent into every conceivable shape of torn and tattered rags.

And now, as the dense cloud-pack got up, the brilliant light was blotted out at a stroke, and this startling thing happened. Every bee, apparently, at work in the vast field of sainfoin, spread her wings at the ominous signal, and raced for home. They swept over my head in numbers that literally darkened the sky. Again, literally, the sound of their going was like a continuous deep syren-note, striking point-blank in the ear. For a minute at most it endured, and then died away almost as suddenly as it came. A bleak ghostly light paled on everything around me. Little cat’s paws of wind flung through the torpid air. Afar the harsh voice of the oncoming tempest sounded. Slow hot gouts of water began to fall, and every moment the inky pall of cloud lit up with an internal fire.

At first, as I made off homeward in the track of the vanished bee-army, I tried to emulate their speed. But the torrent came surging and crying up in my rear, and in a dozen yards I was waterlogged. Thereafter, going leisurely, I came at last into the village, and so to the house. And here, in spite of the deluge, I must stop and look on at more wonders. It seemed almost impossible for any bird to sustain itself on wings under such a cataract. But there above me the martins were at their old incessant gambols, circling and darting about, hither and thither, high and low, in a whirling madcap crew; and higher still, right in the throat of the tempest, I could make out the swifts, hundreds strong, weaving their old mazy pattern on the sky, as though in the pearl and opal dusk of a summer’s evening.

THE TEA-GARDEN AUGUST

I

OLD Runridge’s misadventure in wedlock has proved a trouble to more people than one in Windlecombe. In former years, though boating parties from the town were continually to be seen on the river, when the August holiday season began, they seldom pulled up at our ferry stairs. From the waterside the village had a somewhat inhospitable look, while a mile farther on there were the North Woods, Stavisham’s traditional picnicking ground, where, at the gamekeeper’s cottage, all were sure of a welcome. Such wandering holiday-makers as found their way into Windlecombe came usually by road, and were of the tranquil, undemonstrative breed, like pedestrians all the world over. There would seem to be something about sitting long hours in a rowing-boat which is detrimental, even debasing, to a certain common variety of human nature. The tendency to run and shout and skylark on reaching dry ground again appears to be irresistible to this numerous class. And it is at Mrs. Runridge’s door that we must lay the blame of submitting Windlecombe to a pestilent innovation.

‘Look ye!’ said the old ferryman from his seat in the boat, waving a scornful hand towards his garden, as I chanced along the river bank one fine Saturday afternoon. ‘’Twur me as painted un, an’ me as putt un up, jest fer peace’s sake; but I’d ha’ taken an’ chucked un in th’ river if I’d only ha’ knowed what sort o’ peace ’ud come on ’t!’

A great white board reared itself on ungainly legs above the elder-hedge of the garden, and on it, in huge irregular characters, appeared the single word, ‘TEAS.’ By the side of the ferry-punt half a dozen town rowing-boats lay moored. And from the green depths of the garden there arose a confusion of voices, shrill laughter, and an incessant clatter of crockery. I had hardly realised what it all meant, when Mrs. Runridge showed a vast white apron and a hot perspiring face in the gateway. She bore down upon us with upraised hand, as though she intended bodily harm to one or both.

‘Here, Joe!’ cried she, giving the old ferryman a coin. ‘Change fer half a suvverrin, an’ shaarp ’s th’ wured! Try th’ Thatchers, or Mist. Weaverly, or belike— Doan’t sit starin’ there, looney! Dear, oh Lor! was there ever sech a man! An’ us all run purty nigh off our legses, we be!’

‘Th’ seventh time,’ gasped Runridge, as we hurried together up the steep street, ‘or like as not th’ eighth—I dunno! An’ ut bean’t as though ’a warnted money. Money?—th’ bed bean’t fit fer Christian folk to sleep on, wi’ th’ lumps in ’t! An’ to-morrer ull be wuss, if ’tis fine. Lor’ send a hearthquake, or Noah’s flood, or summat!’

When a naturally silent man attempts self-commiseration in words, his case is sure to be a desperate one. But we are all fated to share in his trouble now. On any fine Saturday or Sunday in the month, Runridge will be a familiar figure, hunting down from door to door the change that, in villages, is so scanty and so hard to discover. On Mondays we shall all suffer from our foolish kindness in allowing this reckless exportation of bullion. Only Susan Angel at the sweetstuff shop, and her small customers, will be unincommoded; for the handful of battered farthings that has served them as currency during whole decades past will be necessarily saved by its insignificance, and will remain, no doubt, in the village for service amidst generations yet unborn.

But disturbing visitors to Windlecombe do not all come by the river. There is an iniquitous job-master in Stavisham who has long had the village in his evil eye; and at intervals, fortunately rare, he descends upon us with charabancs drawn by three horses, and filled with heterogeneous human gleanings—the flotsam and jetsam of holiday-land strayed for the day into Stavisham from contiguous seaside towns.