"This," said George bitterly, "is what the mill will come to."
"After your time," I said.
"My time--my time. I shall never have a time. And I shouldn't be surprised if Father's time isn't short--with rabbits and one thing and another. As it is, we depend on the milk-round, and on the carting which I do for the council. You can't call it farming. We're a miserable mixture of farmer, milkman, greengrocer, and carting contractor. It's a shabby business."
"You have to live," I retorted.
"Yes--but it's rotten. And Father won't move--and he won't change his methods."
"Well--what about you?"
"Me! What should I change for?--I'm comfortable at home. As for my future, it can look after itself, so long as nobody depends on me."
"Laissez-faire," said I, smiling.
"This is no laissez-faire," he replied, glancing round. "This is pulling the nipple out of your lips, and letting the milk run away sour. Look there!"
Through the thin wall of moonlit mist that slid over the hillside we could see an army of rabbits bunched up, or hopping a few paces forward, feeding.
We set off at a swinging pace down the hill, scattering the hosts. As we approached the fence that bounded the Mill fields, he exclaimed, "Hullo!" and hurried forward. I followed him, and observed the dark figure of a man rise from the hedge. It was a game-keeper. He pretended to be examining his gun. As we came up he greeted us with a calm "Good evenin'!"
George replied by investigating the little gap in the hedge. "I'll trouble you for that snare," he said.
"Will yer?" answered Annable, a broad, burly, black-faced fellow. "And I should like ter know what you're doin' on th' wrong side th' 'edge?"
"You can see what we're doing--hand over my snare--and the rabbit," said George angrily.
"What rabbit?" said Annable, turning sarcastically to me. "You know well enough--an' you can hand it over--or--" George replied.
"Or what? Spit it out! The sound won't kill me--" the man grinned with contempt.
"Hand over here!" said George, stepping up to the man in a rage.
"Now don't!" said the keeper, standing stock-still, and looking unmovedly at the proximity of George:
"You'd better get off home--both you an' 'im. You'll get neither snare nor rabbit--see!"
"We will see!" said George, and he made a sudden move to get hold of the man's coat. Instantly he went staggering back with a heavy blow under the left ear.
"Damn brute!" I ejaculated, bruising my knuckles against the fellow's jaw. Then I too found myself sitting dazedly on the grass, watching the great skirts of his velveteens flinging round him as if he had been a demon, as he strode away. I got up, pressing my chest where I had been struck. George was lying in the hedge-bottom. I turned him over, and rubbed his temples, and shook the drenched grass on his face. He opened his eyes and looked at me, dazed. Then he drew his breath quickly, and put his hand to his head.
"He--he nearly stunned me," he said.
"The devil!" I answered.
"I wasn't ready."
"No."
"Did he knock me down?"
"Ay--me too."
He was silent for some time, sitting limply. Then he pressed his hand against the back of his head, saying, "My head does sing!!" He tried to get up, but failed. "Good God--being knocked into this state by a damned keeper!"
"Come on," I said, "let's see if we can't get indoors."
"No!" he said quickly, "we needn't tell them--don't let them know."
I sat thinking of the pain in my own chest, and wishing I could remember hearing Annable's jaw smash, and wishing that my knuckles were more bruised than they were--though that was bad enough. I got up, and helped George to rise. He swayed, almost pulling me over. But in a while he could walk unevenly.
"Am I," he said, "covered with clay and stuff?"
"Not much," I replied, troubled by the shame and confusion with which he spoke.
"Get it off," he said, standing still to be cleaned.
I did my best. Then we walked about the fields for a time, gloomy, silent, and sore.
Suddenly, as we went by the pond-side, we were startled by great, swishing black shadows that swept just above our heads. The swans were flying up for shelter, now that a cold wind had begun to fret Nethermere. They swung down on to the glassy millpond, shaking the moonlight in flecks across the deep shadows; the night rang with the clacking of their wings on the water; the stillness and calm were broken; the moonlight was furrowed and scattered, and broken. The swans, as they sailed into shadow, were dim, haunting spectres; the wind found us shivering.
"Don't--you won't say anything?" he asked as I was leaving him.
"No."
"Nothing at all--not to anybody?"
"No."
"Good night."
About the end of September, our countryside was alarmed by the harrying of sheep by strange dogs. One morning, the squire, going the round of his fields as was his custom, to his grief and horror found two of his sheep torn and dead in the hedge-bottom, and the rest huddled in a corner swaying about in terror, smeared with blood. The squire did not recover his spirits for days.
There was a report of two grey wolvish dogs. The squire's keeper had heard yelping in the fields of Dr Collins of the Abbey, about dawn. Three sheep lay soaked in blood when the labourer went to tend the flocks.
Then the farmers took alarm. Lord, of the White House farm, intended to put his sheep in pen, with his dogs in charge. It was Saturday, however, and the lads ran off to the little travelling theatre that had halted at Westwold. While they sat open-mouthed in the theatre, gloriously nicknamed the "Blood-Tub", watching heroes die with much writhing and heaving, and struggling up to say a word, and collapsing without having said it, six of their silly sheep were slaughtered in the field. At every house it was inquired' of the dog; nowhere had one been loose.
Mr Saxton had some thirty sheep on the Common. George determined that the easiest thing was for him to sleep out with them. He built a shelter of hurdles interlaced with brushwood, and in the sunny afternoon we collected piles of bracken, browning to the ruddy winter-brown now. He slept there for a week, but that week aged his mother like a year. She was out in the cold morning twilight watching, with her apron over her head, for his approach. She did not rest with the thought of him out on the Common.
Therefore, on Saturday night he brought down his rugs, and took up Gyp to watch in his stead. For some time we sat looking at the stars over the dark hills. Now and then a sheep coughed, or a rabbit rustled beneath the brambles, and Gyp whined. The mist crept over the grose-bushes, and the webs on the brambles were white--the devil throws his net over the blackberries as soon as September's back is turned, they say.
"I saw two fellows go by with bags and nets," said George, as we sat looking out of his little shelter.
"Poachers," said I. "Did you speak to them?"
"No--they didn't see me. I was dropping asleep when a rabbit rushed under the blanket, all of a shiver, and a whippet dog after it. I gave the whippet a punch in the neck, and he yelped off. The rabbit stopped with me quite a long time--then it went."
"How did you feel?"
"I didn't care. I don't care much what happens just now. Father could get along without me, and Mother has the children. I think I shall emigrate."
"Why didn't you before?"
"Oh, I don't know. There are a lot of little comforts and interests at home that one would miss. Besides, you feel somebody in your own countryside, and you're nothing in a foreign part, I expect."
"But you're going?"
"What is there to stop here for? The valley is all running wild and unprofitable. You've no freedom for thinking of what the other folks think of you, and everything round you keeps the same, and so you can't change yourself--because everything you look at brings up the same old feeling, and stops you from feeling fresh things. And what is there that's worth anything?--What's worth having in my life?"
"I thou
ght," said I, "your comfort was worth having."
He sat still and did not answer.
"What's shaken you out of your nest?" I asked.
"I don't know. I've not felt the same since that row with Annable. And Lettie said to me, 'Here, you can't live as you like--in any way or circumstance. You're like a bit out of those coloured marble mosaics in the hall, you have to fit in your own set, fit into your own pattern, because you're put there from the first. But you don't want to be like a fixed bit of a mosaic--you want to fuse into life, and melt and mix with the rest of folk, to have some things burned out of you--' She was downright serious."
"Well, you need not believe her. When did you see her?"
"She came down on Wednesday, when I was getting the apples in the morning. She climbed a tree with me, and there was a wind, that was why I was getting all the apples, and it rocked us, me right up at the top, she sitting half-way down holding the basket. I asked her didn't she think that free kind of life was the best, and that was how she answered me."
"You should have contradicted her."
"It seemed true. I never thought of it being wrong, in fact."
"Come--that sounds bad."
"No--I thought she looked down on us--on our way of life. I thought she meant I was like a toad in a hole."
"You should have shown her different."
"How could I when I could see no different?"
"It strikes me you're in love."
He laughed at the idea, saying, "No, but it is rotten to find that there isn't a sine thing you have to be proud of."
"This is a new tune for you."
He pulled the grass moodily.
"And when do you think of going?"
"Oh--I don't know--I've said nothing to Mother. Not yet--at any rate, not till spring."
"Not till something has happened," said I.
"What?" he asked.
"Something decisive."
"I don't know what can happen--unless the squire turns us out."
"No?" I said.
He did not speak.
"You should make things happen," said I.
"Don't make me feel a worse fool, Cyril," he replied despairingly.
Gyp whined and jumped, tugging her chain to follow us. The grey blurs among the blackness of the bushes were resting sheep. A chill, dim mist crept along the ground.
"But, for all that, Cyril," he said, "to have her laugh at you across the table; to hear her sing as she moved about, before you are washed at night, when the fire's warm, and you're tired; to have her sit by you on the hearth-seat, close and soft..."
"In Spain," I said. "In Spain."
He took no notice, but turned suddenly, laughing.
"Do you know, when I was stooking up, lifting the sheaves, it felt like having your arm round a girl. It was quite a sudden sensation."
"You'd better take care," said I, "you'll mesh yourself in the silk of dreams, and then--"
He laughed, not having heard my words.
"The time seems to go like lightning--thinking," he confessed--"I seem to sweep the mornings up in a handful."
"Oh Lord!" said I. "Why don't you scheme for getting what you want, instead of dreaming fulfilments?"
"Well," he replied. "If it was a fine dream, wouldn't you want to go on dreaming?" And with that he finished, and I went home.
I sat at my window looking out, trying to get things straight. Mist rose, and wreathed round Nethermere, like ghosts meeting and embracing sadly. I thought of the time when my friend should not follow the harrow on our own snug valley side, and when Lettie's room next mine should be closed to hide its emptiness, not its joy. My heart clung passionately to the hollow which held us all; how could I bear that it should be desolate! I wondered what Lettie would do.
In the morning I was up early, when daybreak came with a shiver through the woods. I went out, while the moon still shone sickly in the west. The world shrank from the morning. It was then that the last of the summer things died. The wood was dark--and smelt damp and heavy with autumn. On the paths the leaves lay clogged.
As I came near the farm I heard the yelling of dogs. Running, I reached the Common, and saw the sheep huddled and scattered in groups; something leaped round them. George burst into sight pursuing. Directly, there was the bang, bang of a gun. I picked up a heavy piece of sandstone and ran forward. Three sheep scattered wildly before me. In the dim light I saw their grey shadows move among the gorse bushes. Then a dog leaped, and I flung my stone with all my might. I hit. There came a high-pitched howling yelp of pain; I saw the brute make off, and went after him, dodging the prickly bushes, leaping the trailing brambles. The gunshots rang out again, and I heard the men shouting with excitement. My dog was out of sight, but I followed still, slanting down the hill. In a field ahead I saw someone running. Leaping the low hedge, I pursued, and overtook Emily, who was hurrying as fast as she could through the wet grass. There was another gunshot and great shouting. Emily glanced round, saw me, and started.
"It's gone to the quarries," she panted. We walked on, without saying a word. Skirting the spinney, we followed the brook course, and came at last to the quarry fence. The old excavations were filled now with trees. The steep walls, twenty feet deep in places, were packed with loose stones, and trailed with hanging brambles. We climbed down the steep bank of the brook, and entered the quarries by the bed of the stream. Under the groves of ash and oak a pale primrose still lingered, glimmering wanly beside the hidden water. Emily found a smear of blood on a beautiful trail of yellow convolvulus. We followed the tracks on to the open, where the brook flowed on the hard rock bed, and the stony floor of the quarry was only a tangle of gorse and bramble and honeysuckle.
"Take a good stone," said I, and we pressed on, where the grove in the great excavation darkened again, and the brook slid secretly under the arms of the bushes and the hair of the long grass. We beat the cover almost to the road. I thought the brute had escaped, and I pulled a bunch of mountain-ash berries, and stood tapping them against my knee. I was startled by a snarl and a little scream. Running forward, I came upon one of the old, horse-shoe lime-kilns that stood at the head of the quarry. There, in the mouth of one of the kilns, Emily was kneeling on the dog, her hands buried in the hair of its throat, pushing back its head. The little jerks of the brute's body were the spasms of death; already the eyes were turning inward, and the upper lip was drawn from the teeth by pain.
"Good Lord, Emily! But he is dead!" I exclaimed.
"Has he hurt you?" I drew her away. She shuddered violently, and seemed to feel a horror of herself.
"No--no," she said, looking at herself, with blood all on her skirt, where she had knelt on the wound which I had given the dog, and pressed the broken rib into the chest. There was a trickle of blood on her arm.
"Did he bite you?" I asked, anxious.
"No--oh no--I just peeped in, And he jumped. But he had no strength, and I hit him back with my stone, and I lost my balance, and fell on him."
"Let me wash your arm."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "isn't it horrible! Oh, I think it is so awful."
"What?" said I, busy bathing her arm in the cold water of the brook.
"This--this whole brutal affair."
"It ought to be cauterised," said I, looking at a score on her arm from the dog's tooth.
"That scratch--that's nothing! Can you get that off my skirt--I feel hateful to myself."
I washed her skirt with my handkerchief as well as I could, saying:
"Let me just sear it for you; we can go to the Kennels. Do--you ought--I don't feel safe otherwise."
"Really," she said, glancing up at me, a smile coming into her fine dark eyes.
"Yes--come along."
"Ha, ha!" she laughed. "You look so serious."
I took her arm and drew her away. She linked her arm in mine and leaned on me.
"It is just like Lorna Doone," she said as if she enjoyed it. "But you will let me do it," said I, referring to the
cauterising.
"You make me; but I shall feel--ugh, I daren't think of it. Get me some of those berries."
I plucked a few bunches of guelder-rose fruits, transparent, ruby berries. She stroked them softly against her lips and cheek, caressing them. Then she murmured to herself:
"I have always wanted to put red berries in my hair."
The shawl she had been wearing was thrown across her shoulders, and her head was bare, and her black hair, soft and short and ecstatic, tumbled wildly into loose light curls. She thrust the stalks of the berries under her combs. Her hair was not heavy or long enough to have held them. Then, with the ruby bunches glowing through the black mist of curls, she looked up at me, brightly, with wide eyes. I looked at her, and felt the smile winning into her eyes. Then I turned and dragged a trail of golden-leaved convolvulus from the hedge, and I twisted it into a coronet for her.
"There!" said I, "you're crowned."
She put back her head, and the low laughter shook in her throat.
"What!" she asked, putting all the courage and recklessness she had into the question, and in her soul trembling.
"Not Chloe, not Bacchante. You have always got your soul in your eyes, such an earnest, troublesome soul."
The laughter faded at once, and her great seriousness looked out again at me, pleading.
"You are like Burne-Jones's damsels. Troublesome shadows are always crowding across your eyes, and you cherish them. You think the flesh of the apple is nothing, nothing. You only care for the eternal pips. Why don't you snatch your apple and eat it, and throw the core away?"
She looked at me sadly, not understanding, but believing that I in my wisdom spoke truth, as she always believed when I lost her in a maze of words. She stooped down, and the chaplet fell from her hair, and only one bunch of berries remained. The ground around us was strewn with the four-lipped burrs of beechnuts, and the quaint little nut-pyramids were scattered among the ruddy fallen leaves. Emily gathered a few nuts.
"I love beechnuts," she said, "but they make me long for my childhood again till I could almost cry out. To go out for beechnuts before breakfast; to thread them for necklaces before supper--to be the envy of the others at school next day! There was as much pleasure in a beech necklace then as there is in the whole autumn now--and no sadness. There are no more unmixed joys after you have grown up." She kept her face to the ground as she spoke, and she continued to gather the fruits.