A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs Part 16

It happens, oddly enough, that I became acquainted with this same man, the squire, over fifty years after the events I am relating, when he was past eighty. This acquaintance came about by means of a letter he wrote me in reference to the habits of a bird or some such small matter, a way in which I have become acquainted with scores--perhaps I should say hundreds--of persons in many parts of the country. He was a very fine man, the head of an old and distinguished county family; an ideal squire, and one of the few large landowners I have had the happiness to meet who was not devoted to that utterly selfish and degraded form of sport which consists in the annual rearing and subsequent slaughter of a host of pheasants.

Now when Martha was entertaining half a dozen of her new neighbours who had come in to see her, and exhibited her baby to them and then proceeded to suckle it, they looked at one another and laughed, and one said, "Just you wait till the lady at the mansion sees 'ee--she'll soon want 'ee to nurse her little one."

What did they mean? They told her that the great lady was a mother too, and had a little sickly baby and wanted a nurse for it, but couldn't find a woman to please her.

Martha fired up at that. Did they imagine, she asked, that any great lady in the world with all her gold could tempt her to leave her own darling to nurse another woman's? She would not do such a thing--she would rather leave the place than submit to it. But she didn't believe it--they had only said that to tease and frighten her!

They laughed again, looking admiringly at her as she stood before them with sparkling eyes, flushed cheeks, and fine full bust, and only answered, "Just you wait, my dear, till she sees 'ee."

And very soon the lady did see her. The people at the manor were strict in their religious observances, and it had been impressed on Martha that she had better attend at morning service on her first Sunday, and a girl was found by one of her neighbours to look after the baby in the meantime. And so when Sunday came she dressed herself in her best clothes and went to church with the others. The service over, the squire and his wife came out first and were standing in the path exchanging greetings with their friends; then as the others came out with Martha in the midst of the crowd the lady turned and fixed her eyes on her, and suddenly stepping out from the group she stopped Martha and said, "Who are you?--I don't remember your face."

"No, ma'am," said Martha, blushing and curtsying. "I be the new shepherd's wife at the manor-house farm--we've only been here a few days."

The other then said she had heard of her and that she was nursing her child, and she then told Martha to go to the mansion that afternoon as she had something to say to her.

The poor young mother went in fear and trembling, trying to stiffen herself against the expected blandishments.

Then followed the fateful interview. The lady was satisfied that she had got hold of the right person at last--the one in the world who would be able to save her precious little one "from to die," the poor pining infant on whose frail little life so much depended! She would feed it from her full, healthy b.r.e.a.s.t.s and give it something of her own abounding, splendid life. Martha's own baby would do very well--there was nothing the matter with it, and it would flourish on "the bottle" or anything else, no matter what. All she had to do was to go back to her cottage and make the necessary arrangements, then come to stay at the mansion.

Martha refused, and the other smiled; then Martha pleaded and cried and said she would never never leave her own child, and as all that had no effect she was angry, and it came into her mind that if the lady would get angry too she would be ordered out and all would be over. But the lady wouldn't get angry, for when Martha stormed she grew more gentle and spoke tenderly and sweetly, but would still have it her own way, until the poor young mother could stand it no longer, and so rushed away in a great state of agitation to tell her husband and ask him to help her against her enemy. But Tommy took the lady's side, and his young wife hated him for it, and was in despair and ready to s.n.a.t.c.h up her child and run away from them all, when all at once a carriage appeared at the cottage, and the great lady herself, followed by a nurse with the sickly baby in her arms, came in. She had come, she said very gently, almost pleadingly, to ask Martha to feed her child once, and Martha was flattered and pleased at the request, and took and fondled the infant in her arms, then gave it suck at her beautiful breast. And when she had fed the child, acting very tenderly towards it like a mother, her visitor suddenly burst into tears, and taking Martha in her arms she kissed her and pleaded with her again until she could resist no more; and it was settled that she was to live at the mansion and come once every day to the village to feed her own child from the breast.

Martha's connexion with the people at the mansion did not end when she had safely reared the sickly child. The lady had become attached to her and wanted to have her always, although Martha could not act again as wet nurse, for she had no more children herself. And by and by when her mistress lost her health after the birth of a third child and was ordered abroad, she took Martha with her, and she pa.s.sed a whole year with her on the Continent, residing in France and Italy. They came home again, but as the lady continued to decline in health she travelled again, still taking Martha with her, and they visited India and other distant countries, including the Holy Land; but travel and wealth and all that the greatest physicians in the world could do for her, and the tender care of a husband who worshipped her, availed not, and she came home in the end to die; and Martha went back to her Tommy and the boy, to be separated no more while their lives lasted.

The great house was shut up and remained so for years. The squire was the last man in England to shirk his duties as landlord and to his people whom he loved, and who loved him as few great landowners are loved in England, but his grief was too great for even his great strength to bear up against, and it was long feared by his friends that he would never recover from his loss. But he was healed in time, and ten years later married again and returned to his home, to live there until nigh upon his ninetieth year. Long before this the Ierats had returned to their native village. When I last saw Martha, then in her eighty-second year, she gave me the following account of her Tommy's end.

He continued shepherding up to the age of seventy-eight. One Sunday, early in the afternoon, when she was ill with an attack of influenza, he came home, and putting aside his crook said, "I've done work."

"It's early," she replied, "but maybe you got the boy to mind the sheep for you."

"I don't mean I've done work for the day," he returned. "I've done for good--I'll not go with the flock no more."

"What be saying?" she cried in sudden alarm. "Be you feeling bad--what be the matter?"

"No, I'm not bad," he said. "I'm perfectly well, but I've done work;"

and more than that he would not say.

She watched him anxiously but could see nothing wrong with him; his appet.i.te was good, he smoked his pipe, and was cheerful.

Three days later she noticed that he had some difficulty in pulling on a stocking when dressing in the morning, and went to his a.s.sistance. He laughed and said, "Here's a funny thing! You be ill and I be well, and you've got to help me put on a stocking!" and he laughed again.

After dinner that day he said he wanted a drink and would have a gla.s.s of beer. There was no beer in the house, and she asked him if he would have a cup of tea.

"Oh, yes, that'll do very well," he said, and she made it for him.

After drinking his cup of tea he got a footstool, and placing it at her feet sat down on it and rested his head on her knees; he remained a long time in this position so perfectly still that she at length bent over and felt and examined his face, only to discover that he was dead.

And that was the end of Tommy Ierat, the son of Ellen. He died, she said, like a baby that has been fed and falls asleep on its mother's breast.

CHAPTER XXIV

LIVING IN THE PAST

Evening talks--On the construction of sheep-folds--Making hurdles--Devil's guts--Character in sheep-dogs--Sally the spiteful dog--d.y.k.e the lost dog who returned--Strange recovery of a lost dog--Badger the playful dog--Badger shepherds the fowls--A ghost story--A Sunday-evening talk--Parsons and ministers--Noisy religion--The shepherd's love of his calling--Mark d.i.c.k and the giddy sheep--Conclusion

During our frequent evening talks, often continued till a late hour, it was borne in on Caleb Bawcombe that his anecdotes of wild creatures interested me more than anything else he had to tell; but in spite of this, or because he could not always bear it in mind, the conversation almost invariably drifted back to the old subject of sheep, of which he was never tired. Even in his sleep he does not forget them; his dreams, he says, are always about sheep; he is with the flock, shifting the hurdles, or following it out on the down. A troubled dream when he is ill or uneasy in his sleep is invariably about some difficulty with the flock; it gets out of his control, and the dog cannot understand him or refuses to obey when everything depends on his instant action. The subject was so much to him, so important above all others, that he would not spare the listener even the minutest details of the shepherd's life and work. His "hints on the construction of sheep-folds" would have filled a volume; and if any farmer had purchased the book he would not have found the t.i.tle a misleading one and that he had been defrauded of his money. But with his singular fawn-like face and clear eyes on his listener it was impossible to fall asleep, or even to let the attention wander; and incidentally even in his driest discourse there were little bright touches which one would not willingly have missed.

About hurdles he explained that it was common for the downland shepherds to repair the broken and worn-out ones with the long woody stems of the bithywind from the hedges; and when I asked what the plant was he described the wild clematis or traveller's-joy; but those names he did not know--to him the plant had always been known as _bithywind_ or else _Devil's guts_. It struck me that bithywind might have come by the transposition of two letters from withybind, as if one should say flutterby for b.u.t.terfly, or flagondry for dragonfly. Withybind is one of the numerous vernacular names of the common convolvulus. Lilybind is another. But what would old Gerarde, who invented the pretty name of traveller's-joy for that ornament of the wayside hedges, have said to such a name as Devil's guts?

There was, said Caleb, an old farmer in the parish of Bishop who had a peculiar fondness for this plant, and if a shepherd pulled any of it out of one of his hedges after leafing-time he would be very much put out; he would shout at him, "Just you leave my Devil's guts alone or I'll not keep you on the farm." And the shepherds in revenge gave him the unpleasant nickname of "Old Devil's Guts," by which he was known in that part of the country.

As a rule, talk about sheep, or any subject connected with sheep, would suggest something about sheepdogs individual dogs he had known or possessed, and who always had their own character and peculiarities, like human beings. They were good and bad and indifferent; a really bad dog was a rarity; but a fairly good dog might have some trick or vice or weakness. There was Sally, for example, a stump-tail b.i.t.c.h, as good a dog with sheep as he ever possessed, but you had to consider her feelings. She would keenly resent any injustice from her master. If he spoke too sharply to her, or rebuked her unnecessarily for going a little out of her way just to smell at a rabbit burrow, she would nurse her anger until an opportunity came of inflicting a bite on some erring sheep. Punishing her would have made matters worse: the only way was to treat her as a reasonable being and never to speak to her as a dog--a mere slave.

d.y.k.e was another dog he remembered well. He belonged to old Shepherd Matthew t.i.tt, who was head-shepherd at a farm near Warminster, adjacent to the one where Caleb worked. Old Mat and his wife lived alone in their cottage out of the village, all their children having long grown up and gone away to a distance from home, and being so lonely "by their two selves" they loved their dog just as others love their relations. But d.y.k.e deserved it, for he was a very good dog. One year Mat was sent by his master with lambs to Weyhill, the little village near Andover, where a great sheep-fair is held in October every year. It was distant over thirty miles, but Mat though old was a strong man still and greatly trusted by his master. From this journey he returned with a sad heart, for he had lost d.y.k.e. He had disappeared one night while they were at Weyhill. Old Mrs. t.i.tt cried for him as she would have cried for a lost son, and for many a long day they went about with heavy hearts.

Just a year had gone by when one night the old woman was roused from sleep by loud knocks on the window-pane of the living-room below. "Mat!

Mat!" she cried, shaking him vigorously, "wake up--old d.y.k.e has come back to us!" "What be you talking about?" growled the old shepherd. "Lie down and go to sleep--you've been dreaming." "'Tain't no dream; 'tis d.y.k.e--I know his knock," she cried, and getting up she opened the window and put her head well out, and there sure enough was d.y.k.e, standing up against the wall and gazing up at her, and knocking with his paw against the window below.

Then Mat jumped up, and going together downstairs they unbarred the door and embraced the dog with joy, and the rest of the night was spent in feeding and caressing him, and asking him a hundred questions, which he could only answer by licking their hands and wagging his tail.

It was supposed that he had been stolen at the fair, probably by one of the wild, little, lawless men called "general dealers," who go flying about the country in a trap drawn by a fast-trotting pony; that he had been thrown, m.u.f.fled up, into the cart and carried many a mile away, and sold to some shepherd, and that he had lost his sense of direction. But after serving a stranger a full year he had been taken with sheep to Weyhill Fair once more, and once there he knew where he was, and had remembered the road leading to his old home and master, and making his escape had travelled the thirty long miles back to Warminster.

The account of d.y.k.e's return reminded me of an equally good story of the recovery of a lost dog which I heard from a shepherd on the Avon. He had been lost over a year, when one day the shepherd, being out on the down with his flock, stood watching two drovers travelling with a flock on the turnpike road below, nearly a mile away, and by and by hearing one of their dogs bark he knew at that distance that it was his dog. "I haven't a doubt," he said to himself, "and if I know his bark he'll know my whistle." With that he thrust two fingers in his mouth and blew his shrillest and longest whistle, then waited the result. Presently he spied a dog, still at a great distance, coming swiftly towards him; it was his own dog, mad with joy at finding his old master.

Did ever two friends, long sundered by unhappy chance, recognize each other's voices at such a distance and so come together once more!

Whether the drovers had seen him desert them or not, they did not follow to recover him, nor did the shepherd go to them to find out how they had got possession of him; it was enough that he had got his dog back.

No doubt in this case the dog had recognized his old home when taken by it, but he was in another man's hands now, and the habits and discipline of a life made it impossible for him to desert until that old, familiar, and imperative call reached his ears and he could not disobey.

Then (to go on with Caleb's reminiscences) there was Badger, owned by a farmer and worked for some years by Caleb--the very best stump-tail he ever had to help him. This dog differed from others in his vivacious temper and ceaseless activity. When the sheep were feeding quietly and there was little or nothing to do for hours at a time, he would not lie down and go to sleep like any other sheep-dog, but would spend his vacant time "amusing of hisself" on some smooth slope where he could roll over and over; then run back and roll over again and again, playing by himself just like a child. Or he would chase a b.u.t.terfly or scamper about over the down hunting for large white flints, which he would bring one by one and deposit them at his master's feet, pretending they were something of value and greatly enjoying the game. This dog, Caleb said, would make him laugh every day with his games and capers.

When Badger got old his sight and hearing failed; yet when he was very nearly blind and so deaf that he could not hear a word of command, even when it was shouted out quite close to him, he was still kept with the flock because he was so intelligent and willing. But he was too old at last; it was time for him to be put out of the way. The farmer, however, who owned him, would not consent to have him shot, and so the wistful old dog was ordered to keep at home at the farm-house. Still he refused to be superannuated, and not allowed to go to the flock he took to shepherding the fowls. In the morning he would drive them out to their run and keep them there in a flock, going round and round them by the hour, and furiously hunting back the poor hens that tried to steal off to lay their eggs in some secret place. This could not be allowed, and so poor old Badger, who would have been too miserable if tied up, had to be shot after all.

These were always his best stories--his recollections of sheep-dogs, for of all creatures, sheep alone excepted, he knew and loved them best. Yet for one whose life had been spent in that small isolated village and on the bare down about it, his range was pretty wide, and it even included one memory of a visitor from the other world. Let him tell it in his own words.

"Many say they don't believe there be such things as ghosties. They niver see'd 'n. An' I don't say I believe or disbelieve what I hear tell. I warn't there to see. I only know what I see'd myself: but I don't say that it were a ghostie or that it wasn't one. I was coming home late one night from the sheep; 'twere close on 'leven o'clock, a very quiet night, with moonsheen that made it a'most like day. Near th'

end of the village I come to the stepping-stones, as we call 'n, where there be a gate and the road, an' just by the road the four big white stones for people going from the village to the copse an' the down on t'other side to step over the water. In winter 'twas a stream there, but the water it dried in summer, and now 'twere summer-time and there wur no water. When I git there I see'd two women, both on 'em tall, with black gowns on, an' big bonnets they used to wear; an' they were standing face to face so close that the tops o' their bonnets wur a'most touching together. Who be these women out so late? says I to myself.

Why, says I, they be Mrs. Durk from up in the village an' Mrs. Gaarge Durk, the keeper's wife down by the copse. Then I thought I know'd how 'twas: Mrs. Gaarge, she'd a been to see Mrs. Durk in the village, and Mrs. Durk she were coming out a leetel way with her, so far as the stepping-stones, and they wur just having a last leetel talk before saying Good night. But mind, I hear'd no talking when I pa.s.sed 'n. An'

I'd hardly got past 'n before I says, Why, what a fool be I! Mrs. Durk she be dead a twelvemonth, an' I were in the churchyard and see'd her buried myself. Whatever be I thinking of? That made me stop and turn round to look at 'n agin. An' there they was just as I see'd 'n at first--Mrs. Durk, who was dead a twelvemonth, an' Mrs. Gaarge Durk from the copse, standing there with their bonnets a'most touching together.

An' I couldn't hear nothing--no talking, they were so still as two posties. Then something came over me like a tarrible coldness in the blood and down my back, an' I were afraid, and turning I runned faster than I ever runned in my life, an' never stopped--not till I got to the cottage."

It was not a bad ghost story: but then such stories seldom are when coming from those who have actually seen, or believe they have seen, an immaterial being. Their princ.i.p.al charm is in their infinite variety; you never find two real or true ghost stories quite alike, and in this they differ from the weary inventions of the fictionist.

But invariably the princ.i.p.al subject was sheep.