Afoot in England

W >> W.H. Hudson >> Afoot in England

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"I see," he spoke, and his penetrating musical voice had, too,
like his eyes and mouth, an expression of mystery in it, "that
you are admiring our beautiful west window, especially the
figure in the centre. It is quite new--everything is new
here--the church itself was only built a few years ago. This
window is its chief glory: it was done by a good artist--he
has done some of the most admired windows of recent years; and
the centre figure is supposed to be a portrait of our generous
patroness. At all events she sat for it to him. You have
probably heard of Lady Y--?"

"What!" I exclaimed. "Lady Y--: that funny old woman!"

"No--middle-aged," he corrected, a little frigidly and perhaps
a little mockingly at the same time.

"Very well, middle-aged if you like; I don't know her
personally. One hears about her; but I did not know she had a
place in these parts."

"She owns most of this parish and has done so much for us that
we can very well look leniently on a little weakness--her wish
that the future inhabitants of the place shall not remember her
as a middle-aged woman not remarkable for good looks--'funny,'
as you just now said."

He was wonderfully candid, I thought. But what extraordinary
benefits had she bestowed on them, I asked, to enable them to
regard, or to say, that this picture of a very beautiful young
female was her likeness!

"Why," he said, "the church would not have been built but for
her. We were astonished at the sum she offered to contribute
towards the work, and at once set about pulling the small old
church down so as to rebuild on the exact site."

"Do you know," I returned, "I can't help saying something you
will not like to hear. It is a very fine church, no doubt,
but it always angers me to hear of a case like this where some
ancient church is pulled down and a grand new one raised in
its place to the honour and glory of some rich parvenu with or
without a brand new title."

"You are not hurting me in the least," he replied, with that
change which came from time to time in his eyes as if the
flame behind the screen had suddenly grown brighter. "I agree
with every word you say; the meanest church in the land should
be cherished as long as it will hold together. But
unfortunately ours had to come down. It was very old and
decayed past mending. The floor was six feet below the level
of the surrounding ground and frightfully damp. It had been
examined over and over again by experts during the past forty
or fifty years, and from the first they pronounced it a
hopeless case, so that it was never restored. The interior,
right down to the time of demolition, was like that of most
country churches of a century ago, with the old black worm-
eaten pews, in which the worshippers shut themselves up as if
in their own houses or castles. On account of the damp we
were haunted by toads. You smile, sir, but it was no smiling
matter for me during my first year as vicar, when I discovered
that it was the custom here to keep pet toads in the church.
It sounds strange and funny, no doubt, but it is a fact that
all the best people in the parish had one of these creatures,
and it was customary for the ladies to bring it a weekly
supply of provisions--bits of meat, hard-boiled eggs chopped
up, and earth-worms, and whatever else they fancied it would
like--in their reticules. The toads, I suppose, knew when it
was Sunday--their feeding day; at all events they would crawl
out of their holes in the floor under the pews to receive
their rations--and caresses. The toads got on my nerves with
rather unpleasant consequences. I preached in a way which my
listeners did not appreciate or properly understand,
particularly when I took for my subject our duty towards the
lower animals, including reptiles."

"Batrachians," I interposed, echoing as well as I could the
tone in which he had rebuked me before.

"Very well, batrachians--I am not a naturalist. But the
impression created on their minds appeared to be that I was
rather an odd person in the pulpit. When the time came to
pull the old church down the toad-keepers were bidden to
remove their pets, which they did with considerable
reluctance. What became of them I do not know--I never
inquired. I used to have a careful inspection made of the
floor to make sure that these creatures were not put back
in the new building, and I am happy to think it is not
suited to their habits. The floors are very well cemented,
and are dry and clean."

Having finished his story he invited me to go to the parsonage
and get some refreshment. "I daresay you are thirsty," he
said.

But it was getting late; it was almost dark in the church by
now, although the figure of the golden-haired saint still
glowed in the window and gazed at us out of her blue eyes. "I
must not waste more of your time," I added. "There are your
boys still patiently waiting to begin their practice--such
nice quiet fellows!"

"Yes, they are," he returned a little bitterly, a sudden
accent of weariness in his voice and no trace now of what I
had seen in his countenance a little while ago--the light that
shone and brightened behind the dark eye and the little play
about the corners of the mouth as of dimpling motions on the
surface of a pool.

And in that new guise, or disguise, I left him, the austere
priest with nothing to suggest the whimsical or grotesque in
his cold ascetic face. Recrossing the bridge I stood a little
time and looked once more at the noble church tower standing
dark against the clear amber-coloured sky, and said to myself:
"Why, this is one of the oddest incidents of my life! Not
that I have seen or heard anything very wonderful--just a
small rustic village, one of a thousand in the land; a big new
church in which some person was playing rather madly on the
organ, a set of unruly choir-boys; a handsome stained-glass
west window, and, finally, a nice little chat with the vicar."
It was not in these things; it was a sense of something
strange in the mind, of something in some way unlike all other
places and people and experiences. The sensation was like
that of the reader who becomes absorbed in Henry Newbolt's
romance of The Old Country, who identifies himself with the
hero and unconsciously, or without quite knowing how, slips
back out of this modern world into that of half a thousand
years ago. It is the same familiar green land in which he
finds himself--the same old country and the same sort of
people with feelings and habits of life and thought
unchangeable as the colour of grass and flowers, the songs
of birds and the smell of the earth, yet with a difference.
I recognized it chiefly in the parish priest I had been
conversing with; for one thing, his mediaeval mind evidently
did not regard a sense of humour and of the grotesque as out
of place in or on a sacred building. If it had been lighter I
should have looked at the roof for an effigy of a semi-human
toad-like creature smiling down mockingly at the worshippers
as they came and went.

On departing it struck me that it would assuredly be a mistake
to return to this village and look at it again by the common
lights of day. No, it was better to keep the impressions I
had gathered unspoilt; even to believe, if I could, that no
such place existed, but that it had existed exactly as I had
found it, even to the unruly choir-boys, the ascetic-looking
priest with a strange light in his eyes, and the worshippers
who kept pet toads in the church. They were not precisely
like people of the twentieth century. As for the eccentric
middle-aged or elderly person whose portrait adorned the west
window, she was not the lady I knew something about, but
another older Lady Y--, who flourished some six or seven
centuries ago.

Chapter Three: Walking and Cycling

We know that there cannot be progression without
retrogression, or gain with no corresponding loss; and often
on my wheel, when flying along the roads at a reckless rate of
very nearly nine miles an hour, I have regretted that time of
limitations, galling to me then, when I was compelled to go on
foot. I am a walker still, but with other means of getting
about I do not feel so native to the earth as formerly. That
is a loss. Yet a poorer walker it would have been hard to
find, and on even my most prolonged wanderings the end of each
day usually brought extreme fatigue. This, too, although my
only companion was slow--slower than the poor proverbial snail
or tortoise--and I would leave her half a mile or so behind to
force my way through unkept hedges, climb hills, and explore
woods and thickets to converse with every bird and shy little
beast and scaly creature I could discover. But mark what
follows. In the late afternoon I would be back in the road or
footpath, satisfied to go slow, then slower still, until--the
snail in woman shape would be obliged to slacken her pace to
keep me company, and even to stand still at intervals to give
me needful rest.

But there were compensations, and one, perhaps the best of
all, was that this method of seeing the country made us more
intimate with the people we met and stayed with. They were
mostly poor people, cottagers in small remote villages; and
we, too, were poor, often footsore, in need of their
ministrations, and nearer to them on that account than if we
had travelled in a more comfortable way. I can recall a
hundred little adventures we met with during those wanderings,
when we walked day after day, without map or guide-book as our
custom was, not knowing where the evening would find us, but
always confident that the people to whom it would fall in the
end to shelter us would prove interesting to know and would
show us a kindness that money could not pay for. Of these
hundred little incidents let me relate one.

It was near the end of a long summer day when we arrived at a
small hamlet of about a dozen cottages on the edge of an
extensive wood--a forest it is called; and, coming to it, we
said that here we must stay, even if we had to spend the night
sitting in a porch. The men and women we talked to all
assured us that they did not know of anyone who could take us
in, but there was Mr. Brownjohn, who kept the shop, and was
the right person to apply to. Accordingly we went to the
little general shop and heard that Mr. Brownjohn was not at
home. His housekeeper, a fat, dark, voluble woman with
prominent black eyes, who minded the shop in the master's
absence, told us that Mr. Brownjohn had gone to a neighbouring
farm-house on important business, but was expected back
shortly. We waited, and by and by he returned, a shabbily
dressed, weak-looking little old man, with pale blue eyes and
thin yellowish white hair. He could not put us up, he said,
he had no room in his cottage; there was nothing for us but to
go on to the next place, a village three miles distant, on the
chance of finding a bed there. We assured him that we could
go no further, and after revolving the matter a while longer
he again said that we could not stay, as there was not a room
to be had in the place since poor Mrs. Flowerdew had her
trouble. She had a spare room and used to take in a lodger
occasionally, and a good handy woman she was too; but now--no,
Mrs. Flowerdew could not take us in. We questioned him, and
he said that no one had died there and there had been no
illness. They were all quite well at Mrs. Flowerdew's; the
trouble was of another kind. There was no more to be said
about it.

As nothing further could be got out of him we went in search
of Mrs. Flowerdew herself, and found her in a pretty
vine-clad cottage. She was a young woman, very poorly
dressed, with a pleasing but careworn face, and she had four
small, bright, healthy, happy-faced children. They were all
grouped round her as she stood in the doorway to speak to us,
and they too were poorly dressed and poorly shod. When we
told our tale she appeared ready to burst into tears. Oh, how
unfortunate it was that she could not take us in! It would
have made her so happy, and the few shillings would have been
such a blessing! But what could she do now--the landlord's
agent had put in a distress and carried off and sold all her
best things. Every stick out of her nice spare room had been
taken from them! Oh, it was cruel!

As we wished to hear more she told us the whole story. They
had got behindhand with the rent, but that had often been the
case, only this time it happened that the agent wanted a
cottage for a person he wished to befriend, and so gave them
notice to quit. But her husband was a high-spirited man and
determined to stick to his rights, so he informed the agent
that he refused to move until he received compensation for his
improvements.

Questioned about these improvements, she led us through to the
back to show us the ground, about half an acre in extent, part
of which was used as a paddock for the donkey, and on the
other part there were about a dozen rather sickly-looking
young fruit trees. Her husband, she said, had planted the
orchard and kept the fence of the paddock in order, and they
refused to compensate him! Then she took us up to the spare
room, empty of furniture, the floor thick with dust. The bed,
table, chairs, washhandstand, toilet service--the things she
had been so long struggling to get together, saving her money
for months and months, and making so many journeys to the town
to buy--all, all he had taken away and sold for almost
nothing!

Then, actually with tears in her eyes, she said that now we
knew why she couldn't take us in--why she had to seem so
unkind.

But we are going to stay, we told her. It was a very good
room; she could surely get a few things to put in it, and in
the meantime we would go and forage for provisions to last us
till Monday.

It is odd to find how easy it is to get what one wants by
simply taking it! At first she was amazed at our decision,
then she was delighted and said she would go out to her
neighbours and try to borrow all that was wanted in the way of
furniture and bedding. Then we returned to Mr. Brownjohn's to
buy bread, bacon, and groceries, and he in turn sent us to Mr.
Marling for vegetables. Mr. Marling heard us, and soberly
taking up a spade and other implements led us out to his
garden and dug us a mess of potatoes while we waited. In the
meantime good Mrs. Flowerdew had not been idle, and we formed
the idea that her neighbours must have been her debtors for
unnumbered little kindnesses, so eager did they now appear to
do her a good turn. Out of one cottage a woman was seen
coming burdened with a big roll of bedding; from others
children issued bearing cane chairs, basin and ewer, and so
on, and when we next looked into our room we found it swept
and scrubbed, mats on the floor, and quite comfortably
furnished.

After our meal in the small parlour, which had been given up
to us, the family having migrated into the kitchen, we sat for
an hour by the open window looking out on the dim forest and
saw the moon rise--a great golden globe above the trees--and
listened to the reeling of the nightjars. So many were the
birds, reeling on all sides, at various distances, that the
evening air seemed full of their sounds, far and near, like
many low, tremulous, sustained notes blown on reeds, rising
and falling, overlapping and mingling. And presently from
the bushes close by, just beyond the weedy, forlorn little
"orchard," sounded the rich, full, throbbing prelude to the
nightingale's song, and that powerful melody that in its
purity and brilliance invariably strikes us with surprise
seemed to shine out, as it were, against the background of
that diffused, mysterious purring of the nightjars, even as
the golden disc of the moon shone against and above the
darkening skies and dusky woods.

And as we sat there, gazing and listening, a human voice
came out of the night--a call prolonged and modulated like
the coo-ee of the Australian bush, far off and faint; but
the children in the kitchen heard it at the same time, for
they too had been listening, and instantly went mad with
excitement.

"Father!" they all screamed together. "Father's coming!" and
out they rushed and away they fled down the darkening road,
exerting their full voices in shrill answering cries.

We were anxious to see this unfortunate man, who was yet happy
in a loving family. He had gone early in the morning in his
donkey-cart to the little market town, fourteen miles away, to
get the few necessaries they could afford to buy. Doubtless
they would be very few. We had not long to wait, as the white
donkey that drew the cart had put on a tremendous spurt at the
end, notwithstanding that the four youngsters had climbed in
to add to his burden. But what was our surprise to behold in
the charioteer a tall, gaunt, grey-faced old man with long
white hair and beard! He must have been seventy, that old man
with a young wife and four happy bright-eyed little children!

We could understand it better when he finally settled down in
his corner in the kitchen and began to relate the events of
the day, addressing his poor little wife, now busy darning
or patching an old garment, while the children, clustered
at his knee, listened as to a fairy tale. Certainly this
white-haired man had not grown old in mind; he was keenly
interested in all he saw and heard, and he had seen and heard
much in the little market town that day. Cattle and pigs and
sheep and shepherds and sheepdogs; farmers, shopkeepers,
dealers, publicans, tramps, and gentlefolks in carriages and
on horseback; shops, too, with beautiful new things in the
windows; millinery, agricultural implements, flowers and fruit
and vegetables; toys and books and sweeties of all colours.
And the people he had met on the road and at market, and what
they had said to him about the weather and their business and
the prospects of the year, how their wives and children were,
and the clever jokes they had made, and his own jokes, which
were the cleverest of all. If he had just returned from
Central Africa or from Thibet he could not have had more to
tell them nor told it with greater zest.

We went to our room, but until the small hours the wind of the
old traveller's talk could still be heard at intervals from
the kitchen, mingled with occasional shrill explosions of
laughter from the listening children.

It happened that on the following day, spent in idling in the
forest and about the hamlet, conversing with the cottagers, we
were told that our old man was a bit of a humbug; that he was
a great talker, with a hundred schemes for the improvement
of his fortunes, and, incidently, for the benefit of his
neighbours and the world at large; but nothing came of it all
and he was now fast sinking into the lowest depths of poverty.
Yet who would blame him? 'Tis the nature of the gorse to be
"unprofitably gay." All that, however, is a question for the
moralist; the point now is that in walking, even in that poor
way, when, on account of physical weakness, it was often a
pain and weariness, there are alleviations which may be more
to us than positive pleasures, and scenes to delight the eye
that are missed by the wheelman in his haste, or but dimly
seen or vaguely surmised in passing--green refreshing nooks
and crystal streamlets, and shadowy woodland depths with
glimpses of a blue sky beyond--all in the wilderness of the
human heart.

Chapter Four: Seeking a Shelter

The "walks" already spoken of, at a time when life had
little or no other pleasure for us on account of poverty and
ill-health, were taken at pretty regular intervals two or
three times a year. It all depended on our means; in very
lean years there was but one outing. It was impossible to
escape altogether from the immense unfriendly wilderness of
London simply because, albeit "unfriendly," it yet appeared to
be the only place in the wide world where our poor little
talents could earn us a few shillings a week to live on.
Music and literature! but I fancy the nearest crossing-sweeper
did better, and could afford to give himself a more generous
dinner every day. It occasionally happened that an article
sent to some magazine was not returned, and always after so
many rejections to have one accepted and paid for with a
cheque worth several pounds was a cause of astonishment, and
was as truly a miracle as if the angel of the sun had
compassionately thrown us down a handful of gold. And out of
these little handfuls enough was sometimes saved for the
country rambles at Easter and Whitsuntide and in the autumn.
It was during one of these Easter walks, when seeking for a
resting-place for the night, that we met with another
adventure worth telling.

We had got to that best part of Surrey not yet colonized by
wealthy men from the City, but where all things are as they
were of old, when, late in the day, we came to a pleasant
straggling village with one street a mile long. Here we
resolved to stay, and walked the length of the street making
inquiries, but were told by every person we spoke to that the
only place we could stay at was the inn--the "White Hart."
When we said we preferred to stay at a cottage they smiled a
pitying smile. No, there was no such place. But we were
determined not to go to the inn, although it had a very
inviting look, and was well placed with no other house near
it, looking on the wide village green with ancient trees
shading the road on either side.

Having passed it and got to the end of the village, we turned
and walked back, still making vain inquiries, passing it
again, and when once more at the starting-point we were in
despair when we spied a man coming along the middle of the
road and went out to meet him to ask the weary question for
the last time. His appearance was rather odd as he came
towards us on that blowy March evening with dust and straws
flying past and the level sun shining full on him. He
was tall and slim, with a large round smooth face and big
pale-blue innocent-looking eyes, and he walked rapidly but in
a peculiar jerky yet shambling manner, swinging and tossing
his legs and arms about. Moving along in this disjointed
manner in his loose fluttering clothes he put one in mind of
a big flimsy newspaper blown along the road by the wind.
This unpromising-looking person at once told us that there was
a place where we could stay; he knew it well, for it happened
to be his father's house and his own home. It was away at the
other end of the village. His people had given accommodation
to strangers before, and would be glad to receive us and make
us comfortable.

Surprised, and a little doubtful of our good fortune, I asked
my young man if he could explain the fact that so many of his
neighbours had assured us that no accommodation was to be had
in the village except at the inn. He did not make a direct
reply. He said that the ways of the villagers were not the
ways of his people. He and all his house cherished only kind
feelings towards their neighbours; whether those feelings were
returned or not, it was not for him to say. And there was
something else. A small appointment which would keep a man
from want for the term of his natural life, without absorbing
all his time, had become vacant in the village. Several of
the young men in the place were anxious to have it; then he,
too, came forward as a candidate, and all the others jeered at
him and tried to laugh him out of it. He cared nothing for
that, and when the examination came off he proved the best man
and got the place. He had fought his fight and had overcome
all his enemies; if they did not like him any the better for
his victory, and did and said little things to injure him, he
did not mind much, he could afford to forgive them.

Having finished his story, he said good-bye, and went his way,
blown, as it were, along the road by the wind.

We were now very curious to see the other members of his
family; they would, we imagined, prove amusing, if nothing
better. They proved a good deal better. The house we sought,
for a house it was, stood a little way back from the street
in a large garden. It had in former times been an inn, or
farm-house, possibly a manor-house, and was large, with
many small rooms, and short, narrow, crooked staircases,
half-landings and narrow passages, and a few large rooms,
their low ceilings resting on old oak beams, black as ebony.
Outside, it was the most picturesque and doubtless the oldest
house in the village; many-gabled, with very tall ancient
chimneys, the roofs of red tiles mottled grey and yellow with
age and lichen. It was a surprise to find a woodman--for that
was what the man was--living in such a big place. The woodman
himself, his appearance and character, gave us a second and
greater surprise. He was a well-shaped man of medium height;
although past middle life he looked young, and had no white
thread in his raven-black hair and beard. His teeth were
white and even, and his features as perfect as I have seen in
any man. His eyes were pure dark blue, contrasting rather
strangely with his pale olive skin and intense black hair.
Only a woodman, but he might have come of one of the oldest
and best families in the country, if there is any connection
between good blood and fine features and a noble expression.
Oddly enough, his surname was an uncommon and aristocratic
one. His wife, on the other hand, although a very good woman
as we found, had a distinctly plebeian countenance. One day
she informed us that she came of a different and better class
than her husband's. She was the daughter of a small
tradesman, and had begun life as a lady's-maid: her husband
was nothing but a labourer; his people had been labourers for
generations, consequently her marriage to him had involved a
considerable descent in the social scale. Hearing this, it
was hard to repress a smile.

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