The Hills and the Vale Part 4

In a little while a second plover arrives from the field behind; he, too, dances a maze in the air before he settles. Soon a third joins them. They are visible at that spot because the gra.s.s is short; elsewhere they would be hidden. If one of these rises and flies to and fro, almost instantly another follows, and then it is indeed a dance before they alight. The wheeling, maze-tracing, devious windings continue till the eye wearies and rests with pleasure on a pa.s.sing b.u.t.terfly. These birds have nests in the meadows adjoining; they meet here as a common feeding-ground.

Presently they will disperse, each returning to his mate at the nest. Half an hour afterwards they will meet once more, either here or on the wing.

In this manner they spend their time from dawn, through the flower-growing day, till dusk. When the sun arises over the hill into the sky, already blue, the plovers have been up a long while.

All the busy morning they go to and fro: the busy morning when the wood-pigeons cannot rest in the copses on the combe side, but continually fly in and out; when the blackbirds whistle in the oaks; when the bluebells gleam with purplish l.u.s.tre. At noontide in the dry heat it is pleasant to listen to the sound of water moving among the thousand thousand gra.s.s-blades of the mead. The flower-growing day lengthens out beyond the sunset, and till the hedges are dim the lapwings do not cease.

Leaving now the shade of the oak, I follow the path into the meadow on the right, stepping by the way over a streamlet which diffuses its rapid current broadcast over the sward till it collects again and pours into the brook. This next meadow is somewhat more raised, and not watered; the gra.s.s is high, and full of b.u.t.tercups. Before I have gone twenty yards a lapwing rises out in the field, rushes towards me through the air, and circles round my head, making as if to dash at me, and uttering shrill cries. Immediately another comes from the mead behind the oak; then a third from over the hedge, and all those that have been feeding by the bank, till I am encircled with them. They wheel round, dive, rise aslant, cry, and wheel again, always close over me, till I have walked some distance, when one by one they fall off, and, still uttering threats, retire. There is a nest in this meadow, and, although it is, no doubt, a long way from the path, my presence even in the field, large as it is, is resented. The couple who imagine themselves threatened are quickly joined by their friends, and there is no rest till I have left their treasures far behind.

II.--THE GREEN CORN

Pure colour almost always gives the idea of fire, or, rather, it is perhaps as if a light shone through as well as the colour itself.

The fresh green blade of corn is like this--so pellucid, so clear and pure in its green as to seem to shine with colour. It is not brilliant--not a surface gleam nor an enamel--it is stained through.

Beside the moist clods the slender flags arise, filled with the sweetness of the earth. Out of the darkness under--that darkness which knows no day save when the ploughshare opens its c.h.i.n.ks--they have come to the light. To the light they have brought a colour which will attract the sunbeams from now till harvest. They fall more pleasantly on the corn, toned, as if they mingled with it.

Seldom do we realize that the world is practically no thicker to us than the print of our footsteps on the path. Upon that surface we walk and act our comedy of life, and what is beneath is nothing to us. But it is out from that underworld, from the dead and the unknown, from the cold, moist ground, that these green blades have sprung. Yonder a steam-plough pants up the hill, groaning with its own strength, yet all that strength and might of wheels, and piston, and chains cannot drag from the earth one single blade like these.

Force cannot make it; it must grow--an easy word to speak or write, in fact full of potency.

It is this mystery--of growth and life, of beauty and sweetness and colour, and sun-loved ways starting forth from the clods--that gives the corn its power over me. Somehow I identify myself with it; I live again as I see it. Year by year it is the same, and when I see it I feel that I have once more entered on a new life. And to my fancy, the spring, with its green corn, its violets, and hawthorn leaves, and increasing song, grows yearly dearer and more dear to this our ancient earth. So many centuries have flown. Now it is the manner with all natural things to gather as it were by smallest particles. The merest grain of sand drifts unseen into a crevice, and by-and-by another; after a while there is a heap; a century and it is a mound, and then everyone observes and comments on it. Time itself has gone on like this; the years have acc.u.mulated, first in drifts, then in heaps, and now a vast mound, to which the mountains are knolls, rises up and overshadows us. Time lies heavy on the world. The old, old earth is glad to turn from the cark and care of driftless centuries to the first sweet blades of green.

There is sunshine to-day, after rain, and every lark is singing.

Across the vale a broad cloud-shadow descends the hillside, is lost in the hollow, and presently, without warning, slips over the edge, crossing swiftly along the green tips. The sunshine follows--the warmer for its momentary absence. Far, far down in a gra.s.sy combe stands a solitary corn-rick, conical-roofed, casting a lonely shadow--marked because so solitary--and beyond it, on the rising slope, is a brown copse. The leafless branches take a brown tint in the sunlight; on the summit above there is furze; then more hill-lines drawn against the sky. In the tops of the dark pines at the corner of the copse, could the glance sustain itself to see them, there are finches warming themselves in the sunbeams. The thick needles shelter them from the current of air, and the sky is bluer above the pines. Their hearts are full already of the happy days to come, when the moss yonder by the beech, and the lichen on the fir-trunk, and the loose fibres caught in the fork of an unbending bough, shall furnish forth a sufficient mansion for their young. Another broad cloud-shadow, and another warm embrace of sunlight. All the serried ranks of the green corn bow at the word of command as the wind rushes over them.

There is largeness and freedom here. Broad as the down and free as the wind, the thought can roam high over the narrow roofs in the vale. Nature has affixed no bounds to thought. All the palings, and walls, and crooked fences deep down yonder are artificial. The fetters and traditions, the routine, the dull roundabout, which deadens the spirit like the cold moist earth, are the merest nothing. Here it is easy with the physical eye to look over the highest roof, which must also always be the narrowest. The moment the eye of the mind is filled with the beauty of things natural an equal freedom and width of view comes to it. Step aside from the trodden footpath of personal experience, throwing away the petty cynicism bred of petty hopes disappointed. Step out upon the broad down beside the green corn, and let its freshness become part of life.

The wind pa.s.ses and it bends--let the wind, too, pa.s.s over the spirit. From the cloud-shadow it emerges to the sunshine--let the heart come out from the shadow of roofs to the open glow of the sky.

High above, the songs of the larks fall as rain--receive it with open hands. Pure is the colour of the green flags, the slender, pointed blades--let the thought be pure as the light that shines through that colour. Broad are the downs and open the aspect--gather the breadth and largeness of view. Never can that view be wide enough and large enough; there will always be room to aim higher. As the air of the hills enriches the blood, so let the presence of these beautiful things enrich the inner sense.

A KING OF ACRES

I.--JAMES THARDOVER

A weather-beaten man stood by a gateway watching some teams at plough. The bleak March wind rushed across the field, reddening his face; rougher than a flesh-brush, it rubbed the skin, and gave it a glow as if each puff were a blow with the 'gloves.' His short brown beard was full of dust blown into it. Between the line of the hat and the exposed part of the forehead the skin had peeled slightly, literally worn off by the unsparing rudeness of wintry mornings.

Like the early field veronica, which flowered at his feet in the short gra.s.s under the hedge, his eyes were blue and grey. The petals are partly of either hue, and so his eyes varied according to the light--now somewhat more grey, and now more blue. Tall and upright, he stood straight as a bolt, though both arms were on the gate, and his ashen walking-stick swung over it. He wore a grey overcoat, a grey felt hat, grey leggings, and his boots were grey with the dust which had settled on them.

He was thinking: 'Farmer Bartholomew is doing the place better this year; he scarcely hoed a weed last season; the stubble was a tangle of weeds; one could hardly walk across it. That second team stops too long at the end of the furrow--idle fellow that. Third team goes too fast; horses will be soon tired. Fourth team--he's getting beyond his work--too old; the stilts nearly threw him over there.

This ground has paid for the draining--one, at all events. Never saw land look better. Looks brownish and moist--moist brownish red.

Query, what colour is that? Ask Mary--the artist. Never saw it in a picture. Keeps his hedges well; this one is like a board on the top, thorn-boughs molten together; a hare could run along it (as they will sometimes with harriers behind them, and jump off the other side to baffle scent). Now, why is Bartholomew doing his land better this year? Keen old fellow! Something behind this. Has he got that bit of money that was coming to him? Done something, they said, last Doncaster; no one could get anything out of him. Dark as night. Sold the trainer some oats--that I know. Wonder how much the trainer pocketed over that transaction? Expect he did not charge them all.

Still, he's a decent fellow. Honesty is uncertain--never met an honest man. Doubt if world could hang together. Bartholomew is honest enough; but either he has won some money, or he really does not want the drawback at audit. Takes care his horses don't look too well. Notice myself that farmers do not let their teams look so glossy as a few years ago. Like them to seem rough and uncared for--can't afford smooth coats these hard times. Don't look very glossy myself; don't feel very glossy. Hate this wind--hang kings'

ransoms! People who like these winds are telling falsehoods. That's broken (as one of the teams stopped); have to send to blacksmith.

Knock off now; no good your pottering there. Next team stops to go and help potter. Third team stops to help second. Fourth team comes across to help third. All pottering. Wants Bartholomew among them.

That's the way to do a morning's work. Did anyone ever see such idleness! Group about a broken chain--link snapped. Tie it up with your leathern garter--not he; no resource. What patience a man needs to have anything to do with land! Four teams idle over a snapped link! Rent!--of course they can't pay rent. Wonder if a gang of American labourers could make anything out of our farms? There they work from sunrise to sunset. Suppose import a gang and try. Did anyone ever see such a helpless set as that yonder? Depression--of course. No go-ahead in them.'

'Mind opening the gate, you?' said a voice behind; and, turning, the thinker saw a dealer in a trap, who wanted the gate opened, to save him the trouble of getting down to do it himself. The thinker did as he was asked, and held the gate open. The trap went slowly through.

'Will you come on and take a gla.s.s?' said the dealer, pointing with the b.u.t.t-end of his whip. 'Crown.' This was sententious for the Crown in the hamlet. Country-folk speak in pieces, putting the princ.i.p.al word in a sentence for the entire paragraph.

The thinker shook his head and shut the gate, carefully hasping it.

The dealer drove on.

'Who's that?' thought the grey man, watching the trap jolt down the rough road. 'Wants veal, I suppose. No veal here--no good. Now, look!'

The group by the broken chain beckoned to the trap; a lad went across to it with the chain, got up, and was driven off, so saving himself half a mile on his road to the forge.

'Anything to save themselves exertion. Nothing will make them move faster--like whipping a carthorse into a gallop; it soon dies away in the old jog-trot. Why, they have actually started again--actually started!'

He watched the teams a little longer, heedless of the wind, which he abused, but which really did not affect him, and then walked along the hedgerow downhill. Two men were sowing a field on the slope, swinging the hand full of grain from the hip regular as time itself, a swing calculated to throw the seed so far, but not too far, and without jerk. The next field had just been manured, and he stopped to glance at the crowds of small birds which were looking over the straw--finches and sparrows, and the bluish grey of pied wagtails.

There were hundreds of small birds. While he stood, a hedge-sparrow uttered his thin, pleading song on the hedge-top, and a meadow-pipit, which had mounted a little way in the air, came down with outspread wings, with a short 'Seep, seep,' to the ground. Lark and pipit seem near relations; only the skylark sings rising, descending, anywhere, but the pipits chiefly while slowly descending. There had been a rough attempt at market-gardening in the field after this, and rows of cabbage gone up to seed stood forlorn and ragged. On the top of one of these a skylark was perched, calling at intervals; for though cla.s.sed as a non-percher, perch he does sometimes. Meadows succeeded on the level ground; one had been covered with the sc.r.a.pings of roads, a whitish, crumbling dirt, dry, and falling to pieces in the wind. The gra.s.s was pale, its wintry hue not yet gone, and the clods seemed to make it appear paler. Among these clods four or five thrushes were seeking their food; on a bare oak a blackbird was perched, his mate no doubt close by in the hedgerow; at the margin of a pond a black-and-white wagtail waded in the water; a blue t.i.t flew across to the corner.

Brown thrushes, dark blackbird, blue t.i.t, and wagtail gave a little colour to the angle of the meadow. A gleam of pa.s.sing sunlight brightened it. Two wood-pigeons came to a thick bush growing over a grey wall on the other side--for ivy-berries, probably.

A cart pa.s.sed at a little distance, laden with red mangolds, fresh from the pit in which they had been stored; the roots had grown out a trifle, and the rootlets were mauve. A goldfinch perched on a dry dead stalk of wild carrot, a stalk that looked too slender to bear the bird. As the weather-beaten man moved, the goldfinch flew, and the golden wings outspread formed a bright contrast with the dull white clods. Crossing the meadow, and startling the wood-pigeons, our friend scaled the grey walls, putting his foot in a hole left for the purpose. Dark moss lined the interstices between the irregular and loosely placed stones. Above, on the bank, and greener than the gra.s.s, grew moss at the roots of ash-stoles and wherever there was shelter. Broad, rank, green arum leaves crowded each other in places. Red stalks of herb-robert spread open. The weather-beaten man gathered a white wild violet from the shelter of a dead dry oak-leaf, and as he placed it in his b.u.t.tonhole, paused to listen to the baying of hounds. Yowp! yow! The cries echoed from the bank and filled the narrow beechwood within. A shot followed, and then another, and a third after an interval. More yowping. The grey-brown head of a rabbit suddenly appeared over the top of the bank, within three yards of him, and he could see the creature's whiskers nervously working, as its mind estimated its chances of escape. Instead of turning back, the rabbit made a rush to get under an ash-stole, where was a burrow. The yowping went slowly away; the beeches rang again as if the beagles were in cry. Two a.s.sistant-keepers were working the outskirts, and shooting the rabbits which sat out in the brushwood, and so were not to be captured by nets and ferrets. The ground-game was strictly kept down; the noise was made by half a dozen puppies they had with them. Pa.s.sing through the ash-stoles, and next the narrow beechwood, the grey man walked across the open park, and after awhile came in sight of Thardover House. His steps were directed to the great arched porch, beneath which the village folk boasted a waggon-load could pa.s.s. The inner door swung open as if by instinct at his approach. The man who had so neighbourly opened the gate to the dealer in the trap was James Thardover, the owner of the property. Historic as was his name and residence, he was utterly devoid of affectation--a true man of the land.

II.--NEW t.i.tLE-DEEDS

Deed, seal, and charter give but a feeble hold compared with that which is afforded by labour. James Thardover held his lands again by right of labour; he had taken possession of them once more with thought, design, and actual work, as his ancestors had with the sword. He had laid hands, as it were, on every acre. Those who work, own. There are many who receive rent who do not own; they are proprietors, not owners; like receiving dividends on stock, which stock is never seen or handled. Their rights are legal only; his right was the right of labour, and, it might be added, of forbearance. It is a condition of ownership in the United States that the settler clears so much and brings so many acres into cultivation. It was just this condition which he had practically carried out upon the Thardover estate. He had done so much, and in so varied a manner, that it is difficult to select particular acts for enumeration. All the great agricultural movements of the last thirty years he had energetically supported. There was the draining movement. The undulating contour of the country, deep vales alternating with moderate brows, gave a sufficient supply of water to every farm, and on the lower lands led to flooding and the formation of marshes. Horley Bottom, where the hay used to be frequently carried into the river by a June freshet, was now safe from flood. Flag Marsh had been completely drained, and made some of the best wheat-land in the neighbourhood. Part of a bark canoe was found in it; the remnants were preserved at Thardover House, but gradually fell to pieces.

Longboro' Farm was as dry now as any such soil could be. More or less draining had been carried out on twenty other farms, sometimes entirely at his expense. Sometimes the tenant paid a small percentage on the sum expended; generally this percentage fell off in the course of a year or two. The tenant found he could not pay it. Except on Flag Marsh, the drainage did not pay him 50. Perhaps it might have done, had the seasons been better; but, as it had actually happened, the rents had decreased instead of increasing.

Tile-pipes had not availed against rain and American wheat. So far as income was concerned, he would have been richer had the money so expended been allowed to acc.u.mulate at the banker's. The land as land was certainly improved in places, as on Bartholomew's farm.

Thardover never cared for the steam-plough; personally, he disliked it. Those who represented agricultural opinion at the farmers' clubs and in the agricultural papers raised so loud a cry for it that he went half-way to meet them. One of the large tenants was encouraged to invest in the steam-plough by a drawback on his rent, on condition that it should be hired out to others. The steam-plough, Thardover soon discovered, was not profitable to the landowner. It reduced the fields to a dead level. They had previously been thrown into 'lands,' with a drain-trench on each side. On this dead level water did not run off quickly, and the growth of weeds increased.

Tenants got into a habit of shirking the extirpation of the weeds.

The best farmers on the estate would not use it at all. To very large tenants, and to small tenants who could not keep enough horses, it was profitable at times. It did not appear that a single sack more of wheat was raised, nor a single additional head of stock maintained, since the steam-plough arrived.

Paul of Embersbury, who occupied some of the best meadow and upland country, a man of some character and standing, had taken to the shorthorns before Thardover succeeded to the property. Thardover a.s.sisted him in every way, and bought some of the best blood. There was no home-farm; the house was supplied from Bartholomew's dairy, and the Squire did not care to upset the old traditionary arrangements by taking a farm in hand. What he bought went to Embersbury, and Paul did well. As a consequence, there were good cattle all over the estate. The long prices formerly fetched by Paul's method had much fallen off, but substantial sums were still paid. Paul had faced the depression better than most of them. He was bitter, as was only natural, against the reaction in favour of black cattle. The upland tenants, though, had a good many of the black, in spite of Paul's frowns and thunders after the market ordinary at Barnboro' town. He would put down his pipe, bustle upon his feet, lean his somewhat protuberant person on the American leather of the table, and address the dozen or so who stayed for spirits and water after dinner, without the pretence of a formal meeting. He spoke in very fair language, short, jerky sentences, but well-chosen words. He who had taken the van in improvements thirty years ago was the bitterest against any proposed change now. Black cattle were thoroughly bad.

Another of his topics was the hiring fair, where servant-girls stood waiting for engagements, and which it was proposed to abolish. Paul considered it was taking the bread and cheese out of the poor wenches' mouths. They could stand there and get hired for nothing, instead of having to pay half a crown for advertising, and get nothing then. But though the Squire had supported the shorthorns, even the shorthorns had not prevented the downward course things agricultural were following.

Then there was the scientific movement, the cry for science among the farmers. He founded a scholarship, invited the professors to his place, lunched them, let them experiment on little pieces of land, mournful-looking plots. Nothing came of it. He drew a design for a new cottage himself, a practical plain place. The builders told him it was far dearer to put up than ornamental but inconvenient structures. Thardover sunk his money his own way, and very comfortable cottages they were. Ground-game he had kept down for years before the Act. Farm-buildings he had improved freely. The education movement, however, stirred him most. He went into it enthusiastically. Thardover village was one of the first places to become efficient under the new legislation. This was a piece of practical work after his own heart. Generally, legislative measures were so far off from country people. They affected the condition of large towns, of the Black Country, of the weavers or miners, distant folk. To the villages and hamlets of purely agricultural districts these Acts had no existence. The Education Act was just the reverse.

This was a statute which came right down into the hamlets, which was nailed up at the cross-roads, and ruled the barn, the plough, and scythe. Something tangible, that could be carried out and made into a fact--something he could do. Thardover did it with the thoroughness of his nature. He found the ground, lent the money, saw to the building, met the Government inspectors, and organized the whole. A committee of the tenants were the ostensible authority, the motive-power was the Squire. He worked at it till it was completely organized, for he felt as if he were helping to mould the future of this great country. Broad-minded himself, he understood the immense value of education, looked at generally; and he thought, too, that by its aid the farmer and the landowner might be enabled to compete with the foreigner, who was driving them from the market. No speeches and no agitation could equal the power concentrated in that plain school-house; there was nothing from which he hoped so much.

Only one held aloof and showed hostility to the movement, or rather to the form it took. His youngest and favourite daughter, Mary, the artist, rebelled against it. Hitherto she had ruled him as she choose. She had led in every kind act--acts too kind to be called charity. She had been the life of the place. Perhaps it was the strong-minded women whom the cry of education brought to Thardover House that set ajar some chord in her sensitive mind. Strident voices checked her sympathies, and hard rule-and-line work like this repelled her. Till then she had been the constant companion of the Squire's walks; but while the school was being organized she would not go with him. She walked where she could not see the plain angular building; she said it set her teeth on edge.

When the strident voices had departed, when time had made the school-house part and parcel of the place, like the cottages, Mary changed her ways, and occasionally called there. She took a cla.s.s once a week of the elder girls, and taught them in her own fashion at home--most unorthodox teaching it was--in which the works of the best poets were the chief subjects, and portfolios of engravings were found on the table. Long since father and daughter had resumed their walks together.

It was in this way that James Thardover made his estate his own--he held possession by right of labour. He was resident ten months out of twelve, and after all these public and open works he did far more in private. There was not an acre on the property which he had not personally visited. The farm-houses and farm-buildings were all known to him. He rode from tenancy to tenancy; he visited the men at plough, and stood among the reapers. Neither the summer heat nor the winds of March prevented him from seeing with his own eyes. The latest movement was the silo system, the burying of gra.s.s under pressure, instead of making it into hay. By these means the clouds are to be defied, and a plentiful supply of fodder secured. Time alone can show whether this, the latest invention, is any more powerful than steam-plough or guano to uphold agriculture against the shocks of fortune. But James Thardover would have tried any plan that had been suggested to him. It was thus that he laid hold on his lands with the strongest of t.i.tles--the work of his own hands. Yet still the tenants were unable to pay the former rent. Some had failed or left, and their farms were vacant; and nothing could be more discouraging than the condition of affairs upon the property.

III.--A RING-FENCE: CONCLUSION

There were great elms in the Out-park, whose limbs or boughs, as large as the trunk itself, came down almost to the ground. They touched the tops of the white wild parsley; and when sheep were lying beneath, the jackdaws stepped from the sheep's back to the bough and returned again. The jackdaws had their nests in the hollow places of these elms; for the elm as it ages becomes full of cavities. These great trees often divided into two main boughs, rising side by side, and afar off visible as two dark streaks among the green. For many years no cattle had been permitted in the park, and the boughs of the trees had grown in a drooping form, as they naturally do unless eaten or broken by animals pushing against them.

But since the times of agricultural pressure, a large part of the domain had been fenced off, and was now partly grazed and partly mown, being called the Out-park. There were copses at the farther side, where in spring the may flowered; the purple orchis was drawn up high by the trees and bushes--twice as high as its fellows in the mead, where a stray spindle-tree grew; and from these copses the cuckoos flew round the park.

But the thinnest hedge about the wheat-fields was as interesting as the park or the covers; and this is the remarkable feature of English scenery--that its perfection, its beauty, and its interest are not confined to any masterpiece here and there, walled in or enclosed, or at least difficult of access and isolated, but it extends to the smallest portion of the country. Wheatfield hedges are the thinnest of hedges, kept so that the birds may find no shelter, and that the numerous caterpillars may not breed in them more than can be helped. Such a hedge is so low it can be leaped over, and so narrow that it is a mere screen of twisted hawthorn branches which can be seen through, like screens of twisted stone in ancient chapels. But the sparrows come to it, and the finches, the mice, and weasles, and now and then a crow, who searches along, and goes in and out and quests like a spaniel. It is so tough, this twisted screen of branches, that a charge of shot would be stopped by it; if a pellet or two slid through an interstice, the majority would be held as if by a shield of wicker-work. Old Bartholomew, the farmer, sent his men once or twice along with reaping-hooks to clear away the weeds that grew up here under such slight shelter; but other farmers were not so careful. Then convolvulus grew over the thin screen, a cornc.o.c.kle stood up taller than the hedge itself; in time of harvest, yellow St. John's wort flowered beside it, and later on, bunches of yellow-weed.

A lark rose on the other side, and so caused the glance to be lifted and to look farther, and away yonder was a farm-house at the foot of a hill. Pale yellow stubble covered the hill, rising like a background to the red-tile roof, and to the elms beside the house, among whose branches there were pale yellow spots. Round wheat-ricks stood in a double row on the left hand--count them, and you counted the coin of the land, bank-notes in straw--and on the right and in front were green meads, and horses feeding--horses who had done good work in plough-time and harvest-time, and would soon be at plough again. There were green meads, because some green meads are a necessity of an English farm-house, and there are few without them, even when in the midst of corn. Meads in which the horses feed, a pony for the children and for the pony-cart, turkeys, two or three cows--all the large and small creatures that live about the place.

When the land was torn up and ploughed for corn of old time, these green enclosures were left to stay on, till now it seems as if pressure of low prices for wheat would cause the corn-land to again become pasture. Of old time, golden wheat conquered and held possession, and now the gra.s.s threatens to oust the conqueror.