Part 4

‘I see grass—fresh new growth pushing up everywhere. Young nettles too: they are coming up green amongst the old dead stems. But they cannot sting yet—yes, they can! and badly! Stop here a moment, Reverend! The celandines are out thick on the bank—you remember their shining, yellow, five-rayed stars, set in dark green leaves like the spade-blades of Hamlet’s diggers. Below on the bank, where it is too steep for anything else to grow, there are coltsfoot flowers. The drab earth glows with them—no leaves at all, but just long, curved, scaly stems, each ending in a tuft of golden fleece. And then there is—’

‘I know, I know! I can look back a dozen springs, and see them all as well as you. But listen to that thrush! That is his honeymooning note, and the pair must be nesting not far away. I have found thrushes’ nests in February many a time. See if you can find this one.’

‘Your singer has flown. And there goes the hen, out of the other side of the bush; if the nest is anywhere, it will be here under this tangle of clematis. Yes, two eggs already! I wish you could see their clear greenish-blue, with the dapple-marks on it.’

I guided his hand to the nest, and his fingers wandered lightly over it.

‘Cold!’ said he. ‘She will not begin to sit yet. Perhaps never on this clutch. There is frost and snow ahead of us still, though all of us forget it this weather, bird, beast, and man.’

The path led us into the hazelwood; hazel below, and overhead soaring columns of beech, whose branches touched finger-tips everywhere across the white-flecked blue of the sky. As we went along, the sound of our footsteps in the fallen leaves was like the sound of wading through water. I must read off to him what I saw about me as though it were from a book.

‘The hazel-catkins were never so fine, I think, as they are this spring. The wood is full of them, like showers of gold-green rain falling. Whenever we brush against them, clouds of pollen drift off in the wind. It is the wind that makes the hazel-nuts which we gather by and by. What millions upon millions of spores only to make a few bushels of nuts! I struck a single bush with my stick just now, and, for yards ahead, the sunshine was misty with the floating green dust. Then, here and there on every branch—’

‘Yes! I can see it all! There are little green buds each with a torch of bright crimson at its tip, flaming in the sun. Why should they be so vividly coloured, if only to catch what the wind brings—floating pollen as blind as I? No, no! The hazel-nut was made for the bees originally, depend upon it. Nature never uses bright colour unless to attract winged life.’

We came out of the wood on the south side. Stopping just within the shade of the last trees, we had a view over a chain of sunny, sheltered meadows that lay between the riverside willows and the first steep escarpment of the Downs. Here the wind was only a song above our heads. Scarce a breath stirred where we leaned upon the gate in the sunshine. I must be at my living book again, yet knew not where to begin, so crowded was the page.

‘March is still three weeks off, and yet the hares are already as mad as can be. Over there under the Hanger, a mile away, I can see them racing and tumbling about together. There are more celandines and coltsfoot blossom everywhere. I can see daisies wherever I look, and there is a disc of dandelion by the gate-post just where you stand. What clouds of midges! Thousands are dancing in the air above our heads, and I can see their wings making a hazy streak of light all down the hedgerow, where the elders are in flourishing green leaf. Did you ever hear so many birds all singing at the same time? And there goes an army of rooks and jackdaws overhead! What a din!—the high, yelping treble of the daws, and the deep-voiced rooks singing bass to it.’

The Reverend put a hand upon my arm to stop me.

‘I can hear something else,’ he said. ‘A dandelion, did you say? Then she will come straight for it.’ And as he spoke, I heard the old familiar sound too. It was a hive-bee, tempted abroad by the glad spring sunlight. She came straight over the meadows. Passing all other blossoms by, she settled on the single flower half-hidden in its whorl of ragged green leaves close beside us, and forthwith began to smother herself in its yellow pollen.

‘And there she goes again!’ said the old vicar, as the soft, rich sound mingled once more with the myriad other notes about us. ‘High up into the air—doesn’t she?—making ever a wider and wider circle until she gets her first flying-mark, and then in the usual zigzag course, home to the hive! A bee-line! People always make the words stand for something absolutely straight and direct. But a true bee-line is the easiest way between two points, not necessarily the shortest. To take a bee-line, if folk only knew it, is just to fly through the calmest, or most favouring airs, judge the quickest way between all obstacles, dodge the ravenous tits and sparrows, and so get home safe and sound to the hive.’

IV

This spring, the Artletts have built their lambing-pens on the sunny slope of Windle Hill in full view of the village. When, at threshing-time last autumn, the waggons toiled up the steep hillside with their shuddering loads of yellow straw, and the ricks were fashioned end to end in a curving line against the north, strangers wondered why a farmer should carry his bedding-down material so far from its main centres of consumption, the stables and cowsheds. But the reason for the work is clear enough at last. Behind the solid rampart of straw, the lambing-pens lie in cosy shelter, and every day now sees them more populous; day and night, as the month wends on, there arises from them a fuller and fuller melody.

Alone, perhaps, of all other rural occupations, shepherding remains unaffected by the avalanche of machinery and chemistry which has descended upon agriculture. Here and there may be found a flockmaster who talks of shearing-machines, but it is rare to find anything but the old hand-clippers in use by the old-fashioned, wandering gangs of shearers. Flocks are larger, and so bring the modern shepherd more anxious care; but in all essential ways, his year’s round of work is the same as in that time of old when the shepherds watched their flocks by night near Bethlehem.

[Picture: ‘Springtime’]

For the first time, in near upon fifty years, old Artlett has had no hand in the pen-making. Rheumatism, the life-long foe of the shepherd, has got him by the heels at last; and, if it turn out with him as with nearly all his kind, he will never again leave the chimney-corner, until he is carried thence and laid to sleep beside his long line of forbears up in the churchyard. But young George is as good a shepherd as any of his line, in this, as in all other branches of the craft. Wherever you go among the neighbouring sheep-farms, you will hear tell of the amazing good luck of Windlecombe at lambing-time. George Artlett views the matter from a different standpoint.

We sat together in his cosy hut on the hillside, towards twelve o’clock of a gusty, moonlit night. The coke-fire burned in the little stove with a steady brightness, casting its red rays through the open door, and far out into the resounding night. Overhead a lantern swung gently to and fro, rocking our shadows on the walls. From the lambing-pens hard by there rose a ceaseless yammering chorus, and from the outer folds a confusion of tongues deeper still, mingled with the tolling of innumerable bells. George Artlett sat on the straw mattress in the corner, his knees drawn up to his chin.

‘Ah! luck!’ said he, a little scornfully, peering at me through the cloud of tobacco-smoke—all from my own pipe—which hovered between us. ‘An’ how be it then, as them as believes in luck, gets so onaccountable little on’t? Gregory, over at Redesdown yonder—’a wunt so much as throw a hurdle on a Friday, an’ ’a wears a bag o’ charm-stuff round’s neck, an’ ’a wud walk a mile sooner ’n goo unner a laadder—well, how be it wi’ un? Lambs dyin’ every day, folks say; ah! an’ yows too—seven on ’em gone a’ready! “’Twill be thirteen,” ’a sez, “thirteen, th’ on-lucky number, an’ then ’twill stop. ’Tis Redesdown’s luck!” sez he; “ye can do nought agen it!” An’ next year, ’a’ll goo on feedin’ short an’ poor, jest as ’a allers doos; an’ putten th’ yows to th’ ram too young; an’ lambin’ i’ th’ hoameyard agen, where ’tis so soggy an’ onhealthy, jest because ’tis near to ’s bed. When a man doos his night-shepherdin’, swearin’ at th’ laads through ’s windy, ’a may well look fer bad luck!’

He rose, and drew on his great blanket-coat, and pulled his sou’wester over his eyes. Then he took down the lantern from its hook, and together we plunged out into the buffeting wind to make the round of the folds for the sixth time since my advent, although the night was but half over.

The moon was nearly at the full. In its flood of pure white light, the lambing-yard, with its surrounding folds, looked like some extensive fortification, so high and impregnable seemed the walls that hemmed it in on every side. These walls were made of sheaves of straw, standing on end, shoulder to shoulder, of such girth and density that not a breath of the unruly wind could penetrate them. Within, the lambing-yard was floored a foot deep with the same straw, and on all sides were the pens, little separate bays flanked and topped by hurdles covered in with the like material. The whole place was crowded with ewes and lambs; the newest arrivals still in the pens with their mothers, the rest almost as snugly berthed out in the mainway of the yard. Outside this elaborate stockade were two great folds, the one containing the ewes still to be reckoned with, the other thronged with those whose troubles were happily over, and with whom already the cares and joys of motherhood were verging on the trite.

Shepherd Artlett took no chances at any stage of his work. At the entrance to the lambing-yard, he carefully covered up the lantern with his coat, and thereafter allowed its light to fall only where he need direct his scrutiny.

‘Nane o’ Gregory’s luck fer me!’ he said. ‘There bean’t no wolves on th’ Hill nowadays, but sheep, they be jest as much afeared o’ summat as ’twur born in ’em to dread. ’Tis in their blood, I reckons. Now look ye! A naked light carried i’ th’ haand, an’ let sudden in upon ’em—see how it sets th’ shadders dancin’ an’ prancin’ all around! Like as not, ’tis so th’ wolves came leapin’ round th’ folds ages an’ ages back; an’ so it bides in th’ blood wi’ all sheep—a sort o’ natur’s bygone memory. Froughten wan yow, an’ ye be like to froughten all. Set ’em stampedin’, an’ that means slipped lambs, turned milk, an’ trouble wi’out end—Gregory’s luck agen!’

On these rounds, every pen in the yard was visited, and its denizens critically examined: not a sheep of the huddled, vociferating crowd through which we threaded our difficult course, but had her share in George Artlett’s swift-roving glance. Here and there we came upon a newborn lamb, and then George took its four legs in one handful and carried it head downwards through the throng to the nearest vacant pen, its frantic mother bleating her expostulation close in our rear. There were the feeding-cages to fill with hay, and mangold to be carried in and scattered amongst the crouching sheep. Sometimes there was a sickly lamb or ewe to doctor, when we went trudging back to rifle the medicine-chest in the hut; and rarely a weakling, who refused its natural food, must be taken under George’s coat, a silent shivering woolly atom, and restored to life and voice by the warmth of our fire and the bottle.

In how great a measure the luck of Windlecombe or any sheep-farm depends on the foresight and tender care of the shepherd, was well brought home to me as, in the first ghostly light of morning, something like a crisis came to vary the monotonous round of our task. I had dozed off as I sat in my corner, and woke to find grey dawn picking out the tops of the hills, and George away on his unending business. Presently, through the little window at my side, I saw him coming back over the rimy grass, his coat bulged out with the usual burden. He set the lamb down on the straw by the fire. Limp and lifeless it looked, and past all aid; but George fell patiently to work swabbing it. As he worked, he talked.

‘’Tis White-Eye agen—a fine yow, but a onaccountable bad mother, ’a be, surelye. Purty nigh lost her lamb laast season, an’ now agen ’tis ne’ersome-matter wi’ un. Wunt gie suck. Butts th’ little un away, ’a do. That, an’ th’ could, ’tis. Terr’ble hard put to ’t, I wur, laast time, to save un! An’ this—well: if ’a cooms round, ’twill be a miracle—’

He stopped to fetch his breath, then set to more vigorously than ever.

‘Lorsh! I do b’lieve! . . . Ay! I’ll do ’t!—better ’n a score o’ dead uns, ’a be, a’ready. Now, shaap wi’ th’ bottle!’

But the wretched mute morsel of woolliness was too weak to suck. And then George Artlett did what I had never seen done before.

‘Well, well!’ he said confidently, ‘we must try th’ ould-fangled way wi’ un!’ He took a gulp of the warm milk, and bringing the lamb’s mouth to his own, tenderly fed it. Again and again this was done, until life began to flicker up strong once more in the little creature’s body.

‘But mind ye!’ said George, as presently he stood looking down on the resuscitated lamb, and regaling himself with its pitiful bleating, ‘No more o’ White-Eye! Off to Findon Fair ’a goos wi’ th’ draught-sheep next May, sure as she’s alive!’

MARCH

I

THE charm of Sussex woods, though you may frequent them at all times in and out of season, is that they are never the same woods from year to year. The great trees, indeed, keep their old familiar forms and stations, but the undergrowth of hazel, ash, larch, or silver-birch is periodically cleared away. This year, a certain hillside or deep hollow may be hidden under a thicket of growth impenetrable not only to the casual wanderer, but to the very sunlight itself; and next year the wood-cutters may have swept it clean, leaving only the forest trees to cast their shadows over a sunny wilderness that your eyes, though you have journeyed this way scores of times, have never yet beheld. Clearings wherein the children gathered primroses by the thousand one spring, are overgrown and all but impassable the next. The very paths and waggon-ways change their direction, as the woodmen vary the scene of their labours from year to year. And in the track of the copse-cutters, arise all manner of new plants; new birds come to nest; new sights and sounds throng about the way at every turn—so, in nearly all seasons, a strange new land is brought to your very feet, in the midst of things familiar, maybe, for a score of years.

In the dead deeps of winter, nothing seems so remote, so hopelessly unattainable, as the March sunshine; yet here it is at last, and here I am, sitting on a hazel-stole softly cushioned with ivy, alone and deliciously idle, in a clearing I have just discovered in the heart of Windle Woods.

All this part of the wood has lain untouched for a decade, perhaps, given over to the jays and magpies, and other wildest of wild nesting things. There is a green lane only a few hundred feet distant, and along it I have journeyed many a time during the past year, never dreaming that the clearing existed. And yet, no later than last April, the woodmen must have been here with their bill-hooks, hacking and hewing, and letting in the living sunlight where the earth had known no more than green gloaming on the brightest day.

It is strange how quickly the fertile soil awakens from such a lethargy of long, dark years. From where I sit, high upon the sunny slope, I can see nothing but greenery. All that remains of the dense growth of hazel, that covered this part of the wood, is gathered into great square piles, looking like windowless houses set here and there on the sunny declivity. Primroses shine everywhere; truly not in the abundance of April, but still there is no yard of ground without their sulphur sheen. Red deadnettle makes a rosy flush in the grass at my feet. There is ground-ivy round the base of each hazel-stole, with its pale violet flowers, so minute, yet making such a brave show by sheer strength of numbers. And hovering everywhere over this still mere of sunshine, with its sunken treasure of blossom, are butterflies—great sulphur-yellow butterflies—flapping idly along, little tortoiseshells and peacocks that have laid up through the winter, and one gorgeous red-admiral, also a hibernator, veering about in the sunshine with outspread, motionless wings.

To this secret nook of woodland I came but an hour ago, yet in that one hour of still March sunshine, I have seen and heard more things than could be chronicled, perhaps, in a day’s hard driving of the swiftest pen. To set down only the things that dwell foremost in the memory is not easy. I had been here only a few minutes when a rabbit came racing across the clearing, dodging in and out of the hazel-stoles in tremendous hurry and fear. On seeing me, he turned off at a sharp angle, then scurried away into the wood. A full five minutes after came a stealthy rustling from the same direction, and a ruddy-furred stoat drew into view, his snake-like head alternately poised high in the sunshine and lowered amidst the grass, as he carefully picked up the rabbit’s trail. He was going at only a tithe of the rabbit’s pace, but going without an instant’s hesitation. Where the rabbit had turned off at seeing me, the stoat also veered sharply round. He went straight for the wood, entering it, as far as I could judge, at exactly the same spot. So he would go on, I knew, until at last his blood-thirsty cunning and pertinacity had outworn the rabbit’s speed.

Then a woodpecker came over the clearing, his crimson cap and tarnished jerkin of lincoln-green looking strangely tawdry and theatrical in the brilliant sunshine. He flew heavily yet swiftly, arresting the motion of his wings at every four or five beats, much as a finch flies. As he passed over, he uttered his weird call-note, that sounds something like ‘Ploo-ee, ploo-ee!’ wherein, however, there is a tang of crafty cynicism indescribable. Not far from where I sat was a beech-tree, and to this tree I watched him go. He climbed up the smooth bark like a cat, taking the trunk spiral-wise. Then, when almost at its summit, he stopped and beat out of the hard wood, with his pick-axe of a bill, such a note as can be likened to nothing else in nature. So fast fell the blows of his beak, that between them no interval could be distinguished. They ran together into one smooth, continuous volume of sound. Extraordinarily musical it was, with a plaintive quality and a variableness of tone, now loud, now soft, that could not fail to impress the dullest ear. The note was prolonged for half a minute or so, and then the bird stopped to listen. Far away over the wood-top I heard the answering sound. For this woodpecker-music in springtime is a true love-call, and you will hear it onward through the months until the last pair of birds is mated in the wood.

This is the time when the queen-wasps come out of their winter hiding-places, and the first bumble-bees appear. Of the hive-bees very few seek out these isolated clearings; they have all gone to the riverside where the sallows and willows are in bloom. But as I sat listening to the medley of birds and insect-voices around me, trying to pick out one after the other from the chaos of song, I heard the soft note of a honey-bee down in the blue veronica close at hand. Yet she touched none of the flowers. She passed all by, and went scrambling down among the moss and dead leaves. Knowing that the honey-bee never wastes time, and anxious to find out what she might be doing there, I watched her as she painfully went over the moss-fronds one by one, sending forth a shrill, fretful note at intervals, very like an interjection of disappointment at not finding what she needed. At last her search came to a successful end. It was a dew-drop she had been seeking, one of the few that had escaped the thirsty glances of the sun. Silently she drank. And then, as she rose into mid-air with her burden, there was no mistaking the triumphant quality of her song. At this time, water is the all-important factor in the prosperity of the hive; and the bee knew well she was carrying home something of greater worth even than a load of the purest honey.

Leaving the clearing at length, I went homeward by a roundabout way, through the oldest part of the wood. Traversing one of the shadiest paths, where the oaks grew thick together overhead, I came to a turn in the way. Just beyond, there was a single spot of sunshine lying on the moss-green path, and in it a squirrel gambolled, as though he were taking a bath in the yellow pool of light. Often throughout the winter I had come upon squirrels thus, tempted out of their warm winter-houses by some day of exceptional mildness. For the squirrel is no true hibernator. He sleeps through the cold spells, often for weeks at a stretch. But, like the hive-bees, warm weather at once rouses him from his dray, and sends him forth ravenous to his secret store of acorns or beech-mast.

Old Tom Clemmer once told me of a custom regarding the squirrel which, in his boyhood, was rife in most Downland villages. On Saint Andrew’s Day, towards the end of each November, most of the Windlecombe men and boys used to foregather on the green, armed with short sticks, shod at one end with some heavy piece of metal. The party would then go out into the woods for this, the annual squirrel-hunt, or ‘skugging’ as it was called. The weighted sticks were thrown at the squirrels as they leaped in the branches overhead; and some of the folk, Tom Clemmer himself among the number, were famous for their skill at this pastime. Skugging, however, being essentially a poor man’s brutal sport, has been long ago suppressed.

My squirrel in the pool of sunshine blocked the path, and there was no way round. I must perforce disturb him. I watched him clamber upward into the wilderness of budding oak-boughs, his glossy red-brown coat gleaming in the sunshine as he went.

Presently, coming into a spacious valley of beeches, where the eye could wander far and wide, between the grey-green trunks, over a bare, undulating carpet of last year’s leaves—for scarcely anything will grow under beech—I caught sight of an object which drew my steps over to the near hillside. It was a spot of shining white painted about breast high on the smooth bark of one of the trees. I knew what it meant. It was the White Spot of Doom—the token of the woodreeve to his men that the tree was to be felled; and this was the time, when the sap was beginning to run strong and rinding would be easy, for the death sentence to be carried out.