“They are, by Jove!” assented the sporting guest as he took another gun, while the saturnine keeper smiled grimly. Meanwhile, Strelley Mill began to suffer under this gangrene. It was the outpost in the wilderness. It was an understood thing that none of the squire’s tenants had a gun.
“Well,” said the squire to Mr Saxton, “you have the land for next to nothing — next to nothing — at a rent really absurd. Surely the little that the rabbits eat — ”
“It’s not a little — come and look for yourself,” replied the farmer. The squire made a gesture of impatience.
“What do you want?” he inquired.
“Will you wire me off?” was the repeated request.
“Wire is — what does Halkett say — so much per yard — and it would come to — what did Halkett tell me now? — but a Harge sum. No, I can’t do it.”
“Well, I can’t live like this.”
“Have another glass of whisky? Yes, yes, I want another glass myself, and I can’t drink alone — so if I am to enjoy my glass — That’s it! Now surely you exaggerate a little. It’s not so bad.”
“I can’t go on like it, I’m sure.”
“Well, we’ll see about compensation — we’ll see. I’ll have a talk with Halkett, and I’ll come down and have a look at you. We all find a pinch somewhere — it’s nothing but humanity’s heritage.”
I was born in September, and love it best of all the months. There is no heat, no hurry, no thirst and weariness in corn harvest as there is in the hay. If the season is late, as is usual with us, then mid-September sees the corn still standing in stook. The mornings come slowly. The earth is like a woman married and fading; she does not leap up with a laugh for the first fresh kiss of dawn, but slowly, quietly, unexpectantly lies watching the waking of each new day. The blue mist, like memory in the eyes of a neglected wife, never goes from the wooded hill, and only at noon creeps from the near hedges. There is no bird to put a song in the throat of morning; only the crow’s voice speaks during the day. Perhaps there is the regular breathing hush of the scythe — even the fretful jar of the mowing-machine. But next day, in the morning, all is still again. The lying corn is wet, and when you have bound it, and lift the heavy sheaf to make the stook, the tresses of oats wreathe round each other and drop mournfully.
As I worked with my friend through the still mornings we talked endlessly. I would give him the gist of what I knew of chemistry, and botany, and psychology. Day after day I told him what the professors had told me; of life, of sex and its origins; of Schopenhauer and William James. We had been friends for years, and he was accustomed to my talk. But this autumn fruited the first crop of intimacy between us. I talked a great deal of poetry to him, and of rudimentary metaphysics. He was very good stuff. He had hardly a single dogma, save that of pleasing himself. Religion was nothing to him. So he heard all I had to say with an open mind, and understood the drift of things very rapidly, and quickly made these ideas part of himself.
We tramped down to dinner with only the clinging warmth of the sunshine for a coat. In this still, enfolding weather a quiet companionship is very grateful. Autumn creeps through everything. The little damsons in the pudding taste of September, and are fragrant with memory. The voices of those at table are softer and more reminiscent than at haytime.
Afternoon is all warm and golden. Oat sheaves are lighter; they whisper to each other as they freely embrace. The long, stout stubble tinkles as the foot brushes over it; the scent of the straw is sweet. When the poor, bleached sheaves are lifted out of the hedge, a spray of nodding wild raspberries is disclosed, with belated berries ready to drop; among the damp grass lush blackberries may be discovered. Then one notices that the last bell hangs from the ragged spire of foxglove. The talk is of people, an odd book; of one’s hopes — and the future; of Canada, where work is strenuous, but not life; where the plains are wide, and one is not lapped in a soft valley, like an apple that falls in a secluded orchard. The mist steals over the face of the warm afternoon. The tying-up is all finished, and it only remains to rear up the fallen bundles into shocks. The sun sinks into a golden glow in the west. The gold turns to red, the red darkens, like a fire burning low, the sun disappears behind the bank of milky mist, purple like the pale bloom on blue plums, and we put on our coats and go home.
In the evening, when the milking was finished, and all the things fed, then we went out to look at the snares. We wandered on across the stream and up the wild hillside. Our feet rattled through black patches of devil’s-bit scabius; we skirted a swim of thistle-down, which glistened when the moon touched it. We stumbled on through wet, coarse grass, over soft mole-hills and black rabbit-holes. The hills and woods cast shadows; the pools of mist in the valleys gathered the moonbeams in cold, shivery light.
We came to an old farm that stood on the level brow of the hill. The woods swept away from it, leaving a great clearing of what was once cultivated land. The handsome chimneys of the house, silhouetted against a light sky, drew my admiration. I noticed that there was no light or glow in any window, though the house had only the width of one room, and though the night was only at eight o’clock. We looked at the long, impressive front. Several of the windows had been bricked in, giving a pitiful impression of blindness; the places where the plaster had fallen off the walls showed blacker in the shadow. We pushed open the gate, and as we walked down the path, weeds and dead plants brushed our ankles. We looked in at a window. The room was lighted also by a window from the other side, through which the moonlight streamed on to the flagged floor, dirty, littered with paper, and wisps of straw. The hearth lay in the light, with all its distress of grey ashes, and piled cinders of burnt paper, and a child’s headless doll, charred and pitiful. On the border-line of shadow lay a round fur cap — a game-keeper’s cap. I blamed the moonlight for entering the desolate room; the darkness alone was decent and reticent. I hated the little roses on the illuminated piece of wallpaper, I hated that fireside.
With farmer’s instinct George turned to the outhouse. The cow-yard startled me. It was a forest of the tallest nettles I have ever seen — nettles far taller than my six feet. The air was soddened with the dank scent of nettles. As I followed George along the obscure brick path, I felt my flesh creep. But the buildings, when we entered them, were in splendid condition; they had been restored within a small number of years; they were well-timbered, neat, and cosy. Here and there we saw feathers, bits of animal wreckage, even the remnants of a cat, which we hastily examined by the light of a match. As we entered the stable there was an ugly noise, and three great rats half rushed at us and threatened us with their vicious teeth. I shuddered, and hurried back, stumbling over a bucket, rotten with rust, and so filled with weeds that I thought it part of the jungle. There was a silence made horrible by the faint noises that rats and flying bats give out. The place was bare of any vestige of corn or straw or hay, only choked with a growth of abnormal weeds. When I found myself free in the orchard I could not stop shivering. There were no apples to be seen overhead between us and the clear sky. Either the birds had caused them to fall, when the rabbits had devoured them, or someone had gathered the crop.
“This,” said George bitterly, “is what the mill will come to.”
“After your time,” I said.
“My time — my time. I shall never have a time. And I shouldn’t be surprised if Father’s time isn’t short — with rabbits and one thing and another. As it is, we depend on the milk-round, and on the carting which I do for the council. You can’t call it farming. We’re a miserable mixture of farmer, milkman, greengrocer, and carting contractor. It’s a shabby business.”
“You have to live,” I retorted.
“Yes — but it’s rotten. And Father won’t move — and he won’t change his methods.”
“Well — what about you?”
“Me! What should I change for? — I’m comfortable at home. As for my future, it can look after itself, so long as nobody depends on me.”
“Laissez-faire,” said I, smiling.
“This is no laissez-faire,” he replied, glancing round. “This is pulling the nipple out of your lips, and letting the milk run away sour. Look there!”
Through the thin wall of moonlit mist that slid over the hillside we could see an army of rabbits bunched up, or hopping a few paces forward, feeding.
We set off at a swinging pace down the hill, scattering the hosts. As we approached the fence that bounded the Mill fields, he exclaimed, “Hullo!” and hurried forward. I followed him, and observed the dark figure of a man rise from the hedge. It was a game-keeper. He pretended to be examining his gun. As we came up he greeted us with a calm “Good evenin’!”
George replied by investigating the little gap in the hedge. “I’ll trouble you for that snare,” he said.
“Will yer?” answered Annable, a broad, burly, black-faced fellow. “And I should like ter know what you’re doin’ on th’ wrong side th’ ‘edge?”
“You can see what we’re doing — hand over my snare — and the rabbit,” said George angrily.
“What rabbit?” said Annable, turning sarcastically to me. “You know well enough — an’ you can hand it over — or — ” George replied.
“Or what? Spit it out! The sound won’t kill me — ” the man grinned with contempt.
“Hand over here!” said George, stepping up to the man in a rage.
“Now don’t!” said the keeper, standing stock-still, and looking unmovedly at the proximity of George:
“You’d better get off home — both you an’ ‘im. You’ll get neither snare nor rabbit — see!”
“We will see!” said George, and he made a sudden move to get hold of the man’s coat. Instantly he went staggering back with a heavy blow under the left ear.
“Damn brute!” I ejaculated, bruising my knuckles against the fellow’s jaw. Then I too found myself sitting dazedly on the grass, watching the great skirts of his velveteens flinging round him as if he had been a demon, as he strode away. I got up, pressing my chest where I had been struck. George was lying in the hedge-bottom. I turned him over, and rubbed his temples, and shook the drenched grass on his face. He opened his eyes and looked at me, dazed. Then he drew his breath quickly, and put his hand to his head.
“He — he nearly stunned me,” he said.
“The devil!” I answered.
“I wasn’t ready.”
“No.”
“Did he knock me down?”
“Ay — me too.”
He was silent for some time, sitting limply. Then he pressed his hand against the back of his head, saying, “My head does sing!!” He tried to get up, but failed. “Good God — being knocked into this state by a damned keeper!”
“Come on,” I said, “let’s see if we can’t get indoors.”
“No!” he said quickly, “we needn’t tell them — don’t let them know.”
I sat thinking of the pain in my own chest, and wishing I could remember hearing Annable’s jaw smash, and wishing that my knuckles were more bruised than they were — though that was bad enough. I got up, and helped George to rise. He swayed, almost pulling me over. But in a while he could walk unevenly.
“Am I,” he said, “covered with clay and stuff?”
“Not much,” I replied, troubled by the shame and confusion with which he spoke.
“Get it off,” he said, standing still to be cleaned.
I did my best. Then we walked about the fields for a time, gloomy, silent, and sore.
Suddenly, as we went by the pond-side, we were startled by great, swishing black shadows that swept just above our heads. The swans were flying up for shelter, now that a cold wind had begun to fret Nethermere. They swung down on to the glassy millpond, shaking the moonlight in flecks across the deep shadows; the night rang with the clacking of their wings on the water; the stillness and calm were broken; the moonlight was furrowed and scattered, and broken. The swans, as they sailed into shadow, were dim, haunting spectres; the wind found us shivering.
“Don’t — you won’t say anything?” he asked as I was leaving him.
“No.”
“Nothing at all — not to anybody?”
“No.”
“Good night.”
About the end of September, our countryside was alarmed by the harrying of sheep by strange dogs. One morning, the squire, going the round of his fields as was his custom, to his grief and horror found two of his sheep torn and dead in the hedge-bottom, and the rest huddled in a corner swaying about in terror, smeared with blood. The squire did not recover his spirits for days.
There was a report of two grey wolvish dogs. The squire’s keeper had heard yelping in the fields of Dr Collins of the Abbey, about dawn. Three sheep lay soaked in blood when the labourer went to tend the flocks.
Then the farmers took alarm. Lord, of the White House farm, intended to put his sheep in pen, with his dogs in charge. It was Saturday, however, and the lads ran off to the little travelling theatre that had halted at Westwold. While they sat open-mouthed in the theatre, gloriously nicknamed the “Blood-Tub”, watching heroes die with much writhing and heaving, and struggling up to say a word, and collapsing without having said it, six of their silly sheep were slaughtered in the field. At every house it was inquired’ of the dog; nowhere had one been loose.
Mr Saxton had some thirty sheep on the Common. George determined that the easiest thing was for him to sleep out with them. He built a shelter of hurdles interlaced with brushwood, and in the sunny afternoon we collected piles of bracken, browning to the ruddy winter-brown now. He slept there for a week, but that week aged his mother like a year. She was out in the cold morning twilight watching, with her apron over her head, for his approach. She did not rest with the thought of him out on the Common.
Therefore, on Saturday night he brought down his rugs, and took up Gyp to watch in his stead. For some time we sat looking at the stars over the dark hills. Now and then a sheep coughed, or a rabbit rustled beneath the brambles, and Gyp whined. The mist crept over the grose-bushes, and the webs on the brambles were white — the devil throws his net over the blackberries as soon as September’s back is turned, they say.
“I saw two fellows go by with bags and nets,” said George, as we sat looking out of his little shelter.
“Poachers,” said I. “Did you speak to them?”
“No — they didn’t see me. I was dropping asleep when a rabbit rushed under the blanket, all of a shiver, and a whippet dog after it. I gave the whippet a punch in the neck, and he yelped off. The rabbit stopped with me quite a long time — then it went.”
“How did you feel?”
“I didn’t care. I don’t care much what happens just now. Father could get along without me, and Mother has the children. I think I shall emigrate.”
“Why didn’t you before?”
“Oh, I don’t know. There are a lot of little comforts and interests at home that one would miss. Besides, you feel somebody in your own countryside, and you’re nothing in a foreign part, I expect.”
“But you’re going?”
“What is there to stop here for? The valley is all running wild and unprofitable. You’ve no freedom for thinking of what the other folks think of you, and everything round you keeps the same, and so you can’t change yourself — because everything you look at brings up the same old feeling, and stops you from feeling fresh things. And what is there that’s worth anything? — What’s worth having in my life?”
“I thought,” said I, “your comfort was worth having.”
He sat still and did not answer.
“What’s shaken you out of your nest?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve not felt the same since that row with Annable. And Lettie said to me, ‘Here, you can’t live as you like — in any way or circumstance. You’re like a bit out of those coloured marble mosaics in the hall, you have to fit in your own set, fit into your own pattern, because you’re put there from the first. Bu
t you don’t want to be like a fixed bit of a mosaic — you want to fuse into life, and melt and mix with the rest of folk, to have some things burned out of you — ’ She was downright serious.”
“Well, you need not believe her. When did you see her?”
“She came down on Wednesday, when I was getting the apples in the morning. She climbed a tree with me, and there was a wind, that was why I was getting all the apples, and it rocked us, me right up at the top, she sitting half-way down holding the basket. I asked her didn’t she think that free kind of life was the best, and that was how she answered me.”
“You should have contradicted her.”
“It seemed true. I never thought of it being wrong, in fact.”
“Come — that sounds bad.”
“No — I thought she looked down on us — on our way of life. I thought she meant I was like a toad in a hole.”
“You should have shown her different.”
“How could I when I could see no different?”
“It strikes me you’re in love.”
He laughed at the idea, saying, “No, but it is rotten to find that there isn’t a sine thing you have to be proud of.”
“This is a new tune for you.”
He pulled the grass moodily.
“And when do you think of going?”
“Oh — I don’t know — I’ve said nothing to Mother. Not yet — at any rate, not till spring.”
“Not till something has happened,” said I.
“What?” he asked.
“Something decisive.”
“I don’t know what can happen — unless the squire turns us out.”
“No?” I said.
He did not speak.
“You should make things happen,” said I.
“Don’t make me feel a worse fool, Cyril,” he replied despairingly.
Gyp whined and jumped, tugging her chain to follow us. The grey blurs among the blackness of the bushes were resting sheep. A chill, dim mist crept along the ground.
“But, for all that, Cyril,” he said, “to have her laugh at you across the table; to hear her sing as she moved about, before you are washed at night, when the fire’s warm, and you’re tired; to have her sit by you on the hearth-seat, close and soft...”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 8
