menu_book Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI OF LIFT LUCK ON SOUTHERN ROADS BY TICKNER EDWARDS THIS LIBRIBOX RECORDING IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN THE HARMONIOUS RAGMAN When I got away from the house at last, my head was full of a confusion of local names, in which only one stood out clearly.

STAPLE FITZPANE It had an antiquated feudal sound, and I remembered that my way to it lay past Collop's Corner. A little steady going brought me out into a winding green track between hedgerows, which evidently led somewhere, and I pushed on. The day had changed during my sojourn in the farmhouse.

The calm had broken, as though the breeze had been suddenly let out of leash. In the treetops its voice was like the laughter of children pouring out of school. It stemmed by me now in a glad frolic of liberty. I could think of it only as the free child racing merrily homeward, throwing cap in air for the very joy,

and I was carried irresistibly along with it, catching the spirit of its mood as I went. There was another happy wayfarer not far off, as it proved, and I came full upon him at Collop's corner. He sat by the lane side making clothes pegs, the green turf around him strewn with white chips of wood. Close by, a dilapidated pony cart reared its shafts to the sky, and, a little farther off, the pony itself was contentedly browsing. The man wore a velveteen coat and a red neckcloth,

and, as he worked, he sang an old love ditty, disjointedly, full of absent-minded pauses, as though clothes peg making were the most exacting occupation in the world. The music stopped as I came up. It ceased in a gurgling, strangled way due to the fact that the man had at that moment

clapped a handful of tacks into his mouth. At his elbow lay a little heap of old treacle and tomato tins which he felt a cutting up into narrow strips. he brought the two halves of each peg together fitted them with a tin band disgorged a tack and drove it into place with a single blow of an old horseshoe he worked at an incredible pace the heaps of cut wood and strips of tin diminished and the pile of finished pegs grew like magic as i watched him

for half an hour perhaps we remained thus in perfect though mute good-fellowship until the last tack was regurgitated and the last peg made and then the man got to his feet smiling and stretching himself twenty dozen said he looking down on his work twenty-three halfpences is half a crown that is when you've sold em then there's rabbit skins and bottles bottles is worth doin now there's a hexchange over taunton way but this ain't a picnic country and it ain't the season tis props and pegs and brooms till come april and then be skeps for a month or two and that's how the poor lives says you I had said nothing of the kind, being rather intent on a plan which I now broached to him. Suppose I buy the clothes pegs for half a crown, I said,

and then you take the pegs back again in exchange for a ride in your cart. He agreed, and together we put the reluctant pony into the shafts and got up in the cart. The man had a curious method of driving. He did not start the pony by voice or rain in the ordinary way But as soon as we were ready to go

He took a stout cudgel and dealt the beast three or four resounding thwacks on the rump The pony moved one ear languidly Several more hearty blows descended on various parts of him in quick succession He moved both ears this time, and looked round at his master in dull, respectful inquiry. At the third volley, the truth that he was expected to move seemed to dawn on him,

and he went off willingly enough at a shambling trot. I was well into Somerset now, and, so far, thoroughly charmed with the county. It had none of the tremendous breakneck character of Devonshire, but was pretty and quiet, and wild as a pastoral country could be. Civilisation flowed gently through it, but without domination or obtrusiveness. The arts of forestry and road-making were in a commendably primitive state.

state. The trees seemed to grow how and where it suited them, and the highways to wind hither and thither at their own pleasure as much as for the convenience of man. At Staple Fitzpain I sat in the cart, while the clothes-pegged merchant went about his business from door to door. It was only a tiny place with a beautiful, many-pinnacle church tower, on which a big glossy starling sat clucking and whistling industriously. Listening to this queer melody,

it struck me that there was an aspect of the starling song about which none of our ornithologists appear to have written. They all give him credit for being an incorrigible imitator, in and out of season. But the starling on Staple Church Tower, as I lay back on a sack full of gallipots, looking up at him against the blue of the morning sky, seemed all at once to let me into the secret of this. He and his race stood revealed as the victims of a hopelessly

mistaken musical ambition. He was terribly in earnest, yet his ceaseless imitations of the thrushes caroling in the orchards about him were undertaken merely as practice. Like a hard-working student, he was forming his style on the best models and labouring at it with a pathetic fury. Instead of being happy in the sunshine, content to clink his poor triangle in the humble nook of the woodland orchestra to which nature had relegated him, he was spoiling life in a fruitless

endeavour to become first violin. And the worst of it was that he was whelmed in complete self-satisfied ignorance of his artistic plight. He sat up on the tar top high above the most gifted singers, plainly confident that he was sustaining an indispensable part in the morning's melody. And there I left him, still doing his fatuous best, smugly unaware, like all hopeless incompetents who are also enthusiasts, that he moved in the very atmosphere of failure.

I kept my seat in the jingling little cart until we had exploited another village or two, and then, as the clothes-pegged man was doubling back through the side lanes, I parted company with him and journeyed on on foot. The road, which hitherto had kept mostly to the level, now made a sharp ascent through a wood of elms.

At the summit of the hill the trees abruptly ended, and here I came upon a prospect so enchantingly lovely that there was nothing for it but to sit down and leisurely take in its beauties one by one. The last trees made an oval frame of greenery for the picture before me. I made out now that I had come to the end of the hilly country, and that, for the rest of the day at least, my path would be across the flats. On the blue misty earth line, the hills began again.

But between my vantage point and this far-off dim Sierra, there stretched a plain of cultivated land that seemed perfectly level until a cloud shadow strayed over its surface, and revealed, by its uncertain, dipping progress, undulations, hollows, ridges, not to be detected in the unleavened brilliance of the sun. Here and there, in this widespreading vista, were clusters of farm buildings,

grey church spires pointing to the sky, clumps of brown applewood, now and then a glittering thread of river or stream, all set in the checkerboard of meadows and fields. Sweet Auburn must be down there, I thought, if it could be anywhere on earth, and my business was to set out and find it without delay. I got my camera and rucksack on my back again, and was ready to march,

when a creaking sound came from the road behind me. Looking round, there was a parson pushing a bicycle up the hill. He stopped when he reached my corner, very much out of breath, yet overflowing with geniality. It did not look much like a lift. A lift I got from him, however, and one of a kind I never hazarded again.

We fell into talk while he recovered his breath, and I told him of my journey. and the means I was using to arrive at its end. I had suspected him to be a humorist, from his general rubicundity and his little tight glossy curls. Now his eye gave forth a merry twinkle.

My dear man, quoth he, why should I be left out of this? Why shouldn't I, too, go down to posterity and company with the Pantechnican people and the ragman. Here, get up on my step. If you have never coasted down a long and steep and rather jolty hill,

standing on one leg on the step of a bicycle, and holding on to a pair of broad clerical shoulders with a camera banging about wildly in your rear, you have missed one of the most fearsome joys in creation. We charged down the hill like a thunderbolt, the wind screaming in our ears.

Luckily there was nothing in our road, and we pulled up safely at the bottom. As we walked part of the way back together, to pick up the parson's hat, I put the question to him, very mildly I thought, under the circumstances, What in heaven and earth possessed you to let her go like that? Why, it was that wretched break, he explained, rather frightened out of his mirthful fit for the nonce.

I forgot about it until too late. But all's well that ends well. And now, put me in your record. For the rest of that morning I wandered through that hail-smiling pleasant land, picking blackberries as I went, and wondering at the prosperity and content of all around me. It was evidently a great cider country, for the orchards abounded everywhere.

From the hilltop these had seemed quite brown in colour, but a nearer view disclosed this prevailing tint as a blend of the tarnished green of the foliage with the yellow and scarlet of the fruit. The white lane took a serpentine course, accommodating itself to the features of the landscape. It wound about sociably from farm to farm, skirted fields, dipped down through shady hollows,

or went off at a tangent to look in at pleasant little villages hiding behind clumps of trees. And still autumn seemed as far off as ever. Some of the tallest of the elms hung out golden banners over their battlements of living green. Here and there a maple stood up like a crimson torch in the wood Or a birch had sparsely decked herself out in amber sequins

But as yet there was neither the face of autumn on the landscape Nor the touch of it in the vital sun-laden breeze It was, in truth, November But the land was Somerset, the summer land of the west All the quiet day through, I went trudging on from one sweet, shy country nook to another,

leaving the road whenever the mood beset me, taking to the field paths or woodland tracks, stopping when I had a mind, or strolling on again for no more definite reason than it seemed good to roam or rest. I lunched at a place called Hatch Beauchamp, who's in, wide, comfortable, bright, was a materialised invitation to come in and take good cheer. And in the deepening light of afternoon I found a solitary cottage tucked away in a roadside quarry pit, like a pearl in an oyster, through whose open door I beheld an old lady in a sunbonnet, sitting at a tea-table laid for two, as though she expected me, and a shining copper kettle on the fire behind her, bubbling me a welcome that was impossible to resist.

Everyone I met on that smiling, fruitful plane looked happy and contented. Now and then I was overtaken by some vehicle and found that a single glance at the driver was generally enough to bring him to a stop with a civil invitation to mount and ride. But even when going at walking pace, it seemed too hurried a progression. Moreover, I had a certain scheme in view.

It was seldom I looked at my map now, but in the cottage by the quarry, I happened to glance over it, and my eye had caught a name. Kingsbury Episcopi It had an alluring old-world ecclesiastic savour, just the place, one would think, to wake up in of a fine Sunday morning, and this, I remembered for the first time now, was Saturday afternoon. I resolved to lie at Kingsbury Episcopi that night

It was but a few miles onward I could reach it in an hour or two at most And as yet the sun was only just tiptoeing the western hills It was deep dusk when I came down the long incline into Kingsbury That intense blue dusk which one notices most of all

in the fast-shortening autumn days. There was but one street, and that thickly ramparted on either hand with houses of all ages and degrees. I passed two inns,

but somehow, though they looked clean and cosy enough, I was out of the mood for them. I resolved to try for a lodging in one of the cottages if I could prevail upon any of the folk to take me in. Thereafter, to the end of my fifteen days' ramble,

I lay only one other night at a public house, and this only for want of better faring. It proved always a difficult and delicate business, needing much circumspection and not a little diplomacy before my cottage quarters were won for the night.

At Kingsbury I wandered up and down in the darkness for a good half hour, inspecting the fronts of the houses, or peering in at cottage windows for some token of the sort of people likely to take a stranger in. At last I hit upon one of the oldest cottages in the place. It was double-fronted and thatched, with wide, low, lattice windows, through one of which yellow candlelight poured out upon the street. I was looking at the cottage, turning over in my head,

how best to further my design, when a great strapping fellow in corduroys, with a bunch of farm tools on his shoulder, came up and lifted the latch of the gate. This was my chance. I went up to him, got into talk, asked many questions about Kingsbury, told him what brought me there, and finally broke the matter of a night's lodging, saying that it was not my desire to put up at an inn. He listened, scratching his ear doubtfully,

well i dunno i couldn't say for sure maybe you'm coom a long way tis true anyways now come in and talk to the missus i followed him to the door and there on the step with the rich glow of fire and candle behind them he and his comely wife and i debated the question at length on every subsequent occasion when i was manoeuvring for cottage hospitality there was always this elaborate doorstep consultation lasting frequently for ten minutes or more and into which in some cases the whole household forces were pressed it was my first attempt of the kind and i sustained my part but ill i did not know then as i afterwards came to realise that this was the crucial time for me and that on my conduct and demeanour during these lengthy minutes by the entry depended the success or failure of my scheme

I was on my trial, it seemed. My appearance, voice, manner, the story I put forward, were each in turn subjected to a keen scrutiny, and judgment was passed on me according to canons of which, on that first essay, I was pitiably ignorant.

On after occasions, practice had developed in me the qualities of dove and serpent necessary for the work, and I never once failed. The vital thing is to get an immediate idea of the characteristics of the household. These can ordinarily be guessed from the bearing of the people at the door, but usually a glance into the room behind them will give you just the password you need.

In this case, I had a view of a comfortable kitchen, a meal set out tidily on a spotless table, a little cluster of children's fair curly heads about it, how many I could not guess, and then something that, in after days, would have guided me infallibly on the true road to favour. an open Bible, throned between the bread platter and a mighty hunk of cheese. I say this quite innocently and reverently, for then, as always, my great delight and profit has been to win away into these little home circles in country England,

where the faith of the fathers is a daily, indispensable thing. On this, as through all other wanderings in rural England, I have tried to discover for myself what the real hold of Christianity is in the life of the more humble people, and I have come through it all immeasurably reassured and impressed. Out in the intellectual rough and tumble of city life and the internecine ward in of the churches you may well come by an over gloomy view

as to how the larger and only vital issue is perpending but once you get your lungs filled with the home air of the English villagers and your pessimism will arrive at a speedy end It was unfortunate for me that my first venture of this kind should have been hedged about with difficulties greater than fell to my lot on any other occasion, and I suppose I owe it more to good luck than anything else that eventually the Kingsbury folk decided to take me in. They were for lighting a fire in the best parlour

And making a lonely gentleman lodger of me But this would never have done I got all my wits to work And called up all resources With the net result that, in ten minutes

I was given a hearty, unreserved place at the common board As a sort of temporary uncle In the midst of the jolliest little circle it is possible to conceive. We sat up that night until past eleven o'clock, father, mother, seven children, and a very comfortable and happy stranger, all gathered round the great crackling,

hissing wood fire, and talking and laughing for the most part, all at the same time. Nothing would induce a single one of them, from the oldest to the youngest, to forego a moment of that evening, and the stranger desired to curtail it least of all. But it came to an end at last, and I was escorted to my bed in a little triangular room under the thatch, full of a fragrance of apples, hay and lavender, and where I lay awake for

hours, with the broad Somersetshire dialect ringing pleasantly in my head. End of chapter 6