Anthony Lyveden Part 43

The fence about the estate was going up.

It was indeed high time. What was left of the old paling was in evil case. Worm and rot had corrupted with a free hand. There was hardly a chain, all told, that merited repair. So Gramarye was to have a new girdle. For the last week Winchester and his little band had been working at nothing else. A spell of fine weather favouring them, the work flew. Master and men worked feverishly, but for once in a way, without relish. The industry of the gnome was still there, but it had become nervous.

The reason for this must be made clear.

Always, till now, the little company had laboured in secret. The thick, dark, lonely woods of Gramarye had sheltered all they did. No strange, unsympathetic eyes had ever peered at their zeal, curious and hostile. This was as well. They had--all ten of them--a freemasonry which the World would not understand. They were observing rites which it was not seemly that the World should watch. Hitherto they had toiled in a harbour at which the World did not touch. Knowing naught else, they had come to take their privacy for granted. Now suddenly this precious postulate had been withdrawn. Since wellnigh the whole of the estate was edged by road, the erection of the fence at once cost them seclusion and showed them how dear they valued it.

All day long the World and his Wife pa.s.sed by, kindly, mocking, or silent--but always curious. The little fellowship became resentfully self-conscious.... Old wounds reopened; forgotten infirmities lifted up their heads. The three great sailors remembered that they were deaf. The little engineer noticed his trailing leg. The lean, grey-headed joiner thought of the wife who had left him: his fellow recalled the cries of a dying child. Anthony minded Miss French. Only the two old carters were spared the ordeal, their labour keeping them busy under the cover of the woods. Winchester himself felt the unusual exposure most of all. But that the fence was to give them the fee-simple of privacy, he would have abandoned the enterprise. It was not that he was ashamed, but, as an atelier, he had no use for a house-top. "Working in a shop-window," he styled it. If he detested publicity, his resentment of idle curiosity was painfully apparent.

Once or twice, indeed, he had broken out and, in a voice of thunder, bade loiterers begone. Happily they had always obeyed....

Anthony finished his lunch, gave a few pieces to Patch, quenched his thirst with a draught of well-water out of an old beer-bottle, and got upon his feet. Winchester had not reappeared, so he strolled across to the fir-tree which had been marked for destruction. As usual, his employer was perfectly right. It would be idle to carry the paling along this piece of bank and leave the tree standing to menace fence and foundation. The sooner it was out of the way, the better.

He crossed to where the sailors were crowded about the engineer, who was drawing a rough diagram upon the sawn face of timber to ill.u.s.trate some argument. Hard by, upon a log, the joiners were smoking and conversing in a low tone.

"Where are the axes, Blake? The Colonel and I are going to fell that fir."

The grey-headed joiner rose and stepped to a rough litter covered by a tarpaulin. The latter, being turned back, displayed a travelling armoury of tools. As he lifted two axes out of their slots, Winchester came thrusting out of the undergrowth.

"Ready, Lyveden?" he queried. "Right."

Anthony flung off his coat, made Patch fast to a convenient bush--you could not be too careful when trees were falling--and took an axe out of the carpenter's hand. The sailors had disappeared in the direction of the waggon. A moment later the two ex-officers were felling the tree.

It was Winchester's whim to use an axe where he could. He delighted in the pastime, and his tremendous physique enabled him to make such play with the tool as could few men who were not experts. Under his guidance, Anthony had proved an apt pupil, and the two, working together, could send a soft-wood tree toppling in no time. So engaged; they made a wonderful picture. Had any pa.s.sed by at this moment, they might have been pardoned for staring.

At his fourth stroke Anthony misjudged the angle, and his axe stuck.

As he leaned forward to lever it out of the wood, there was the whirr of steel falling, and he flung himself back with a cry. The other had struck without waiting for him to get clear.

As an error of judgment, the thing was inexplicable. A child of six would have known better. And an axe was no pop-gun.

For a moment he stared at Winchester like a man in a dream.

His employer blinked back....

Then his eyes narrowed.

"_You're_ getting curious, are you?" he said thickly.

In spite of himself, Anthony started.

Loosely nursing his implement, the other took a step to one side.

There was not much in the movement, but it placed him between Lyveden and the road.

Anthony kept his eyes riveted upon the powerful hands playing with the haft of the axe....

Twenty paces away a saw was going. Raised above the din could be heard the engineer's voice calling for the return of his pencil. A distant clatter of timber told that the waggon was being unloaded.

Anthony moistened his lips.

For another pair of eyes he would have given anything. Any moment now he would have to jump--one way or the other. It did not matter which.

The going was equally bad. But if he met an obstruction--caught his foot in a root--fell among briers at the outset, he knew he was doomed.

The impulse to glance to one side was terrible. Yet he dared not take his eyes from those terrible itching fingers. If only one of the men----

The noise of the saw stopped, and a piece of wood fell with a thud.

Blake's voice was heard asking the whereabouts of his rule. The answer was inaudible, but the next moment somebody started to move in the direction of the fir. As they pa.s.sed Patch, they chirruped.

In an instant the axe leapt to Winchester's shoulder, and Anthony jumped....

A moment later Blake parted the bushes, to see his employer wrench free an axe which had bitten into the ground, and hurl himself after Lyveden, who was on his feet again and running steadily about six paces ahead.

For a second the fellow stared stupidly. Then he let out a yell and started in pursuit.

The two ex-officers were evenly matched. If Anthony was the lighter and younger, Winchester had run for Oxford. Moreover, the latter knew the woods like the back of his hand. Anthony, who did not, ran blindly. This was not a moment to pick and choose. All the time he was desperately afraid of mire....

Briers tore at his legs, saplings whipped him across the face, a bough stabbed at his eyes and, as he turned, scored his brow savagely; a rabbit-hole trapped his foot and sent him flying, but he caught at a friendly trunk and swung round to find his balance and a new line before him. So quick was the turn, that the giant behind him lost the yard he had gained. Down through a grey beechwood, over a teeming brook, into a sodden drift of leaves, up through a welter of bracken, on to the silence of pine-needles, over the top of the ridge into the cursed undergrowth again, panting, straining, sobbing for breath, his temples bursting, his hands and arms bleeding, unutterable agony in his side, Lyveden tore like a madman. The pace was too awful to last.

Always the terror behind clung to his heels.

They were flying downhill now, and the giant's weight was telling. On the opposite side of the valley was another pinewood. If he could only reach that, between the good going and the up-gradient Anthony felt that there was a bare chance. The thing behind, however, was coming up.

The slope grew steeper ... precipitous ... With a shock, Lyveden realized that the giant must be almost above him, that he had only to drop.... With a frightful effort he swerved. A tangle of matted thorn bushes opposed him. Frantically he smashed his way through, kicking desperately at the suckers, plunging to find a footing--a holding--anything. For a moment he trod the air. Then he fell heavily, head first, into a ditch....

Only the sight of the road before him and the firm brown carpet beyond could have got him upon his feet. Dazed and winded, he staggered across into the pinewood and started to struggle up the slope....

A sudden thought came to him, and he glanced over his shoulder. The next moment he was leaning against a tree-trunk, gazing down into the road.

Winchester was flat upon his face, spread-eagled, scrabbling with his nails upon the roadway and cursing horribly. He seemed to be endeavouring to haul himself across. Had the road been a wall, you would have said he was trying to scale it....

He had made no progress by the time the others arrived, and was easily secured. Then ropes were sent for, and two of his magnificent sailors lashed his arms to his sides.

The end of a conversation held this same evening in the hall of Bell Hammer may be recorded.

"He's not himself, Aunt Harriet. There's something wrong. n.o.body could have been more gentle--or handsome. He was just wonderful. And then..." Valerie broke off and shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

"His work and the place itself--Gramarye, he calls it--seem to have got into his blood. You never saw such enthusiasm. It was unnatural."

"Anthony Lyveden," said Lady Touchstone, "is not the man to go mad."

"I know. But he ought to see somebody--a doctor. There was the queerest light in his eyes.... And he spoke strangely, as if he heard things. Who's the great man for--for brain trouble?"

"Sperm," said Lady Touchstone placidly. "But you're racking my brains for nothing. Anthony Lyveden's not----"

"I know he isn't!" cried Valerie. "That's what makes me certain there's something wrong. He's doing something, or taking something, or being given something, that's affecting his mind. It's not internal; it's some outside influence. If he didn't care, it'd be different.

But he does. He said so. But he didn't seem to have room for me and the estate at the same time. It had to be one or the other. It was like a bad dream--past dispute, but illogical."

"I should write to John Forest," said her aunt. "Ask him to come and stay. He's a wise man. I don't feel equal to telling you what to do.

I don't know what to tell you. If you'd come back and said that he wouldn't see you, I was going to Chorley Wood----"

"Chipping Norton," corrected Valerie.