August holiday-makers in Windlecombe are mainly of the normal, obvious kind, the people for whom guide-books and picture postcards are produced, and by whom the job-masters and the boat proprietors gain a livelihood. But September brings to the village a wandering crew of an altogether different complexion. There is something about the temperate sunshine and general slowing up and sweetening of life during this month, that draws from their hiding-nooks in the city suburbs a class of man and woman for whom I have long entertained the profoundest respect. With every year, as soon as September comes round, I find myself looking out for these stray, for the most part solitary, folk, and, in quite a humble, unpretentious spirit, taking them beneath my avuncular wing.

That they seek the quiet of an inland village in September, and not the feverish, belated distractions of the seaside town, is an initial point in their favour. But almost invariably they bring with them a much more subtle recommendation. They are down for a holiday, but they have come entirely without premeditation. Suddenly yielding to a sort of migratory impulse, they have locked up dusty chambers, or left small shops to the care of wives, or begged a few precious days from niggardly employers; and come away on a spate of emotional longing for country quiet and greenery, irresistible this time, though generally the impulse has been felt and resisted every autumn for twenty years back. Indeed, there must be some specially fatal quality about this period of time, for I constantly hear the same story—no holiday taken for twenty years.

At noon to-day, after a long tramp through the fields, I came up the village street, and paused irresolutely outside the Three Thatchers Inn. The morning had been hot, and the walk tiring; moreover, it was the first of September, and the guns had been popping distressfully in all the coverts by the way. I knew that before sundown a brace or two of partridges would be certain to find their road to my door; but this did not prove, and never has proved, compensation for the flurry and disturbance carried by the noise of the guns into all my favourite conning-places, or arenas for quiet thought. The whole world of wild life was in a panic, and I with it.The red-ochred doorstep of the inn glowed in the sunshine at my feet, and from the cool darkness beyond came a chink of glasses and murmur of many tongues. It all seemed eminently consolatory for the moment’s mood. Within there, no one would fire a gun off at my ear, nor stalk past me with a shoulder-load of limp, sanguinary spoil, nor warn me out of my favourite coppices with a finger to the lip, as though a nation of babies slumbered within. I was a lost man even before I began to hesitate. I stood my stout furze walking-stick in the porch beside a drover’s staff, a shepherd’s crook, and three or four undenominational cudgels; and plunged down the two steps into the bar.

Now, before my eyes had accustomed themselves to the subdued light, and I could see what company was about me, I had become aware of a strange odour in the air. It was the scent of a tobacco, happily unknown in Windlecombe: neither wholly Latakia nor Turkish, not honeydew alone nor red Virginia, cavendish nor returns, but a curious internecine blend of all these. I knew it at once to be something for which I have a constitutional loathing—one of the new town mixtures, wherein are confused and mutually stultified all the good smoking-weeds in the world.

Looking more narrowly about me, after the usual greetings, I discovered a vast and elaborate meerschaum pipe in the corner, and behind it a little diffident smiling man. But this could not entirely account for the overpowering exotic reek in the room. I missed the familiar smell of our own good Windlecombe shag, although there were half a dozen other pipes in full blast round me. And then I realised the situation. The stranger had seduced all the company to his pestilent combination; and now, as I lowered at him through the haze, he was holding out his pouch even to me, who would not have touched his garbage if it had been the last pipe-fill left on earth. But he took my curt, almost surly refusal as if it were an intended kindness.

‘Ah! you do not smoke? Well: it does seem a kind of insult to the pure country air. But in towns, you know, what with the din and the dust, and the strain on one’s nerves, everybody— And of course I must not quarrel with my bread-and-butter!’

I produced my own pipe and pouch, and filled brutally under his very nose. Serenely he watched the operation, and without a trace of offence.

‘I am in the trade, as I was telling these gentlemen here when you came in. Do you know the Walworth Road, in London? My shop is just behind the Elephant, and any day you are passing, I— But wasn’t I glad to get away, if only for the few hours! And I do assure you, sir, I haven’t been out of London for nearly—nearly—’

‘Twenty years, I suppose?’

He looked at me in placid surprise.

‘Lor’, how did you know that now? But it is quite true. Being single-handed, you see, it isn’t easy to— But I was glad, I tell you! And I had never seen a real country village in my life, until I got out of the train at Stavisham and walked on here. Isn’t it quiet! And how funny it seems—no asphalt-paving, and no wires running all ways over the house-tops, and the singing-birds all loose in the trees! And flowers! I suppose there is a law to prevent people picking ’em: there were no end along by the road I came.’

Somehow my heart warmed to this inconsiderable by-product of civilisation that had strayed amongst us; and presently, as much to my own surprise as his, I found myself loitering down the hill again, with him at my elbow, having promised to show him that there were other flowers in the country beside the dust-throttled daisies and dandelions of the roadside.

We took the path that runs between the river and the wood. He soon let his pipe go out, for he moved in open-mouthed wonder all the way, which rendered smoking impracticable. At last we came to a bend in the river, where the bank sloped gently down to the water-side covered with all the rich-hued September growths, and we sat down to rest. I did not plague him with the names of things, nor with any talk at all; but lay, for the most part silently, watching the effect of the place upon him, as one might study the demeanour of a dormouse let loose amidst the like surroundings, straight from Ratcliff Highway.

He took off coat and hat, and sat quite still for awhile with legs drawn up, and his chin upon his knees. But presently he fell to wandering about like a child, ducking his pallid bald head over each flower as he came to it, but keeping his itching fingers resolutely clasped behind his back. It was a brave show, even for this brave time of year. Though other months afford perhaps a greater variety in colour and kind, Nature in early autumn seems more forceful and impressive because she concentrates her energies into the dealing of the one blow, the urging of the one appeal upon the colour sense. It was the Purple Month. Look where we would, the same royal colour filled the sunshine. Purple loosestrife edged the river, and purple knapweed, thistles, heather, purple thyme and willowherb and climbing vetch hemmed us in on every side. Paler of hue, yet still of the same regal dye, the wild mint and cranesbill, marjoram and calamint, crowded upon one another; and close to the water’s edge, the Michaelmas daisies were already in full flower—under both banks the soil was tinged with their pure cool lilac, mirrored again yet more faintly in the drowsy water below.

For half an hour, perhaps, the little tobacconist wandered up and down this enchanted place; and then he came back to me, treading on tiptoe, hushed, and solemn-eyed, as if he were in church.

‘You live hereabouts?’ he asked, in a voice little above a whisper, ‘all the year round, don’t you? And nothing to do but just put on a hat whenever you want to come here, and in ten minutes here you are! Nothing to pay, and no trouble. Oh, my stars!’

‘And it is not always the same, you know. I pass this way nearly every week, and there is always something different. The flowers change with every month. You hear different birds singing, according to the season. The leaves on the trees come and go, and the sky shows you a new picture every time you look at it. Even the river changes. It is the top of the tide now: that log, floating out there, has not moved a dozen feet in the last five minutes. But in an hour’s time the water will be driving down swift and strong, and all the reeds and rushes, that now stand up quite straight and still in the sunshine, will bending and trembling in the flow.’

‘Ah!’ He crowded a perfectly bewildering variety of emotions into the breathed monosyllable. ‘Is that a nightingale singing over there?’

‘No; you are too late for nightingales: they have done singing these two months and more. That is a robin. The robins have just begun to sing again after their summer silence; and when that happens, you know the summer is almost done.’

He sat now mute at my side for so long, that at last I must steal a glance at him. I saw him brush a hand hastily across his eyes.

‘I—I am glad I came, of course,’ said he, musing, ‘but—but I have been the worst kind of fool all the same. Just think of going back there to-night! Lor’! just think of it! Yesterday morning I watered the geraniums in the window-boxes, and gave the canary his seed; and, says I, “Here’s singing-birds and flowers, as good as any you’ll get in the country!” Then I went to the shop door, and saw a cart full of straw going by, and another of green cabbages for Boro’ Market. “Lor’!” I says, “the country comes on wheels to your very door in London! London for me!” And now I’ll never get that feeling back again, no, never! The very worst kind of fool, I don’t think!’

Close by us there grew a great tuft of valerian. As he sat staring tragically at its disc of deep red blossom, butterflies came to it with every moment, sipped awhile, then passed on. Painted ladies, red admirals, little tortoiseshells always in twos or threes; finally a peacock butterfly sailed over to the valerian and settled there, her rich colours aflare in the sunshine. She spread out her great vanes, the upper covering the lower. Then she gently slid her upper wings forward, and gradually the wonderful spots on the lower wings appeared, like a pair of slowly opening, drowsy, violet eyes. The little tobacconist breathed hard.

‘I can see it all clear enough,’ he said tremulously. ‘A man gets a real chance here. Come worry, come sickness, come bad luck, come anything you like—all you have got to do is to open your eyes and ears, and off it goes like the bundle of sins in the Pilgrim’s Progress book. But in London—’ He stopped short; then, in a tone of deep, despairing disgust, ‘Geraniums!—Canaries!—Cartloads of cabbages! bah!’

I had not found myself confronted by so difficult a proposition for many a long day. If only the Reverend had been there! But there was nothing for it but to try a joust with the situation alone.

‘Depend upon it,’ said I, ‘if coming amongst the beautiful natural things of the world has made you despise the mean, ugly, necessary parts of your life, then you have been a fool indeed—one of the worst kind. But are you really the sort of fool you think? And have you not overstated both cases alike? In neither town nor country is there all of good, or all of evil. There are plenty of geraniums and cabbages in Windlecombe, and—alas!—canaries. And in London there is plenty of beauty, if you look for it with the right eyes.’

‘Beauty?—in London?’ he repeated incredulously.

‘Yes, truly; and the people who see it, and enjoy it most, are just those people who have the deepest knowledge of, and love for, the natural things of the country-side. Now, shall I tell you what sort of a fool you really are?’

He thought a moment, eyeing me in some perplexity. ‘Well—yes,’ said he at last, ‘if it isn’t too much trouble.’

‘It is a lot of trouble, and I am not sure I can do it. But I will try. Did you ever hear of the saying, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise?”’

‘No: I can’t say that I ever—’‘Well, you have fallen right into that trap. You have given yourself twenty years of that kind of bliss, and now you have got to pay for it. But what was it made you start off this morning in such a hurry to get to the country, when only yesterday you were quite content with your window-boxes and your screeching yellow gewgaw?’

He considered a little, then blushed to his eyes.

‘It was an old book,’ he said mysteriously, looking round apparently to make certain we were alone, ‘nothing but an old book on a bookstall. I picked it up just out of curiosity as I went by last night, and there were some dried flowers in it—dog-roses, I think. And then I looked up and saw the moon shining very small and bright high up in the sky; and it came over me that though she kept one eye dutifully on the Walworth Road, with the other eye she might well be looking down on the country lane where those roses grew years ago. And thinks I, all of a creep, like, Why can’t a man look two ways at once; and if he must give one eye to business, why can’t he give the other to just what he likes? And then I—’

‘And then you certainly left off being the kind of fool I mean—left off for ever. Well: that saves us both a lot of trouble, for we are both wrong about your case, it seems. You need not fear to go home to-night. You will find those geraniums as fresh and sweet as the valerian there, and just as populous of butterflies. And the canary—you will hear in his song every morning the notes of all the wild birds that have sung to you to-day. And when next a wagonload of straw goes by your shop, it will not be mere straw, but a field of wheat under the country sunshine: the sound of the wind in the Walworth telephone wires will be for you only the rustle of wind in the corn. That is what I meant by London beauty.’

II

That summer is drawing to its end, and autumn close at hand, one need not look at the calendar to know. Throughout a morning’s walk, signs of imminent change crop up now at every turn. The wild arums that you have forgotten since last you saw them turning their pale green cowls from the light, give out a bold glitter of scarlet in the shady deeps under every hedgerow. Each day sees the hips and haws growing ruddier. Though September is scarce half gone, the green bracken-fronds in the woods are already alight at the tips with crimson and gold; and the heather on the combe-side has lost its clear rose-red. The song of the bees in it seems as loud as ever, but for every tuft of living blossom there are two that are faded and brown. The good times are nearly over for the honey-makers, and each day the gathering of a full load of nectar means travelling farther afield.

I wonder why it is I always look forward to the renewal of the year’s life with so much eagerness and impatience, and yet meet its decline with such surpassing equanimity. Am I—I have often asked myself lately—the same being who industriously searched the river bank for a whole bleak February morning in quest of the first coltsfoot, greeting it with an unconscionable extravagance of rejoicing: I who now tread the same way in nowise perturbed, nor even unelated, at the obvious fact of each day’s lessened ardour? The truth that the year is already on the long downward road, riding for its winter fall, awakens in me not a pang of regret. Indeed, I neither remember the departed magnificence of June as something lost, nor regard the ever-diminishing September days as portent of penurious times to come. With autumn, as with advancing age, when once each is assured, irrevocable, the natural tendency seems to be towards a looking neither backward nor forward, but towards a joyful acceptance of the things that are. And so, at these times, whatever our declared principles, we one and all develop, or degenerate, into optimists.

But, of a truth, it needs very little of this mental condiment to be happy in a Sussex Downland village in September. Perhaps none but the very old can, at any time, sincerely avow a repugnance towards machinery in farming: certainly, at this season of the year, the whole spirit of village life receives benefit from it. They have been threshing up at the farm to-day, and from sunrise to sunset, all through the still, quiet, golden hours, the voice of the threshing mill has permeated everything, blent itself with the song of the robins in the garden, with the chime from the smithy, with all the other sounds of labour that go to make up the silence of country dwelling-places. I have come to look upon this sound as the veritable keynote of autumn, and to believe that it has an influence on all hearts at this season, entirely underrated by those whose business it is to study rural affairs.

It is the fashion to contemn the old melodramatic trick of still-music; but, for my own part, I have never been able to resist the low sobbing and sighing of the violins when the stage-story is being cleared up, all wrongs righted, and the villain given his due. The speech itself is nothing to me. It is seldom regarded, and remembered never. I should be just as deeply moved if all that leashed, melodious passion went as setting to ‘Old Mother Hubbard’ or ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ And on the same principle, when this beautiful, solemn voice of the threshing mill dwells in the autumnal air, I find myself doing the commonest things with a sense of high Fate and speeding of the world’s progress. But, indeed, Nature works throughout largely on this still-music plan, and therein lies one inestimable advantage of living in the country. Bird song, to all intents and purposes, unceasing throughout the year—the songs of stream, river, and sea—the songs of the four winds—all work together for good on the hearts of those men and women who, by their own design, or by external destiny, have been led to keep their thread of life running by green woods and fields.

As the sun went down behind the hills, and left the world afloat in wine-coloured mist, every sound of work ceased in the village, save this rich throbbing voice of the threshing mill up at the farm. I went out into the dreaming light to listen to it. From where I sat on the churchyard wall, I could make out that they were prolonging the work into the dusk, so that the last rick might be finished now, and the threshing gang move on to-night to the next farm. There was the deep sound of the mill itself, one tremendous baritone note succeeding another, each held for a moment, and then suddenly changing to one higher or lower in the sonorous clef. Apart from this, I could distinguish the fuss and fume of the engine, as it drove its white breath in little unsteady gusts up against the violet calm of the sky. And there was another sound—the flapping song of the driving-belt—a note that punctuated everything, as though some invisible conductor were beating time to the general symphony. But the combined effect of all was infinitely harmonious and restful.

Yet I had come out, in the main, to hear, not this familiar part of the music, but something about it that I loved to hear most of all; and this was the stopping of the machine. It was almost dark before the last sheaf went to the mill, and steam was shut off. And then the wonderful note began. The machine took an appreciable time to run down. But now there was no upward inflection in its voice. Note by note, each note more drawn out and quieter, the rich tones fell through every stage of an octave, until at last they died away in the profoundest, softest bass. Even then I fancied I could feel the solid earth still shuddering with a music too deep for human ear.

III

I think the last of the summer boating parties to Windlecombe has come and gone; at least for a week I have seen and heard nothing of revelry. But the thin stream of odd folk still dribbles into the village from road or Down.

There were two elderly ladies, obviously sisters, wandering about the place one day, who afforded material for commentary to most curious tongues. Severely and sparely clad in grey tweeds, wearing black felt hats each wrapped about with a wisp of grey gauze, and gold spectacles, over the shining hafts of which little tight glossy-white ringlets depended, pink serene faces inclined to be downy, and voices low and gentle yet extraordinarily penetrating and clear—they crept about the village all day long in an ecstasy of enjoyment, peering into cottage doorways, looking over garden fences, watching the children at play on the green and the mothers hanging out their linen, gazing with timorous delight down into the wheelwright’s sawpit, and into the black deeps of Tom Clemmer’s forge. And all the while, though they kept up an incessant low interchange between themselves, they accosted no one. Apparently Windlecombe was to them a sort of spectacle, half peep-show and half menagerie, where everything might be looked at, but nothing touched. The last I saw of them, they were standing at the far end of the green, looking towards the seats under the Seven Sisters where two old rustics slumbered peacefully in the sun. The pair were in earnest consultation, and obvious, though wholly affectionate difference on some point. At length one, apparently the more ancient by a year or two, raised her hands with a gesture of reluctant consent. And then the other timidly approached the old men, presented each with what, at a distance, appeared to be a surplus sandwich drawn from a reticule, and returned to her companion, giving her—before they made off down the street together—a grateful, childish little hug.

On another day a very different pair dropped down from the skies amongst us. They were two men scarcely of middle age, the one with a swirl of coppery hair topping a high forehead, the other sombre-locked, low-browed and swarthy; both alike shabby, unshaven and unkempt. They came swinging down the hill-path together, hatless and barefooted, laden up with certain dusty travelling-gear, the one of them carrying in addition a leather-cased violin. As they strode through the village street they made the place resound with their laughter, jovially greeted all and sundry that chanced in their way, and finally disappeared through the door of the Three Thatchers Inn.

Thereafter, sitting at work by the window, I forgot all about them, until a far-off strain of music gradually forced itself upon my ear. I could make out the violin, played as though it were three instruments at least, and above it such a voice as I had heard only once in my life before. I saw that passers-by were halting in the roadway to listen. Some were crowded round the inn window, craning over one another’s heads. Then the music stopped, the pair of harmonious vagabonds reappeared, and made straight for the Seven Sisters, all the folk jostling at their heels. A moment later, the violin struck into an air that sent my pen clattering to the paper, and my feet speeding towards the house-door. It was the ‘X—,’ the tenor song from ‘Q—,’ played by a master hand. Before I reached the fringe of the little crowd—taking the old vicar by the arm as I went—the copper-haired man had mounted upon the seat and had begun to sing the incomparable melody, hurling it over the heads of the crowd with a passion, a force, yet with a surpassingly delicate sweetness of tone, that drew the people spellbound closer and closer with every moment round him. The old parson’s grip tightened on my sleeve.

‘What is he like?’ he whispered. And when I had told him—‘Strange that he should come here and— But there can be few with a voice like that: it must be— Ah! listen! Don’t you know now?’

For the song had changed. The violin had slowed down into a simple quiet undertone. And then there pealed out upon us an air that a year ago had been made famous by one man alone, and he almost the greatest in his art. As he sang, his great chest heaving in the sunshine, I watched him, and once he looked swiftly in our direction. He gave us the whole piece, that finishes on a note incredibly high, yet is not really an end to the song, for the note is one picked out, as it were, at random in the scale. Then, to my amazement, he got down from the bench, took the hat from the head of the nearest boy, and went gravely about among the folk, collecting pennies. From me he levied toll as from the rest, but instead of holding out the hat to the Reverend, he placed it, money and all, into his hands, adding to the goodly store a shining piece from his own pocket. ‘You will know what to do with it,’ said he, his grey eyes twinkling merrily.

A minute later the pair were trudging off together down the street, as they had come, with their dusty, travel-stained satchels swinging behind them, and their long hair blowing in the breeze.

IV

Yes, the summer is gone, in very truth. With every day now, and every hour of the day, the writing on the wall shows plainer. While the hushed, hot times endured, it was still possible to believe red autumn as far away as ever; for not a leaf in oak or elm has changed, nor will change, perhaps, for weeks to come. But the tell-tale winds of the equinox are upon us, bringing the very voice of autumn with them; and the acorns are falling by the river, and the thistle-down drifting white upon the hills.

I began this day badly—badly, that is to say, from my own private point of view; which is a point, it may well be, like Euclid’s, having position but no dimensions, yet a point nevertheless. Chancing to wake with the dawn, I saw that the day was beginning with a beautiful smoke-pearl trellis in the east, behind which welled up an ever-strengthening fountain of silver white. Coming presently out upon the green under this pure pale glow of morning, I was startled by a cry that came echoing from the misty twilight of the hills.

‘Hi-up! Hi-up! Voller, voller, voller!’

Hoarse, harsh, undeniably brutal it sounded in the sweet, snow-white lustre of the virgin light. And then came the shrill blare of the huntsman’s horn, the confused yelping and baying of the pack, and the dull thunder of beating hoofs, as the hunt drove over the hill-top, and fell to drawing Windle coverts.

At once the silent village awoke. Windows were thrown open and heads appeared. Dark figures burst from cottage doors and went pounding up the lane that led to the hills. Round the covert the horsemen gathered in a motionless ring, while the huntsman drove his pack through the undergrowth, for ever urging them forward with that fierce guttural note, which was more like the cry of a wolf than a man. At length a fine cub fox broke cover, and led the whole company a ding-dong chase over the hills, and out of sight and hearing for good.

Some hours later, I met Farmer Coles and his two sons returning from the sport, the youngest, a mere schoolboy, mounted on a pony, his head, as he rode, reaching scarce to his father’s saddle-peak. He was in huge high spirits, displaying the brush, his share of the spoil, to all acquaintance as he passed. And the face of this yellow-haired, chubby child was bedaubed with blood, thick zebra-like streaks of it smudged across his smooth forehead and rosy baby cheeks. He was going home delighted, to show to an admiring mother how he had been ‘blooded’ at his first cub-hunt; and in all that country-side, I thought to myself as I passed on, there was scarce a man or woman of station and breeding who would not have applauded son of theirs returning home in such a plight.

Nor, though at the time the thing filled me personally with genuine horror and loathing, did I condemn it, nor wish to see its like made impossible in the land. For the sybaritish, lotus-eating danger is too imminent in our midst for any such fabian trifling: it will be a woeful day for England when we have bred out of our young manhood the last instincts of the healthy brute.

I got into Runridge’s skiff, in the absence of its owner, and pushed off into mid-stream, letting the little craft drift whither it would. Wind and tide together were setting strongly up-country. Swiftly the reedy banks glided by, as we bore through the meadows that lie at the foot of the hills. The summer was gone, indeed; and gone with it that sense of striving towards achievement. The year seemed to be resting upon its oars, as I was doing. All its fruit was set: there remained nothing now but to wait and let it ripen. It was just this waiting and resting that made up autumn’s greatest charm.

I set my elbows on my knees and my chin on my hands, and let the little boat choose a destiny for the idle pair of us. The bank was high to windward. We drifted in an almost unruffled calm, while overhead there sailed by an unending cloud of thistle-down, tiny verticals of sunlit silver, each gleaming star-like against the morning blue. Most of them took the broad river at a stride, disappearing over the opposite bank, but many fell upon the water. Thousands of them floated around me, and as far as eye could reach the water was grey and misty with them. And this was only one nook of earth in innumerable miles. How was it, I asked of the wind above me, that with such inexhaustible store of thistle-seed, she could not sow the whole land thick with thistles in a single season, and drive all other things from the fields? The answer was to be obtained for the mere raising of a hand. For it is not the thistle-seed that flies, but only the harmless thistle-down. Moreover, among the millions of air-ships that each thistle-patch sends off upon the wind throughout a breezy autumn day, not one in fifty ever bore a seed, or, if bearing it, contrived to carry its burden more than a yard or two. The curved seed-pod of the thistle is attached to its feathery volute only by the slenderest thread, and is brushed off by the lightest touch of the first grass-blade as it sails low over the sward. But the thistle-down, lightened of its counterpoise, bowls on for ever.