Chapter Ten.A Fray.Puff-puff! puff-puff! hum-m-m! as the fly-wheel whizzed round with a sudden ease in working.“I detest these ploughing engines,” said Squire Thorpe, looking over the gate and leaning his arms on it, as country people always do.“But if the tenants find deep ploughing and manuring better, I suppose that’s the point,” said Valentine.“For the tenant, yes,” said the Squire, as he shouldered his gun and turned away from the gate. “Forme, it is another matter. It is a question with me if this deep ploughing will not exhaust the earth.”“But the artificial manure,” said Valentine, who was inclined to argue with any one.“Rubbish! Why, it’s only used like dust—not an eighth of an inch thick; and they take all that out again quick enough. Then these deep drains; they carry away as much of the richness of the soil as water.”“You don’t think much of unexhausted improvements,” said Geoffrey.“The greatest nonsense ever talked,” said the Squire, working himself into a temper. “It’s simply a device to suck every atom out of the soil, and leave me as dry as a dead hemlock. What profit do you suppose I get out of the land? I’m pestered to put up cattle-stalls and sheds, to sink wells and rebuild farmhouses, to put in drains—confound the drains! Then I must make reductions because the labourers want higher wages, and take off ten per cent, because the weather’s been bad! As if the weather had not always been wrong these three hundred years! I’m perfectly sick of science and superphosphates, shorthorns, and steam tackle. Then they bring public opinion, forsooth, on me, and say I must disgorge! (Intense disgust.) Disgorge! Let them take the land, and welcome, and give me an equivalent in Consols, I should be twenty times better off. No; I’ll be shot if they shall! (With energetic inconsistency.) I would sooner be flayed alive than part with a square inch! I love the land next to my mother! There! But I’ll be let alone. I’ll plant the whole place with oaks. My woods are the only things that pay me—except the rabbits, and that rascally Guss Basset poaches and nets them by the score. Look out!”A covey of partridges rose, and Valentine, who was a little in advance, fired both barrels without effect.“Mark!” said the Squire. “Gone to the turnips of course, the only place left for the poor things; this short stubble makes them as wild as hawks. Val, your nerves are shaky this afternoon, and, by Jove, that horse dying was enough!”“My nerves are not at all shaken,” said Valentine, as he reloaded.He affected a stoical indifference, though really hit hard. His temper had been boiling like molten lead under the surface, and it wanted but little to make him explode. His losses and vexation, his jealousy of Geoffrey, the unfortunate suspicions that had been aroused in his mind about the night on the Downs—all had combined to irritate him to the last degree.“Well, we’ve all lost money,” said the Squire; “and what a terrible thing about poor old Fisher! May will stay at Greene Ferne, I suppose; she can never return alone to that gloomy house. Ah, that’s more to my taste,”—pointing to a middle-aged labourer who was sowing corn broadcast. “Now watch his steps; regular as clockwork. See, his hand springs from his hip, and describes an exact segment of a circle—no, a parabola, I suppose—every time, so as to make the seed spread itself equally. That’s higher than science—that’s art, art handed down these thousand years.”A man now overtook them with a message from the house: the Squire was wanted about a summons.“If you cross the turnips,” he said, as he turned to leave them, “you may find the covey again; and then try the meadows at the edge of the wood; and if you see that rascally Basset at my rabbits, just—” he kicked a clod to pieces illustratively.The Squire returned homewards; Geoffrey and Valentine entered the turnips, making for the narrow belt of meadow by the wood. It was not a regular shooting expedition: they had simply strolled out for an hour, and were not accompanied by a keeper. The moment the Squire left, the conversation dropped. Valentine was bitter against his old friend: Geoffrey had not forgotten thecontretempsat the nutting. It had been long before Margaret accepted his protestations of regret for his hasty words. Now no man, who is a man, likes the part of penitence. He considered that Valentine had forced him into that unpleasant position, and his wrath smouldered against him.After the turnips, they got through a gap into the meadow land, which, being of poor quality, as is often the case near a wood, was dotted with dead thistles, rushes in the hollows, and bunches of tussocky grass. Out from one of these sprang a hare, as nearly as possible midway between them. They both fired—so exactly simultaneously that it sounded as one report; and for the moment neither knew that the other had pulled the trigger. But when they saw what had happened, each turned away from the dead hare—neither would touch it. Each, biassed by previous irritation, accused the other in his mind of taking the shot from him. This little accident added to the sullen bitterness.They now came to an immense double-mound hedge, into which the spaniels rushed. Valentine took the near side, Geoffrey the off, with the hedge between them. It was so thick neither could see the other; so trifling a circumstance tended to calm the annoyance—out of sight, out of mind. As he followed the edge of the ditch, waiting now and then for the dogs to work the hedge thoroughly, Geoffrey became conscious of the beauty of the warm autumn day.Puff-puff! puff-puff! hum-m-m! The sound of the distant ploughing engines came humming in the still air. He had noticed previously that his coat-sleeve was flecked with gossamer threads, and now saw that the bushes were white with them. Looking upwards, the atmosphere was full of glistening lines—like the most delicate silk—drooping downwards and shining in the sunlight. As far up as the eye could see, they came showering slowly, noiselessly, down. The surface of the grass was covered with these webs like a broad veil of fragile lace; and his feet, tearing a rent through it were whitened by the accumulated threads. The rooks rose from the oaks with a lazy cawing, loth to leave the ripening acorns, and settled again when he had passed.Hum-m-m! hum-m-m!Underfoot a soft moss, luxuriating in the shade, almost took the place of grass. The hedge itself was like a wood, so wide and thick—full of ashpoles and hawthorn, crab-tree underwood, willow, elder, and blackthorn, and here and there spreading oak trees. It terminated at the wood; and as they approached it the dogs became more busy; for the rabbits were numerous, and the banks were bored with their holes. Geoffrey kept his gun on the hollow of his left arm—ready for a rabbit—with the muzzle towards the hedge.“Loo! Loo!” cried Valentine, urging the dogs.Puff-puff! hum-m-m!Geoffrey, looking intently at the mound, and expecting a rabbit to start every moment, did not notice that a mole had recently thrown up a heap of earth in his path. His foot striking against it caused him to stumble, and, to recover himself, he snatched at a projecting branch of nut-wood. A twig, or perhaps his sleeve, touched the trigger of his gun—the muzzle still towards the hedge—and the sudden explosion that followed jerked the gun from his arm to the ground. Like a bullet the cartridge sang through between the ashpoles, and cut a small pendent bough of willow in twain, not two feet in front of Valentine’s face.“By Jove!” he shouted, “that was meant for me. There!”Strung up to an unbearable tension by brooding over his losses and disappointment, jealous about Margaret, and now suddenly startled, Valentine lost all control of himself, and, swinging his gun round towards Geoffrey, without putting it to his shoulder, fired.Geoffrey was in a stooping position, just lifting his gun from the ground, when the shot, fired low, came with a rattle among the crab-tree undergrowth. The tough fibres of the wood held and checked it, so that only a few pellets passed by; but one or two of these, though their force was almost spent in penetrating the branches, struck him sharply by the knee with a sudden stinging pain.“You shot at me!” shouted Geoffrey, now equally excited, and, hardly aware what he was doing, he sprang across the ditch and into the double mound, to get a clearer aim.Valentine ran quickly down the meadow on his side; then, seeing no other cover, also leapt into the hedge, and they faced each other some thirty yards apart. As usual in double mounds, the growth of underwood was less dense in the middle, so that, though some distance apart, each was dimly visible through the branches. There came a loud report as they fired the remaining barrels almost simultaneously, and a crashing and cracking of splintered wood; but no harm yet, thanks to the crab and stubborn blackthorn. The sulphurous smoke, clinging to the close undergrowth and tall grasses, filled their nostrils with the scent and madness of battle. In his ordinary mood either of these two would have scouted the possibility of such a thing happening; but circumstances suddenly threw them as it were a thousand years back in civilisation on the original savage instincts of man. Had they carried even the muzzle loaders, which take time to ram the charge home, one or other might have paused. Better still if their arms had been the ancient matchlock, with the priming to look to and the match to blow. But these breechloaders, which send forth continuous flame, swift as the lightning, flash on flash, allow not a moment for thought. The “death and murder of a world,” as Faust said, be on them.As they jerked out the empty cartridge cases, and thrust in fresh charges, each instinctively moved to the best shelter he could see—Valentine behind the gabions of a great gnarled ash-stole; Geoffrey to the cover of a crooked maple, whose leaves were turning yellow. Red tongues of fire darted forth, scorching the leaves and blackening the branches. Guided by sound and guess rather than sight, they fired vaguely into the thickets. From the oaks of great Thorpe Wood the rooks rose at the din, loudly cawing, high into the air; then in circling sweep they soared and wheeled, black and ominous, a dance of death in the azure beauty of the cloudless sky. The dogs yelped their very loudest, keeping at a distance from the hedgerow; they knew that something was wrong. Fast as the motions of the hand could answer to the eager hate in the heart, volley followed volley, till the heated metal of the barrels could scarcely be touched.The dun smoke crept along the mound, and slipped with sudden draught into the rabbit-buries, and hung low over the ash-tops. With a hiss and roar and rattle the shot tore its way, biting hungrily at the branches as it passed. The ash-boughs, tough and sinewy, though half-severed, hung together still; the willow split, and let the lead slip through its feeble wood; the hard crab-tree and blackthorn, with fibres torn and jagged, held and stopped it; the briar, with its circular pith, snapped and drooped. Through the broad burdock leaves and hollow hemlock stems and “gicks” the hasty pellets drilled round holes, or buried themselves in the bark of the larger tree-trunks, some glancing off at a sharp angle like Tyrrell’s arrow. The maple, all scored and dotted, and partly stripped of leaves by the leaden shower, gave less cover than the ash-stole; and Geoffrey, with shot-holes in his hat, and the pellets hissing past his ears, yielded ground and retreated, firing as he went. Valentine immediately advanced, and thus, like Indians in the backwoods, they glided from thicket to thicket, from tree to tree, stalking, but shooting wildly, baffled by the branches.In a few minutes Geoffrey came to a great oak, rugged and moss-grown at the roots, which stood near the edge of the ditch that, at the end of the double mound, divided the hedge from the wood. Behind this he took his stand; and Valentine, advancing too rapidly, was stung by a pellet that glanced from a branch and struck his arm. He hastily rushed behind an ash-tree—it was not broad enough to shield him completely; but by its side grew a thicket of bramble and brake fern that helped to hide him from sight. He blazed rapidly at the edge of the oak; in return the shot came rushing through the fern, and scoring the bark of the ash. Suddenly Geoffrey’s fire ceased: the next moment Valentine guessed the truth—that his opponent’s last cartridge was gone—and surely mad with rage stepped from his cover eager to seize the advantage. At the same moment Geoffrey, saying to himself that he would not die like a dog cowering behind a tree, walked out from the oak and faced his doom.In that second—in the tenth of a second—he saw the sunbeams glance on the levelled barrel, and behind the twin circular orifices of the muzzle the smoke-blackened, frowning brow of the man who once had loved him.“Fair play in the army!” shouted a hoarse voice, and a long stick of briar suddenly projected from the fern at Valentine’s side fell with a crash upon his barrel. The blow diverted the aim, but the charge exploded. Geoffrey uttered a sharp cry, turned round and put out his hand as if to lean against the oak, and then dropped.“We used to have fair play in the army,” said Augustus Basset, stepping up from the ditch out of the fern, with a briar in one hand, and a vicious ferret in the other—struggling hard, but dexterously grasped just behind the forelegs, the first finger in front of the legs, so that it could not bite. “You make a ring, look here!” in his incoherent way.But Valentine, all aghast with sudden revulsion of feeling, had already rushed to his fallen friend and knelt beside him, feeling a pressure upon his heart and a dizziness of sight. For the blood of life was spouting from the right shoulder, and already the yellow fern and the grey grass were spotted and stained, and the lowly creeping ivy streaked with crimson.“Speak, Geof, old fellow!” cried Valentine, becoming of a more deadly pallor than the wounded man.“Plug the hole,” said Augustus, who, though he had never seen service, like most old soldiers had some smattering of surgery. “You’ve lost your head. Here, let me. Hold pug;” and he pushed the ferret into Valentine’s hands.Pulling out his handkerchief, none of the cleanest, Augustus pressed it on the wound, and succeeded in reducing the flow of blood. Geoffrey moved, and Valentine, flinging the ferret aside, held him up.“Speak to me!” he cried.“Say not a word how it happened,” Geoffrey replied, thinking of Margaret, and became unconscious again.There was a rustling of branches and a cracking of dead sticks underfoot, and two men in their shirt-sleeves rushed out from the wood.“By Gaarge, you, Measter Newton, be shot!”“He won’t die,” said Augustus, looking up, and apparently quite unconcerned. “I put my finger in—it hasn’t touched the artery; look!” He held out his hands, which were soaking red.The two strong men turned white with a sudden sickness.“We thought us hearn a scrame,” one said.“Make a litter,” said Augustus. “There, you great odd-me-dods (scarecrows), you don’t know what it is! A hand-barrow, then, you gawnies! What are you staring there for? Go and get your hurdles!”“Zo us wull; come on, Bill!” and away they ran.“A man’s made just like a pig inside,” said Augustus to Valentine, and he proceeded to compare the anatomy to heedless ears. Quite sobered by the shock, Basset was of more use than any of them. Long hardened, and indifferent to all but the immediate gratification of his senses with smoke and beer, Augustus had lost all the finer perceptions, and had become not exactly callous, but unimpressionable. That very condition rendered his aid valuable at such a time. Even now, under the crust of stolidity, there were not wanting some better feelings in this wreck of an educated man. He was faithful to the hand that fed him, i.e. to the Greene Ferne people; Geoffrey had frequently given him tobacco and such trifles, and now he was really anxious to do his best. As it was, he had probably saved Geoffrey’s life; for when the last shot was fired, they were so near that the cartridge had only just begun to scatter; had it struck the head or chest with the shot altogether, like a bullet, instant death must have followed. But the blow on the barrel with the stick so far diverted the swift aim of the practised sportsman, that only a part of the charge took effect in the shoulder.The two men ran as fast as they might across a corner of the wood, crashing through the hazel, and stumbling in their haste as the woodbine caught their heavy shoes. They made straight for a spot about a hundred and fifty yards distant, where on the edge of the meadow land stood a rude shed, framed of logs and slabs, thatched with flags from the brook, and walled on three sides with hurdles interwoven with straw. By the hut was a pile of ashpoles, dry and hard, cut a winter since in the depths of Thorpe Wood, and drawn out there for better convenience. These men had been at work for some months splitting the poles, shaving and preparing them to be used as wooden hoops for barrels. Geoffrey, on his way from Squire Thorpe’s down to Greene Ferne, had frequently passed the hut, and, interested in their work, formed a slight acquaintance with the men. They told him that these ashen hoops, cut from English woods, went in shiploads to Jamaica and other sugar lands, returning round the sugar casks. He in turn had given them cigars, or a couple of rabbits that he had shot; and watching the dexterous way they used their tools, and how cheerfully they worked through rain and shine and thunderstorm, grew to almost envy their content. They had heard the firing as they worked by the hut, and stayed to listen to it. When it suddenly ceased, simultaneously with a sharp cry as of pain, they guessed there had been an accident. Now these rough sons of toil, mindful of his little kindnesses, staying not a moment to inquire how the catastrophe occurred, ran with all their might, tore down the thatched hurdles which formed their walls, and with these, a couple of poles, and their jackets snatched up in a hurry, hastened back to the scene.On this improvised litter Geoffrey, still insensible, was placed, his head propped up somewhat with their jackets; and then, as they lifted him, the question arose, where should they take him. As he was the Squire’s visitor, it seemed proper to carry him there; but Augustus, who had his own private reasons for desiring to avoid the Squire, vehemently insisted that it was all up-hill and through the wood, and much farther than Greene Ferne. Valentine, anxious to get somewhere, and quite beside himself with impatience, begged them to start; so the bearers set out across the corner of the wood for the farm. Basset walked in front, opening a road through the bushes; but the tall dead thistles, swinging back as they hurriedly pushed along, pricked the pale cheek and listless hands of their burden. They emerged from the wood shortly, and crossed the meadow towards the ploughed field.Augustus, with his hand now on Valentine’s shoulder, babbled in his ear, and showed him the briar-stick.“I was poking a rabbit-bury,” said he, “when you came along shooting. There ain’t no call to say anything to the Squire. See, here’s bunnie’s fur!” He pointed to the end of the stick, where the sharp curved prickles were left on, having been cut from the other end for ease of handling. To these prickles a little soft fur adhered, together with particles of sand. “I found him—he’s got his head in the bottom of the hole and can’t move, and my other pug is at him. He’s young, and wants lining. When you came along I got down in the ditch under the fern. But, I say, fair play in the army! If this had been a ground-ash stick,”—swishing the briar, which bent easily—“I should have knocked the gun out of your hands; but this briar plied, don’t you see? I must go back for the other ferret presently.”He ran forward to open the gate of the ploughed field for the bearers, who were now a little way in front.Puff-puff! puff-puff! hum-m-m! The fly-wheel whirled about, beating the air to musical resonance; the steel sinew of Behemoth stretched across the stubble, dragging the shares remorselessly through tender roots of pimpernel and creeping convolvulus. Hum-m-m!It was rough travelling over the deep fresh-turned furrows, that exhaled a scent of earth, and their burden was somewhat jolted.“Hulloa, you! What’s up? I say there—you!”The men with the ploughing engines had espied the litter, and, abandoning operations, came running across the field. Thus, surrounded by an excited group, the wounded man was borne over the lawn at Greene Ferne.
Puff-puff! puff-puff! hum-m-m! as the fly-wheel whizzed round with a sudden ease in working.
“I detest these ploughing engines,” said Squire Thorpe, looking over the gate and leaning his arms on it, as country people always do.
“But if the tenants find deep ploughing and manuring better, I suppose that’s the point,” said Valentine.
“For the tenant, yes,” said the Squire, as he shouldered his gun and turned away from the gate. “Forme, it is another matter. It is a question with me if this deep ploughing will not exhaust the earth.”
“But the artificial manure,” said Valentine, who was inclined to argue with any one.
“Rubbish! Why, it’s only used like dust—not an eighth of an inch thick; and they take all that out again quick enough. Then these deep drains; they carry away as much of the richness of the soil as water.”
“You don’t think much of unexhausted improvements,” said Geoffrey.
“The greatest nonsense ever talked,” said the Squire, working himself into a temper. “It’s simply a device to suck every atom out of the soil, and leave me as dry as a dead hemlock. What profit do you suppose I get out of the land? I’m pestered to put up cattle-stalls and sheds, to sink wells and rebuild farmhouses, to put in drains—confound the drains! Then I must make reductions because the labourers want higher wages, and take off ten per cent, because the weather’s been bad! As if the weather had not always been wrong these three hundred years! I’m perfectly sick of science and superphosphates, shorthorns, and steam tackle. Then they bring public opinion, forsooth, on me, and say I must disgorge! (Intense disgust.) Disgorge! Let them take the land, and welcome, and give me an equivalent in Consols, I should be twenty times better off. No; I’ll be shot if they shall! (With energetic inconsistency.) I would sooner be flayed alive than part with a square inch! I love the land next to my mother! There! But I’ll be let alone. I’ll plant the whole place with oaks. My woods are the only things that pay me—except the rabbits, and that rascally Guss Basset poaches and nets them by the score. Look out!”
A covey of partridges rose, and Valentine, who was a little in advance, fired both barrels without effect.
“Mark!” said the Squire. “Gone to the turnips of course, the only place left for the poor things; this short stubble makes them as wild as hawks. Val, your nerves are shaky this afternoon, and, by Jove, that horse dying was enough!”
“My nerves are not at all shaken,” said Valentine, as he reloaded.
He affected a stoical indifference, though really hit hard. His temper had been boiling like molten lead under the surface, and it wanted but little to make him explode. His losses and vexation, his jealousy of Geoffrey, the unfortunate suspicions that had been aroused in his mind about the night on the Downs—all had combined to irritate him to the last degree.
“Well, we’ve all lost money,” said the Squire; “and what a terrible thing about poor old Fisher! May will stay at Greene Ferne, I suppose; she can never return alone to that gloomy house. Ah, that’s more to my taste,”—pointing to a middle-aged labourer who was sowing corn broadcast. “Now watch his steps; regular as clockwork. See, his hand springs from his hip, and describes an exact segment of a circle—no, a parabola, I suppose—every time, so as to make the seed spread itself equally. That’s higher than science—that’s art, art handed down these thousand years.”
A man now overtook them with a message from the house: the Squire was wanted about a summons.
“If you cross the turnips,” he said, as he turned to leave them, “you may find the covey again; and then try the meadows at the edge of the wood; and if you see that rascally Basset at my rabbits, just—” he kicked a clod to pieces illustratively.
The Squire returned homewards; Geoffrey and Valentine entered the turnips, making for the narrow belt of meadow by the wood. It was not a regular shooting expedition: they had simply strolled out for an hour, and were not accompanied by a keeper. The moment the Squire left, the conversation dropped. Valentine was bitter against his old friend: Geoffrey had not forgotten thecontretempsat the nutting. It had been long before Margaret accepted his protestations of regret for his hasty words. Now no man, who is a man, likes the part of penitence. He considered that Valentine had forced him into that unpleasant position, and his wrath smouldered against him.
After the turnips, they got through a gap into the meadow land, which, being of poor quality, as is often the case near a wood, was dotted with dead thistles, rushes in the hollows, and bunches of tussocky grass. Out from one of these sprang a hare, as nearly as possible midway between them. They both fired—so exactly simultaneously that it sounded as one report; and for the moment neither knew that the other had pulled the trigger. But when they saw what had happened, each turned away from the dead hare—neither would touch it. Each, biassed by previous irritation, accused the other in his mind of taking the shot from him. This little accident added to the sullen bitterness.
They now came to an immense double-mound hedge, into which the spaniels rushed. Valentine took the near side, Geoffrey the off, with the hedge between them. It was so thick neither could see the other; so trifling a circumstance tended to calm the annoyance—out of sight, out of mind. As he followed the edge of the ditch, waiting now and then for the dogs to work the hedge thoroughly, Geoffrey became conscious of the beauty of the warm autumn day.
Puff-puff! puff-puff! hum-m-m! The sound of the distant ploughing engines came humming in the still air. He had noticed previously that his coat-sleeve was flecked with gossamer threads, and now saw that the bushes were white with them. Looking upwards, the atmosphere was full of glistening lines—like the most delicate silk—drooping downwards and shining in the sunlight. As far up as the eye could see, they came showering slowly, noiselessly, down. The surface of the grass was covered with these webs like a broad veil of fragile lace; and his feet, tearing a rent through it were whitened by the accumulated threads. The rooks rose from the oaks with a lazy cawing, loth to leave the ripening acorns, and settled again when he had passed.
Hum-m-m! hum-m-m!
Underfoot a soft moss, luxuriating in the shade, almost took the place of grass. The hedge itself was like a wood, so wide and thick—full of ashpoles and hawthorn, crab-tree underwood, willow, elder, and blackthorn, and here and there spreading oak trees. It terminated at the wood; and as they approached it the dogs became more busy; for the rabbits were numerous, and the banks were bored with their holes. Geoffrey kept his gun on the hollow of his left arm—ready for a rabbit—with the muzzle towards the hedge.
“Loo! Loo!” cried Valentine, urging the dogs.
Puff-puff! hum-m-m!
Geoffrey, looking intently at the mound, and expecting a rabbit to start every moment, did not notice that a mole had recently thrown up a heap of earth in his path. His foot striking against it caused him to stumble, and, to recover himself, he snatched at a projecting branch of nut-wood. A twig, or perhaps his sleeve, touched the trigger of his gun—the muzzle still towards the hedge—and the sudden explosion that followed jerked the gun from his arm to the ground. Like a bullet the cartridge sang through between the ashpoles, and cut a small pendent bough of willow in twain, not two feet in front of Valentine’s face.
“By Jove!” he shouted, “that was meant for me. There!”
Strung up to an unbearable tension by brooding over his losses and disappointment, jealous about Margaret, and now suddenly startled, Valentine lost all control of himself, and, swinging his gun round towards Geoffrey, without putting it to his shoulder, fired.
Geoffrey was in a stooping position, just lifting his gun from the ground, when the shot, fired low, came with a rattle among the crab-tree undergrowth. The tough fibres of the wood held and checked it, so that only a few pellets passed by; but one or two of these, though their force was almost spent in penetrating the branches, struck him sharply by the knee with a sudden stinging pain.
“You shot at me!” shouted Geoffrey, now equally excited, and, hardly aware what he was doing, he sprang across the ditch and into the double mound, to get a clearer aim.
Valentine ran quickly down the meadow on his side; then, seeing no other cover, also leapt into the hedge, and they faced each other some thirty yards apart. As usual in double mounds, the growth of underwood was less dense in the middle, so that, though some distance apart, each was dimly visible through the branches. There came a loud report as they fired the remaining barrels almost simultaneously, and a crashing and cracking of splintered wood; but no harm yet, thanks to the crab and stubborn blackthorn. The sulphurous smoke, clinging to the close undergrowth and tall grasses, filled their nostrils with the scent and madness of battle. In his ordinary mood either of these two would have scouted the possibility of such a thing happening; but circumstances suddenly threw them as it were a thousand years back in civilisation on the original savage instincts of man. Had they carried even the muzzle loaders, which take time to ram the charge home, one or other might have paused. Better still if their arms had been the ancient matchlock, with the priming to look to and the match to blow. But these breechloaders, which send forth continuous flame, swift as the lightning, flash on flash, allow not a moment for thought. The “death and murder of a world,” as Faust said, be on them.
As they jerked out the empty cartridge cases, and thrust in fresh charges, each instinctively moved to the best shelter he could see—Valentine behind the gabions of a great gnarled ash-stole; Geoffrey to the cover of a crooked maple, whose leaves were turning yellow. Red tongues of fire darted forth, scorching the leaves and blackening the branches. Guided by sound and guess rather than sight, they fired vaguely into the thickets. From the oaks of great Thorpe Wood the rooks rose at the din, loudly cawing, high into the air; then in circling sweep they soared and wheeled, black and ominous, a dance of death in the azure beauty of the cloudless sky. The dogs yelped their very loudest, keeping at a distance from the hedgerow; they knew that something was wrong. Fast as the motions of the hand could answer to the eager hate in the heart, volley followed volley, till the heated metal of the barrels could scarcely be touched.
The dun smoke crept along the mound, and slipped with sudden draught into the rabbit-buries, and hung low over the ash-tops. With a hiss and roar and rattle the shot tore its way, biting hungrily at the branches as it passed. The ash-boughs, tough and sinewy, though half-severed, hung together still; the willow split, and let the lead slip through its feeble wood; the hard crab-tree and blackthorn, with fibres torn and jagged, held and stopped it; the briar, with its circular pith, snapped and drooped. Through the broad burdock leaves and hollow hemlock stems and “gicks” the hasty pellets drilled round holes, or buried themselves in the bark of the larger tree-trunks, some glancing off at a sharp angle like Tyrrell’s arrow. The maple, all scored and dotted, and partly stripped of leaves by the leaden shower, gave less cover than the ash-stole; and Geoffrey, with shot-holes in his hat, and the pellets hissing past his ears, yielded ground and retreated, firing as he went. Valentine immediately advanced, and thus, like Indians in the backwoods, they glided from thicket to thicket, from tree to tree, stalking, but shooting wildly, baffled by the branches.
In a few minutes Geoffrey came to a great oak, rugged and moss-grown at the roots, which stood near the edge of the ditch that, at the end of the double mound, divided the hedge from the wood. Behind this he took his stand; and Valentine, advancing too rapidly, was stung by a pellet that glanced from a branch and struck his arm. He hastily rushed behind an ash-tree—it was not broad enough to shield him completely; but by its side grew a thicket of bramble and brake fern that helped to hide him from sight. He blazed rapidly at the edge of the oak; in return the shot came rushing through the fern, and scoring the bark of the ash. Suddenly Geoffrey’s fire ceased: the next moment Valentine guessed the truth—that his opponent’s last cartridge was gone—and surely mad with rage stepped from his cover eager to seize the advantage. At the same moment Geoffrey, saying to himself that he would not die like a dog cowering behind a tree, walked out from the oak and faced his doom.
In that second—in the tenth of a second—he saw the sunbeams glance on the levelled barrel, and behind the twin circular orifices of the muzzle the smoke-blackened, frowning brow of the man who once had loved him.
“Fair play in the army!” shouted a hoarse voice, and a long stick of briar suddenly projected from the fern at Valentine’s side fell with a crash upon his barrel. The blow diverted the aim, but the charge exploded. Geoffrey uttered a sharp cry, turned round and put out his hand as if to lean against the oak, and then dropped.
“We used to have fair play in the army,” said Augustus Basset, stepping up from the ditch out of the fern, with a briar in one hand, and a vicious ferret in the other—struggling hard, but dexterously grasped just behind the forelegs, the first finger in front of the legs, so that it could not bite. “You make a ring, look here!” in his incoherent way.
But Valentine, all aghast with sudden revulsion of feeling, had already rushed to his fallen friend and knelt beside him, feeling a pressure upon his heart and a dizziness of sight. For the blood of life was spouting from the right shoulder, and already the yellow fern and the grey grass were spotted and stained, and the lowly creeping ivy streaked with crimson.
“Speak, Geof, old fellow!” cried Valentine, becoming of a more deadly pallor than the wounded man.
“Plug the hole,” said Augustus, who, though he had never seen service, like most old soldiers had some smattering of surgery. “You’ve lost your head. Here, let me. Hold pug;” and he pushed the ferret into Valentine’s hands.
Pulling out his handkerchief, none of the cleanest, Augustus pressed it on the wound, and succeeded in reducing the flow of blood. Geoffrey moved, and Valentine, flinging the ferret aside, held him up.
“Speak to me!” he cried.
“Say not a word how it happened,” Geoffrey replied, thinking of Margaret, and became unconscious again.
There was a rustling of branches and a cracking of dead sticks underfoot, and two men in their shirt-sleeves rushed out from the wood.
“By Gaarge, you, Measter Newton, be shot!”
“He won’t die,” said Augustus, looking up, and apparently quite unconcerned. “I put my finger in—it hasn’t touched the artery; look!” He held out his hands, which were soaking red.
The two strong men turned white with a sudden sickness.
“We thought us hearn a scrame,” one said.
“Make a litter,” said Augustus. “There, you great odd-me-dods (scarecrows), you don’t know what it is! A hand-barrow, then, you gawnies! What are you staring there for? Go and get your hurdles!”
“Zo us wull; come on, Bill!” and away they ran.
“A man’s made just like a pig inside,” said Augustus to Valentine, and he proceeded to compare the anatomy to heedless ears. Quite sobered by the shock, Basset was of more use than any of them. Long hardened, and indifferent to all but the immediate gratification of his senses with smoke and beer, Augustus had lost all the finer perceptions, and had become not exactly callous, but unimpressionable. That very condition rendered his aid valuable at such a time. Even now, under the crust of stolidity, there were not wanting some better feelings in this wreck of an educated man. He was faithful to the hand that fed him, i.e. to the Greene Ferne people; Geoffrey had frequently given him tobacco and such trifles, and now he was really anxious to do his best. As it was, he had probably saved Geoffrey’s life; for when the last shot was fired, they were so near that the cartridge had only just begun to scatter; had it struck the head or chest with the shot altogether, like a bullet, instant death must have followed. But the blow on the barrel with the stick so far diverted the swift aim of the practised sportsman, that only a part of the charge took effect in the shoulder.
The two men ran as fast as they might across a corner of the wood, crashing through the hazel, and stumbling in their haste as the woodbine caught their heavy shoes. They made straight for a spot about a hundred and fifty yards distant, where on the edge of the meadow land stood a rude shed, framed of logs and slabs, thatched with flags from the brook, and walled on three sides with hurdles interwoven with straw. By the hut was a pile of ashpoles, dry and hard, cut a winter since in the depths of Thorpe Wood, and drawn out there for better convenience. These men had been at work for some months splitting the poles, shaving and preparing them to be used as wooden hoops for barrels. Geoffrey, on his way from Squire Thorpe’s down to Greene Ferne, had frequently passed the hut, and, interested in their work, formed a slight acquaintance with the men. They told him that these ashen hoops, cut from English woods, went in shiploads to Jamaica and other sugar lands, returning round the sugar casks. He in turn had given them cigars, or a couple of rabbits that he had shot; and watching the dexterous way they used their tools, and how cheerfully they worked through rain and shine and thunderstorm, grew to almost envy their content. They had heard the firing as they worked by the hut, and stayed to listen to it. When it suddenly ceased, simultaneously with a sharp cry as of pain, they guessed there had been an accident. Now these rough sons of toil, mindful of his little kindnesses, staying not a moment to inquire how the catastrophe occurred, ran with all their might, tore down the thatched hurdles which formed their walls, and with these, a couple of poles, and their jackets snatched up in a hurry, hastened back to the scene.
On this improvised litter Geoffrey, still insensible, was placed, his head propped up somewhat with their jackets; and then, as they lifted him, the question arose, where should they take him. As he was the Squire’s visitor, it seemed proper to carry him there; but Augustus, who had his own private reasons for desiring to avoid the Squire, vehemently insisted that it was all up-hill and through the wood, and much farther than Greene Ferne. Valentine, anxious to get somewhere, and quite beside himself with impatience, begged them to start; so the bearers set out across the corner of the wood for the farm. Basset walked in front, opening a road through the bushes; but the tall dead thistles, swinging back as they hurriedly pushed along, pricked the pale cheek and listless hands of their burden. They emerged from the wood shortly, and crossed the meadow towards the ploughed field.
Augustus, with his hand now on Valentine’s shoulder, babbled in his ear, and showed him the briar-stick.
“I was poking a rabbit-bury,” said he, “when you came along shooting. There ain’t no call to say anything to the Squire. See, here’s bunnie’s fur!” He pointed to the end of the stick, where the sharp curved prickles were left on, having been cut from the other end for ease of handling. To these prickles a little soft fur adhered, together with particles of sand. “I found him—he’s got his head in the bottom of the hole and can’t move, and my other pug is at him. He’s young, and wants lining. When you came along I got down in the ditch under the fern. But, I say, fair play in the army! If this had been a ground-ash stick,”—swishing the briar, which bent easily—“I should have knocked the gun out of your hands; but this briar plied, don’t you see? I must go back for the other ferret presently.”
He ran forward to open the gate of the ploughed field for the bearers, who were now a little way in front.
Puff-puff! puff-puff! hum-m-m! The fly-wheel whirled about, beating the air to musical resonance; the steel sinew of Behemoth stretched across the stubble, dragging the shares remorselessly through tender roots of pimpernel and creeping convolvulus. Hum-m-m!
It was rough travelling over the deep fresh-turned furrows, that exhaled a scent of earth, and their burden was somewhat jolted.
“Hulloa, you! What’s up? I say there—you!”
The men with the ploughing engines had espied the litter, and, abandoning operations, came running across the field. Thus, surrounded by an excited group, the wounded man was borne over the lawn at Greene Ferne.
Chapter Eleven.A Feast—Conclusion.It was fortunate that Basset’s dislike of meeting Squire Thorpe caused Geoffrey to be conveyed to Greene Ferne, for Felix was there, and he had sufficient knowledge of surgery to staunch the wound. The shock to the household on the arrival of the litter was of course very great. May fainted; Margaret very nearly did the same, but, recovering herself by a strong effort, forced herself to help Felix. The support afforded by her love enabled her to face the sight; but when there was nothing more that she could do, she burst into a flood of tears, yet still refused to leave the room. Felix asked Valentine, who still moved as one dazed, to send Basset, as the best rider, for a doctor from the town. As he got up into the saddle, he asked Valentine if he had any loose silver or a cigar. Valentine mechanically gave him all he had and his cigar-case; and the old trooper, never even in moments of the highest excitement forgetting to take good care of himself, went clattering down the road. The doctor came, examined Felix’s work, improved upon it, and pronounced Geoffrey’s wound painful rather than dangerous. Augustus, after taking sundry nips of strong liquor with the silver Valentine had given him, in Kingsbury, presently returned to the hamlet, and stopped at the Spotted Cow, where, as he had anticipated, a number of the gossips of the place had assembled. Here he became the hero of the hour, puffing his cigars, and spending his money right royally. But having had lengthened experience of his imaginative powers, they totally refused to believe him now he spoke the truth. They grinned at the idea of Geoffrey and Valentine firing intentionally at each other, and still more ridiculed the embellishment which he added—how he stepped between the levelled guns at the risk of his life. They knew him too well.“It wur an accident, of course,” they said. “I tell you they fought a regular battle,” said Augustus, in a towering rage. “You be a parcel of fools!”“If they did vite,” said the landlord slowly, “you med be zure Basset put his yod (head) inside a rabbit-hole vor fear of the shot—and how could he knaw?”“Ha, ha!” such was the popular verdict.Geoffrey, so soon as he could speak, declared it an accident, and as such it passed outside Greene Ferne. The only witness indeed was Basset, whose sodden word was not worth taking, even had any stir been made. So soon as the excitement of the day was over, too, Basset—old soldier as he was—seeing which side his bread was buttered, turned round, and openly proclaimed that he was drunk when he made his statement about the fight. Inthiseverybody believed him. But Valentine, whose remorse was beyond expression, notwithstanding Geoffrey’s wish, gave Felix and Squire Thorpe the true version of the case, laying all the blame upon himself. His jealousy and hatred disappeared, the old friendship returned, and he did all in his power to show it.Though Margaret did not know all the truth, she was not without a pang of conscience, for she recollected the nutting, and reproached herself for not discouraging Valentine. It was long before Geoffrey recovered; as the doctor had said, the wound, though not dangerous, was painful, and took more time to heal than seemed proportioned to its character. Margaret nursed him with all the devotion of love; May aided her; and indeed his convalescence was almost an idyl. Friends gathered round to cheer and make the time pass happily—Felix, the Squire, Valentine. The two farmers, Ruck and Hedges, dropped in occasionally to inquire. The spring almost came again, before he was strong, and it was then necessary to take a change. The pleasant circle at Greene Ferne was temporarily broken up, but for a short time only. In the summer they met again at the sea, and a double marriage was arranged for the autumn, when May’s year of mourning had elapsed. After old Fisher’s affairs were investigated, it was found that his loss over the racing was but a few hundreds—quite a small sum in comparison with his fortune. But his soul had become so steeped in avarice that he could not endure it; it had struck him as heavy a blow as if it had been the whole accumulation of his life. There were ample means left—for a farmer, positive wealth—and May was comparatively rich. The old hags who robbed the house escaped punishment, though made to disgorge their plunder. May could not be prevailed upon to prosecute—the whole matter was too painful to be raked up. Basset benefited perhaps as much as any one; Margaret gave him the credit of saving Geoffrey’s life, and when she began to show an interest in him the old trooper brightened up. He had hitherto felt himself an outcast. Now he was made much of, the better qualities came out; he furbished himself up, and held his head higher. He could not indeed entirely break from drink, but he did, with an effort, curtail his glasses. He attended to his work, and became a valuable assistant. So much does the mind affect the body, that the influence of kindness can even improve the condition of a drunkard. Valentine, thankful to him for escape from a lifelong regret, petted him. Geoffrey, grateful for the blow which had diverted the cartridge, petted him. Squire Thorpe relented, and even gave him permission to shoot in Thorpe Wood. Of this permission Augustus did not make much use. The incitement of poaching was lacking.The double marriage—Margaret and Geoffrey, May and Felix—took place early in September at Millbourne Church. As the carriages rolled away, after breakfast, from the porch at Greene Ferne, in the beautiful sunshine, and with the shouts of the villagers and the rattling of rice, Felix thought to himself, “This day at least we may surely say ‘Gaudeamus’ in the fullness of our hearts.” Valentine could not bring himself to be present at the wedding—he would not have been human if he had; but he sent the brides a handsome present each. They are both to reside at Kingsbury, within easy reach of Greene Ferne.By Margaret’s special wish, in the afternoon there was a dinner, or, as the guests persisted in calling it, a supper, to the labourers and their wives in the barn. In superintending this, Mrs Estcourt found some little relief from the sadness which always weighs upon those left behind after a joyous marriage. It was a large affair, for besides the men employed on Greene Ferne, others working on adjoining farms were bidden to the feast, which was also to be countenanced by many of higher rank.There was less difficulty in clearing the barn for the purpose, because stores of corn are not now kept. The winnowing machine was stowed away in the corner, together with the polished bushel measure and the broad wooden shovels. A floor so level was easily swept, though the roof was far beyond the reach of the longest broom. It was supported by beams of chestnut—a lofty piece of ancient workmanship, not unlike some noble halls that yet exist. The cobwebs up there had not been disturbed for generations; the bats among the tiles slept on heedless of the stir. A noble apartment it made, wide and long and high; a place where men could breathe and live a larger, if a more rugged, life than in the contracted space of rooms.Against the door-posts inside, and at intervals around the walls, rose columns of corn; whole sheaves of wheat, stacked in piles, for a less quantity would scarcely have been seen in so great a space. Nor was the white and drooping barley forgotten; and these, the wealth of the cornfields, were strewn in profusion with the flowers that were yet in bloom. Scarlet poppies, blue harebells, the yellow corn marigolds, the mauve mallows, the “butter and eggs,” and woodbine—all were there, gathered by willing hands. Ferns, some already yellow and some green, tall reeds with beautiful waving heads, and rushes, were placed at the side of the wheat, relieving the bright flowers and the dry-looking corn with their green; branches of oak, upon whose twigs the young acorns were showing; branches of hazel with the nuts, and of hawthorn with the haws, were hung between the sheaves.The tables, with the exception of one across at the top, were of plank on trestles, and the seats of equally primitive style—stools from the farm, and so on; and when they ran short, a broad plank stretched from one pile of empty cheese-vats to another. Upon the tables, flowers in pots and cut flowers were arranged.Augustus Basset was of considerable assistance in these preparations—he always was when there was a prospect of unlimited feeding and liquor. Nor did he forget to glance in at the kitchen, and see that the copper was full of potatoes—for no pots could contain the quantity required—and that enough cabbage had been cut to fill a few bushel baskets.As the time fixed approached the older men began to stroll up, and after them the women—always apart from their husbands; men came with men, and women with women, not together, though they might dwell in the same cottage. Among them were old Gaffer Pistol-legs, Jabez the shepherd, and his nephew, and Jenny the dairy-maid from the Warren, for whom a trap had been specially sent. The men on the farm who, in attendance on the cattle, had been obliged to work till the last moment, now came to the pump in the yard and splashed themselves with much noise, amid the rough jokes of the idlers around.By-and-by, Squire Thorpe and Mrs Estcourt, Farmer Ruck and Farmer Hedges, and several more farmers who had been invited came across from the house, and immediately old and young began to take their places. The Squire said the shortest of graces, the covers were lifted, and the smoke and steam from yards of solid beef and mutton rose into the lofty roof. At the cross-table at the top a plentiful supply of game appeared, from Thorpe Wood. Now the solid beef began to gape as slice after slice was cut and piled upon the plates that came faster and faster, till the carvers, standing up to their work, were forced to take off their jackets to have their arms at greater liberty. The clatter of knives and forks reverberated in the hollow barn—the men ate steadily on with a calm persistent thoroughness, like the mill-wheel at the Warren, their chins wagged without haste and without rest. The process was only varied by a momentary pause while the two-pronged forks were stuck into the potatoes in the dish, a much more effectual plan than bothering with a spoon, or while a goodly load of salt was shovelled from the salt-cellar with the tip of the knife. Meantime Augustus, happy as a king, with the can of ale in his hands, went round and round and up and down the long tables, filling the mugs and glasses, never weary of well-doing. No one can understand the latent possibilities of physical development he possesses till he has seen the agricultural labourer eat. It is indeed a goodly spectacle, and for my part I own I love to see it, and wish them all, great and small, plenty wherewith to heartily satisfy those honest appetites. But it is easy to see how we English conquered the world, sinceThe seat of empire is the belly.So steadily went the eating, that before the meat was quite done already the sun began to slope downwards, and shone full in at the open doorway. For the barn having no windows to speak of, the vast broad doors, wider than the gates of Gaza, were thrown open both for light and air. The sunbeams fell full on the face of Gaffer Pistol-legs, who chanced to sit opposite, and lit up his ancient features, which might have been carved by a monk for a gargoyle, so wrinkled were they. After awhile the rays seemed to awaken the patriarch from his munching, and, blinking his eyes, he looked up and placed both his fists upon the table, still holding his knife and fork, the points upward. His neighbours, seeing that the old man was about to speak, stayed with half-open mouths to listen.“This be the vinest veast, you,” said the Ancient, “this be the vinest veast, you, as ever I zeed since ould Squire Thorpe—his’n’s feyther (nodding his head towards the top of the table)—got up the junketing when the news come of the battle of Waterloo, dree-score year ago. The vinest veast althegither since ould Bony were whopped. Yellucks!”—as much as to say, Look here, that is my dictum.This poor old man, humble as he was, had many friends, both of his own class and among those above him, to give him a kind word or a lift. A contrast, this, with the ancient and brutal miser Fisher, who had faced that other magnificent sunset on the hills the year before.After the pudding Squire Thorpe gave the health of the brides and their bridegrooms; and risingen masse, they made the old barn ring again with cheering and hammering of the tables. Down fell two of the plank-seats, and added a booming roar to the noise.Mrs Estcourt slipped out into the air for a minute, and came through the rick-yard. The rosy light of the setting sun, now behind the trees of Thorpe Wood, lit up the house and the barn and the fields. The call of the partridge, “Caer-wit, caer-wit!” sounded across the stubble. Far away upon the hill shone a brilliant red light—a very beacon—flashing and gleaming. It was the last level rays of the sun reflected from the west window of the church—a light of good omen for those who had therein been made one that day. Yet joying in their joy and hoping their hopes, the tears came fast from her swelling heart. But there arose the tuning of a fiddle—“tum-tum, tup-tup!”—and her sigh, as she turned away and forced down her feelings, was drowned in a roar and stamping from the barn. It was her own health that they were drinking, and immediately afterwards a crowd began to pour forth from the wide portal. The older men settled to their pipes—an ample supply of long clay pipes, stacked anglewise, was provided for them. But the lissom young men and the giggling girls trooped across the rick-yard to the level meadow, which the sheep had cropped close, and which had been also carefully mown for the purpose. Had it rained, there would still have been dancing-room in the barn; but it was warm and dry, so they footed it on the sward.Mrs Estcourt, a little shrinking and nervous, had to open it with the Squire; and, instead of finishing, they commenced with “Sir Roger de Coverley,” that fine old country dance. After a short time she left it, but the rest grew wilder and wilder. The dancing was like a maelstrom, sucking in all that came within its circling sound. Those who had at first held aloof, saying that they were too old or stiff, or didn’t know how, by degrees were drawn in, and frisked as merrily as the lads. So the wearyful women, whose hearts had already been made glad, hummed the tune and flung through it with a will. The children set up a dance of their own, joining hands in a ring. “Let’s jine in,” said Farmer Ruck to Farmer Hedges; and away they went with the stream—a sight not to be seen but once in fifty years. The Ancient, Daddy Pistol-legs, sitting in the barn and listening to the music, lifted his oaken staff and beat time upon an empty barrel. So lustily did the village band blow and fiddle that the carthorses in the meadows, who always cock up their ears at the sound of a drum or a trumpet, galloped to and fro with excitement.The Squire’s gamekeeper by-and-by came along, with his gun under his arm, to see the fun, when Augustus Basset, with a fine sense of magnanimity, went up to him with his can and poured him out a foaming mug. But as he went to the house to replenish the can he could not forbear muttering to himself, “I can’t see whathewants to showhisface here for.”The bats had now left the tiles of the barn, and were wheeling to and fro. But the band blew and fiddled, well refreshed by Augustus’s can, and the dancers whirled about yet more fast and furious. Sly couples, however, occasionally slipped aside to do a little courting. Tummas and Rause, after slowly sauntering up the hedgerow, came to a gateway, and, looking through, beheld the broad round face of the full moon placidly shining.“Aw, thur be the moon, you; a’ be as big as a waggon-wheel,” said Tummas, putting his arm as far round her plump waist as it would go.“Let I bide,” said Rause.“I wooll kiss ee,” said Tummas sturdily.“Thee shatn’t.”There was some struggling, but Tummas succeeded with less difficulty than he expected. The damsel was relenting under the influence of long and faithful attentions. Tummas, like a wise man, hit while the iron was hot, and pressed for the publication of the banns.“Aw,” said Rause, at last, with a finished air of languid weariness, as if quite worn out with importunity, that could not have been much improved on in a drawing-room, “aw, s’pose us med as well, you. If thee woot do’t,Ican’t help it, can ’ee?”So the beautiful moonlight streamed down calmly upon the white ricks, the white loaded waggon, and the white stubble on the slightly rising ground. Still the blare of the brass echoed back from the house, the drum boomed, and the fiddle’s treble sounded over the mead where white skirts flickered round and round. But the mother’s heart, as she stood for a minute alone in her chamber gazing out at the night, was far, far away with her daughter, and almost as much with that other girl who had been to her as a second child.In the barn the sweet fresh scent of flowers and wheat had long since been overcome by the fumes of tobacco. Big as the barn was, it was full of smoke and the odour of pipes and ale. Hedges and Ruck, not able to do much dancing, had come back, and sat in chairs in the doorway, very happily hobnobbing with Augustus to fill their glasses. At last, however, whether it was the unwonted whirling of the dance, or whether it was the xxxx ale, these two old cronies fell out, and abused each other as only old cronies can, to the intense amusement of the bystanders. These crowded up to listen to their mutual revelations.“Thee shaved the brook,” said Ruck, shaking his fist. “Thee scooped out the ground on the Squire’s side, wur the bend wur, and put the mud on thy side. I’ll warn thee took nigh three lug of land.”“I only straightened un,” explained Hedges, “when I cleaned un out. A’ wur terrable crooked.”“Aw! (with scorn). Thee put all the straightness thee own side a-wuver!”“Thee bist allus pinching the king’s highway,” shouted Hedges, stung by this last taunt, and only withheld from battle by two strong labourers. “Thee cuts thy hedges by the road inside, and lets um grow out on the green, a-most into the road. A sort of a rolling-fence, doan’t ee zee!”“Beer in, bark out,” said Pistol-legs, sententiously.The Squire, hearing the noise, came across from the house; and at sight of him the two would-be combatants quieted down; when Augustus thrust a great double-handled mug between them, from which they had to drink in token of restored amity.“They won’t know nothing about it to-morrow morning,” said Augustus, as a man of experience, slightly unsteady on his own legs. “They’ll forget all about it.”“I thenks it be a-most time to go whoam,” said Pistol-legs, rising with some difficulty. “Here, Dan’l!” to one of his numerous descendants. “Let I hould on by thee.”It was abundantly evident that Pistol-legs was right; it was time to go home. Shortly afterwards the Squire returned again, and announced that the feast was over; when the assembly separated peacefully, after the wont of country folk, though for half an hour or more there came distant “Hurrays” and cheering as the groups went down the road.About two o’clock in the morning, Jabez the shepherd, with his dog Job at his feet, was found astride of a stile in the meadows. He had stuck close to the barrel all day, and was roaring, at the top of a voice accustomed to shout across half a mile of down, the veracious ballad of “Gaarge Ridler’s Oven,” of noted memory:“When I goes dead, as it med hap,Why, bury me under the good ale-tap!Wi’ voulded arms thur let me lie,Cheek by jowl my dog and I!”
It was fortunate that Basset’s dislike of meeting Squire Thorpe caused Geoffrey to be conveyed to Greene Ferne, for Felix was there, and he had sufficient knowledge of surgery to staunch the wound. The shock to the household on the arrival of the litter was of course very great. May fainted; Margaret very nearly did the same, but, recovering herself by a strong effort, forced herself to help Felix. The support afforded by her love enabled her to face the sight; but when there was nothing more that she could do, she burst into a flood of tears, yet still refused to leave the room. Felix asked Valentine, who still moved as one dazed, to send Basset, as the best rider, for a doctor from the town. As he got up into the saddle, he asked Valentine if he had any loose silver or a cigar. Valentine mechanically gave him all he had and his cigar-case; and the old trooper, never even in moments of the highest excitement forgetting to take good care of himself, went clattering down the road. The doctor came, examined Felix’s work, improved upon it, and pronounced Geoffrey’s wound painful rather than dangerous. Augustus, after taking sundry nips of strong liquor with the silver Valentine had given him, in Kingsbury, presently returned to the hamlet, and stopped at the Spotted Cow, where, as he had anticipated, a number of the gossips of the place had assembled. Here he became the hero of the hour, puffing his cigars, and spending his money right royally. But having had lengthened experience of his imaginative powers, they totally refused to believe him now he spoke the truth. They grinned at the idea of Geoffrey and Valentine firing intentionally at each other, and still more ridiculed the embellishment which he added—how he stepped between the levelled guns at the risk of his life. They knew him too well.
“It wur an accident, of course,” they said. “I tell you they fought a regular battle,” said Augustus, in a towering rage. “You be a parcel of fools!”
“If they did vite,” said the landlord slowly, “you med be zure Basset put his yod (head) inside a rabbit-hole vor fear of the shot—and how could he knaw?”
“Ha, ha!” such was the popular verdict.
Geoffrey, so soon as he could speak, declared it an accident, and as such it passed outside Greene Ferne. The only witness indeed was Basset, whose sodden word was not worth taking, even had any stir been made. So soon as the excitement of the day was over, too, Basset—old soldier as he was—seeing which side his bread was buttered, turned round, and openly proclaimed that he was drunk when he made his statement about the fight. Inthiseverybody believed him. But Valentine, whose remorse was beyond expression, notwithstanding Geoffrey’s wish, gave Felix and Squire Thorpe the true version of the case, laying all the blame upon himself. His jealousy and hatred disappeared, the old friendship returned, and he did all in his power to show it.
Though Margaret did not know all the truth, she was not without a pang of conscience, for she recollected the nutting, and reproached herself for not discouraging Valentine. It was long before Geoffrey recovered; as the doctor had said, the wound, though not dangerous, was painful, and took more time to heal than seemed proportioned to its character. Margaret nursed him with all the devotion of love; May aided her; and indeed his convalescence was almost an idyl. Friends gathered round to cheer and make the time pass happily—Felix, the Squire, Valentine. The two farmers, Ruck and Hedges, dropped in occasionally to inquire. The spring almost came again, before he was strong, and it was then necessary to take a change. The pleasant circle at Greene Ferne was temporarily broken up, but for a short time only. In the summer they met again at the sea, and a double marriage was arranged for the autumn, when May’s year of mourning had elapsed. After old Fisher’s affairs were investigated, it was found that his loss over the racing was but a few hundreds—quite a small sum in comparison with his fortune. But his soul had become so steeped in avarice that he could not endure it; it had struck him as heavy a blow as if it had been the whole accumulation of his life. There were ample means left—for a farmer, positive wealth—and May was comparatively rich. The old hags who robbed the house escaped punishment, though made to disgorge their plunder. May could not be prevailed upon to prosecute—the whole matter was too painful to be raked up. Basset benefited perhaps as much as any one; Margaret gave him the credit of saving Geoffrey’s life, and when she began to show an interest in him the old trooper brightened up. He had hitherto felt himself an outcast. Now he was made much of, the better qualities came out; he furbished himself up, and held his head higher. He could not indeed entirely break from drink, but he did, with an effort, curtail his glasses. He attended to his work, and became a valuable assistant. So much does the mind affect the body, that the influence of kindness can even improve the condition of a drunkard. Valentine, thankful to him for escape from a lifelong regret, petted him. Geoffrey, grateful for the blow which had diverted the cartridge, petted him. Squire Thorpe relented, and even gave him permission to shoot in Thorpe Wood. Of this permission Augustus did not make much use. The incitement of poaching was lacking.
The double marriage—Margaret and Geoffrey, May and Felix—took place early in September at Millbourne Church. As the carriages rolled away, after breakfast, from the porch at Greene Ferne, in the beautiful sunshine, and with the shouts of the villagers and the rattling of rice, Felix thought to himself, “This day at least we may surely say ‘Gaudeamus’ in the fullness of our hearts.” Valentine could not bring himself to be present at the wedding—he would not have been human if he had; but he sent the brides a handsome present each. They are both to reside at Kingsbury, within easy reach of Greene Ferne.
By Margaret’s special wish, in the afternoon there was a dinner, or, as the guests persisted in calling it, a supper, to the labourers and their wives in the barn. In superintending this, Mrs Estcourt found some little relief from the sadness which always weighs upon those left behind after a joyous marriage. It was a large affair, for besides the men employed on Greene Ferne, others working on adjoining farms were bidden to the feast, which was also to be countenanced by many of higher rank.
There was less difficulty in clearing the barn for the purpose, because stores of corn are not now kept. The winnowing machine was stowed away in the corner, together with the polished bushel measure and the broad wooden shovels. A floor so level was easily swept, though the roof was far beyond the reach of the longest broom. It was supported by beams of chestnut—a lofty piece of ancient workmanship, not unlike some noble halls that yet exist. The cobwebs up there had not been disturbed for generations; the bats among the tiles slept on heedless of the stir. A noble apartment it made, wide and long and high; a place where men could breathe and live a larger, if a more rugged, life than in the contracted space of rooms.
Against the door-posts inside, and at intervals around the walls, rose columns of corn; whole sheaves of wheat, stacked in piles, for a less quantity would scarcely have been seen in so great a space. Nor was the white and drooping barley forgotten; and these, the wealth of the cornfields, were strewn in profusion with the flowers that were yet in bloom. Scarlet poppies, blue harebells, the yellow corn marigolds, the mauve mallows, the “butter and eggs,” and woodbine—all were there, gathered by willing hands. Ferns, some already yellow and some green, tall reeds with beautiful waving heads, and rushes, were placed at the side of the wheat, relieving the bright flowers and the dry-looking corn with their green; branches of oak, upon whose twigs the young acorns were showing; branches of hazel with the nuts, and of hawthorn with the haws, were hung between the sheaves.
The tables, with the exception of one across at the top, were of plank on trestles, and the seats of equally primitive style—stools from the farm, and so on; and when they ran short, a broad plank stretched from one pile of empty cheese-vats to another. Upon the tables, flowers in pots and cut flowers were arranged.
Augustus Basset was of considerable assistance in these preparations—he always was when there was a prospect of unlimited feeding and liquor. Nor did he forget to glance in at the kitchen, and see that the copper was full of potatoes—for no pots could contain the quantity required—and that enough cabbage had been cut to fill a few bushel baskets.
As the time fixed approached the older men began to stroll up, and after them the women—always apart from their husbands; men came with men, and women with women, not together, though they might dwell in the same cottage. Among them were old Gaffer Pistol-legs, Jabez the shepherd, and his nephew, and Jenny the dairy-maid from the Warren, for whom a trap had been specially sent. The men on the farm who, in attendance on the cattle, had been obliged to work till the last moment, now came to the pump in the yard and splashed themselves with much noise, amid the rough jokes of the idlers around.
By-and-by, Squire Thorpe and Mrs Estcourt, Farmer Ruck and Farmer Hedges, and several more farmers who had been invited came across from the house, and immediately old and young began to take their places. The Squire said the shortest of graces, the covers were lifted, and the smoke and steam from yards of solid beef and mutton rose into the lofty roof. At the cross-table at the top a plentiful supply of game appeared, from Thorpe Wood. Now the solid beef began to gape as slice after slice was cut and piled upon the plates that came faster and faster, till the carvers, standing up to their work, were forced to take off their jackets to have their arms at greater liberty. The clatter of knives and forks reverberated in the hollow barn—the men ate steadily on with a calm persistent thoroughness, like the mill-wheel at the Warren, their chins wagged without haste and without rest. The process was only varied by a momentary pause while the two-pronged forks were stuck into the potatoes in the dish, a much more effectual plan than bothering with a spoon, or while a goodly load of salt was shovelled from the salt-cellar with the tip of the knife. Meantime Augustus, happy as a king, with the can of ale in his hands, went round and round and up and down the long tables, filling the mugs and glasses, never weary of well-doing. No one can understand the latent possibilities of physical development he possesses till he has seen the agricultural labourer eat. It is indeed a goodly spectacle, and for my part I own I love to see it, and wish them all, great and small, plenty wherewith to heartily satisfy those honest appetites. But it is easy to see how we English conquered the world, since
The seat of empire is the belly.
The seat of empire is the belly.
So steadily went the eating, that before the meat was quite done already the sun began to slope downwards, and shone full in at the open doorway. For the barn having no windows to speak of, the vast broad doors, wider than the gates of Gaza, were thrown open both for light and air. The sunbeams fell full on the face of Gaffer Pistol-legs, who chanced to sit opposite, and lit up his ancient features, which might have been carved by a monk for a gargoyle, so wrinkled were they. After awhile the rays seemed to awaken the patriarch from his munching, and, blinking his eyes, he looked up and placed both his fists upon the table, still holding his knife and fork, the points upward. His neighbours, seeing that the old man was about to speak, stayed with half-open mouths to listen.
“This be the vinest veast, you,” said the Ancient, “this be the vinest veast, you, as ever I zeed since ould Squire Thorpe—his’n’s feyther (nodding his head towards the top of the table)—got up the junketing when the news come of the battle of Waterloo, dree-score year ago. The vinest veast althegither since ould Bony were whopped. Yellucks!”—as much as to say, Look here, that is my dictum.
This poor old man, humble as he was, had many friends, both of his own class and among those above him, to give him a kind word or a lift. A contrast, this, with the ancient and brutal miser Fisher, who had faced that other magnificent sunset on the hills the year before.
After the pudding Squire Thorpe gave the health of the brides and their bridegrooms; and risingen masse, they made the old barn ring again with cheering and hammering of the tables. Down fell two of the plank-seats, and added a booming roar to the noise.
Mrs Estcourt slipped out into the air for a minute, and came through the rick-yard. The rosy light of the setting sun, now behind the trees of Thorpe Wood, lit up the house and the barn and the fields. The call of the partridge, “Caer-wit, caer-wit!” sounded across the stubble. Far away upon the hill shone a brilliant red light—a very beacon—flashing and gleaming. It was the last level rays of the sun reflected from the west window of the church—a light of good omen for those who had therein been made one that day. Yet joying in their joy and hoping their hopes, the tears came fast from her swelling heart. But there arose the tuning of a fiddle—“tum-tum, tup-tup!”—and her sigh, as she turned away and forced down her feelings, was drowned in a roar and stamping from the barn. It was her own health that they were drinking, and immediately afterwards a crowd began to pour forth from the wide portal. The older men settled to their pipes—an ample supply of long clay pipes, stacked anglewise, was provided for them. But the lissom young men and the giggling girls trooped across the rick-yard to the level meadow, which the sheep had cropped close, and which had been also carefully mown for the purpose. Had it rained, there would still have been dancing-room in the barn; but it was warm and dry, so they footed it on the sward.
Mrs Estcourt, a little shrinking and nervous, had to open it with the Squire; and, instead of finishing, they commenced with “Sir Roger de Coverley,” that fine old country dance. After a short time she left it, but the rest grew wilder and wilder. The dancing was like a maelstrom, sucking in all that came within its circling sound. Those who had at first held aloof, saying that they were too old or stiff, or didn’t know how, by degrees were drawn in, and frisked as merrily as the lads. So the wearyful women, whose hearts had already been made glad, hummed the tune and flung through it with a will. The children set up a dance of their own, joining hands in a ring. “Let’s jine in,” said Farmer Ruck to Farmer Hedges; and away they went with the stream—a sight not to be seen but once in fifty years. The Ancient, Daddy Pistol-legs, sitting in the barn and listening to the music, lifted his oaken staff and beat time upon an empty barrel. So lustily did the village band blow and fiddle that the carthorses in the meadows, who always cock up their ears at the sound of a drum or a trumpet, galloped to and fro with excitement.
The Squire’s gamekeeper by-and-by came along, with his gun under his arm, to see the fun, when Augustus Basset, with a fine sense of magnanimity, went up to him with his can and poured him out a foaming mug. But as he went to the house to replenish the can he could not forbear muttering to himself, “I can’t see whathewants to showhisface here for.”
The bats had now left the tiles of the barn, and were wheeling to and fro. But the band blew and fiddled, well refreshed by Augustus’s can, and the dancers whirled about yet more fast and furious. Sly couples, however, occasionally slipped aside to do a little courting. Tummas and Rause, after slowly sauntering up the hedgerow, came to a gateway, and, looking through, beheld the broad round face of the full moon placidly shining.
“Aw, thur be the moon, you; a’ be as big as a waggon-wheel,” said Tummas, putting his arm as far round her plump waist as it would go.
“Let I bide,” said Rause.
“I wooll kiss ee,” said Tummas sturdily.
“Thee shatn’t.”
There was some struggling, but Tummas succeeded with less difficulty than he expected. The damsel was relenting under the influence of long and faithful attentions. Tummas, like a wise man, hit while the iron was hot, and pressed for the publication of the banns.
“Aw,” said Rause, at last, with a finished air of languid weariness, as if quite worn out with importunity, that could not have been much improved on in a drawing-room, “aw, s’pose us med as well, you. If thee woot do’t,Ican’t help it, can ’ee?”
So the beautiful moonlight streamed down calmly upon the white ricks, the white loaded waggon, and the white stubble on the slightly rising ground. Still the blare of the brass echoed back from the house, the drum boomed, and the fiddle’s treble sounded over the mead where white skirts flickered round and round. But the mother’s heart, as she stood for a minute alone in her chamber gazing out at the night, was far, far away with her daughter, and almost as much with that other girl who had been to her as a second child.
In the barn the sweet fresh scent of flowers and wheat had long since been overcome by the fumes of tobacco. Big as the barn was, it was full of smoke and the odour of pipes and ale. Hedges and Ruck, not able to do much dancing, had come back, and sat in chairs in the doorway, very happily hobnobbing with Augustus to fill their glasses. At last, however, whether it was the unwonted whirling of the dance, or whether it was the xxxx ale, these two old cronies fell out, and abused each other as only old cronies can, to the intense amusement of the bystanders. These crowded up to listen to their mutual revelations.
“Thee shaved the brook,” said Ruck, shaking his fist. “Thee scooped out the ground on the Squire’s side, wur the bend wur, and put the mud on thy side. I’ll warn thee took nigh three lug of land.”
“I only straightened un,” explained Hedges, “when I cleaned un out. A’ wur terrable crooked.”
“Aw! (with scorn). Thee put all the straightness thee own side a-wuver!”
“Thee bist allus pinching the king’s highway,” shouted Hedges, stung by this last taunt, and only withheld from battle by two strong labourers. “Thee cuts thy hedges by the road inside, and lets um grow out on the green, a-most into the road. A sort of a rolling-fence, doan’t ee zee!”
“Beer in, bark out,” said Pistol-legs, sententiously.
The Squire, hearing the noise, came across from the house; and at sight of him the two would-be combatants quieted down; when Augustus thrust a great double-handled mug between them, from which they had to drink in token of restored amity.
“They won’t know nothing about it to-morrow morning,” said Augustus, as a man of experience, slightly unsteady on his own legs. “They’ll forget all about it.”
“I thenks it be a-most time to go whoam,” said Pistol-legs, rising with some difficulty. “Here, Dan’l!” to one of his numerous descendants. “Let I hould on by thee.”
It was abundantly evident that Pistol-legs was right; it was time to go home. Shortly afterwards the Squire returned again, and announced that the feast was over; when the assembly separated peacefully, after the wont of country folk, though for half an hour or more there came distant “Hurrays” and cheering as the groups went down the road.
About two o’clock in the morning, Jabez the shepherd, with his dog Job at his feet, was found astride of a stile in the meadows. He had stuck close to the barrel all day, and was roaring, at the top of a voice accustomed to shout across half a mile of down, the veracious ballad of “Gaarge Ridler’s Oven,” of noted memory:
“When I goes dead, as it med hap,Why, bury me under the good ale-tap!Wi’ voulded arms thur let me lie,Cheek by jowl my dog and I!”
“When I goes dead, as it med hap,Why, bury me under the good ale-tap!Wi’ voulded arms thur let me lie,Cheek by jowl my dog and I!”
|Chapter 1| |Chapter 2| |Chapter 3| |Chapter 4| |Chapter 5| |Chapter 6| |Chapter 7| |Chapter 8| |Chapter 9| |Chapter 10| |Chapter 11|