CHAPTER I.
On a certain night in the December following the engagement of MarcellaBoyce to Aldous Raeburn, the woods and fields of Mellor, and all thebare rampart of chalk down which divides the Buckinghamshire plain fromthe forest upland of the Chilterns lay steeped in moonlight, and in thesilence which belongs to intense frost.
Winter had set in before the leaf had fallen from the last oaks; alreadythere had been a fortnight or more of severe cold, with hardly any snow.The pastures were delicately white; the ditches and the wet furrows inthe ploughed land, the ponds on Mellor common, and the stagnant pool inthe midst of the village, whence it drew its main water supply, werefrozen hard. But the ploughed chalk land itself lay a dull grey besidethe glitter of the pastures, and the woods under the bright sun of thedays dropped their rime only to pass once more with the deadly cold ofthe night under the fantastic empire of the frost. Every day the veil ofmorning mist rose lightly from the woods, uncurtaining the wintryspectacle, and melting into the brilliant azure of an unflecked sky;every night the moon rose without a breath of wind, without a cloud; andall the branch-work of the trees, where they stood in the open fields,lay reflected clean and sharp on the whitened ground. The bitter coldstole into the cottages, marking the old and feeble with the touch ofAzrael; while without, in the field solitudes, bird and beast coweredbenumbed and starving in hole and roosting place.
How still it was--this midnight--on the fringe of the woods! Two mensitting concealed among some bushes at the edge of Mr. Boyce's largestcover, and bent upon a common errand, hardly spoke to each other, sostrange and oppressive was the silence. One was Jim Hurd; the other wasa labourer, a son of old Patton of the almshouses, himself a man ofnearly sixty, with a small wizened face showing sharp and white to-nightunder his slouched hat.
They looked out over a shallow cup of treeless land to a further boundof wooded hill, ending towards the north in a bare bluff of down shiningsteep under the moon. They were in shadow, and so was most of the widedip of land before them; but through a gap to their right, beyond thewood, the moonbeams poured, and the farms nestling under the oppositeridge, the plantations ranging along it, and the bald beacon hill inwhich it broke to the plain, were all in radiant light.
Not a stir of life anywhere. Hurd put up his hand to his ear, andleaning forward listened intently. Suddenly--a vibration, a dullthumping sound in the soil of the bank immediately beside him. Hestarted, dropped his hand, and, stooping, laid his ear to the ground.
"Gi' us the bag," he said to his companion, drawing himself upright."You can hear 'em turnin' and creepin' as plain as anything. Now then,you take these and go t' other side."
He handed over a bundle of rabbit nets. Patton, crawling on hands andknees, climbed over the low overgrown bank on which the hedge stood intothe precincts of the wood itself. The state of the hedge, leaving thecover practically open and defenceless along its whole boundary, showedplainly enough that it belonged to the Mellor estate. But the fieldbeyond was Lord Maxwell's.
Hurd applied himself to netting the holes on his own side, pushing thebrambles and undergrowth aside with the sure hand of one who had alreadyreconnoitred the ground. Then he crept over to Patton to see that allwas right on the other side, came back, and went for the ferrets, ofwhom he had four in a closely tied bag.
A quarter of an hour of intense excitement followed. In all, fiverabbits bolted--three on Hurd's side, two on Patton's. It was all thetwo men could do to secure their prey, manage the ferrets, and keep awatch on the holes. Hurd's great hands--now fixing the pegs that heldthe nets, now dealing death to the entangled rabbit, whose neck he brokein an instant by a turn of the thumb, now winding up the line that heldthe ferret--seemed to be everywhere.
At last a ferret "laid up," the string attached to him having eitherslipped or broken, greatly to the disgust of the men, who did not wantto be driven either to dig, which made a noise and took time, or to losetheir animal. The rabbits made no more sign, and it was tolerablyevident that they had got as much as they were likely to get out ofthat particular "bury."
Hurd thrust his arm deep into the hole where he had put the ferret."Ther's summat in the way," he declared at last. "Mos' likely a dead un.Gi' me the spade."
He dug away the mouth of the hole, making as little noise as possible,and tried again.
"'Ere ee be," he cried, clutching at something, drew it out, exclaimedin disgust, flung it away, and pounced upon a rabbit which on theremoval of the obstacle followed like a flash, pursued by the lostferret. Hurd caught the rabbit by the neck, held it by main force, andkilled it; then put the ferret into his pocket. "Lord!" he said, wipinghis brow, "they do come suddent."
What he had pulled out was a dead cat; a wretched puss, who on somehappy hunt had got itself wedged in the hole, and so perished theremiserably. He and Patton stooped over it wondering; then Hurd walkedsome paces along the bank, looking warily out to the right of him acrossthe open country all the time. He threw the poor malodorous thing farinto the wood and returned.
The two men lit their pipes under the shelter of the bushes, and resteda bit, well hidden, but able to see out through a break in the bit ofthicket.
"Six on 'em," said Hurd, looking at the stark creatures beside him. "Ibe too done to try another bury. I'll set a snare or two, an' be offhome."
Patton puffed silently. He was wondering whether Hurd would give him onerabbit or two. Hurd had both "plant" and skill, and Patton would havebeen glad enough to come for one. Still he was a plaintive man with aperpetual grievance, and had already made up his mind that Hurd wouldtreat him shabbily to-night, in spite of many past demonstrations thathis companion was on the whole of a liberal disposition.
"You bin out workin' a day's work already, han't yer?" he saidpresently. He himself was out of work, like half the village, and hadbeen presented by his wife with boiled swede for supper. But he knewthat Hurd had been taken on at the works at the Court, where the newdrive was being made, and a piece of ornamental water enlarged andimproved--mainly for the sake of giving employment in bad times. He,Patton, and some of his mates, had tried to get a job there. But thesteward had turned them back. The men off the estate had first claim,and there was not room for all of them. Yet Hurd had been taken on,which had set people talking.
Hurd nodded, and said nothing. He was not disposed to be communicativeon the subject of his employment at the Court.
"An' it be true as _she_ be goin' to marry Muster Raeburn?"
Patton jerked his head towards the right, where above a sloping hedgethe chimneys of Mellor and the tops of the Mellor cedars, some two orthree fields away, showed distinct against the deep night blue.
Hurd nodded again, and smoked diligently. Patton, nettled by thisparsimony of speech, made the inward comment that his companion was "adeep un." The village was perfectly aware of the particular friendshipshown by Miss Boyce to the Hurds. He was goaded into trying a morestinging topic.
"Westall wor braggin' last night at Bradsell's"--(Bradsell was thelandlord of "The Green Man" at Mellor)--"ee said as how they'd taken youon at the Court--but that didn't prevent 'em knowin' as you was a badlot. Ee said _ee_ 'ad 'is eye on yer--ee 'ad warned yer twoice lastyear--"
"That's a lie!" said Hurd, removing his pipe an instant and putting itback again.
Patton looked more cheerful.
"Well, ee spoke cru'l. Ee was certain, ee said, as you could tell athing or two about them coverts at Tudley End, if the treuth were known.You wor allus a loafer, an' a loafer you'd be. Yer might go snivellin'to Miss Boyce, ee said, but yer wouldn't do no honest work--ee said--notif yer could help it--that's what ee said."
"Devil!" said Hurd between his teeth, with a quick lift of all his greatmisshapen chest. He took his pipe out of his mouth, rammed it downfiercely with his thumb, and put it in his pocket.
"Look out!" exclaimed Patton with a start.
A whistle!--clear and distinct--from the opposite side of the hollow.Then a man's figure, black and motionless an instant
on the whiteneddown, with a black speck beside it; lastly, another figure higher upalong the hill, in quick motion towards the first, with other specksbehind it. The poachers instantly understood that it was Westall--whoseparticular beat lay in this part of the estate--signalling to his nightwatcher, Charlie Dynes, and that the two men would be on them in notime. It was the work of a few seconds to efface as far as possible thetraces of their raid, to drag some thick and trailing brambles whichhung near over the mouth of the hole where there had been digging, tocatch up the ferrets and game, and to bid Hurd's lurcher to come toheel. The two men crawled up the ditch with their burdens as far away toleeward as they could get from the track by which the keepers wouldcross the field. The ditch was deeply overgrown, and when theapproaching voices warned them to lie close, they crouched under a densethicket of brambles and overhanging bushes, afraid of nothing but thenoses of the keepers' dogs.
Dogs and men, however, passed unsuspecting.
"Hold still!" said Hurd, checking Patton's first attempt to move. "He'llbe back again mos' like. It's 'is dodge."
And sure enough in twenty minutes or so the men reappeared. Theyretraced their steps from the further corner of the field, where somepreserves of Lord Maxwell's approached very closely to the big Mellorwood, and came back again along the diagonal path within fifty yards orso of the men in the ditch.
In the stillness the poachers could hear Westall's harsh and peremptoryvoice giving some orders to his underling, or calling to the dogs, whohad scattered a little in the stubble. Hurd's own dog quivered besidehim once or twice.
Then steps and voices faded into the distance and all was safe.
The poachers crept out grinning, and watched the keepers' progressalong the hill-face, till they disappeared into the Maxwell woods.
"_Ee_ be sold again--blast 'im!" said Hurd, with a note of quitedisproportionate exultation in his queer, cracked voice. "Now I'll setthem snares. But you'd better git home."
Patton took the hint, gave a grunt of thanks as his companion handed himtwo rabbits, which he stowed away in the capacious pockets of hispoacher's coat, and slouched off home by as sheltered and roundabout away as possible.
Hurd, left to himself, stowed his nets and other apparatus in a hiddencrevice of the bank, and strolled along to set his snares in threehare-runs, well known to him, round the further side of the wood.
Then he waited impatiently for the striking of the clock in Mellorchurch. The cold was bitter, but his night's work was not over yet, andhe had had very good reasons for getting rid of Patton.
Almost immediately the bell rang out, the echo rolling round the bend ofthe hills in the frosty silence. Half-past twelve Hurd scrambled overthe ditch, pushed his way through the dilapidated hedge, and began toclimb the ascent of the wood. The outskirts of it were filled with athin mixed growth of sapling and underwood, but the high centre of itwas crowned by a grove of full-grown beeches, through which the moon,now at its height, was playing freely, as Hurd clambered upwards amidthe dead leaves just freshly strewn, as though in yearly festival, abouttheir polished trunks. Such infinite grace and strength in the line workof the branches!--branches not bent into gnarled and unexpectedfantasies, like those of the oak, but gathered into every conceivableharmony of upward curve and sweep, rising all together, black againstthe silvery light, each tree related to and completing its neighbour, asthough the whole wood, so finely rounded on itself and to the hill, werebut one majestic conception of a master artist.
But Hurd saw nothing of this as he plunged through the leaves. He wasthinking that it was extremely likely a man would be on the look-out forhim to-night under the big beeches--a man with some business to proposeto him. A few words dropped in his ear at a certain public-house thenight before had seemed to him to mean this, and he had accordingly sentPatton out of the way.
But when he got to the top of the hill no one was to be seen or heard,and he sat him down on a fallen log to smoke and wait awhile.
He had no sooner, however, taken his seat than he shifted it uneasily,turning himself round so as to look in the other direction. For in frontof him, as he was first placed, there was a gap in the trees, and overthe lower wood, plainly visible and challenging attention, rose the darkmass of Mellor House. And the sight of Mellor suggested reflections justnow that were not particularly agreeable to Jim Hurd.
He had just been poaching Mr. Boyce's rabbits without any sort ofscruple. But the thought of _Miss_ Boyce was not pleasant to him when hewas out on these nightly raids.
Why had she meddled? He bore her a queer sort of grudge for it. He hadjust settled down to the bit of cobbling which, together with his wife'splait, served him for a blind, and was full of a secret excitement as tovarious plans he had in hand for "doing" Westall, combining a maximum ofgain for the winter with a maximum of safety, when Miss Boyce walked in,radiant with the news that there was employment for him at the Court, onthe new works, whenever he liked to go and ask for it.
And then she had given him an odd look.
"And I was to pass you on a message from Lord Maxwell, Hurd," she hadsaid: "'You tell him to keep out of Westall's way for the future, andbygones shall be bygones.' Now, I'm not going to ask what that means. Ifyou've been breaking some of our landlords' law, I'm not going to sayI'm shocked. I'd alter the law to-morrow, if I could!--you know I would.But I do say you're a fool if you go on with it, now you've got goodwork for the winter; you must please remember your wife and children."
And there he had sat like a log, staring at her--both he and Minta notknowing where to look, or how to speak. Then at last his wife had brokenout, crying:
"Oh, miss! we should ha starved--"
And Miss Boyce had stopped her in a moment, catching her by the hand.Didn't she know it? Was she there to preach to them? Only Hurd mustpromise not to do it any more, for his wife's sake.
And he--stammering--left without excuse or resource, either against hercharge, or the work she offered him--had promised her, and promised her,moreover--in his trepidation--with more fervency than he at all likedto remember.
For about a fortnight, perhaps, he had gone to the Court by day, and hadkept indoors by night. Then, just as the vagabond passions, the Celticinstincts, so long repressed, so lately roused, were goading at himagain, he met Westall in the road--Westall, who looked him over from topto toe with an insolent smile, as much as to say, "Well, my man, we'vegot the whip hand of you now!" That same night he crept out again in thedark and the early morning, in spite of all Minta's tears and scolding.
Well, what matter? As towards the rich and the law, he had the morals ofthe slave, who does not feel that he has had any part in making therules he is expected to keep, and breaks them when he can with glee. Itmade him uncomfortable, certainly, that Miss Boyce should come in andout of their place as she did, should be teaching Willie to read, andbringing her old dresses to make up for Daisy and Nellie, while he wasmaking a fool of her in this way. Still he took it all as it came. Onesensation wiped out another.
Besides, Miss Boyce had, after all, much part in this double life ofhis. Whenever he was at home, sitting over the fire with a pipe, he readthose papers and things she had brought him in the summer. He had nottaken much notice of them at first. Now he spelled them out again andagain. He had always thought "them rich people took advantage of yer."But he had never supposed, somehow, they were such thieves, such meanthieves, as it appeared, they were. A curious ferment filled hisrestless, inconsequent brain. The poor were downtrodden, but they werecoming to their rights. The land and its creatures were for the people!not for the idle rich. Above all, Westall was a devil, and must be putdown. For the rest, if he could have given words to experience, he wouldhave said that since he began to go out poaching he had burst his prisonand found himself. A life which was not merely endurance pulsed in him.The scent of the night woods, the keenness of the night air, the tracksand ways of the wild creatures, the wiles by which he slew them, thetalents and charms of his dog Bruno--these things had dev
eloped in himnew aptitudes both of mind and body, which were in themselvesexhilaration. He carried his dwarf's frame more erect, breathed from anampler chest. As for his work at the Court, he thought of it often withimpatience and disgust. It was a more useful blind than his cobbling, orhe would have shammed illness and got quit of it.
"Them were sharp uns that managed that business at Tudley End!" He fellthinking about it and chuckling over it as he smoked. Two of Westall'sbest coverts swept almost clear just before the big shoot inNovember!--and all done so quick and quiet, before you could say "JackRobinson." Well, there was plenty more yet, more woods, and more birds.There were those coverts down there, on the Mellor side of thehollow--they had been kept for the last shoot in January. Hang him! whywasn't that fellow up to time?
But no one came, and he must sit on, shivering and smoking, a sackacross his shoulders. As the stir of nerve and blood caused by theferreting subsided, his spirits began to sink. Mists of Celticmelancholy, perhaps of Celtic superstition, gained upon him. He foundhimself glancing from side to side, troubled by the noises in the wood.A sad light wind crept about the trunks like a whisper; the owls calledoverhead; sometimes there was a sudden sharp rustle or fall of a branchthat startled him. Yet he knew every track, every tree in that wood. Upand down that field outside he had followed his father at the plough, alittle sickly object of a lad, yet seldom unhappy, so long as childhoodlasted, and his mother's temper could be fled from, either at school orin the fields. Under that boundary hedge to the right he had lainstunned and bleeding all a summer afternoon, after old Westall hadthrashed him, his heart scorched within him by the sense of wrong andthe craving for revenge. On that dim path leading down the slope of thewood, George Westall had once knocked him down for disturbing a sittingpheasant. He could see himself falling--the tall, powerful lad standingover him with a grin.
Then, inconsequently, he began to think of his father's death. He made agood end did the old man. "Jim, my lad, the Lord's verra merciful," or"Jim, you'll look after Ann." Ann was the only daughter. Then a sigh ortwo, and a bit of sleep, and it was done.
And everybody must go the same way, must come to the same stopping ofthe breath, the same awfulness--in a life of blind habit--of a momentthat never had been before and never could be again? He did not put itto these words, but the shudder that is in the thought for all of us,seized him. He was very apt to think of dying, to ponder in his secretheart _how_ it would be, and when. And always it made him very softtowards Minta and the children. Not only did the _life_ instinct clingto them, to the warm human hands and faces hemming him in and protectinghim from that darkness beyond with its shapes of terror. But to think ofhimself as sick, and gasping to his end, like his father, was to puthimself back in his old relation to his wife, when they were firstmarried. He might cross Minta now, but if he came to lie sick, he couldsee himself there, in the future, following her about with his eyes, andthanking her, and doing all she told him, just as he'd used to do. Hecouldn't die without her to help him through. The very idea of her beingtaken first, roused in him a kind of spasm--a fierceness, a clenching ofthe hands. But all the same, in this poaching matter, he must have, hisway, and she must just get used to it.
Ah! a low whistle from the further side of the wood. He replied, and wasalmost instantly joined by a tall slouching youth, by day a blacksmith'sapprentice at Gairsley, the Maxwells' village, who had often brought himinformation before.
The two sat talking for ten minutes or so on the log. Then they parted;Hurd went back to the ditch where he had left the game, put two rabbitsinto his pockets, left the other two to be removed in the morning whenhe came to look at his snares, and went off home, keeping as much aspossible in the shelter of the hedges. On one occasion he braved themoonlight and the open field, rather than pass through a woody cornerwhere an old farmer had been found dead some six years before. Then hereached a deep lane leading to the village, and was soon at his owndoor.
As he climbed the wooden ladder leading to the one bedroom where he, hiswife, and his four children slept, his wife sprang up in bed.
"Jim, you must be perished--such a night as 't is. Oh, Jim--where ha'you bin?"
She was a miserable figure in her coarse nightgown, with her grizzlinghair wild about her, and her thin arms nervously outstretched along thebed. The room was freezing cold, and the moonlight stealing through thescanty bits of curtains brought into dismal clearness the squalid bed,the stained walls, and bare uneven floor. On an iron bedstead, at thefoot of the large bed, lay Willie, restless and coughing, with the eldergirl beside him fast asleep; the other girl lay beside her mother, andthe wooden box with rockers, which held the baby, stood within reach ofMrs. Hurd's arm.
He made her no answer, but went to look at the coughing boy, who hadbeen in bed for a week with bronchitis.
"You've never been and got in Westall's way again?" she said anxiously."It's no good my tryin' to get a wink o' sleep when you're out likethis."
"Don't you worrit yourself," he said to her, not roughly, but decidedly."I'm all right. This boy's bad, Minta."
"Yes, an' I kep' up the fire an' put the spout on the kettle, too." Shepointed to the grate and to the thin line of steam, which was doing itspowerless best against the arctic cold of the room.
Hurd bent over the boy and tried to put him comfortable. The child, weakand feverish, only began to cry--a hoarse bronchial crying, whichthreatened to wake the baby. He could not be stopped, so Hurd made hasteto take off his own coat and boots, and then lifted the poor soul in hisarms.
"You'll be quiet, Will, and go sleep, won't yer, if daddy takes keer onyou?"
He wrapped his own coat round the little fellow, and lying down besidehis wife, took him on his arm and drew the thin brown blankets overhimself and his charge. He himself was warm with exercise, and in alittle while the huddling creatures on either side of him were warm too.The quick, panting breath of the boy soon showed that he was asleep. Hisfather, too, sank almost instantly into deep gulfs of sleep. Only thewife--nervous, overdone, and possessed by a thousand fears--lay tossingand wakeful hour after hour, while the still glory of the winter nightpassed by.