MOTOR cars were crossing the Downs to Goodwood Races. Slowly they mounted, sending forth an oily reek, a jerky grinding sound; and a cloud of dust hung over the white road. Since ten o’clock they had been mounting, one by one, freighted with the pale conquerors of time and space. None paused on the top of the green heights, but with a convulsive shaking leaped, and glided swiftly down; and the tooting of their valves and the whirring of their wheels spread on either hand along the hills.
But from the clump of beech-trees on the very top nothing of their progress could be heard, and nothing seen; only a haze of dust trailing behind them like a hurried ghost.
Amongst the smooth grey beech-stems of that grove were the pallid forms of sheep, and it was cool and still as in a temple. Outside, the day was bright, and a hundred yards away in the hot sun the shepherd, a bent old man in an aged coat, was leaning on his stick. His brown face wrinkled like a walnut, was fringed round with a stubble of grey beard. He stood very still, and waited to be spoken to.
“A fine day?”
“Aye, fine enough; a little sun won’t do no harm. ’Twon’t last!”
“How can you tell that?”
“I been upon the Downs for sixty year!”
“You must have seen some changes?”
“Changes in men—an’ sheep!”
“An’ wages, too, I suppose. What were they when you were twenty?”
“Eight shillin’ a week.”
“But living was surely more expensive?”
“So ’twas; the bread was mortial dear, I know, an’ the flour black! An’ piecrust, why, ’twas hard as wood!”
“There’s not a man about the Downs don’t get his sixteen shillin’; some get a pound, some more.... There they go! Sha’n’t get ’em out now till tew o’clock!” His sheep were slipping one by one into the grove of beech-trees where, in the pale light, no flies tormented them. The shepherd’s little dark-grey eyes seemed to rebuke his flock because they would not feed the whole day long.
“It’s cool in there. Some say that sheep is silly. ’Tain’t so very much that they don’t know.”
“So you think the times have changed?”
“Well! There’s a deal more money in the country.”
“And education?”
“Ah! Ejucation? They spend all day about it. Look at the railways too, an’ telegraphs! See! That’s bound to make a difference.”
“So, things are better, on the whole?”
He smiled.
“I was married at twenty, on eight shillin’ a week; you won’t find them doing such a thing as that these days—they want their comforts now. There’s not the spirit of content about of forty or fifty years agone. All’s for movin’ away an’ goin’ to the towns; an’ when they get there, from what I’ve heard, they wish as they was back; but they don’t never come.”
There was no complaining in his voice; rather, a matter-of-fact and slightly mocking tolerance.
“You’ll see none now that live their lives up on the Downs an’ never want to change. The more they get the more they want. They smell the money these millioneers is spendin’—seems to make ’em think they can do just anythin’ ’s long as they get some of it themselves. Times past, a man would do his job, an’ never think because his master was rich that he could cheat him; he gave a value for his wages, to keep well with himself. Now, a man thinks because he’s poor he ought to ha’ been rich, and goes about complainin’, doin’ just as little as he can. It’s my belief they get their notions from the daily papers—hear too much of all that’s goin’ on—it onsettles them; they read about this Sawcialism, an’ these millioneers; it makes a pudden’ in their heads. Look at the beer that’s drunk about it. For one gallon that was drunk when I was young there’s twenty gallon now. The very sheep ha’ changed since I remember; not one o’ them ewes you see before you there, that isn’t pedigree—and the care that’s taken o’ them! They’d have me think that men’s improvin’, too; richer they may be, but what’s the use o’ riches if your wants are bigger than your purse? A man’s riches is the things he does without an’ never misses.”
And crouching on his knee, he added:
“Ther’ goes the last o’ them; sha’n’t get ’em out now till tew o’clock. One gone—all go!”
Then squatting down, as though responsibility were at an end, he leaned one elbow on the grass, his eyes screwed up against the sun. And in his old brown face, with its myriad wrinkles and square chin, there was a queer contentment, as though approving the perversity of sheep.
“So riches don’t consist in man’s possessions, but in what he doesn’t want? You are an enemy of progress?”
“These Downs don’t change—’tis only man that changes; what good’s he doin’, that’s what I ask meself—he’s makin’ wants as fast as ever he makes riches.”
“Surely a time must come when he will see that to be really rich his supply must be in excess of his demand? When he sees that, he will go on making riches, but control his wants.”
He paused to see if there were any meaning in such words, then answered:
“On these Downs I been, man an’ boy, for sixty year.”
“And are you happy?”
He wrinkled up his brows and smiled.
“What age d’ you think I am? Seventy-six!”
“You look as if you’d live to be a hundred.”
“Can’t expect it! My health’s good though, ’cept for these.”
Like wind-bent boughs all the fingers of both his hands from the top joint to the tip were warped towards the thumb.
“Looks funny! But I don’t feel ’em. What you don’t feel don’t trouble you.”
“What caused it?”
“Rheumatiz! I don’t make nothin’ of it. Where there’s doctors there’s disease.”
“Then you think we make our ailments, too, as fast as we make remedies?”
He slowly passed his gnarled hand over the short grass.
“My missus ’ad the doctor when she died.... See that dust? That’s motorcars bringin’ folks to Goodwood Races. Wonderful quick-travellin’ things.”
“Ah! That was a fine invention, surely?”
“There’s some believes in them. But if they folk weren’t doin’ everything and goin’ everywhere at once, there’d be no need for them rampagin’ motors.”
“Have you ever been in one yourself?”
His eyes began to twinkle mockingly.
“I’d like to get one here on a snowy winter’s day, when ye’ve to find your way by sound and smell; there’s things up here they wouldn’t make so free with. They say from London ye can get to anywhere. But there’s things no man can ride away from. Downs ’ll be left when they’re all gone.... Never been off the Downs meself.”
“Don’t you ever feel you’d like to go?”
“There isn’t not hardly one as knows what these Downs are. I see the young men growin’ up, but they won’t stay on ’em; I see folk comin’ down, same as yourself, to look at ’em.”
“What are they, then—these Downs?”
His little eyes, that saw so vastly better than my eyes, deepened in his walnut-coloured face. Fixed on those grey-green Downs, that reigned serene above the country spread below in all its little fields, and woods, and villages, they answered for him. It was long before he spoke.
“Healthiest spot in England!... Talkin’ you was of progress; but look at bacon—four times the price now that ever it was when I were young. And families—thirteen we had, my missus and meself; nowadays if they have three or four it’s as much as ever they’ll put up with. The country’s changed.”
“Does that surprise you? When you came up here this morning the sun was just behind that clump of beech—it’s travelled on since then.”
He looked at it.
“There’s no puttin’ of it back, I guess, if that’s your meaning? It were risin’ then, an’ now it’s gone past noon.”
“Joshua made the sun stand still; it was a great achievement!”
“May well say that; won’t never be done again, I’m thinkin’. And as to knowin’ o’ the time o’ day, them ewes they know it better than ever humans do; at tew o’clock exact you’ll see them comin’ out again to feed.”
“Ah! well—I must be getting on. Good-bye!”
His little eyes began to twinkle with a sort of friendly mockery.
“Ye’re like the country, all for movin’ on your way! Well, keep on, along the tops—ye can’t make no mistake!”
He gave me his old gnarled hand, whose finger-tips were so strangely warped. Then, leaning on his stick, he fixed his eyes upon the beech grove, where his ewes were lying in the cool.
Beyond him in the sun the hazy line of dust trailed across the grey-green Downs, and on the rising breeze came the far-off music of the cars.