A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs Part 8

A reader well acquainted with the valley will probably laugh to be told that the manor-house which most interested me was that of Knook, a poor little village between Heytesbury and Upton Lovell. Its ancient and towerless little church with rough, grey walls is, if possible, even more desolate-looking than that of Tytherington. In my hunt for the key to open it I disturbed a quaint old man, another octogenarian, picturesque in a vast white beard, who told me he was a thatcher, or had been one before the evil days came when he could work no more and was compelled to seek parish relief. "You must go to the manor-house for the key," he told me. A strange place in which to look for the key, and it was stranger still to see the house, close to the church, and so like it that but for the small cross on the roof of the latter one could not have known which was the sacred building. First a monks' house, it fell at the Reformation to some greedy gentleman who made it his dwelling, and doubtless in later times it was used as a farm-house. Now a house most desolate, dirty, and neglected, with cracks in the walls which threaten ruin, standing in a wilderness of weeds, tenanted by a poor working-man whose wages are twelve shillings a week, and his wife and eight small children. The rent is eighteen-pence a week--probably the lowest-rented manor-house in England, though it is not very rare to find such places tenanted by labourers.

But let us look at the true cottages. There are, I imagine, few places in England where the humble homes of the people have so great a charm. Undoubtedly they are darker inside, and not so convenient to live in as the modern box-shaped, red-brick, slate-roofed cottages, which have spread a wave of ugliness over the country; but they do not offend--they please the eye. They are smaller than the modern-built habitations; they are weathered and coloured by sun and wind and rain and many lowly vegetable forms to a harmony with nature. They appear related to the trees amid which they stand, to the river and meadows, to the sloping downs at the side, and to the sky and clouds over all. And, most delightful feature, they stand among, and are wrapped in, flowers as in a garment--rose and vine and creeper and clematis. They are mostly thatched, but some have tiled roofs, their deep, dark red clouded and stained with lichen and moss; and these roofs, too, have their flowers in summer. They are grown over with yellow stonecrop, that bright cheerful flower that smiles down at you from the lowly roof above the door, with such an inviting expression, so delighted to see you no matter how poor and worthless a person you may be or what mischief you may have been at, that you begin to understand the significance of a strange vernacular name of this plant--Welcome-home-husband-though-never-so-drunk.

But its garden flowers, cl.u.s.tering and nestling round it, amid which its feet are set--they are to me the best of all flowers. These are the flowers we know and remember for ever. The old, homely, cottage-garden blooms, so old that they have entered the soul. The big house garden, or gardener's garden, with everything growing in it I hate, but these I love--fragrant gillyflower and pink and clove-smelling carnation; wallflower, abundant periwinkle, sweet-william, larkspur, love-in-a-mist, and love-lies-bleeding, old-woman's-nightcap, and kiss-me-John-at-the-garden-gate, some times called pansy. And best of all and in greatest profusion, that flower of flowers, the marigold.

How the townsman, town born and bred, regards this flower, I do not know. He is, in spite of all the time I have spent in his company, a comparative stranger to me--the one living creature on the earth who does not greatly interest me. Some over-populated planet in our system discovered a way to relieve itself by discharging its superfluous millions on our globe--a pale people with hurrying feet and eager, restless minds, who live apart in monstrous, crowded camps, like wood ants that go not out to forage for themselves--six millions of them crowded together in one camp alone! I have lived in these colonies, years and years, never losing the sense of captivity, of exile, ever conscious of my burden, taking no interest in the doings of that innumerable mult.i.tude, its manifold interests, its ideals and philosophy, its arts and pleasures. What, then, does it matter how they regard this common orange-coloured flower with a strong smell? For me it has an atmosphere, a sense or suggestion of something immeasurably remote and very beautiful--an event, a place, a dream perhaps, which has left no distinct image, but only this feeling unlike all others, imperishable, and not to be described except by the one word Marigold.

But when my sight wanders away from the flower to others blooming with it--to all those which I have named and to the taller ones, so tall that they reach half-way up, and some even quite up, to the eaves of the lowly houses they stand against--hollyhocks and peonies and crystalline white lilies with powdery gold inside, and the common sunflower--I begin to perceive that they all possess something of that same magical quality.

These taller blooms remind me that the evening primrose, long naturalized in our hearts, is another common and very delightful cottage-garden flower; also that here, on the Wylye, there is yet another stranger from the same western world which is fast winning our affections. This is the golden-rod, grandly beautiful in its great, yellow, plume-like tufts. But it is not quite right to call the tufts yellow: they are green, thickly powdered with the minute golden florets.

There is no flower in England like it, and it is a happiness to know that it promises to establish itself with us as a wild flower.

Where the village lies low in the valley and the cottage is near the water, there are wild blooms, too, which almost rival those of the garden in beauty--water agrimony and comfrey with ivory-white and dim purple blossoms, purple and yellow loosestrife and gem-like, water forget-me-not; all these mixed with reeds and sedges and water-gra.s.ses, forming a fringe or border to the potato or cabbage patch, dividing it from the stream.

But now I have exhausted the subject of the flowers, and enumerated and dwelt upon the various other components of the scene, it comes to me that I have not yet said the right thing and given the Wylye its characteristic expression. In considering the flowers we lose sight of the downs, and so in occupying ourselves with the details we miss the general effect. Let me then, once more, before concluding this chapter, try to capture the secret of this little river.

There are other chalk streams in Wiltshire and Hampshire and Dorset--swift crystal currents that play all summer long with the floating poa gra.s.s fast held in their pebbly beds, flowing through smooth downs, with small ancient churches in their green villages, and pretty thatched cottages smothered in flowers--which yet do not produce the same effect as the Wylye. Not Avon for all its beauty, nor Itchen, nor Test. Wherein, then, does the "Wylye bourne" differ from these others, and what is its special attraction? It was only when I set myself to think about it, to a.n.a.lyse the feeling in my own mind, that I discovered the secret--that is, in my own case, for of its effect on others I cannot say anything. What I discovered was that the various elements of interest, all of which may be found in other chalk-stream valleys, are here concentrated, or comprised in a limited s.p.a.ce, and seen together produce a combined effect on the mind. It is the narrowness of the valley and the nearness of the high downs standing over it on either side, with, at some points, the memorials of antiquity carved on their smooth surfaces, the barrows and lynchetts or terraces, and the vast green earth-works crowning their summit. Up here on the turf, even with the lark singing his shrill music in the blue heavens, you are with the prehistoric dead, yourself for the time one of that innumerable, unsubstantial mult.i.tude, invisible in the sun, so that the sheep travelling as they graze, and the shepherd following them, pa.s.s through their ranks without suspecting their presence. And from that elevation you look down upon the life of to-day--the visible life, so brief in the individual, which, like the swift silver stream beneath, yet flows on continuously from age to age and for ever. And even as you look down you hear, at that distance, the bell of the little hidden church tower telling the hour of noon, and quickly following, a shout of freedom and joy from many shrill voices of children just released from school. Woke to life by those sounds, and drawn down by them, you may sit to rest or sun yourself on the stone table of a tomb overgrown on its sides with moss, the two-century-old inscription well-nigh obliterated, in the little gra.s.s-grown, flowery churchyard which serves as village green and playground in that small centre of life, where the living and the dead exist in a neighbourly way together. For it is not here as in towns, where the dead are away and out of mind and the past cut off. And if after basking too long in the sun in that tree-sheltered spot you go into the little church to cool yourself, you will probably find in a dim corner not far from the altar a stone effigy of one of an older time; a knight in armour, perhaps a crusader with legs crossed, lying on his back, dimly seen in the dim light, with perhaps a coloured sunbeam on his upturned face. For this little church where the villagers worship is very old; Norman on Saxon foundations; and before they were ever laid there may have been a temple to some ancient G.o.d at that spot, or a Roman villa perhaps. For older than Saxon foundations are found in the vale, and mosaic floors, still beautiful after lying buried so long.

All this--the far-removed events and periods in time--are not in the conscious mind when we are in the vale or when we are looking down on it from above: the mind is occupied with nothing but visible nature. Thus, when I am sitting on the tomb, listening to the various sounds of life about me, attentive to the flowers and bees and b.u.t.terflies, to man or woman or child taking a short cut through the churchyard, exchanging a few words with them; or when I am by the water close by, watching a little company of graylings, their delicately-shaded, silver-grey scales distinctly seen as they lie in the crystal current watching for flies; or when I listen to the perpetual musical talk and song combined of a family of green-finches in the alders or willows, my mind is engaged with these things. But if one is familiar with the vale; if one has looked with interest and been deeply impressed with the signs and memorials of past life and of antiquity everywhere present and forming part of the scene, something of it and of all that it represents remains in the subconscious mind to give a significance and feeling to the scene, which affects us here more than in most places; and that, I take it, is the special charm of this little valley.

CHAPTER XIV

A SHEEP-DOG'S LIFE

Watch--His visits to a dew-pond--David and his dog Monk--Watch goes to David's a.s.sistance--Caleb's new master objects to his dog--Watch and the corn-crake--Watch plays with rabbits and guinea-pigs--Old Nance the rook-scarer--The lost pair of spectacles--Watch in decline--Grey hairs in animals--A grey mole--Last days of Watch--A shepherd on old sheep-dogs

Perhaps the most interesting of the many sheep-dog histories the shepherd related was that of Watch, a dog he had at Winterbourne Bishop for three years before he migrated to Warminster. Watch, he said, was more "like a Christian," otherwise a reasonable being, than any other dog he had owned. He was exceedingly active, and in hot weather suffered more from heat than most dogs. Now the only accessible water when they were out on the down was in the mist-pond about a quarter of a mile from his "liberty," as he called that portion of the down on which he was ent.i.tled to pasture his sheep. When Watch could stand his sufferings no longer, he would run to his master, and sitting at his feet look up at his face and emit a low, pleading whine.

"What be you wanting, Watch--a drink or a swim?" the shepherd would say, and Watch, c.o.c.king up his ears, would repeat the whine.

"Very well, go to the pond," Bawcombe would say, and off Watch would rush, never pausing until he got to the water, and dashing in he would swim round and round, lapping the water as he bathed.

At the side of the pond there was a large, round sa.r.s.en-stone, and invariably on coming out of his bath Watch would jump upon it, and with his four feet drawn up close together would turn round and round, surveying the country from that elevation; then jumping down he would return in all haste to his duties.

Another anecdote, which relates to the Winterbourne Bishop period, is a somewhat painful one, and is partly about Monk, the sheep-dog already described as a hunter of foxes, and his tragic end. Caleb had worked him for a time, but when he came into possession of Watch he gave Monk to his younger brother David, who was under-shepherd on the same farm.

One morning Caleb was with the ewes in a field, when David, who was in charge of the lambs two or three fields away, came to him looking very strange--very much put out.

"What are you here for--what's wrong with 'ee?" demanded Caleb.

"Nothing's wrong," returned the other.

"Where's Monk then?" asked Caleb.

"Dead," said David.

"Dead! How's he dead?"

"I killed'n. He wouldn't mind me and made me mad, and I up with my stick and gave him one crack on the head and it killed'n."

"You killed 'n!" exclaimed Caleb. "An' you come here an' tell I nothing's wrong! Is that a right way to speak of such a thing as that?

What be you thinking of? And what be you going to do with the lambs?"

"I'm just going back to them--I'm going to do without a dog. I'm going to put them in the rape and they'll be all right."

"What! put them in the rape and no dog to help 'ee?" cried the other.

"You are not doing things right, but master mustn't pay for it. Take Watch to help 'ee--I must do without'n this morning."

"No, I'll not take'n," he said, for he was angry because he had done an evil thing and he would have no one, man or dog, to help him. "I'll do better without a dog," he said, and marched off.

Caleb cried after him: "If you won't have the dog don't let the lambs suffer but do as I tell 'ee. Don't you let 'em bide in the rape more 'n ten minutes; then chase them out, and let 'em stand twenty minutes to half an hour; then let them in another ten minutes and out again for twenty minutes, then let them go back and feed in it quietly, for the danger 'll be over. If you don't do as I tell 'ee you'll have many blown."

David listened, then without a word went his way. But Caleb was still much troubled in his mind. How would he get that flock of hungry lambs out of the rape without a dog? And presently he determined to send Watch, or try to send him, to save the situation. David had been gone half an hour when he called the dog, and pointing in the direction he had taken he cried, "Dave wants 'ee--go to Dave."

Watch looked at him and listened, then bounded away, and after running full speed about fifty yards stopped to look back to make sure he was doing the right thing. "Go to Dave," shouted Caleb once more; and away went Watch again, and arriving at a very high gate at the end of the field dashed at and tried two or three times to get over it, first by jumping, then by climbing, and falling back each time. But by and by he managed to force his way through the thick hedge and was gone from sight.

When David came back that evening he was in a different mood, and said that Watch had saved him from a great misfortune: he could never have got the lambs out by himself, as they were mad for the rape. For some days after this Watch served two masters. Caleb would take him to his ewes, and after a while would say, "Go--Dave wants 'ee," and away Watch would go to the other shepherd and flock.

When Bawcombe had taken up his new place at Doveton, his master, Mr.

Ellerby, watched him for a while with sharp eyes, but he was soon convinced that he had not made a mistake in engaging a head-shepherd twenty-five miles away without making the usual inquiries but merely on the strength of something heard casually in conversation about this man.

But while more than satisfied with the man he remained suspicious of the dog. "I'm afraid that dog of yours must hurt the sheep," he would say, and he even advised him to change him for one that worked in a quieter manner. Watch was too excitable, too impetuous--he could not go after the sheep in that violent way and grab them as he did without injuring them with his teeth.

"He did never bite a sheep in his life," Bawcombe a.s.sured him, and eventually he was able to convince his master that Watch could make a great show of biting the sheep without doing them the least hurt--that it was actually against his nature to bite or injure anything.

One day in the late summer, when the corn had been cut but not carried, Bawcombe was with his flock on the edge of a newly reaped cornfield in a continuous, heavy rain, when he spied his master coming to him. He was in a very light summer suit and straw hat, and had no umbrella or other protection from the pouring rain. "What be wrong with master to-day?"

said Bawcombe. "He's tarrably upset to be out like this in such a rain in a straw hat and no coat."

Mr. Ellerby had by that time got into the habit when troubled in his mind of going out to his shepherd to have a long talk with him. Not a talk about his trouble--that was some secret bitterness in his heart--but just about the sheep and other ordinary topics, and the talk, Caleb said, would seem to do him good. But this habit he had got into was observed by others, and the farm-men would say, "Something's wrong to-day--the master's gone off to the head-shepherd."

When he came to where Bawcombe was standing, in a poor shelter by the side of a fence, he at once started talking on indifferent subjects, standing there quite unconcerned, as if he didn't even know that it was raining, though his thin clothes were wet through, and the water coming through his straw hat was running in streaks down his face. By and by he became interested in the dog's movements, playing about in the rain among the stocks. "What has he got in his mouth?" he asked presently.

"Come here, Watch," the shepherd called, and when Watch came he bent down and took a corncrake from his mouth. He had found the bird hiding in one of the stocks and had captured without injuring it.

"Why, it's alive--the dog hasn't hurt it," said the farmer, taking it in his hands to examine it.

"Watch never hurted any creature yet," said Bawcombe. He caught things just for his own amus.e.m.e.nt, but never injured them--he always let them go again. He would hunt mice in the fields, and when he captured one he would play with it like a cat, tossing it from him, then dashing after and recapturing it. Finally, he would let it go. He played with rabbits in the same way, and if you took a rabbit from him and examined it you would find it quite uninjured.

The farmer said it was wonderful--he had never heard of a case like it before; and talking of Watch he succeeded in forgetting the trouble in his mind which had sent him out in the rain in his thin clothes and straw hat, and he went away in a cheerful mood.

Caleb probably forgot to mention during this conversation with his master that in most cases when Watch captured a rabbit he took it to his master and gave it into his hands, as much as to say, Here is a very big sort of field-mouse I have caught, rather difficult to manage--perhaps _you_ can do something with it?

The shepherd had many other stories about this curious disposition of his dog. When he had been some months in his new place his brother David followed him to the Wylye, having obtained a place as shepherd on a farm adjoining Mr. Ellerby's. His cottage was a little out of the village and had some ground to it, with a nice lawn or green patch. David was fond of keeping animal pets--birds in cages, and rabbits and guinea-pigs in hutches, the last so tame that he would release them on the gra.s.s to see them play with one another. When Watch first saw these pets he was very much attracted, and wanted to get to them, and after a good deal of persuasion on the part of Caleb, David one day consented to take them out and put them on the gra.s.s in the dog's presence. They were a little alarmed at first, but in a surprisingly short time made the discovery that this particular dog was not their enemy but a playmate. He rolled on the gra.s.s among them, and chased them round and round, and sometimes caught and pretended to worry them, and they appeared to think it very good fun.

"Watch," said Bawcombe, "in the fifteen years I had 'n, never killed and never hurt a creature, no, not even a leetel mouse, and when he caught anything 'twere only to play with it."