Wood Magic Part 21

The crow, envious, but afraid to join the venture, watched him from the ash. Every few inches the weasel stayed, lifted his head; looked, and listened. Then he advanced again, paused, and again approached. In five minutes he had reached the keeper's feet; two minutes more and he was by his waist. He listened again; he sniffed, he knew it was dangerous, but he could not check the resistless prompting of his appet.i.te.

He crept up on the keeper's chest; the crow fidgeted on the ash. He crept up to the necktie; the crow came down on a lower bough. He moved yet another inch to the collar; the crow flew out ten yards and settled on the ground. The collar was stiff, and partly covered that part of the neck which fascinated the weasel's gaze. He put his foot softly on the collar; the crow hopped thrice towards them. He brought up his other foot, he sniffed--the breath came warm from the man's half-open lips--he adventured the risk, and placed his paw on the keeper's neck.

Instantly--as if he had received an electric shock--the keeper started to his knees, shuddering; the weasel dropped from his neck upon the ground, the crow hastened back to the ash. With a blow of his open hand the keeper knocked the weasel yards away; then, in his rage and fear, with whitened face, he wished instead he had beaten the creature down upon the earth, for the weasel, despite the grinding of his broken rib, began to crawl off, and he could not reach him.

He looked round for a stick or stone, there was none; he put his hand in his pocket, but his knife had slipped out when he fell from the tree. He pa.s.sed his hands over his waistcoat seeking for something, felt his watch--a heavy silver one--and in his fury s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the swivel, and hurled it at the weasel. The watch thrown with such force missed the weasel, struck the sward, and bounded up against the oak: the gla.s.s shivered and flew sparkling a second in the sunshine; the watch glanced aside, and dropped in the gra.s.s. When he looked again the weasel had gone. It was an hour before the keeper recovered himself--the shuddering terror with which he woke up haunted him in the broad daylight.

An intolerable thirst now tormented him, but the furrow was dry. In the morning, he remembered it had contained a little water from the rain, which during the day had sunk into the earth. He picked a bennet from the gra.s.s and bit it, but it was sapless, dried by the summer heat. He looked for a leaf of sorrel, but there was none. The slow hours wore on; the sun sank below the wood, and the long shadows stretched out.

By-and-by the gra.s.s became cooler to the touch; dew was forming upon it.

Overhead the rooks streamed homewards to their roosting trees. They cawed incessantly as they flew; they were talking about Kapchack and Choo Hoo, but he did not understand them.

The shadows reached across the glade, and yonder the rabbits appeared again from among the bushes where their burrows were. He began now to seriously think that he should have to pa.s.s the night there. His ankle was swollen, and the pain almost beyond endurance. The slightest attempt at motion caused intense agony. His one hope now was that the same slouching labourer who had pa.s.sed in the morning would go back that way at night; but as the shadows deepened that hope departed, and he doubted too whether any one could see him through the underwood in the dark. The slouching labourer purposely avoided that route home. He did not want to see anything, if anything there was.

He went round by the high road, and having had his supper, and given his wife a clout in the head, he sauntered down to the alehouse. After he had taken three quarts of beer, he mentioned the curious incident of the white handkerchief in the woods to his mates, who congratulated him on his sense in refraining from going near it, as most likely it was one of that keeper's tricks, just to get somebody into the wood. More talk, and more beer. By-and-by the keeper's wife began to feel alarmed. She had already found the dead dog in the kennel; but that did not surprise her in the least, knowing her husband's temper, and that if a dog disobeyed it was not at all unusual for a cartridge to go whistling after him.

But when the evening came, and the darkness fell; when she had gone down to the alehouse, braving his wrath, and found that he was not there, the woman began to get hysterical. The lad who acted as a.s.sistant had gone home, so she went out into the nearest stubble herself, thinking that her husband must have finished his round before lunch, and was somewhere in the newly-reaped fields. But after walking about the rustling stubble till she was weary, she came back to the alehouse, and begged the men to tell her if they had seen anything of him. Then they told her about the white handkerchief which the slouching poacher had seen in the wood that morning. She turned on him like a tiger, and fiercely upbraided him; then rushed from the house. The sloucher took up his quart, and said that he saw "no call" to hurry.

But some of the men went after the wife. The keeper was found, and brought home on a cart, but not before he had seen the owl go by, and the dark speck of the bat pa.s.sing to and fro overhead.

All that day Bevis did not go to the copse, being much upset with the cheat the weasel had played him, and also because they said the gra.s.s and the hedges would be so wet after the storm. Nor did anything take place in the copse, for King Kapchack moped in his fortress, the orchard, the whole day long, so greatly was he depressed by the widespread treason of which the owl had informed him.

Choo Hoo, thinking that the treaty was concluded, relaxed the strictness of discipline, and permitted his army to spread abroad from the camp and forage for themselves. He expected the return of the amba.s.sador with further communications, and ordered search to be made for every dainty for his entertainment; while the thrush, for whom this care was taken, had not only ceased to exist, but it would have been impossible to collect his feathers, blown away to every quarter.

The vast horde of barbarians were the more pleased with the liberty accorded to them, because they had spent so ill a night while the gale raged through their camp. So soon as the sun began to gleam through the retreating clouds, they went forth in small parties, many of which the keeper saw go over him while lying helpless by the dead oak-tree.

King Kapchack, after the owl had informed him of the bewildering maze of treason with which he was surrounded, moped, as has been said before, upon his perch. In the morning, wet and draggled from the storm, his feathers out of place, and without the spirit to arrange them, he seemed to have grown twenty years older in one night, so pitiable did he appear. Nor did the glowing sun, which filled all other hearts with joy, reach his gloomy soul. He saw no resource; no enterprise suggested itself to him; all was dark at noonday.

An ominous accident which had befallen the aged apple-tree in which his palace stood contributed to this depression of mind. The gale had cracked a very large bough, which, having shown signs of weakness, had for many years been supported by a prop carefully put up by the farmer.

But whether the prop in course of time had decayed at the line where the air and earth exercise their corroding influence upon wood; or whether the bough had stiffened with age, and could not swing easily to the wind; or whether, as seems most likely, the event occurred at that juncture in order to indicate the course of fate, it is certain that the huge bough was torn partly away from the trunk, leaving a gaping cavity.

Kapchack viewed the injury to the tree, which had so long sustained his family and fortune, with the utmost concern; it seemed an omen of approaching destruction so plain and unmistakable that he could not look at it; he turned his mournful gaze in the opposite direction. The day pa.s.sed slowly, as slowly as it did to the keeper lying beneath the oak, and the king, though he would have resented intrusion with the sharpest language, noticed with an increasing sense of wrong that the court was deserted, and with one exception none called to pay their respects.

The exception was Eric, the favourite missel-thrush, who alone of all the birds was allowed to frequent the same orchard. The missel-thrush, loyal to the last, came, but seeing Kapchack's condition, did not endeavour to enter into conversation. As for the rest, they did not venture from fear of the king's violent temper, and because their unquiet consciences made them suspect that this unusual depression was caused by the discovery of their treachery. They remained away from dread of his anger. Kapchack, on the other hand, put their absence down to the mean and contemptible desire to avoid a falling house. He observed that even the little Te-te, the tomt.i.t, and chief of the secret police, who invariably came twice or thrice a day with an account of some gossip he had overheard, did not arrive. How low he must have fallen, since the common informers disdained to a.s.sociate with him!

Towards the evening he sent for his son, Prince Tchack-tchack, with the intention of abdicating in his favour, but what were his feelings when the messenger returned without him! Tchack-tchack refused to come. He, too, had turned away. Thus, deserted by the lovely La Schach, for whom he had risked his throne; deserted by the whole court and even by his own son; the monarch welcomed the darkness of the night, the second of his misery, which hid his disgrace from the world.

The owl came, faithful by night as the missel-thrush by day, but Kapchack, in the deepest despondency, could not reply to his remarks.

Twice the owl came back, hoping to find his master somewhat more open to consolation, and twice had to depart unsuccessful. At last, about midnight, the king, worn out with grief, fell asleep.

Now the same evening the hare, who was upon the hills as usual, as she came by a barn overheard some bats who lived there conversing about the news which they had learnt from their relations who resided in the woods of the vale. This was nothing less than the revelations the dying hawk had made of the treacherous designs of Ki Ki and the weasel, which, as the owl had suspected, had been partly overheard by the bats. The hare, in other circ.u.mstances, would have rejoiced at the overthrow of King Kapchack, who was no favourite with her race, for he had, once or twice, out of wanton cruelty, pecked weakly leverets to death, just to try the temper of his bill. But she dreaded lest if he were thrust down the weasel should seize the sovereignty, the weasel, who had already done her so much injury, and was capable of ruining not only herself but her whole nation if once he got the supreme power.

Not knowing what to do herself for the best, away she went down the valley and over the steep ridges in search of a very old hare, quite h.o.a.r with age--an astrologer of great reputation in those parts. For the hares have always been good star-gazers, and the whole race of them, one and all, are not without skill in the mystic sciences, while some are highly charged with knowledge of futurity, and have decided the fate of mighty battles by the mere direction in which they scampered. The old hare no sooner heard her information than he proceeded to consult the stars, which shone with exceeding brilliance that night, as they often do when the air has been cleared by a storm, and finding, upon taking accurate observations, that the house of Jupiter was threatened by the approach of Saturn to the meridian, he had no difficulty in p.r.o.nouncing the present time as full of danger and big with fate.

The planets were clearly in combination against King Kapchack, who must, if he desired to avoid extinction, avoid all risks, and hide his head, as it were, in a corner till the aspect of the heavens changed. Above all things let him not make war or go forth himself into the combat; let him conclude peace, or at least enter into a truce, no matter at what loss of dignity, or how much territory he had to concede to conciliate Choo Hoo. His person was threatened, the knife was pointed at his heart; could he but wait a while, and tide as it were over the shallows, he might yet resume the full sway of power; but if he exposed his life at this crisis the whole fabric of his kingdom might crumble beneath his feet.

Having thus spoken, the h.o.a.ry astrologer went off in the direction of Stonehenge, whose stones formed his astrolabe, and the hare, much excited with the communication she had received (confirmed as it was too by the facts of the case), resolved to at once warn the monarch of his danger. Calling a beetle, she charged him with a message to the king: That he should listen to the voice of the stars, and conclude peace at no matter what cost, or at least a truce, submitting to be deprived of territory or treasure to any amount or extent, and that above all things he should not venture forth personally to the combat. If he hearkened he would yet reign; if he closed his ears the evil influence which then threatened him must have its way. Strictly enjoining the beetle to make haste, and turn neither to the right nor the left, but to speed straight away for the palace, she dismissed him.

The beetle, much pleased to be employed upon so important a business, opened his wing-cases, began to hum, and increasing his pace as he went, flew off at his utmost velocity. He pa.s.sed safely over the hills, descended into the valley, sped across the fields and woods, and in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time approached the goal of his journey. The wall of the orchard was in sight, he began to repeat his message to himself, so as to be sure and not miss a word of it, when going at this tremendous pace, and as usual, without looking in front, but blundering onwards, he flew with his whole force against a post. His body, crushed by the impetus of its own weight, rebounded with a snap, and he fell disabled and insensible to the earth.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE COURTSHIP IN THE ORCHARD.

The next morning Bevis's papa looking at the almanac found there was going to be an eclipse of the sun, so Bevis took a piece of gla.s.s (part of one of the many window panes he had broken) and smoked it over a candle, so as to be able to watch the phenomenon without injury to his eyes. When the obscuration began too, the dairy-maid brought him a bucket of clear water in which the sun was reflected and could be distinctly seen. But before the eclipse had proceeded beyond the mere edge of the sun, Bevis heard the champing of a bit, and the impatient pawing of hoofs, and running up to the stable to see who it was, found that his papa was just on the point of driving over in the dog-cart to see another farmer (the very old gentleman in whose orchard Kapchack's palace was situated) about a load of straw.

Bevis of course insisted upon going too, the smoked gla.s.s was thrown aside, he clambered up and held the reins, and away they went, the eclipse now counting for nothing. After a while, however, as they went swiftly along the road, they came to a hill, and from the summit saw a long way off a vast shadow like that cast by some immense cloud which came towards them over the earth, and in a second or two arrived, and as it were put out the light. They looked up and the sun was almost gone. In its place was a dark body, with a rim of light round it, and flames shooting forth.

As they came slowly down the hill a pheasant crowed as he flew up to roost, the little birds retired to the thickets, and at the farmyards they pa.s.sed the fowls went up to their perches. Presently they left the highway and drove along a lane across the fields, which had once been divided from each other by gates. Of these there was nothing now standing but the posts, some of which could hardly be said to stand, but declining from the perpendicular, were only kept from falling by the bushes. The lane was so rough and so bad from want of mending that they could only walk the impatient horse, and at times the jolting was extremely unpleasant.

Sometimes they had to stoop down in the trap to pa.s.s under the drooping boughs of elms and other trees, which not having been cut for years, hung over and almost blocked the track. From the hedges the brambles and briars extended out into the road, so that the wheels of the dog-cart brushed them, and they would evidently have entirely shut up the way had not waggons occasionally gone through and crushed their runners. The meadows on either hand were brown with gra.s.s that had not been mown, though the time for mowing had long since gone by, while the pastures were thick with rushes and thistles. Though so extensive there were only two or three cows in them, and these old and poor, and as it were broken-down. No horses were visible, nor any men at work.

There were other fields which had once grown wheat, but were now so choked with weeds as to be nothing but a wilderness. As they approached the farmhouse where the old gentleman dwelt, the signs of desolation became more numerous. There were walls that had fallen, and never been repaired, around whose ruins the nettles flourished. There were holes in the roofs of the sheds exposing the rafters.

Trees had fallen and lay as they fell, rotting away, and not even cut up for firewood. Railings had decayed till there was nothing left but a few stumps; gates had dropped from their hinges, and nothing of them remained but small bits of rotten board attached to rusty irons. In the garden all was confusion, the thistles rose higher than the gooseberry bushes, and burdocks looked in at the windows. From the wall of the house a pear that had been trained there had fallen away, and hung suspended, swinging with every puff; the boughs, driven against the windows, had broken the panes in the adjacent cas.e.m.e.nt; other panes which had been broken were stuffed up with wisps of hay.

Tiles had slipped from the roof, and the birds went in and out as they listed. The remnants of the tiles lay cracked upon the ground beneath the eaves just as they had fallen. No hand had touched them; the hand of man indeed had touched nothing. Bevis, whose eyes were everywhere, saw all these things in a minute. "Why," said he, "there's the knocker; it has tumbled down." It had dropped from the door as the screws rusted; the door itself was propped up with a log of wood. But one thing only appeared to have been attended to, and that was the wall about the orchard, which showed traces of recent mortar, and the road leading towards it, which had not long since been mended with flints.

Now Bevis, as I say, noting all these things as they came near with his eyes, which, like gimlets, went through everything, was continually asking his papa questions about them, and why everything was in such a state, till at last his papa, overwhelmed with his inquiries, promised to tell him the whole story when they got home. This he did, but while they are now fastening up the horse (for there was no one to help them or mind it), and while Bevis is picking up the rusty knocker, the story may come in here very well:--

Once upon a time, many, many years ago, when the old gentleman was young, and lived with his mother at the farmhouse, it happened that he fell in love. The lady he loved was very young, very beautiful, very proud, very capricious, and very poor. She lived in a house in the village little better than a cottage, with an old woman who was said to be her aunt. As the young farmer was well off, for the land was his own, and he had no one to keep but his old mother, and as the young lady dearly loved him, there seemed no possible obstacle in their way. But it is well known that a brook can never run straight, and thus, though all looked so smooth, there were, in reality, two difficulties.

The first of these was the farmer's old mother, who having been mistress in the farmhouse for very nearly fifty years, did not like, after half-a-century, to give place to a mere girl. She could not refrain from uttering disparaging remarks about her, to which her son, being fond of his mother, could not reply, though it angered him to the heart, and at such times he used to take down his long single-barrelled gun with bra.s.s fittings, and go out shooting. More than once the jealous mother had insulted the young lady openly in the village street, which conduct, of course, as things fly from roof to roof with the sparrows, was known all over the place, and caused the lady to toss her head like a filly in spring to show that she did not care for such an old harridan, though in secret it hurt her pride beyond expression.

So great was the difficulty this caused, that the young lady, notwithstanding she was so fond of the handsome young farmer, who rode so well and shot so straight, and could carry her in his arms as if she were no more than a lamb, would never put her dainty foot, which looked so little and pretty even in the rude shoes made for her by the village cobbler, over the threshold of his house. She would never come in, she said, except as a wife, while he on his part, anxious as he was to marry her, could not, from affection for his mother, summon up courage to bring her in, as it were, rough-shod over his mother's feelings.

Their meetings, therefore, as she would not come indoors, were always held in the farmer's orchard, where was a seat in an arbour, a few yards in front of which stood the ancient apple-tree in which Kapchack, who was also very young in those days, had built his nest. At this arbour they met every day, and often twice a day, and even once again in the evening, and could there chat and make love as sweetly as they pleased, because the orchard was enclosed by a high wall which quite shut out all spying eyes, and had a gate with lock and key. The young lady had a duplicate key, and came straight to the orchard from the cottage where she lived by a footpath which crossed the lane along which Bevis had been driven.

It happened that the footpath just by the lane, on coming near the orchard, pa.s.sed a moist place, which in rainy weather was liable to be flooded, and as this was inconvenient for her, her lover had a waggon-load of flints brought down from the hills where the hares held their revels, and placed in the hollow so as to fill it up, and over these he placed f.a.ggots of nut-tree wood, so that she could step across perfectly clean and dry. In this orchard, then, they had their constant rendezvous; they were there every day when the nightingale first began to sing in the spring, and when the apple-trees were hidden with their pink blossom, when the haymakers were at work in the meadow, when the reapers cut the corn, and when the call of the first fieldfare sounded overhead. The golden and rosy apples dropped at their feet, they laughed and ate them, and taking out the brown pips she pressed them between her thumb and finger to see how far they would shoot.

Though they had begun to talk about their affairs in the spring, and had kept on all the summer and autumn, and though they kept on as often as the weather was dry (when they walked up and down the long orchard for warmth, sheltered by the wall), yet when the spring came again they had not half finished. Thus they were very happy, and the lady used particularly to laugh at the antics of the magpie, who became so accustomed to their presence as to go on with the repairs to his nest without the least shyness. Kapchack, being then very young and full of spirits, and only just married, and in the honeymoon of prosperity, played such freaks and behaved in so amusing a manner that the lady became quite attached to him, and in order to protect her favourite, her lover drove away all the other large birds that came near the orchard, and would not permit any one whatever to get up into Kapchack's apple-tree, nor even to gather the fruit, which hung on the boughs till the wind pushed it off.

Thus, having a fortress to retreat to, and being so highly honoured of men, Kapchack gave the reins to his natural audacity, and succeeded in obtaining the sovereignty. When the spring came again they had still a great deal of talking to do; but whether the young lady was weary of waiting for the marriage-ring, or whether she was jealous of the farmer's mother, or whether she thought they might continue like this for the next ten years if she did not make some effort, or whether it was the worldly counsels of her aunt, or what it was--perhaps her own capricious nature, it is certain that they now began to quarrel a little about another gentleman.

This gentleman was very rich, and the owner of a large estate in the neighbourhood; he did not often reside there, for he did not care for sport or country life, but once when he came down he happened to see the young lady, and was much attracted towards her. Doubtless she did not mean any harm, but she could not help liking people to admire her, and, not to go into every little particular, in the course of time (and not very long either) she and the gentleman became acquainted. Now, when her own true lover was aware of this, he was so jealous that he swore if ever he saw them together he would shoot his rival with his long-barrelled gun, though he were hung for it the next day.

The lady was not a little pleased at this frantic pa.s.sion, and secretly liked him ten times better for it, though she immediately resorted to every artifice to calm his anger, for she knew his violent nature, and that he was quite capable of doing as he had said. But the delight of two strings to her bow was not easily to be foregone, and thus, though she really loved the farmer, she did not discourage the gentleman. He, on his part, finding after a while that although she allowed him to talk to her, and even to visit her at the cottage, and sometimes (when she knew the young farmer was at market) go for a walk with him, and once even came and went over his grand mansion, still finding that it was all talk, and that his suit got no further, he presently bethought him of diamonds.

He gave her a most beautiful diamond locket, which he had had down all fresh and brilliant from London. Now this was the beginning of the mischief. She accepted it in a moment of folly, and wished afterwards ten times that she had refused, but having once put it on, it looked so lovely she could not send it back. She could not openly wear it, lest her lover should see it, but every morning she put it on indoors, and frequently glanced in the gla.s.s.

Nor is it any use to find fault with her; for in the first place she has been dead many years, and in the second she was then very young, very beautiful, and living quite alone in the world with an old woman. Now her lover, notwithstanding the sweet a.s.surances she gave him of her faithfulness, and despite the soft kisses he had in abundance every day in the orchard, soft as the bloom of the apple-trees, could not quite recover his peace of mind. He did not laugh as he used to do. He was restless, and the oneness of his mind was gone. Oneness of mind does not often last long into life, but while it lasts everything is bright. He had now always a second thought, a doubt behind, which clouded his face and brought a line into his forehead.

After a time his mother, observing his depression, began to accuse herself of unkindness, and at last resolved to stand no longer in the way of the marriage. She determined to quit the house in which she had lived ever since she came to it a happy bride half-a-century before.

Having made up her mind, that very morning she walked along the footpath to the young lady's cottage, intending to atone for her former unkindness, and to bring the girl back to lunch, and thus surprise her son when he came in from the field.