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Of our stay at Scheveningen I recollect nothing except that the paths in the little garden of the house we occupied were strewn with shells. We dug a big hole in the sand on the downs, but I retained no remembrance of the sea and its majesty, and when I beheld it in later years it seemed as if I were greeting for the first time the eternal Thalassa which was to become so dear and familiar to me.
To-day he could walk into your stock market and sell them for one hundred thousand. That is the way money is made in Africa, Mr. Mangan, where innocents like me are to be found every day." Dominey poured out a glass of wine and passed it to their visitor. "Come," he said, "we all have our ups and downs. Africa owes you nothing, Seaman."
I was standing at a busy spot by a row of carriers' carts drawn up at the side of the pavement, just where there are three public-houses close together, when I caught sight of a young man of about twenty-two or twenty-three, a shepherd in a grey suit and thick, iron-shod, old boots and brown leggings, with a soft felt hat thrust jauntily on the back of his head, coming along towards me with that half-slouching, half-swinging gait peculiar to the men of the downs, especially when they are in the town on pleasure bent.
God was brought from that heaven of the books, and dwelt on the downs in the far-away distances, and in every cloud- shadow which wandered across the valley. Wordsworth unconsciously did for me what every religious reformer has done he re-created my Supreme Divinity; substituting a new and living spirit for the old deity, once alive, but gradually hardened into an idol.
This, indeed, is a vision of peaceful intensity, but there are other times when there is no peace here when winds buffet the barren downs and waves crash furiously on the caverned crags, when the sentinel rocks of the old country are a horror of wreck and death. Of such a scene it would be more easy to say too much than too little.
But there was a fine strong Cornish woman to take charge of the ladies and the little boys, and she, watching the ways of the wild monster, knew the when and the where, and all about it. Connie got out upon the downs every day. She improved in health certainly, and we thought a little even in her powers of motion. The weather continued superb.
Downs had been there once, years before. It was a "natteral curosity," she said, with all sorts of strange sea-creatures growing in pools, and the rocks were red and quite beautiful. It wasn't a dangerous place, either, and here Mr. Downs confirmed her. You couldn't get in after half-tide, but anybody could stay in for a week in ordinary weather, and not be drowned.
The incident I am going to relate occurred about 1815 or perhaps two or three years later. The border of one of the deer walks was at a spot known as Three Downs Place, two miles and a half from Winterbourne Bishop.
Drake and Dick and Axtell went ploughing through big holes opened up by their comrades in both sides of the line until, with two downs yet to go, the ball was in the hands of the Blues twelve yards from the enemy's goal. Everybody was standing now. Flags were waving, voices yelling and the tumult was indescribable. It was the supreme moment, and Bert was called on for the final plunge.
The shepherds on the Wiltshire downs are also well paid, especially in lambing-time, when the greatest watchfulness and care are required. It has been stated that the labourer has no chance of rising from his position. This is sheer cant. He has very good opportunities of rising, and often does rise, to my knowledge.
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