Afoot in England Part 8

After gazing steadily for some time I made out a crow's nest in the dwarf pine top and the vague black forms of three young fully fledged crows sitting or standing in it. The middle bird had the s.h.i.+ning crimson eyes; but in a few moments the illusory colour was gone and the eyes were black.

It was certainly an extraordinary thing: the ragged-looking black-plumaged bird on its ragged nest of sticks in the deep shade, with one ray of intense sunlight on its huge nose-like beak and blood-red eyes, a sight to be remembered for a lifetime! It recalled Zurbaran's picture of the "Kneeling Monk," in which the man with everything about him is steeped in the deepest gloom except his nose, on which one ray of strong light has fallen. The picture of the monk is gloomy and austere in a wonderful degree: the crow in his interior with sunlit big beak and crimson eyes looked nothing less than diabolical.

I paid other visits to the spot at the same hour, and sat long and watched the crows while they watched me, occasionally tossing pebbles on to them to make them s.h.i.+ft their positions, but the magical effect was not produced again.

As to the cause of that extraordinary colour in the crow's eyes, one might say that it was merely the reflected red light of the level sun.

We are familiar with the effect when polished and wet surfaces, such as gla.s.s, stone, and water, s.h.i.+ne crimson in the light of a setting sun; but there is also the fact, which is not well known, that the eye may show its own hidden red--the crimson colour which is at the back of the retina and which is commonly supposed to be seen only with the ophthalmoscope. Nevertheless I find on inquiry among friends and acquaintances that there are instances of persons in which the iris when directly in front of the observer with the light behind him, always looks crimson, and in several of these cases the persons exhibiting this colour, or danger signal, as it may be called, were subject to brain trouble. It is curious to find that the crimson colour or light has also been observed in dogs: one friend has told me of a pet King Charles, a lively good-tempered little dog with brown eyes like any other dog, which yet when they looked up, into yours in a room always shone ruby-red instead of hyaline blue, or green, as is usually the case. From other friends I heard of many other cases: one was of a child, an infant in arms, whose eyes sometimes appeared crimson, another of a cat with yellow eyes which shone crimson-red in certain lights.

Of human adults, I heard of two men great in the world of science, both dead now, in whose eyes the red light had been seen just before and during attacks of nervous breakdown. I heard also of four other persons, not distinguished in any way, two of them sisters, who showed the red light in the eyes: all of them suffered, from brain trouble and two of them ended their lives in asylums for the insane.

Discussing these cases with my informants, we came to the conclusion that the red light in the human eye is probably always a pathological condition, a danger signal; but it is not perhaps safe to generalize on these few instances, and I must add that all the medical men I have spoken to on the subject shake their heads. One great man, an eye specialist, went so far as to say that it is impossible, that the red light in the eye was not seen by my informants but only imagined. The ophthalmoscope, he said, will show you the crimson at the back of the eye, but the colour is not and cannot be reflected on the surface of the iris.

Chapter Sixteen: In Praise of the Cow

In spite of discontents I might have remained to this day by the Otter, in the daily and hourly expectation of seeing some new and wonderful thing in Nature in that place where a crimson-eyed carrion-crow had been revealed to me, had not a storm of thunder and rain broken over the country to shake me out of a growing disinclination to move. We are, body and mind, very responsive to atmospheric changes; for every storm in Nature there is a storm in us--a change physical and mental. We make our own conditions, it is true, and these react and have a deadening effect on us in the long run, but we are never wholly deadened by them--if we be not indeed dead, if the life we live can be called life.

We are told that there are rainless zones on the earth and regions of everlasting summer: it is hard to believe that the dwellers in such places can ever think a new thought or do a new thing. The morning rain did not last very long, and before it had quite ceased I took up my knapsack and set off towards the sea, determined on this occasion to make my escape.

Three or four miles from Ottery St. Mary I overtook a cowman driving nine milch cows along a deep lane and inquired my way of him. He gave me many and minute directions, after which we got into conversation, and I walked some distance with him. The cows he was driving were all pure Devons, perfect beauties in their bright red coats in that greenest place where every rain-wet leaf sparkled in the new sunlight. Naturally we talked about the cows, and I soon found that they were his own and the pride and joy of his life. We walked leisurely, and as the animals went on, first one, then another would stay for a mouthful of gra.s.s, or to pull down half a yard of green drapery from the hedge. It was so lavishly decorated that the damage they did to it was not noticeable.

By and by we went on ahead of the cows, then, if one stayed too long or strayed into some inviting side-lane, he would turn and utter a long, soft call, whereupon the straggler would leave her browsing and hasten after the others.

He was a big, strongly built man, a little past middle life and grey-haired, with rough-hewn face--unprepossessing one would have p.r.o.nounced him until the intelligent, kindly expression of the eyes was seen and the agreeable voice was heard. As our talk progressed and we found how much in sympathy we were on the subject, I was reminded of that Biblical expression about the s.h.i.+ning of a man's face: "Wine that maketh glad the heart of man"--I hope the total abstainers will pardon me--"and oil that maketh his face to s.h.i.+ne," we have in one pa.s.sage.

This rather goes against our British ideas, since we rub no oil or unguents on our skin, but only soap which deprives it of its natural oil and too often imparts a dry and hard texture. Yet in that, to us, disagreeable aspect of the skin caused by foreign fats, there is a resemblance to the sudden brightening and glory of the countenance in moments of blissful emotion or exaltation. No doubt the effect is produced by the eyes, which are the mirrors of the mind, and as they are turned full upon us they produce an illusion, seeming to make the whole face s.h.i.+ne.

In our talk I told him of long rambles on the Mendips, along the valley of the Somerset Axe, where I had lately been, and where of all places, in this island, the cow should be most esteemed and loved by man. Yet even there, where, standing on some elevation, cows beyond one's power to number could be seen scattered far and wide in the green vales beneath, it had saddened me to find them so silent. It is not natural for them to be dumb; they have great emotions and mighty voices--the cattle on a thousand hills. Their morning and evening lowing is more to me than any other natural sound--the melody of birds, the springs and dying gales of the pines, the wash of waves on the long s.h.i.+ngled beach.

The hills and valleys of that pastoral country flowing with milk and honey should be vocal with it, echoing and re-echoing the long call made musical by distance. The cattle are comparatively silent in that beautiful district, and indeed everywhere in England, because men have made them so. They have, when deprived of their calves, no motive for the exercise of their voices. For two or three days after their new-born calves have been taken from them they call loudly and incessantly, day and night, like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted; grief and anxiety inspires that cry--they grow hoa.r.s.e with crying; it is a powerful, harsh, discordant sound, unlike the long musical call of the cow that has a calf, and remembering it, and leaving the pasture, goes lowing to give it suck.

I also told him of the cows of a distant country where I had lived, that had the maternal instinct so strong that they refused to yield their milk when deprived of their young. They "held it back," as the saying is, and were in a sullen rage, and in a few days their fountains dried up, and there was no more milk until calving-time came round once more.

He replied that cows of that temper were not unknown in South Devon.

Very proudly he pointed to one of the small herd that followed us as an example. In most cases, he said, the calf was left from two or three days to a week, or longer, with the mother to get strong, and then taken away. This plan could not be always followed; some cows were so greatly distressed at losing the young they had once suckled that precautions had to be taken and the calf smuggled away as quietly as possible when dropped--if possible before the mother had seen it. Then there were the extreme cases in which the cow refused to be cheated. She knew that a calf had been born; she had felt it within her, and had suffered pangs in bringing it forth; if it appeared not on the gra.s.s or straw at her side then it must have been s.n.a.t.c.hed away by the human creatures that hovered about her, like crows and ravens round a ewe in travail on some lonely mountain side.

That was the character of the cow he had pointed out; even when she had not seen the calf of which she had been deprived she made so great an outcry and was thrown into such a rage and fever, refusing to be milked that, finally, to save her, it was thought necessary to give her back the calf. Now, he concluded, it was not attempted to take it away: twice a day she was allowed to have it with her and suckle it, and she was a very happy animal.

I was glad to think that there was at least one completely happy cow in Devons.h.i.+re.

After leaving the cowkeeper I had that feeling of revulsion very strongly which all who know and love cows occasionally experience at the very thought of beef. I was for the moment more than tolerant of vegetarianism, and devoutly hoped that for many days to come I should not be sickened with the sight of a sirloin on some hateful board, cold, or smoking hot, bleeding its red juices into the dish when gashed with a knife, as if undergoing a second death. We do not eat negroes, although their pigmented skins, flat feet, and woolly heads proclaim them a different species; even monkey's flesh is abhorrent to us, merely because we fancy that that creature in its ugliness resembles some old men and some women and children that we know. But the gentle large-brained social cow that caresses our hands and faces with her rough blue tongue, and is more like man's sister than any other non-human being--the majestic, beautiful creature with the juno eyes, sweeter of breath than the rosiest virgin--we slaughter and feed on her flesh--monsters and cannibals that we are!

But though cannibals, it is very pleasant to find that many cowmen love their cows. Walking one afternoon by a high unkept hedge near Southampton Water, I heard loud shouts at intervals issuing from a point some distance ahead, and on arriving at the spot found an old man leaning idly over a gate, apparently concerned about nothing. "What are you shouting about?" I demanded. "Cows," he answered, with a glance across the wide green field dotted with a few big furze and bramble bushes. On its far side half a dozen cows were, quietly grazing. "They came fast enough when I was a-feeding of 'em," he presently added; "but now they has to find for theirselves they don't care how long they keeps me." I was going to suggest that it would be a considerable saving of time if he went for them, but his air of lazy contentment as he leant on the gate showed that time was of no importance to him. He was a curious-looking old man, in old frayed clothes, broken boots, and a cap too small for him. He had short legs, broad chest, and long arms, and a very big head, long and horselike, with a large shapeless nose and grizzled beard and moustache. His ears, too, were enormous, and stood out from the head like the handles of a rudely shaped terra-cotta vase or jar. The colour of his face, the ears included, suggested burnt clay.

But though Nature had made him ugly, he had an agreeable expression, a sweet benign look in his large dark eyes, which attracted me, and I stayed to talk with him.

It has frequently been said that those who are much with cows, and have an affection for them, appear to catch something of their expression--to look like cows; just as persons of sympathetic or responsive nature, and great mobility of face, grow to be like those they live and are in sympathy with. The cowman who looks like a cow may be more bovine than his fellows in his heavier motions and slower apprehensions, but he also exhibits some of the better qualities--the repose and placidity of the animal.

He said that he was over seventy, and had spent the whole of his life in the neighbourhood, mostly with cows, and had never been more than a dozen miles from the spot where we were standing. At intervals while we talked he paused to utter one of his long shouts, to which the cows paid no attention. At length one of the beasts raised her head and had a long look, then slowly crossed the field to us, the others following at some distance. They were shorthorns, all but the leader, a beautiful young Devon, of a uniform rich glossy red; but the silky hair on the distended udder was of an intense chestnut, and all the parts that were not clothed were red too--the teats, the skin round the eyes, the moist embossed nose; while the hoofs were like polished red pebbles, and even the shapely horns were tinged with that colour. Walking straight up to the old man, she began deliberately licking one of his ears with her big rough tongue, and in doing so knocked off his old rakish cap. Picking it up he laughed like a child, and remarked, "She knows me, this one does--and she loikes me."

Chapter Seventeen: An Old Road Leading Nowhere

So many and minute were the directions I received about the way from the blessed cowkeeper, and so little attention did I give them, my mind being occupied with other things, that they were quickly forgotten.

Of half a hundred things I remembered only that I had to "bear to the left." This I did, although it seemed useless, seeing that my way was by lanes, across fields, and through plantations. At length I came to a road, and as it happened to be on my left hand I followed it. It was narrow, worn deep by traffic and rains; and grew deeper, rougher, and more untrodden as I progressed, until it was like the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and I walked on boulder-stones between steep banks about fourteen feet high. Their sides were clothed with ferns, gra.s.s and rank moss; their summits were thickly wooded, and the interlacing branches of the trees above, mingled with long rope-like shoots of bramble and briar, formed so close a roof that I seemed to be walking in a dimly lighted tunnel. At length, thinking that I had kept long enough to a road which had perhaps not been used for a century, also tired of the monotony of always bearing to the left, I scrambled out on the right-hand side. For some time past I had been ascending a low, broad, flat-topped hill, and on forcing my way through the undergrowth into the open I found myself on the level plateau, an unenclosed spot overgrown with heather and scattered furze bushes, with clumps of fir and birch trees. Before me and on either hand at this elevation a vast extent of country was disclosed. The surface was everywhere broken, but there was no break in the wonderful greenness, which the recent rain had intensified. There is too much green, to my thinking, with too much uniformity in its soft, bright tone, in South Devon. After gazing on such a landscape the brown, harsh, scanty vegetation of the hilltop seemed all the more grateful. The heath was an oasis and a refuge; I rambled about in it until my feet and legs were wet; then I sat down to let them dry and altogether spent several agreeable hours at that spot, pleased at the thought that no human fellow-creature would intrude upon me. Feathered companions were, however, not wanting. The crowing of c.o.c.k pheasants from the thicket beside the old road warned me that I was on preserved grounds. Not too strictly preserved, however, for there was my old friend the carrion-crow out foraging for his young. He dropped down over the trees, swept past me, and was gone. At this season, in the early summer, he may be easily distinguished, when flying, from his relation the rook. When on the prowl the crow glides smoothly and rapidly through the air, often changing his direction, now flying close to the surface, anon mounting high, but oftenest keeping nearly on a level with the tree tops. His gliding and curving motions are somewhat like those of the herring-gull, but the wings in gliding are carried stiff and straight, the tips of the long flight-feathers showing a slight upward curve. But the greatest difference is in the way the head is carried. The rook, like the heron and stork, carries his beak pointing lance-like straight before him. He knows his destination, and makes for it; he follows his nose, so to speak, turning neither to the right nor the left. The foraging crow continually turns his head, gull-like and harrier-like, from side to side, as if to search the ground thoroughly or to concentrate his vision on some vaguely seen object.

Not only the crow was there: a magpie chattered as I came from the brake, but refused to show himself; and a little later a jay screamed at me, as only a jay can. There are times when I am intensely in sympathy with the feeling expressed in this ear-splitting sound, inarticulate but human. It is at the same time warning and execration, the startled solitary's outburst of uncontrolled rage at the abhorred sight of a fellow-being in his woodland haunt.

Small birds were numerous at that spot, as if for them also its wildness and infertility had an attraction. t.i.ts, warblers, pipits, finches, all were busy ranging from place to place, emitting their various notes now from the tree-tops, then from near the ground; now close at hand, then far off; each change in the height, distance, and position of the singer giving the sound a different character, so that the effect produced was one of infinite variety. Only the yellow-hammer remained constant in one spot, in one position, and the song at each repet.i.tion was the same.

Nevertheless this bird is not so monotonous a singer as he is reputed.

A lover of open places, of commons and waste lands, with a bush or dwarf tree for tower to sit upon, he is yet one of the most common species in the thickly timbered country of the Otter, Clyst, and Sid, in which I had been rambling, hearing him every day and all day long. Throughout that district, where the fields are small, and the trees big and near together, he has the cirl-bunting's habit of perching to sing on the tops of high hedgerow elms and oaks.

By and by I had a better bird to listen to--a redstart. A female flew down within fifteen yards of me; her mate followed and perched on a dry twig, where he remained a long time for so shy and restless a creature.

He was in perfect plumage, and sitting there, motionless in the strong sunlight, was wonderfully conspicuous, the gayest, most exotic-looking bird of his family in England. Quitting his perch, he flew up into a tree close by and began singing; and for half an hour thereafter I continued intently listening to his brief strain, repeated at short intervals--a song which I think has never been perfectly described.

"Practice makes perfect" is an axiom that does not apply to the art of song in the bird world; since the redstart, a member of a highly melodious family, with a good voice to start with, has never attained to excellence in spite of much practising. The song is interesting both on account of its exceptional inferiority and of its character. A distinguished ornithologist has said that little birds have two ways of making themselves attractive--by melody and by bright plumage; and that most species excel in one or the other way; and that the acquisition of gay colours by a species of a sober-coloured melodious family will cause it to degenerate as a songster. He is speaking of the redstart.

Unfortunately for the rule there are too many exceptions. Thus confining ourselves to a single family--that of the finches--in our own islands, the most modest coloured have the least melody, while those that have the gayest plumage are the best singers--the goldfinch, chaffinch, siskin, and linnet. Nevertheless it is impossible to listen for any length of time to the redstart, and to many redstarts, without feeling, almost with irritation, that its strain is only the prelude of a song--a promise never performed; that once upon a time in the remote past it was a sweet, copious, and varied singer, and that only a fragment of its melody now remains. The opening rapidly warbled notes are so charming that the attention is instantly attracted by them. They are composed of two sounds, both beautiful--the bright pure gus.h.i.+ng robin-like note, and the more tender expressive swallow-like note. And that is all; the song scarcely begins before it ends, or collapses; for in most cases the pure sweet opening strain is followed by a curious little farrago of gurgling and squeaking sounds, and little fragments of varied notes, often so low as to be audible only at a few yards' distance. It is curious that these slight fragments of notes at the end vary in different individuals, in strength and character and in number, from a single faintest squeal to half a dozen or a dozen distinct sounds. In all cases they are emitted with apparent effort, as if the bird strained its pipe in the vain attempt to continue the song.

The statement that the redstart is a mimic is to be met with in many books about birds. I rather think that in jerking out these various little broken notes which end its strain, whether he only squeaks or succeeds in producing a pure sound, he is striving to recover his own lost song rather than to imitate the songs of other birds.

So much entertainment did I find at that spot, so grateful did it seem in its openness after long confinement in the lower thickly wooded country, that I practically spent the day there. At all events the best time for walking was gone when I quitted it, and then I could think of no better plan than to climb down into the old long untrodden road, or channel, again just to see where it would lead me. After all, I said, my time is my own, and to abandon the old way I have walked in so long without discovering the end would be a mistake. So I went on in it once more, and in about twenty minutes it came to an end before a group of old farm buildings in a hollow in the woods. The s.p.a.ce occupied by the buildings was quite walled round and shut in by a dense growth of trees and bushes; and there was no soul there and no domestic animal. The place had apparently been vacant many years, and the buildings were in a ruinous condition, with the roofs falling in.

Now when I look back on that walk I blame myself for having gone on my way without trying to find out something of the history of that forsaken home to which the lonely old road had led me. Those ruinous buildings once inhabited, so wrapped round and hidden away by trees, have now a strange look in memory as if they had a story to tell, as if something intelligent had looked from the vacant windows as I stood staring at them and had said, We have waited these many years for you to come and listen to our story and you are come at last.

Something perhaps stirred in me in response to that greeting and message, but I failed to understand it, and after standing there awhile, oppressed by a sense of loneliness, I turned aside, and creeping and pus.h.i.+ng through a ma.s.s and tangle of vegetation went on my way towards the coast.

Possibly that idea or fancy of a story to tell, a human tragedy, came to me only because of another singular experience I had that day when the afternoon sun had grown oppressively hot--another mystery of a desolate but not in this case uninhabited house. The two places somehow became a.s.sociated together in my mind.

The place was a little farm-house standing some distance from the road, in a lonely spot out of sight of any other habitation, and I thought I would call and ask for a gla.s.s of milk, thinking that if things had a promising look on my arrival my modest gla.s.s of milk would perhaps expand to a sumptuous five-o'clock tea and my short rest to a long and pleasant one.

The house I found on coming nearer was small and mean-looking and very old; the farm buildings in a dilapidated condition, the thatch rotten and riddled with holes in which many starlings and sparrows had their nests. Gates and fences were broken down, and the ground was everywhere overgrown with weeds and enc.u.mbered with old broken and rusty implements, and littered with rubbish. No person could I see about the place, but knew it was inhabited as there were some fowls walking about, and some calves shut in a pen in one of the numerous buildings were dolefully calling--calling to be fed. Seeing a door half open at one end of the house I went to it and rapped on the warped paintless wood with my stick, and after about a minute a young woman came from an inner room and asked me what I wanted. She was not disturbed or surprised at my sudden appearance there: her face was impa.s.sive, and her eyes when they met mine appeared to look not at me but at something distant, and her words were spoken mechanically.

I said that I was hot and thirsty and tired and would be glad of a gla.s.s of milk.

Without a word she turned and left me standing there, and presently returned with a tumbler of milk which she placed on a deal table standing near me. To my remarks she replied in monosyllables, and stood impa.s.sively, her hands at her side, her eyes cast down, waiting for me to drink the milk and go. And when I had finished it and set the gla.s.s down and thanked her, she turned in silence and went back to that inner room from which she first came. And hot and tired as I had felt a few moments before, and desirous of an interval of rest in the cool shade, I was glad to be out in the burning sun once more, for the sight of that young woman had chilled my blood and made the heat out-of-doors seem grateful to me.

The sight of such a face in the midst of such surroundings had produced a shock of surprise, for it was n.o.ble in shape, the features all fine and the mouth most delicately chiselled, the eyes dark and beautiful, and the hair of a raven blackness. But it was a colourless face, and even the lips were pale. Strongest of all was the expression, which had frozen there, and was like the look of one on whom some unimaginable disaster or some hateful disillusionment had come, not to subdue nor soften, but to change all its sweet to sour, and its natural warmth to icy cold.

Chapter Eighteen: Brans...o...b..

Health and pleasure resorts and all parasitic towns in fact, inland or on the sea, have no attractions for me and I was more than satisfied with a day or two of Sidmouth. Then one evening I heard for the first time of a place called Brans...o...b..-a village near the sea, over by Beer and Seaton, near the mouth of the Axe, and the account my old host gave me seemed so attractive that on the following day I set out to find it. Further information about the unknown village came to me in a very agreeable way in the course of my tramp. A hotter walk I never walked--no, not even when travelling across a flat sunburnt treeless plain, nearer than Devon by many degrees to the equator. One wonders why that part of Devon which lies between the Exe and the Axe seems actually hotter than other regions which undoubtedly have a higher temperature.

After some hours of walking with not a little of uphill and downhill, I began to find the heat well-nigh intolerable. I was on a hard dusty glaring road, shut in by dusty hedges on either side. Not a breath of air was stirring; not a bird sang; on the vast sky not a cloud appeared.

If the vertical sun had poured down water instead of light and heat on me my clothing could not have clung to me more uncomfortably. Coming at length to a group of two or three small cottages at the roadside, I went into one and asked for something to quench my thirst--cider or milk.

There was only water to be had, but it was good to drink, and the woman of the cottage was so pretty and pleasant that I was glad to rest an hour and talk with her in her cool kitchen. There are English counties where it would perhaps be said of such a woman that she was one in a thousand; but the Devonians are a comely race. In that blessed county the prettiest peasants are not all diligently gathered with the dew on them and sent away to supply the London flower-market. Among the best-looking women of the peasant cla.s.s there are two distinct types--the rich in colour and the colourless. A majority are perhaps intermediate, but the two extreme types may be found in any village or hamlet; and when seen side by side--the lily and the rose, not to say the peony--they offer a strange and beautiful contrast.