Secret Bread Part 16

CHAPTER VI

THE BUSH-BEATING

In all the bleak country "the wood" represented mystery, glamour. It made a dark wedge between two folds of moorland, its tree-tops level with the piled boulders on the northern side, like a deeply green tarn lapping the edge of some rocky sh.o.r.e. Oak, beech and ash, hawthorn, sycamore and elder, went to make the solid bosses of verdure that filled the valley, while at one end a grove of furs stood up blackly, winter and summer. Giant laurels, twisted and writhing creations of a nightmare, spread their snake-like branches beneath the rocky wall at one side of the wood, and in spring they shook their pale, sickly ta.s.sels in a gloom that was as green, as freckled with shallows of light, as underseas. A stream gurgled through its depths, increasing the illusion of a watery element. All over the sloping floor of the wood, where the red leaves drifted high in due season, huge boulders were piled, moss-grown, lividly decked with orange fungi, and surrounded by a thick undergrowth of holly and elder bushes. This place had no name beyond "the wood"--enough distinction in that county where a copse of ash or fir was all that scarred moor and pasture with shadow. It was just within Ishmael's property, marking his most inland boundary, and he cherished it as something dearer than all his money-yielding acres. It had been his ambition to make it the home of every bird that built its nest there, of every badger or rabbit or toad or slow-worm that sheltered in its fastnesses. No life should cry there for the teeth of the trap, no feathers scatter for the brutal violating of the sheltering bushes. Thus Ishmael, but otherwise Archelaus.... There was little doubt what he and his fellows had come for: there were a half-dozen of them when all were met, and all carried cudgels or flails made of knotted cloth, and walked cautiously, whispering to each other lest the birds should take premature flight. Ishmael and Killigrew lagged behind them, waiting for certainty before discovering themselves.

It was deadlily dark in the wood, with a darkness more unbroken than the stillness which yet seemed part of it. A thousand little sc.r.a.ping noises broke the quiet air, chill and dank. Leaves pattered against each other, twigs rubbed faintly, brittle things broke under the lightest foot.

Still hardly a wing unfolded ever so little, not a distressful chirp heralded the slaughter that threatened. Gradually, to eyes growing used to the gloom, differing shades of darkness became apparent; it was faintly marked by them as the silence by the sounds....

Still the feathers were unstirred on the b.r.e.a.s.t.s where tiny beaks were thrust in sleep; round, bright eyes were filmed by the delicate lids; the bushes held undisturbed the little lives confided to them.

Suddenly a funnel of light flared into the darkness, intensifying it, waking into vivid green a full-foliaged holly; a rain of blows echoed back and forth through the night, a whirr of bewildered wings mingled with it, a frantic piping that was drowned in the clamour even as it burst forth. High overhead the startled wood-pigeons flew out into the free air above the tree-tops, their clamour filling the whole place with the beating of wings that in the dark seemed mighty as the wings of avenging angels, but availed their tiny brethren nothing. In that one minute there fell, beaten into the undergrowth to die miserably or flailed into the greedy hands and caps of the murderers, some half a hundred innocent and lovely lives, all of them torn out in an agony of fear without knowing why. Ishmael ran forward, not even hearing his own voice as it shouted oaths he never knew he had used.

The men stopped at their work, caps and sticks in hand, staring stupidly; only Archelaus, after a first moment's pause, showed no astonishment. It was not till long afterwards that it occurred to Ishmael to wonder whether his brother had all along known he followed, and it was a question that was to remain for ever unanswered. Archelaus lifted his lantern, which first gleamed on the red surprise of John-w.i.l.l.y Jacka's face, then on the foolish mask of Silly Peter, the local idiot, who stood slackly agape between a couple of miners. Then Archelaus brought the light round, to fall on Ishmael's pale face ere swinging it on to Killigrew.

"Lads, here's the young gentlemen from the Manor!" he cried--"come to see a bit o' bush-beaten; let's show 'en, shall us?" And, still holding his lantern so that its light fell on them, he deliberately let drive with his great stick at a branch where a wounded bird was crushed upon a sharp twig.

Ishmael sprang forward and laid hands on the stick, twisting at it with all his strength. Archelaus gave for a flash under the sudden onslaught, but, recovering himself at once, held the stick steady with one hand against all the twisting of Ishmael's two. He laughed a little as he did so. Silly Peter, under the impression that it was all part of the fun, laughed too.

"You beast!... you beast!..." Ishmael was saying as he tussled.

Killigrew caught at his arm.

"Say something to them, Ishmael; say something to them. Don't go on like that ..." he muttered urgently.

Ishmael turned on him a face distorted with pa.s.sion. "Say something--what is there to say to brutes like that? Ah!..."

Archelaus had thrown the lantern underfoot and trampled it out; a darkness impenetrable to dazzled eyes enwrapped them. Killigrew, keeping his head amidst the scuffing he heard, dived for where he had seen young Jacka standing in guilty stillness, his dark lantern dangling from his hand. Almost at once Killigrew felt his own fingers meet its smooth, slightly hot surface; he wrenched it away and fumbled desperately at the slide. A beam, pale but wavering, shot out into the darkness as he succeeded in his effort, and by its light, as men in moments of emotion may see some one thing or action painted on their retina by a lightning flash, he saw Archelaus bringing his stick, m.u.f.fled in a coat, down on Ishmael's head. The next second the blow fell--there had not been time for Archelaus to check the impetus of the blow when the discovering light flared onto him. There came the heavy sound of a body falling on the thick-piled leaves. Archelaus stumbled up against Killigrew, knocking the lantern from his hand; it hit against a boulder and went out.

It was the voice of Archelaus that broke the stricken stillness.

"Don't 'ee move, you chaps ..." it said, in tones that made a ghastly essay at confidence and trembled despite his efforts. "I fear Silly Peter's done someone a hurt.... I saw en striking out.... Why ded'n 'ee all keep still same as I ded ... someone light a lantern...." Followed a sound of fumbling, and then a light wavered in Killigrew's fingers; he picked up and lit a lantern. By its light could be seen Archelaus holding a bewildered Silly Peter, whose mouth and eyes hung open with fear, while from his hand depended a stick wrapped in a coat. Even in that dim light wet marks could be seen on it. The brain of Archelaus, perhaps stirred to activity by his first inspiration of attack as much as by the hatred that had suddenly welled up uncontrollably, had for once worked with a desperate quickness. Everyone stared at one another over the body of Ishmael that lay huddled on its face in the leaves.

"Help me pick him up, you two," ordered Killigrew to Jacka; "and you there, go ahead with the light. Who is the fastest runner?"

"I'll go for doctor," said Archelaus. "'Tes my right. He'n my brother."

He boggled a little at the word.

"You!" began Killigrew, then stopped. His quick intuition had told him how important it was to Archelaus also to be the first to get the doctor. Killigrew was not a cynic, even at that age; he was merely supremely utilitarian.

"Off you go," he said, "and remember I shall be timing you. The doctor must be at Cloom as soon as we are."

"He shall be," declared Archelaus, and meant it. He kept his word. By the time that Ishmael had been laid beneath the drooping Christ who had seen so much of pa.s.sion and misery, of birth and death, in that same bed spread before Him, the doctor was there too. And round the bed cl.u.s.tered as many distraught women, and men hovering at their skirts, as gathered at the foot of the plaster Calvary above. Even the intent dog was not wanting, as poor Wanda, conscious of disaster to the being she worshipped, whimpered and shivered, her back curved in an arch of distress, by the head of the bed.

CHAPTER VII

THE HEART OF THE CYCLONE

There are times in life when our affairs are at some high crest, when all emotion and the processes of thought become intensified and crystallised: the slightest incident makes a deep-bitten impression; the most momentary effect of colour or lighting, or the tones of a voice, remain in the memory indissolubly connected with the phase the mind is pa.s.sing through. Every sense is hung upon a hair-trigger, and even irrelevant things touch more sharply than usual, in the same way that a magnifying gla.s.s reveals the minutest pores and hairs on the hand holding whatever the primary object to be looked at may be. They are mercifully few, those periods of intense clarity, for they leave a mind and heart deadened and surfeited, that slowly awake to the dull consciousness of pain, even as the body, numbed by a severe accident, only after a while awakes to sentient aching. Ishmael pa.s.sed into this phase in the first days after the scene in the wood, before physically he was conscious of much beyond a dull throbbing in his head.

He lay and stared from out his bandages, feigning more stupor than he felt in his pa.s.sionate craving to keep off all discussion and inquiry.

He lay and watched the spring sunlight creep over the whitewashed wall opposite, and every slow black fly that crawled across the patch of warmth might have been crawling over his raw nerves. He almost expected the surface of the wall to contract like a skin and twitch them off, as he felt his own skin doing out of sympathy.

In the night, when the wall was filmed with shadow save for the faint flickering of a rushlight that made great rounds of light upon the dimness, then he saw all his life at Cloom pa.s.sing in a shadow show across the wall, crawling like the flies.... He was never delirious; physically his fine and sane const.i.tution was recovering well from a nasty blow--it was merely as though all his mind had been set a little faster, like a newly-regulated clock, a clock set to work backwards; and he could hear its ticking through all the sounds of everyday life that, hushed as much as might be, came into his room.

He felt sick of it all, sick of the striving at Cloom, of the quarrels with Archelaus, of Tom's cat-like attacks, of his mother's plaints, of the cruelties he felt spoiling the whole countryside like a leprosy. He cared for no one near him except Killigrew, because he alone stood for the things of an alien world. He hated the sound of John-James' boots that never failed to go a tip-toe over the cobbles below his window. He wanted nothing, not even to get away from it all. He was too absorbed watching it upon the wall, hearing his own mind ticking out its comments like that horrible instrument Va.s.sie had upon the piano to time her exercises.

It was the first time since the fit in his childhood, which he did not remember, that he had ever lain helpless or suffered in his body, and he was aware of humiliation. All he could remember of the scene in the wood showed him his own futility. Everything was wasted--nothing he had done was any good nor the doing of it, then or ever again, at all worth while. Nothing seemed to matter.

So pa.s.sed the first two days of his consciousness, and the speed at which the clock of his mind was regulated made the world's time seem interminable. When the two days had gone they seemed to him to be lengthy, not as two weeks or years or anything in a known measure of counting, but as some period of time s.p.a.ced quite differently. This is the time that only sick people know, that fills their eyes with knowledge not understood of the healthy sympathisers beside their beds, who, though they may have sat the nights and days out with them, yet have not the same measure to count the pa.s.sing of their hours.

With the third day came pain, bodily pain, and that saved Ishmael. It seemed to him then that physical hurts were so far worse than mental that his dread depression vanished before it. He would have welcomed that back to save his body a pang; it seemed to him his head must burst with the pain raging in it, and he cared about nothing else in the world. When that too pa.s.sed he was as one who has floated out of stormy seas into smooth waters--too weak to navigate them, but blissfully aware that it does not matter, they are safe and he can drift with the current. It was only then he began to talk, and he never once referred to what had happened. He asked where Archelaus was, and when he heard he had gone back to his work in the mine that day he said no more. And it was characteristic of Ishmael that no one ever knew whether he were aware of that impulse of his brother's, and what it had nearly led to, or not. With cessation of physical pain and the exhaustion of the high-keyed string of his mind, came blessed reaction. Even the fact that nothing mattered ceased to matter. The suggestion, emanating simultaneously from the Parson and Killigrew that he should accompany the latter back to London stirred him to only a faint thrill--indeed, a certain disinclination to accept the offer was almost as strong as the urgings of the common sense which told him that soon he would be won to pleasure and interest, once the initial effort was over. Still, as the days slipped past, he found himself looking forward more and more keenly.

On the afternoon before he was to go to town he was resting on a couch in his room when the sounds of Va.s.sie's arrogant but not unpleasing voice came floating up to him from the parlour as she sang her latest song, the fashionable "Maiden's Prayer." He smiled a little to himself; he could picture Killigrew, leaning attentive, turning the pages, smiling between narrowed lids at the lovely thing she looked--chin raised and full throat vibrant--yet giving so little away beyond his admiration. The song faded, silence fell, then a door opened and closed.

Va.s.sie's voice was raised, this time in welcome. He guessed the visitor to be Phoebe from the fluttered feminine quality of the sounds below--staccato sentences whose words he could not catch, but whose very rhythm, broken and eager, betrayed them. A moment later, and a knock came at his door.

It was Va.s.sie who entered, somewhat sulkily, her beauty clouded by a shade of reluctance--Phoebe, shrinking, palpitant, staying in the shadowy pa.s.sage.

"Phoebe has come to know if she may say good-bye to you, Ishmael?"

said Va.s.sie. "She's heard you're going to London, and can't believe you'll ever come back safely...."

"Why, Phoebe, that's kind of you," he called; "but won't you come in for a moment?" He was pleased after a mild fashion to see her--she at least stood for something not too intimately connected with his own household, he told himself. The next moment he remembered that there had been some suggestion--what his blurred recollection of it could not tell him--that she might be being courted by Archelaus; but the slight recoil of distaste stirred within him fell away before her frank eagerness, her kindly warmth, as she pattered into the room, her skirts swaying around her. She sat primly down beside the couch while Va.s.sie stayed by its foot, determined not to sit down also and so give an air of settled ease to the interview.

"I--I hope you are better, Ishmael?" faltered Phoebe. She had never before been in a young man's bedroom, even bereft of its tenant, and she felt shy and fluttered.

"Oh, I'm all right!" answered Ishmael. "I don't think poor Silly Peter has enough muscle to hit very hard, you know."

A look of intense relief floated across the strained demureness of Phoebe's countenance: raised eyelids and a heightened colour testified to what pa.s.sed through her mind.

"Oh, then it was Silly Peter--" she began ingenuously; then broke off.

"Yes, didn't you know? He was dazed with the lights, and then the sudden darkness and all of us being so angry, I suppose.... Hullo, what's that?"

It was Killigrew's voice calling softly up the stairs to Va.s.sie. She hesitated, made a feint of going to the door only to hear what he wanted, and then went rustling down to him. Phoebe snuggled a little more comfortably on her chair with an unconscious movement of pleasure.

"He said downstairs he wanted to finish taking her picture to-day while the light lasted," she said; then ran on: "Ishmael, I've been so unhappy...."

"Have you, Phoebe? Why, what about?" Then, as he saw her flush and bite her pouting lower lip, he added: "Not because of me? I say, how jolly of you! But there wasn't any necessity--"

"How silly you are! As if one did things--worried and that sort of thing--because it was necessary! It's because one can't help it."

"Then it was all the nicer of you. But I meant that really it wasn't anything to worry about. I'm as right as rain, and it's given me a jolly good excuse to go up to London and see the world."