THE SAW-PIT.
At Hall, that same morning had broken on Squire Cleverdon in his office
or sitting-room--it might bear either name--leaning back in his leather
armchair, with his hands clasped on his breast, his face an ashen grey,
and his hair several degrees whiter than on the preceding day.
When the maid came in at an early hour to clean and tidy the apartment,
she started, and uttered a cry of alarm, when she saw the old man in his
seat. She thought he was dead. But at her appearance he stood up, and
with tottering steps left the room and went upstairs. He had not been to
bed all night.
Breakfast was made ready, and he was called; but he did not come.
That night had been one of vain thinking and torturing of his mind to
find a mode of escape from his troubles. He had reckoned on assistance
from Fox or his father, and this had failed him. Fox, may be, for all
his brag, could not help him. The Justice might, were he at home; but he
had gone off to join the Duke of Monmouth, and, if he did return, it
might be too late, and it was probable enough that he never would
reappear. If anything happened to Mr. Crymes, then Fox would step into
his place as trustee for Julian till Julian married; but could he raise
money on her property to assist him and save his property? Anyhow it was
not possible for matters to be so settled that he could do this within a
fortnight.
The only chance that old Cleverdon saw was to borrow money for a short
term till something was settled at Kilworthy--till the Rebellion was
either successful or was extinguished--and he could appeal to Fox or his
father to secure Hall.
But to have, ultimately, to come to Fox for deliverance, to have his own
fate and that of his beloved Hall in the hands of this son-in-law, who
had insulted, humiliated him, publicly and brutally, the preceding
night, was to drink the cup of degradation to its bitter and final
dregs.
It was about ten o'clock when the old Squire, now bent and broken, with
every line in his face deepened to a furrow, reappeared, ready to go
abroad. He had resolved to visit his attorney-at-law in Tavistock, and
see if, through him, the requisite sum could be raised as a short loan.
The house was in confusion. None of the workmen were gone to their
duties; the serving-maids and men talked or whispered in corners, and
went about on tip-toe as though there were a corpse in the house.
His man told the Squire that Fox was gone, and had left a message, which
the fellow would not deliver, so grossly insolent was it; the substance
was that he would not return to the house. The Squire nodded and asked
for his horse.
After some delay it was brought to the door; the groom was not to be
found, and one of the maids had gone to the stable for the beast, and
had saddled and bridled it.
The old man mounted and rode away. Then he heard a call behind him, but
did not turn his head; another call, but he disregarded it, and rode
further, urging on his horse to a quicker rate.
Next moment the brute stumbled, and nearly went down on its nose; the
Squire whipped angrily, and the horse went on faster, then began to lag,
and suddenly tripped once more and fell. Old Cleverdon was thrown on the
turf and was uninjured. He got up and went to the beast, and then saw
why it had twice stumbled. The serving girl, in bridling it, had
forgotten to remove the halter, the rope of which hung down to the
ground, so that, as the animal trotted, the end got under the hoofs.
That was what the call had signified. Some one of the serving-men had
noticed the bridle over the halter as the old Squire rode away, and had
shouted after him to that effect.
Mr. Cleverdon removed the bridle, then took off the halter, and replaced
the bridle. What was to be done with the halter? He tried to thrust it
into one of his pockets, but they were too small. He looked round; he
was near a saw-pit a bow-shot from the road. He remembered that he had
ordered a couple of sawyers to be there that day to cut up into planks
an oak-tree; he hitched up his horse and went towards the saw-pit,
calling, but no one replied. The men had not come; they had heard of
what had taken place at Hall, and had absented themselves, not expecting
under the circumstances to be paid for their labour.
The old man wrapped the halter round his waist, and knotted it, then
drew his cloak about him to conceal it, remounted, and rode on. Had the
sawyers been at the pit he would have sent back the halter by one of
them to the stable. As none was there, he was forced to take it about
with him.
Five hours later he returned the same way. His eyes were glassy, and
cold sweat beaded his brow. His breath came as a rattle from his lungs.
All was over. He could obtain assistance nowhere. The times were
dangerous, because unsettled, and no one would risk money till the
public confidence was restored. His attorney had passed him on to the
agent for the Earl of Bedford, and the agent had shaken his head, and
suggested that the miller at the Abbey Mill was considered a well-to-do
man, and might be inclined to lend money.
The miller refused, and spoke of a Jew in Bannawell, who was said to
lend money at high rates of interest. The Jew, however, would not think
of the loan, till the Rebellion was at an end.
All was over. The Squire--the Squire!--he would be that no more--must
leave the land and home of his fathers, his pride broken, his ambition
frustrated, the object for which he had lived and schemed lost to him.
There are in the world folk who are, in themselves, nothing, and who
have nothing, and who nevertheless give themselves airs, and cannot be
shaken out of their self-satisfaction. Mr. Cleverdon was not one of
these, he had not their faculty of imagination. The basis of all his
greatness was Hall; that was being plucked from under his feet; and he
staggered to his fall. Once on the ground, he would be proper, lie
there, an object of mockery to those who had hitherto envied him. Once
there, he would never raise his head again. He who had stood so high,
who had been so imperious in his pride of place, would be under the feet
of all those over whom hitherto he had ridden roughshod.
This thought gnawed and bored in him, with ever fresh anguish, producing
ever fresh aspects of humiliation. This was the black spot on which his
eyes were fixed, which overspread and darkened the whole prospect. The
brutality with which he had been treated by Fox was but a sample and
foretaste of the brutality with which he would be treated by all such as
hitherto he had held under, shown harshness and inconsideration towards.
He had been selfish in his prosperity, he was selfish in his adversity.
He did not think of Anthony. He gave not a thought to Bessie. His own
disappointment, his own humiliation, was all that concerned him. He had
valued the love of his children not a rush, and now that his material
possessions slipped from his grasp, nothing was left him to which to
cling.
He had ridden as far as the point where his horse had fallen, on his
way back to Hall, when the rope twined about his waist loosened and fell
down. The old man stooped towards his stirrup, picked it up, and cast it
over his shoulder. The act startled his horse, and it bounded; with the
leap the rope was again dislodged, and fell once more. He sought, still
riding, to arrange the cord as it had been before about his waist, but
found this impracticable.
He was forced to dismount, and then he hitched his horse to a tree, and
proceeded to take the halter from his body, that he might fold and knot
it together.
Whilst thus engaged, a thought entered his head that made him stand,
with glazed eye, looking at the coil, motionless.
To what was he returning? To a home that was no more a home--to a few
miserable days of saying farewell to scenes familiar to him from
infancy; then to being cast forth on the world in his old age, he knew
not whither to go, where to settle. To a new life of which he cared
nothing, without interests, without ambitions--wholly purposeless. He
would go forth alone; Bessie would not accompany him, for he had thrown
her away on the most despicable of men, and to him she was bound--him
she must follow. Anthony--he knew not whether he were alive or dead. If
alive, he could not go to him whom he had driven from Hall, and to
Willsworthy, of all places under the sun, he would not go. Luke he could
not ask to receive him, who was but a curate, and whom he had refused to
speak to since he had been the means of uniting his son to the daughter
of his deadly rival and enemy. What sort of life could he live with no
one to care for him--with nothing to occupy his mind and energies?
How could he appear in church, at market, now that it was known that he
was a ruined man? Would not every one point at him, and sneer and laugh
at his misfortunes? He had not made a friend, except Mr. Crymes; and not
having a friend, he had no one to sympathise with, to pity him.
Then he thought of his sister Magdalen. Her little annuity he would have
to pay out of his reduced income; he might live with her--with her whom
he had treated so unceremoniously, so rudely--over whom he had held his
chin so high, and tossed it so contemptuously.
What would Fox do? Would he not take every occasion to insult him, to
make his life intolerable to him, use him as his butt for gibes, anger
him to madness--the madness of baffled hate that cannot revenge a wrong?
Anything were better than this.
The old man walked towards the saw-pit. The tree was there, lying on the
frame ready to be sawn into planks, and already it was in part cut
through. The men had been there, begun their task; then had gone off,
probably to the house to drink his cider and discuss his ruin.
Below his feet the pit gaped, some ten or eleven feet, with oak sawdust
at the bottom, dry and fragrant. Round the edges of the pit the
hart's-tongue fern and the pennywort had lodged between the stones and
luxuriated, the latter throwing up at this time its white spires of
flower.
A magnificent plume of fern occupied one end of the trough. Bashes and
oak-coppice were around, and almost concealed the saw-pit from the road.
That saw-pit seemed to the old man to be a grave, and a grave that
invited an occupant.
He knelt on the cross-piece on which the upper sawyer stands when
engaged on his work, and round it fastened firmly the end of the rope;
then fixed the halter with running knot about his own neck.
He stood up and bent his grey head, threw his hat on one side, and
looked down into the trough.
He had come to the end. Everything was gone, or going, from him--even a
sepulchre with his fathers, for, if he died by his own hand, then he
would not be buried with them, but near that saw-pit, where a cross-way
led to Black Down. It was well that so it should be; so he would retain,
at all events, six foot of the paternal inheritance. That six foot would
be his inalienably, and that would be better than banishment to the
churchyard of Peter Tavy. But he would make sure that he carried with
him something of the ancestral land. He crept along the beam, with the
rope about his neck, fastened near the middle of the saw-pit, like a dog
running to the extent of his chain, and scrabbled up some of the soil,
with which he stuffed his ears and his mouth, and filled his hands.
Thus furnished, he stepped back, and again looked down. He did not
pray. He had no thought about his soul--about heaven. His mind was fixed
on the earth--the earth of Hall, with which he must part, with all but
what he held, and with which he had choked his mouth.
"Earth to earth!"
No words of the burial office would be said over him; but what cared he?
It would be the earth of Hall that went back to the earth of Hall when
he perished and was buried there. His flesh had been nourished by the
soil of Hall, his mind had lived on nothing else. He could not speak as
his mouth was full. How sweet, how cool tasted that clod upon his tongue
under his palate!
Though he could not speak he formed words in his mind, and he said to
himself--
"Thrice will I say 'Earth to earth!' and then leap down."
Once the words were said, and now he said them again, in his mind--
"Earth to earth."
There was a large black spider on the oak-tree, running up and down the
chopped section, and now, all at once, it dropped, but did not fall--it
swung at the end of its silken fibre. Mr. Cleverdon watched it. As the
spider dropped, so, in another minute, would he. Then the spider ran up
its thread. The old man shook his head. When he fell he would remain
there motionless. What then would the spider do? Would it swing and
catch at him, and proceed to construct a cobweb between him and the side
of the pit? He saw himself thus utilised as a sidestay for a great
cobweb, and saw a brown butterfly, with silver underwings, now playing
about the pit-mouth, come to the cobweb and be caught in it. He shook
his head--he must not yield to these illusions.
"Earth to----"
A hand was laid on his shoulder, an arm put about his waist; he was
drawn to the side of the pit, and the rope hastily disengaged from his
throat.
With blank, startled eyes old Squire Cleverdon looked on the face of his
preserver. It was that of Luke, his nephew.
"Uncle!--dear uncle!"
Luke took the halter, unloosed it from where it had been fastened to
the beam, knotted it up, and flung it far away among the bushes.
The old man said nothing, but stood before his nephew with downcast
eyes, slightly trembling.
Luke was silent also for some while, allowing the old man to recover
himself. Then he took his arm in his own and led him back to the horse.
"Let me alone! Let me go!" said old Cleverdon.
"Uncle, we will go together. I was on my way to you. I had heard in what
trouble you were, and I thought it possible I might be of some
assistance to you."
"You!" the Squire shook his head. "I want over a thousand pounds at
once."
"That I have not got. Can I not help you in any other way?"
"There is no other way."
"What has happened," said Luke, "is by the will of God, and you must
accept it, and look to Him to bless your loss to you."
"Ah, you are a parson!" said the old man.
Luke did not urge him to remount his horse. He kept his arm, and helped
him along, as though he were conducting a sick man on his walk, till he
had conveyed him some distance from the saw-pit. As the Squire's step
became firmer, he said,
"A hard trial is laid on you, dear uncle, but you must bear up under it
as a man. Do not let folk think that it has broken you down. They will
respect you when they see your courage and steadfastness. Put your trust
in God, and He will give you in place of Hall something better than
that--better a thousand times, which hitherto you have not esteemed."
"What is that?" asked the old man, loosening his arm, standing still,
and looking Luke shyly in the face.
"What is that?" repeated Luke. "Wait! Trust in God and see."