V
They came down the road like a plantation posse, four mounted, with slung shotguns, two on foot leading dogs, as though flushing a dangerous beast into the open. Rudd, meeting them on his way up to help Honeyman plant a windbreak in the water meadows, stared at them in amazement. They looked so theatrical that he could not imagine for one instant what they sought, or why they looked so grim about it, so he called to Kitchens, the agent, ‘What’s going on, Harry?’ and the agent flung back, ‘You know what’s going on, John!’ Rudd, irritated by his tone, caught his horse by the bridle and said, ‘Now, why in hell should I ask you what’s going on if I knew what’s going on?’ and then Kitchens looked slightly confused as the party surrounded Rudd. ‘Well, maybe you don’t, John,’ he said, ‘maybe nobody has told you yet but we mean business, I can tell you that. Last night we almost caught Smut Potter, after he had killed a buck. He showed fight and Nick Buller is badly hurt. He had his face smashed in with a gun butt and they’ve taken him to hospital. We’re looking for Smut now, so if you know where he is you’d best say, and save everyone a lot of trouble. My chaps aren’t in the mood to fool around!’
John Rudd’s jaw dropped. ‘Great God!’ he said, ‘isn’t this a matter for the police?’
‘Yes, it is,’ Kitchens told him, ‘but you know how that lazy devil Price goes about his business. The Whinmouth police were told early this morning but by the time they get over here Smut will be miles away. We thought we’d flush him out and we’re on our way up to the Coombe right now. Come on, lads,’ and he kicked his horse.
‘Wait a minute!’ Rudd cried, running alongside, ‘you don’t imagine Smut will be waiting for you in the Dell, do you?’
‘We’ve got to start somewhere and we can begin with that gypsy mother of his. She’ll know something and she’ll either tell us or face a charge of compounding a felony.’
Rudd said, ‘Listen here, Harry, Low Coombe is one of our farms and if you’re going up there to raise hell I’m going with you!’, and he ran back into the farm buildings and threw a saddle over Honeyman’s pony, Squirrel. By the time he had the bridle on and was mounted, however, Gilroy’s men were half-a-mile down the road and he had to gallop to catch them up. He had meant to send a message up to the house to inform Paul but there was no time and when he followed them into the Dell Kitchens was already hectoring Old Tamer and one of the girls. Presently Meg, the other girl and the Potters’ simple child, Hazel, came out and they all stood in a tight circle, like partridges roosting in the open, with Gilroy men posted round them like sentinels. Rudd pushed his way through to them.
‘Smut’s in real trouble this time,’ he told Tamer, shortly, ‘so if you do know where he is you had best tell me. I’ll undertake to hand him over to Police Sergeant Price. They won’t dare maul him in my presence!’
Meg said, sullenly, ‘We dorn know where he be, Mr Rudd, but if us did, do you think us’d tell’ee?’
‘If you hide him you’ll be in gaol yourself before you know it, the whole tribe of you!’ Kitchens growled, but Meg only spat on the ground and said ‘Aw, the devil take you all!’, and walked calmly back to her farm followed by the two elder girls.
Rudd saw the veins swell in Kitchens’ temples and heard the men muttering behind him. He said, ignoring Tamer, ‘You’d better follow me to Sam Potter’s cottage in the woods. He might know something!’ and Kitchens said, ‘All right, John, but don’t try any tricks. These chaps are after blood and so would you be if you’d seen Buller’s face last night!’, and they rode out of the Dell with John Rudd leading, crossing the side of the hill and the big meadow and descending the long wooded slope to the mere.
‘Listen here, Harry,’ John said, as they went along, ‘this is a ridiculous business and you know it! What’ll happen if we run into Smut? They’ll manhandle him and I shall be a witness, so you’ll soon be joining Smut in the dock! You’d far better leave it to the police and Mr Craddock.’
‘Craddock,’ said Kitchens, with a short laugh, ‘Craddock’s a Radical, isn’t he, I wouldn’t put it past him to be thinking Smut Potter had every right to that buck!’
‘Then you don’t know Craddock!’ John said, shortly. ‘I’ll answer for him. There’s no harm in calling on Sam Potter but after that I’ll see you all off our land and for your own sakes as much as Potter’s! This isn’t Czarist Russia and we aren’t living in the Middle Ages!’
Kitchens seemed worried at this and dropped back to hold a brief consultation with his men, while Rudd dismounted and entered the cottage to find Sam and his wife at breakfast. He told them what had happened and asked if they could tell him where Smut might have gone.
‘Lord bless you, no, I can’t,’ Sam said, looking startled and unhappy, ‘he might be in any one o’ a hundred plaaces, Mr Rudd, and they’ll have the works o’ the world ter catch un, now he’s won clear! Mashed in Nick Buller’s face, you say? And with a gun? Well, an’ what was they up to for such a thing to happen? Maybe Smut was on’y standin’ up fer hisself, like anybody would?’
‘He was poaching deer,’ Rudd said, ‘and they had every right to take him.’
‘Aye,’ Sam said, slowly ‘but it depends on how they went about it, dorn it?’
‘Perhaps, but if you find out where he is tell me or the Squire before you tell them, understand?’
‘Aye,’ Sam said, readily, ‘I’ll do that, Mr Rudd. Smut? Well, he’s wild all right, but he baint vi’lent, and you can tell em zo from me!’
Kitchens seemed in a somewhat more reasonable frame of mind when he rejoined them. Perhaps the hopelessness of flushing Smut Potter into the open had occurred to him, or perhaps he felt unequal to controlling the Gilroy keepers in their present mood. At all events he agreed to return to Shallowford and make a formal report to the Squire and sent the men home with a warning to be careful how they handled Smut if they were lucky enough to find him. They rode off still muttering and growling and Rudd had the impression that this business coming on top of Paul’s personal quarrel with Lord Gilroy would be likely to widen the rift to a feud and that it was all very childish and unnecessary. He had always got along very well with Kitchens.
‘I’ll give you a piece of advice, Harry,’ he said, as they approached the house, ‘don’t try and browbeat that young man. He isn’t nearly as green as he looks and he’s still very new to our kind of problems. It was Gilroy’s manner that drove him into the Liberal camp.’ Kitchens said, sourly, ‘I’m sick of the whole business, John! Smut Potter is a waster, of course, but every landowner has poaching problems, and it needn’t have come to this. But Gilroy means to make an issue of it and when Potter is laid by the heels he’ll be for it! It won’t make for peace and quiet hereabouts, I’m thinking!’
When they handed over their horses to Ikey in the yard they saw that Paul was already aware of what had happened for the police sergeant’s trap was there and Chivers, the groom, said he was in the office with the Squire now. ‘Has anything serious happened, sir?’ he wanted to know but Rudd grunted, ‘Serious enough!’ and left it at that.
They found Paul and the police sergeant in the library with Grace, whose presence disconcerted Kitchens, and when Rudd explained that they had been to the Dell and Sam Potter’s but had drawn a blank the sergeant said, ‘Buller has a fractured jaw and two teeth through his tongue but there’s no question of him not making a recovery. I saw his lordship before I came over, and he seems to think it should be a charge of attempted murder. It’s not for me to decide, of course, but my inspector will want to know the full facts even if we do take our time catching him. He has a record, you know.’
Grace said, unexpectedly, ‘Yes, he has. Two spells of fourteen days for trespassing in pursuit of conies!’ and everyone looked at her.
‘That’s so ma’am,’ said Kitchens, ‘but this is surely a far more serious matter.’
‘I don’t see that it has to be,’ Grace said, ignoring Pa
ul’s glance. ‘As far as I can see there were five or six of you on the spot and we have yet to hear Potter’s version.’
‘No doubt we shall, when we catch him!’ said the sergeant pacifically but Grace shrugged and said, ‘Will we? I doubt it! If I was facing a half-a-dozen Gilroy witnesses ready to swear my life away, I think I should stay out of reach as long as possible!’
Kitchens said, ‘I was present when it happened, Mrs Craddock. Buller jumped on him just as he was lifting the buck and when we came up our man was unconscious on the ground.’
‘Then you weren’t actually present, were you?’ she said, ‘and I also hear Buller’s gun was snapped off at the stock.’
Paul said, crisply, ‘Leave this to me, Grace! John and myself will sort it out.’
‘Oh, you’ll sort it out I don’t doubt,’ said Grace, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her overall, ‘but neither you, nor John Rudd, nor the sergeant here will be able to ensure that Potter gets a fair trial, with Lord Gilroy pressing the charges. Why don’t we all admit it?’
The policeman looked miserably embarrassed and Paul said, ‘Listen, Grace …’ but she turned and walked out of the room and Rudd noticed that her manner of exit had the effect of hardening Kitchens’ mouth. Paul said, half-apologetically, ‘My wife and I crossed swords with Lord Gilroy on another matter, Sergeant, but that need have no bearing on this. If I get word of Potter I’ll do my utmost to bring him in without further trouble, you can rely on that!’
‘I’m sure I can, sir,’ Price said, in a tone that made Rudd doubt it.
There seemed nothing else to say so, after both the sergeant and Kitchens had refused a drink, they all left. Rudd said, slowly, ‘That wasn’t very wise of her, Paul. Maybe you’d best tell me what you feel about it, personally.’
‘She has a point, John. It might be difficult to get an unprejudiced hearing in the circumstances, but we could get Smut a good lawyer to take care of that, couldn’t we?’
‘You’d want to do that?’
‘Why, yes, of course I would, and so would Grace. He’s one of our people, poacher or not, isn’t he?’ And then, ruefully, ‘I don’t seem to be able to put a foot right in Gilroy’s direction, do I?’
‘What has it to do with you? Smut Potter is jumped by Gilroy’s keepers in the act of taking game. He hits out and lands himself in this kind of mess. Damn it, man, you can’t be responsible for the behaviour of every Tom Fool in the Valley, can you?’
‘No,’ said Paul, ‘I don’t suppose I can, John, but I have an uneasy suspicion I’m partly responsible for the viciousness with which Gilroy is pressing charges. Battery and assault is one thing, attempted murder quite another. A man can go to prison for ten years or more for that, can’t he?’
‘Not in these circumstances,’ John said, ‘so stop worrying about it. If Smut keeps hidden for a while and Buller picks up, I daresay everybody’s tempers will soon cool.’
‘You really think that, John?’ and he sounded, Rudd thought, pathetically eager to be reassured. ‘Yes, I do!’ Rudd went on. ‘After all, it sounds bad to begin with, a man surprised in the act of committing a felony using a gun to resist arrest but what does it amount to really? A scuffle in the bushes after dark. If Smut had fired a shot it might be different but he didn’t and all I can say is it’s a great pity he didn’t use his fists. A good solicitor ought to be able to get him off with six months. Poaching is a national sport about here and has been since the time of William Rufus.’
‘Well, I hope you’re right,’ said Paul, ‘I’d better find Grace and tell her. She’s very worried about it.’
‘You do that,’ said John, but to himself, as Paul went on to the terrace, he murmured, ‘You’ll get little comfort there, my lad! She’s raised Kitchens’ hackles just as I’d managed to lower them and every word she said will be stable gossip at Heronslea in an hour!’ Grumpily he stumped out across the water meadows, reflecting that he could cheerfully wring Smut Potter’s neck himself for landing them all in such a desperately embarrassing situation.
It was not until Paul was alone with Grace after supper that he was able to pursue the matter. He said, ‘It would have been better for everybody if you hadn’t said that in front of Kitchens, Grace, and if he or Gilroy come here again I’d feel a lot happier if you kept out of it!’
She did not resent this rebuke, seeming to have expected it. ‘I’m not likely to seek either of them out,’ she said, and then, looking steadily at him, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’m sorry for what I said! Somebody had to say it.’
He flushed, saying sharply, ‘Why? Why couldn’t you let things take their course? Or at least leave this kind of thing to me?’
‘That’s what you’re upset about, isn’t it?’
It was the closest they had yet come to an open quarrel and Paul wanted, above all, to be as honest as she always was. He said, flatly, ‘Yes, I suppose it is, Grace. No man likes his wife to do his talking for him and I think you made me look a fool.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m sincerely sorry about that but it had to be said all the same. You still don’t know what you’re up against down here and sometimes I don’t think you ever will! If the Gilroys could lay hands on Potter now he would appear in court on a stretcher but that isn’t what’s so important. They’ll pull every string within reach to get him gaoled for half a lifetime and partly to teach you your place! If I did speak out of turn this morning it was in your interests as well as Potter’s.’
‘I think you’re exaggerating,’ he argued but he felt uneasy all the same. ‘Anyway, if I locate him I’ll make sure the police get to him first.’
‘I don’t doubt that you would,’ she replied, still speaking very calmly, ‘but that wouldn’t stop him getting a savage sentence!’
‘Damn it, Grace, don’t let’s overlook his liability,’ he said, feeling cornered. ‘He bashed a man’s face in and the chap is still in hospital.’
‘What do you imagine they would have done to Smut if they had laid hands on him? When I was a little girl here a Whinmouth poacher was peppered with a shotgun and left to bleed to death in Gilroy coverts. The verdict at the inquest was “Accidental Death” but everybody knew who was responsible.’
‘I’ve still got to do what I think is right,’ he said. ‘I happen to believe in civilised conduct.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said in the same tone, ‘and that’s why you should have stayed in a city,’ and she left him to his own gloomy company.
They did not refer to it again until they were going to bed. The implication that he was unqualified for his responsibilities rankled with him but he was too unsure of himself to make an issue of it.
‘We don’t have to quarrel over this, Grace,’ he said, when he blew out the lamp and was getting into bed beside her.
‘No, we don’t, Paul,’ she said, ‘because, luckily for all of us, the issue has resolved itself already. Smut Potter is clear away by now and they’ll have to take it out of the next poor devil they catch contravening the Ten Commandments and the landed gentry’s Enclosure Acts! Good night, Paul,’ and she turned away. He lay awake a long time listening to the night sounds of Priory Wood and the muted hunting clamour of the river banks, dismayed by this unforseeable rift that had opened between them but wondering, with the detached part of his mind, how much of his land and Gilroy’s across the Teazel had once been common pasture, available to everyone in the Valley.
Grace was wrong in her estimate of Smut’s margin of safety. At the moment, and every night until Midsummer Eve, he was no more than two miles away, and far less as the heron flew from the river to the edge of Shallowford Mere. When the Valley worked he slept and when the Valley slept he was at one with the foxes in the glades further east and the otters fishing under the logs near his hideout.
He could have been gone by now, up the country, over to Ireland, to America even, for Meg had begun s
craping money together the moment Hazel brought news of his whereabouts, and by now she somehow accumulated enough to spirit him out of reach of everybody, providing he travelled by night. But to her dismay he was still there, lying all day in his holt under the fallen beech and drifting about the woods all night, living on what he trapped and the food that Hazel floated down to him according to instructions given the day after he had gone into hiding. None of them had actually seen him, for even when he first made contact with Hazel he remained out of sight in the foliage that grew down to the water’s edge and told her how to keep in touch with him by using the stream that flowed past the mouth of his lair. She had obeyed his instructions to the letter so that now he had most things a man could need, a blanket, a stewpot, tobacco and trap wires, with bread, salt and a stub of blacklead on which he could scrawl messages.
Yet it was not comfort that kept him here or fear of the Gilroy keepers and police, nor even the news that Nick Buller was now out of hospital, with a lopsided jaw and a slight impediment in his speech, caused by the passage of two teeth through his tongue. He was still there because he could not bring himself to turn his back on the fields and woods that had enclosed him all his life or separate himself from his kin in the Dell. He knew every bush and tree in the thirty-odd square miles about the Coombe but never once, not even for a day, had he travelled further afield, or wanted to and now that he was faced with the prospect of leaving it all and perhaps never coming back his resolution faltered and he hung on, waiting for some miraculous turn of fortune that would make everything the same as it had been before that unlucky incident in Heronslea plantation. He had never been called upon to make a decision as final as this, that would shatter the rhythm of his life and throw him among strangers, an act that would, in a sense, not only deprive him of his means of livelihood but compel him to come to terms with people who worked from dawn to dusk, lived in brick houses, raised families and paid rates and taxes. And so it was, in the end, that the decision had to be made for him by others, after news of his whereabouts leaked outside the clan.
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 33
