Sir Arthur Hirries, Baronet, of Hirriehugh, in a northern county, came
to the decision to sell his timber, in that state of mind--common
during the war--which may be called patrio-profiteering. Like newspaper
proprietors, writers on strategy, shipbuilders, owners of factories,
makers of arms and the rest of the working classes at large, his mood
was: ‘Let me serve my country, and if thereby my profits are increased,
let me put up with it, and invest in National Bonds.’
With an encumbered estate and some of the best coverts in that northern
county, it had not become practical politics to sell his timber till
the Government wanted it at all costs. To let his shooting had been
more profitable, until now, when a patriotic action and a stroke of
business had become synonymous. A man of sixty-five, but not yet grey,
with a reddish tinge in his moustache, cheeks, lips and eyelids,
slightly knock-kneed, and with large, rather spreading feet, he moved
in the best circles in a somewhat embarrassed manner. At the enhanced
price, the timber at Hirriehugh would enfranchise him for the
remainder of his days. He sold it therefore one day of April when the
war news was bad, to a Government official on the spot. He sold it at
half-past five in the afternoon, practically for cash down, and drank a
stiff whisky and soda to wash away the taste of the transaction; for,
though no sentimentalist, his great-great-grandfather had planted most
of it, and his grandfather the rest. Royalty, too, had shot there in
its time and he himself (never much of a sportsman) had missed more
birds in the rides and hollows of his fine coverts than he cared to
remember. But the country was in need, and the price considerable.
Bidding the Government official good-bye, he lighted a cigar, and went
across the park to take a farewell stroll among his timber.
He entered the home covert by a path leading through a group of
pear-trees just coming into bloom. Smoking cigars and drinking whisky
in the afternoon in preference to tea, Sir Arthur Hirries had not much
sense of natural beauty. But those pear-trees impressed him, greenish
white against blue sky and fleecy thick clouds which looked as if they
had snow in them. They were deuced pretty, and promised a good year for
fruit, if they escaped the late frosts, though it certainly looked like
freezing to-night! He paused a moment at the wicket gate to glance
back at those scantily clothed white maidens posing on the outskirts
of his timber. Such was not the vision of Sir Arthur Hirries, who was
considering how he should invest the balance of the cash down after
paying off his mortgages. National Bonds--the country was in need!
Passing through the gate he entered the ride of the home covert.
Variety lay like colour on his woods. They stretched for miles, and his
ancestors had planted almost every kind of tree--beech, oak, birch,
sycamore, ash, elm, hazel, holly, pine; a lime-tree and a hornbeam
here and there, and further in among the winding coverts, spinneys
and belts of larch. The evening air was sharp, and sleet showers came
whirling from those bright clouds; he walked briskly, drawing at his
richly fragrant cigar, the whisky still warm within him. He walked
thinking, with a gentle melancholy slowly turning a little sulky, that
he would never again be pointing out with his shooting stick to such or
such a guest where he was to stand to get the best birds over him. The
pheasants had been let down during the war, but he put up two or three
old cocks, who went clattering and whirring out to left and right; and
rabbits crossed the rides quietly to and fro, within easy shot. He came
to where Royalty had stood fifteen years ago during the last drive. He
remembered Royalty saying: “Very pretty shooting at that last stand,
Hirries; birds just about as high as I like them.” The ground indeed
rose rather steeply there, and the timber was oak and ash, with a few
dark pines sprinkled into the bare greyish twiggery of the oaks, always
costive in spring, and the just greening feather of the ashes.
“They’ll be cutting those pines first,” he thought--strapping trees,
straight as the lines of Euclid, and free of branches, save at their
tops. In the brisk wind those tops swayed a little and gave forth
soft complaint. ‘Three times my age,’ he thought; ‘prime timber.’
The ride wound sharply and entered a belt of larch, whose steep rise
entirely barred off the rather sinister sunset--a dark and wistful
wood, delicate dun and grey, whose green shoots and crimson tips
would have perfumed the evening coolness, but for the cigar smoke in
his nostrils. ‘They’ll have this spinney for pit props,’ he thought;
and, taking a cross ride through it, he emerged in a heathery glen of
birch-trees. No forester, he wondered if they would make anything of
those whitened, glistening shapes. His cigar had gone out now, and he
leaned against one of the satin-smooth stems, under the lacery of twig
and bud, sheltering the flame of a relighting match. A hare lopped
away among the bilberry shoots; a jay, painted like a fan, squawked
and flustered past him up the glen. Interested in birds, and wanting
just one more jay to complete a fine stuffed group of them, Sir Arthur,
though devoid of a gun, followed, to see where ‘the beggar’s’ nest
was. The glen dipped rapidly, and the character of the timber changed,
assuming greater girth and solidity. There was a lot of beech here--a
bit he did not know, for though taken-in by the beaters, no guns could
be stationed there because of the lack of undergrowth. The jay had
vanished, and light had begun to fail. ‘Must get back,’ he thought, ‘or
I shall be late for dinner.’ For a moment he debated whether to retrace
his steps, or cut across the beeches and regain the home covert by a
loop. The jay, reappearing to the left, decided him to cross the beech
grove. He did so, and took a narrow ride up through a dark bit of mixed
timber with heavy undergrowth. The ride, after favouring the left for
a little, bent away to the right; Sir Arthur followed it hurriedly,
conscious that twilight was gathering fast. It must bend again to the
left in a minute! It did, and then to the right, and, the undergrowth
remaining thick, he could only follow on, or else retrace his steps.
He followed on, beginning to get hot in spite of a sleet shower falling
through the dusk. He was not framed by Nature for swift travelling--his
knees turning in and his toes turning out--but he went at a good bat,
uncomfortably aware that the ride was still taking him away from home,
and expecting it at any minute to turn left again. It did not, and hot,
out of breath, a little bewildered, he stood still in three-quarter
darkness, to listen. Not a sound, save that of wind in the tops of
the trees, and a faint creaking of timber, where two stems had grown
athwart and were touching.
The path was a regular will o’ the wisp. He must make a bee line of
it through the undergrowth into another ride! He had never before
been amongst his timber in the dusk, and he found the shapes of the
confounded trees more weird, and as if menacing, that he had ever
dreamed of. He stumbled quickly on in and out of them among the
undergrowth, without coming to a ride.
‘Here I am stuck in this damned wood!’ he thought. To call these
formidably encircling shapes ‘a wood’ gave him relief. After all, it
was _his_ wood, and nothing very untoward could happen to a man in
his own wood, however dark it might get; he could not be more than a
mile and a half at the outside from his dining-room! He looked at
his watch, whose hands he could just see--nearly half-past seven! The
sleet had become snow, but it hardly fell on him, so thick was the
timber just here. But he had no overcoat, and suddenly he felt that
first sickening little drop in his chest which presages alarm. Nobody
knew he was in this damned wood! And in a quarter of an hour it would
be black as your hat! He _must_ get on and out! The trees amongst
which he was stumbling produced quite a sick feeling now in one who
hitherto had never taken trees seriously. What monstrous growths they
were! The thought that seeds, tiny seeds or saplings, planted by his
ancestors, could attain such huge impending and imprisoning bulk--the
ghostly great growths, mounting up to heaven and shutting off this
world, exasperated and unnerved him. He began to run, caught his foot
in a root, and fell flat on his face. The cursed trees seemed to have
a down on him! Rubbing elbows and forehead with his snow-wetted hands,
he leaned against a trunk to get his breath, and summon the sense of
direction to his brain. Once as a young man he had been ‘bushed’ at
night in Vancouver Island; quite a scary business! But he had come out
all right, though his camp had been the only civilised spot within a
radius of twenty miles. And here he was, on his own estate, within
a mile or two of home, getting into a funk. It was childish! And he
laughed. The wind answered, sighing and threshing in the tree tops.
There must be a regular blizzard blowing now, and, to judge by the
cold, from the north--but whether north-east or north-west was the
question. Besides, how keep definite direction without a compass in the
dark? The timber, too, with its thick trunks, diverted the wind into
keen, directionless draughts. He looked up, but could make nothing of
the two or three stars that he could see. It was a mess! And he lighted
a second cigar with some difficulty, for he had begun to shiver. The
wind in this blasted wood cut through his Norfolk jacket and crawled
about his body, which had become hot from his exertions, and now
felt clammy and half-frozen. This would mean pneumonia, if he didn’t
look out! And, half feeling his way from trunk to trunk, he started
on again, but for all he could tell he might be going round in a
circle, might even be crossing rides without realising, and again that
sickening drop occurred in his chest. He stood still and shouted. He
had the feeling of shouting into walls of timber, dark and heavy, which
threw the sound back at him.
‘Curse you!’ he thought. ‘Wish I’d sold you six months ago!’ The wind
fleered and mowed in the tree tops; and he started off again at a run
in that dark wilderness; till, hitting his head against a low branch,
he fell, stunned. He lay several minutes unconscious, came to himself
deadly cold, and struggled up on to his feet.
‘By Jove!’ he thought, with a sort of stammer in his brain; ‘this is
a bad business! I may be out here all night!’ For an unimaginative
man, it was extraordinary what vivid images he had just then. He saw
the face of the Government official who had bought his timber, and
the slight grimace with which he had agreed to the price. He saw his
butler, after the gong had gone, standing like a stuck pig by the
sideboard, waiting for him to come down. What would they do when he
didn’t come? Would they have the _nous_ to imagine that he might have
lost his way in the coverts, and take lanterns and search for him?
Far more likely they would think he had walked over to Greenlands or
Berrymoor, and stayed there to dinner. And, suddenly, he saw himself
slowly freezing out here, in the snowy night, among this cursed timber.
With a vigorous shake, he butted again into the darkness among the tree
trunks. He was angry now--with himself, with the night, with the trees;
so angry that he actually let out with his fist at a trunk against
which he had stumbled, and scored his knuckles. It was humiliating;
and Sir Arthur Hirries was not accustomed to humiliation. In anybody
else’s wood--yes; but to be lost like this in one’s own coverts! Well,
if he had to walk all night, he would get out! And he plunged on
doggedly in the darkness.
He was fighting with his timber now, as if the thing were alive and
each tree an enemy. In the interminable stumbling exertion of that
groping progress his angry mood gave place to half-comatose philosophy.
Trees! His great-great-grandfather had planted them! His own was the
fifth man’s life, but the trees were almost as young as ever; they
made nothing of a man’s life! He sniggered: and a man made nothing of
theirs! Did they know they were going to be cut down? All the better
if they did, and were sweating in their shoes. He pinched himself--his
thoughts were becoming so queer! He remembered that once, when his
liver was out of order, trees had seemed to him like solid, tall
diseases--bulbous, scarred, cavernous, witch-armed, fungoid emanations
of the earth. Well, so they were! And he was among them, on a snowy
pitch-black night, engaged in this death-struggle! The occurrence
of the word death in his thoughts brought him up all standing. Why
couldn’t he concentrate his mind on getting out; why was he mooning
about the life and nature of trees instead of trying to remember the
conformation of his coverts, so as to rekindle in himself some sense
of general direction? He struck a number of matches, to get a sight of
his watch again. Great heaven! He had been walking nearly two hours
since he last looked at it; and in what direction? They said a man in
a fog went round and round because of some kink in his brain! He began
now to feel the trees, searching for a hollow trunk. A hollow would
be some protection from the cold--his first conscious confession of
exhaustion. He was not in training, and he was sixty-five. The thought:
‘Can’t keep this up much longer,’ caused a second explosion of sullen
anger. Damnation! Here he was--for all he could tell--standing where he
had sat perhaps a dozen times on his spread shooting stick; watching
sunlight on bare twigs, or the nose of his spaniel twitching beside
him, listening to the tap of the beaters’ sticks, and the shrill,
drawn-out: “Marrk! Cock over!” Would they let the dogs out, to pick up
his tracks? No! ten to one they would assume he was staying the night
at the Summertons, or at Lady Mary’s, as he had done before now, after
dining there. And suddenly his strained heart leaped. He had struck a
ride again! His mind slipped back into place like an elastic let-go,
relaxed, quivering gratefully. He had only to follow this ride, and
somewhere, somehow, he would come out. And be hanged if he would let
them know what a fool he had made of himself! Right or left--which way?
He turned so that the flying snow came on his back, hurrying forward
between the denser darkness on either hand, where the timber stood
in walls, moving his arms across and across his body, as if dragging
a concertina to full stretch, to make sure that he was keeping in
the path. He went what seemed an interminable way like this, till he
was brought up all standing by trees, and could find no outlet, no
continuation. Turning in his tracks, with the snow in his face now, he
retraced his steps till once more he was brought-up short by trees.
He stood panting. It was ghastly--ghastly! And in a panic he dived
this way and that to find the bend, the turning, the way on. The sleet
stung his eyes, the wind fleered and whistled, the boughs sloughed and
moaned. He struck matches, trying to shade them with his cold, wet
hands, but one by one they went out, and still he found no turning.
The ride must be blind-alley at either end, the turning be down the
side somewhere! Hope revived in him. Never say die! He began a second
retracing of his steps, feeling the trunks along one side, to find a
gap. His breath came with difficulty. What would old Brodley say if
he could see him, soaked, sweating, frozen, tired to death, stumbling
along in the darkness among this cursed timber--old Brodley who had
told him his heart was in poor case!... A gap? Ah! No trunks--a ride at
last! He turned, felt a sharp pain in his knee and pitched forward. He
could not rise--the knee dislocated six years ago was out again. Sir
Arthur Hirries clenched his teeth. Nothing more could happen to him!
But after a minute--blank and bitter--he began to crawl along the new
ride. Oddly he felt less discouraged and alarmed on hands and knee--for
he could use but one. It was a relief to have his eyes fixed on the
ground, not peering at the tree trunks; or perhaps there was less
strain for the moment on his heart. He crawled, stopping every minute
or so, to renew his strength. He crawled mechanically, waiting for his
heart, his knee, his lungs to stop him. The earth was snowed over, and
he could feel its cold wetness as he scraped along. Good tracks to
follow, if anybody struck them! But in this dark forest----! In one of
his halts, drying his hands as best he could, he struck a match, and
sheltering it desperately, fumbled out his watch. Past ten o’clock. He
wound the watch, and put it back against his heart. If only he could
wind his heart! And squatting there he counted his matches--four! He
thought grimly: ‘I won’t light them to show me my blasted trees. I’ve
got a cigar left; I’ll keep them for that!’ And he crawled on again. He
must keep going while he could!
He crawled till his heart and lungs and knee struck work; and, leaning
his back against a tree, sat huddled together, so exhausted that he
felt nothing save a sort of bitter heartache. He even dropped asleep,
waking with a shudder, dragged from a dream arm-chair at the Club into
this cold, wet darkness and the blizzard moaning in the trees. He tried
to crawl again, but could not, and for some minutes stayed motionless,
hugging his body with his arms. ‘Well,’ he thought vaguely, ‘I _have_
done it!’ His mind was in such lethargy that he could not even pity
himself. His matches: could he make a fire? But he was no woodsman,
and, though he groped around, could find no fuel that was not soaking
wet. He scraped a hole and with what papers he had in his pockets
tried to kindle the wet wood. No good! He had only two matches left
now, and he remembered his cigar. He took it out, bit the end off, and
began with infinite precautions to prepare for lighting it. The first
burned, and the cigar drew. He had one match left, in case he dozed and
let the thing go out. Looking up through the blackness he could see a
star. He fixed his eyes on it, and leaning against the trunk drew the
smoke down into his lungs. With his arms crossed tightly on his breast
he smoked very slowly. When it was finished--what? Cold, and the wind
in the trees until the morning! Halfway through the cigar, he dozed
off, slept a long time, and woke up so cold that he could barely summon
vitality enough to strike his last match. By some miracle it burned,
and he got his cigar to draw again. This time he smoked it nearly to
its end, without mentality, almost without feeling, except the physical
sense of bitter cold. Once with a sudden clearing of the brain, he
thought faintly: ‘Thank God, I sold the--trees, and they’ll all come
down!’ The thought drifted away in frozen incoherence, drifted out like
his cigar smoke into the sleet; and with a faint grin on his lips he
dozed off again....
An under-keeper found him at ten o’clock next morning, blue from cold,
under a tall elm-tree, within a mile of his bed, one leg stretched
out, the other hunched up toward his chest, with its foot dug into the
undergrowth for warmth, his head huddled into the collar of his coat,
his arms crossed on his breast. They said he must have been dead at
least five hours. Along one side snow had drifted against him; but the
trunk had saved his back and other side. Above him, the spindly top
boughs of that tall tree were covered with green-gold clusters of tiny
crinkled elm flowers, against a deep blue sky--gay as a song of perfect
praise. The wind had dropped, and after the cold of the night the birds
were singing their clearest in the sunshine.
They did not cut down the elm-tree under which they found his body,
with the rest of the sold timber, but put a little iron fence round it,
and a little tablet on its trunk.
1920.