LITMIR.BIZ

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He was an impressive figure massed in blackness against the moonlight, with his arms outspread.

      “I suppose,” he said, “it wasn’t all her fault.”

      “A white peacock, we will say,” I suggested.

      He laughed.

      “Go home by the top road, will you!” he said. “I believe there’s something on in the bottom wood.”

      “All right,” I answered, with a quiver of apprehension. “Yes, she was fair enough,” he muttered.

      “Ay,” said I, rising. I held out my hand from the shadow. I was startled myself by the white sympathy it seemed to express, extended towards him in the moonlight. He gripped it, and cleaved to me for a moment, then he was gone.

      I went out of the churchyard feeling a sullen resentment against the tousled graves that lay inanimate across my way. The air was heavy to breathe, and fearful in the shadow of the great trees. I was glad when I came out on the bare white road, and could see the copper lights from the reflectors of a pony-cart’s lamps, and could hear the amiable chat-chat of the hoofs trotting towards me. I was lonely when they had passed.

      Over the hill, the big flushed face of the moon poised just above the tree-tops, very majestic, and far off — yet imminent. I turned with swift sudden friendliness to the net of elm-boughs spread over my head, dotted with soft clusters winsomely. I jumped up and pulled the cool soft tufts against my face for company; and as I passed, still I reached upward for the touch of this budded gentleness of the trees. The wood breathed fragrantly, with a subtle sympathy. The firs softened their touch to me, and the larches woke from the barren winter sleep, and put out velvet fingers to caress me as I passed. Only the clean, bare branches of the ash stood emblem of the discipline of life. I looked down on the blackness where trees filled the quarry and the valley bottoms, and it seemed that the world, my own home world, was strange again.

      Some four or five days after Annable had talked to me in the churchyard, I went out to find him again. It was Sunday morning. The larch-wood was afloat with clear, lyric green, and some primroses scattered whitely on the edge under the fringing boughs. It was a clear morning, as when the latent life of the world begins to vibrate afresh in the air. The smoke from the cottage rose blue against the trees, and thick yellow against the sky. The fire, it seemed, was only just lighted, and the wood-smoke poured out.

      Sam appeared outside the house, and looked round. Then he climbed the water-trough for a better survey. Evidently unsatisfied, paying slight attention to me, he jumped down and went running across the hill-side to the wood. “He is going for his father,” I said to myself, and I left the path to follow him down hill across the waste meadow, crackling the blanched stems of last year’s thistles as I went, and stumbling in rabbit-holes. He reached the wall that ran along the quarry’s edge, and was over it in a twinkling.

      When I came to the place, I was somewhat nonplussed, for sheer from the stone fence, the quarry-side dropped for some twenty or thirty feet, piled up with unmortared stones. I looked round — there was a plain dark thread down the hillside, which marked a path to this spot, and the wall was scored with the marks of heavy boots. Then I looked again down the quarry-side, and I saw — how could I have failed to see? — stones projecting to make an uneven staircase, such as is often seen in the Derbyshire fences. I saw this ladder was well used, so I trusted myself to it, and scrambled down, clinging to the face of the quarry wall. Once down, I felt pleased with myself for having discovered and used the unknown access, and I admired the care and ingenuity of the keeper, who had fitted and wedged the long stones into the uncertain pile.

      It was warm in the quarry: there the sunshine seemed to thicken and sweeten; there the little mounds of overgrown waste were aglow with very early dog-violets; there the sparks were coming out on the bits of gorse, and among the stones the coltfoot plumes were already silvery. Here was spring sitting just awake, unloosening her glittering hair, and opening her purple eyes.

      I went across the quarry, down to where the brook ran murmuring a tale to the primroses and the budding trees. I was startled from my wandering among the fresh things by a faint clatter of stones.

      “What’s that young rascal doing?” I said to myself, setting forth to see. I came towards the other side of the quarry: on this, the moister side, the bushes grew up against the wall, which was higher than on the other side, though piled the same with old dry stones. As I drew near I could hear the scrape and rattle of stones, and the vigorous grunting of Sam as he laboured among them. He was hidden by a great bush of sallow catkins, all yellow, and murmuring with bees, warm with spice. When he came in view I laughed to see him lugging and grunting among the great pile of stones that had fallen in a mass from the quarry-side; a pile of stones and earth and crushed vegetation. There was a great bare gap in the quarry wall. Somehow, the lad’s labouring earnestness made me anxious, and I hurried up.

      He heard me, and glancing round, his face red with exertion, eyes big with terror, he called, commanding me:

      “Pull ’em off ’im-pull ’em off!”

      Suddenly my heart beating in my throat nearly suffocated me. I saw the hand of the keeper lying among the stones. I set to tearing away the stones, and we worked for some time without a word. Then I seized the arm of the keeper and tried to drag him out. But I could not.

      “Pull it off ’im!” whined the lad, working in a frenzy.

      When we got him out I saw at once he was dead, and I sat down trembling with exertion. There was a great smashed wound on the side of the head. Sam put his face against his father’s and snuffed round him like a dog, to feel the life in him. The child looked at me:

      “He won’t get up,” he said, and his little voice was hoarse with fear and anxiety.

      I shook my head. Then the boy began to whimper. He tried to close the lips which were drawn with pain and death, leaving the teeth bare; then his fingers hovered round the eyes, which were wide open, glazed, and I could see he was trembling to touch them into life.

      “He’s not asleep,” he said, “because his eyes is open — look!” I could not bear the child’s questioning terror. I took him up to carry him away, but he struggled and fought to be free. “Ma’e ’im get up — ma’e ’im get up,” he cried in a frenzy, and I had to let the boy go.

      He ran to the dead man, calling, “Feyther! Feyther!” and pulling his shoulder; then he sat down, fascinated by the sight of the wound; he put out his finger to touch it, and shivered.

      “Come away,” said I.

      “Is it that?” he asked, pointing to the wound. I covered the face with a big silk handkerchief.

      “Now,” said I, “he’ll go to sleep if you don’t touch him — so sit still while I go and fetch somebody. Will you run to the Hall?”

      He shook his head. I knew he would not. So I told him again not to touch his father, but to let him lie still till I came back. He watched me go, but did not move from his seat on the stones beside the dead man, though I know he was full of terror at being left alone.

      I ran to the Hall — I dared not go to the Kennels. In a short time I was back with the squire and three men. As I led the way, I saw the child lifting a corner of the handkerchief to peep and see if the eyes were closed in sleep. Then he heard us, and started violently. When we removed the covering, and he saw the face unchanged in its horror, he looked at me with a look I have never forgotten.

      “A bad business — an awful business!” repeated the squire. “A bad business. I said to him from the first that the stones might come down when he was going up, and he said he had taken care to fix them. But you can’t be sure, you can’t be certain. And he’d be about half-way up — ay — and the whole wall would come down on him. An awful business, it is really; a terrible piece of work!”

      They decided at the inquest that the death came by misadventure. But there were vague rumours in the village that this was revenge which had overtaken the keeper.

      They decided to bury him in our churchyard at Greymede

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