INDEPENDENCE
The leveret’s wonderful memory for country he had once been over enabled
him to find his way straight back to the farm, where with timid steps he
passed from enclosure to enclosure, exploring his domain. In his round
he came on a field of clover, another of turnips, two of corn, pastures
with sheep and cattle, and a pound with a donkey in it, familiar objects
which served to make him forget his solitary condition till he came to
the scene of the previous night’s frolics; then the thought of his
mother and sister flashed across his mind: he became alive to his
loneliness. But a voice within whispered, “Courage, courage, all will
soon be well”; at this he took heart and strove to forget the past as he
resumed his way, observant of everything and alert to the many dangers
of the night.
In a field of mowing-grass and again in the oats he caught the rank
scent of an enemy—luckily in time to avoid it and withdraw without
being discovered. Now and again he stopped to nibble a bit of tempting
herbage; but he did not settle down to feed until the small hours, when
he returned to the clover. Here he remained till the first flush in the
sky warned him he must seek a retreat in which to pass the day. Twice he
made towards the gate as if he were leaving the field, as often retraced
his steps, presently repaired to the spot where the clover was most
luxuriant, and lay there. No sooner, however, had he sat down than he
realised that the stems which shut out the sight of everything prevented
him from seeing an enemy, should one approach. The lack of outlook
troubled him: soon he imagined that he could hear the faint sound of a
stealthy footfall. To satisfy himself that he was mistaken he kept
raising his head and looking round until, unable to endure the misery
any longer, he stole from the seat and hurried back to the highest part
of the farm, where a hedge had taken his fancy as he had crossed from
the barley to the oats.
There, amongst the coarse grasses, beneath the fronds of a solitary
brake-fern, he sat with his face to the dawn-wind, which played with his
whiskers, swayed the ears of the barley, and buffeted the smoke rising
from the chimney of the homestead. The light was still grey, but beyond
the low roof of the byre the hills stood expectant of the sun, whose
fiery disc soon bathed summit and slope with its richest rays. The
conspicuous heights attracted the eyes of the leveret till the orb rose
higher and made a glory of the dew on the leaves of the tree amidst the
barley; then the sparkling beads won and held his gaze; later the tree
itself so absorbed his attention that he seemed to be wondering what it
did there. It certainly was a strange place for a tree, especially for a
fruit-tree, though it was not strange to the people familiar with its
story. The field, or rather a part of it, had formerly been a garden—it
is still called Johanna’s Garden; and sentiment had caused the tree to
be spared, though it interfered with the plough and attracted badgers
who trod down the crop.
The leveret had not been long in his form before one of these animals
crossed the opposite bank, shaking the dew from the wild roses that
festooned the creep, and made its way through the barley and the oats to
the sett at the foot of the steep slope. Here a colony of badgers lived.
The lane in the corn was their highway, and the tree a convenient
stretching-post, so that next to the crowing of the cocks, the
scratching noise made by powerful claws was the most familiar noise of
the grey dawn. Luckily the leveret had no fear of the badgers, no more
fear of them indeed than of the long-tailed tit whom he watched coming
and going with food for a brood of insatiable nestlings in the near
furze-bush. The cries of the young tits, all eager for the food she
brought, were at times the only sound that broke the silence of the
sequestered spot; there were days when scarcely a breath stirred, when
the stalks of the barley were as motionless as the stem of the tree, and
the shadow of the frond looked like a stain on the leveret’s coat.
He enjoyed the slumbrous peace, and revelled in the noonday heat that
shimmered above the array of barley ears and veiled with a pearly haze
valley and hills and all the land between. It was a delightful time,
which in his innocence he thought would last for ever. He knew nothing
of the ways of husbandry, of the harvesting of crops by the dwellers of
the homestead, whence by day came shout and song, and where the strange
light glowed in the early hours of foraging time. He did not know that
man was lord of the earth; as little did he realise that he himself was
man’s guest. His own view was quite different. He thought that the
clover, the corn, and the pinks grew for him, that fern and heather
flourished to afford him cover, that hedge and hill rose above the level
merely to furnish him with outlook. He even thought that the sun rose to
warm him, that moon and stars shone to light his steps; and he found the
world a most delectable place, despite the number of his enemies.
A somewhat rude awakening befell him on the thirteenth day of his
independence, when the field was invaded by the farm folk. Their coming,
or rather their inrush, had nothing to do with the harvesting of the
barley, which was yet green; they were drawn thither by an incident of
farm life that is attended with as much noise as human beings are
capable of making. The hubbub broke out near the house some two furlongs
away. Even at that distance the din was disquieting, but it grew louder
and louder and caused the leveret more and more perturbation. Whilst he
wondered what it all meant, a swarm of bees came flying over the hedge
and settled on the tree. In less than a minute three boys, two men, and
a woman came tumbling pell-mell over the hedge, shouting “Brownie,
Brownie,” and beating frying-pans and milk-pails. The boy who led soon
espied the cluster of bees hanging to the branch, and cried, “Here they
are, faither, fastened on the old medlar-tree.”
“Th—that’s lucky, lad,” replied the father breathlessly as his face
showed above the hedge, “I feared we’d seed the laist of ’em. Go and
fetch a skep and my hat, and don’t forget the bellows, for I’ve hardly a
brith left in me. But, dang me,” he added angrily, on sighting the lane
in the barley, “what a mess they badgers have made of the corn. It’s all
through that theer tree, and down it shall come.”
“What, Johanna’s tree? Cut down Johanna’s tree? You’ll do nawthin’ of
the kind, maister. ’Twas her pride, good soul, so I’ve heered granny
say. Cut it down? Why, ’twould be enough to make her turn in her grave,
and perhaps visit ’ee, who do knaw? And only think a minit, you’d have
lost that swarm of bees, and a handsome swarm it is. Iss fay, and worth
a bra bit; ‘a swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon,’ and you’d
have lost it if the tree hadn’t been theere.”
“Well, well, Betty, most likely you’re right. I never looked at it that
way.”
“Ah, maister, it don’t take much to make people forget their
obligations.”
“Now, now, Betty, have done, theere’s a good woman; I spoke in haste.
I’ll never lay hands on Johanna’s tree. And here comes our Jesse
already. The lad’s as fast as a hare, and if he’s forgotten the bellows
he’s remembered the cloth to ground the hive on.”
Taking the skep, the farmer shook the bees into it and laid it on the
cloth which Jesse had spread at the foot of the tree. “They’ll do all
right theere till the sun is gone, when I’ll come myself and fetch ’em.
Now let’s make haste back and finish our fish and taties, or they’ll be
too cold to be worth eating. What do you say, Dick?”
“You’re right, maister, a cold pilcher ed’n much account, nor a cold
tatie nother. I’d as soon sit down to a basin of sky blue and sinker,[2]
and that ed’n sayin’ much.” With that, man and master, Betty and the
boys quitted the field, leaving the hare to his reflections.
The whole proceeding was a mystery to the timid wildling, who had kept
to his seat notwithstanding Betty’s shrill voice and gesticulations.
Some hares would have slipped away, but it was instinctive in him to lie
close until found; a trait of his strain which went far to explain the
survival of his forbears amidst the gradual disappearance of their kind.
But though satisfied that he was not the object of the visit as he had
at first feared, he was glad when the party went away and left him to
solitude. The rest of the day was without incident, save that the
farmer, true to his word, came and fetched the bees at sundown.
The swarming of the bees and their capture was followed a week later by
a further disquieting incident, the cutting of the clover. It quite took
his breath away one morning when he reached the gate, to find the crop
levelled and the look of the enclosure changed almost beyond
recognition: the hedges too had grown so much taller. The timid fellow
shrank from entering the field; indeed the presence of three rabbits
feeding there would alone have sufficed to prevent it. On several
occasions these very rabbits had shown themselves hostile and driven him
off. Rabbits were by no means plentiful on his beats; he had not seen
more than a score; and as for hares, he had not only not met with one,
he had not crossed a single trail. He was the solitary survivor of his
kind, with enemies on every hand. Nevertheless, confident in the
protection which his wiles and speed afforded him, he enjoyed life to
the full, roaming over the farms in the highest of spirits.
But though he exulted in his powers he ran no risks; even the buck his
father had not been so wary as he. Whilst feeding he kept to the middle
of the field, where at frequent intervals he sat up and looked about
him, first to leeward, then to windward, his nostrils working all the
time, to assure himself that no enemy was near. Then he always slowed
down when approaching a gate or creep, in order to learn by sight or
smell whether a fox or one of the farm cats was lying in wait for him;
once he winded a fox and withdrew noiselessly as a shadow, leaving the
fox none the wiser. He was quick in distinguishing marauders by their
footfall and by the rustling they made in threading the ripe corn.
With the arrival of harvest, however, he was completely puzzled by the
loud outcry that arose on the farm-lands. It was always the same, and
caused by the reapers hailing the cutting of the last sheaf.[3]
Sometimes while he was in the form, sometimes when he was afoot, the
silence would be broken by a voice proclaiming aloud, “I haben, I
haben,” followed by many voices asking, “What have ’ee? What have ’ee?”
and the instant response, “A neck, a neck,” welcomed by loud hurrahs.
Save for these acclamations of farmer and farm-hands, he was wise in the
lore of the countryside; and with knowledge came confidence, which led
to his wandering farther and farther afield. He roamed as far as three
miles from the seat, to which he nevertheless continued to return, until
he happened on a wild bottom which the country folk have named Golden
Valley.
It was a beautiful starlight night when he came to the brow overlooking
it, and sat down to gaze at the mill, the pool above it, and the
glimpses of stream showing in the gorse like silver stitched on black
velvet. A will o’ the wisp was flitting to and fro near the bend of the
valley, and a white owl was searching the stubble before the miller’s
cottage; otherwise nothing stirred; so presently the leveret made his
way down and down the rugged hillside to the stream. This he followed as
far as the mill-pool; then, after glancing round the rushy margin, he
retraced his steps and crossed the stream below the mill. Sometimes
along the bank, sometimes within a stone’s throw as the bushes allowed,
he held on to the swampy ground where the weird light still floated
hither and thither and, passing between patches of iris and watermint,
came to some mounds carpeted with thyme, on which he remained to feed.
From there he overlooked a sheet of water, half-circled with alders, a
fowler’s hut peeping from beneath a cluster of them. No bird rested on
the water, which was marked only by the rings made by trout rising at
the white moths that came within their reach. It was a very peaceful
scene, with no breath of wind to diffuse the scent given out by
meadow-sweet and camomile.
The hungry fellow nibbled unceasingly at the aromatic herb, avoiding the
glow-worms which dotted the mounds. On the furze they were even more
numerous, so that their golden-green lamps lit up the beads of dew on
the spiders’ webs. But the leveret rarely interrupted his feast to look
about him; only once did he scratch his ears, and whilst so engaged had
his attention attracted by a shrill whistle from the stream below the
pool. Turning his head, he saw an otter and two cubs come over the bank
which dammed the pool, and enter the water with so little disturbance as
to make them seem uncanny. When they dived, their progress would have
been most difficult to follow had it not been for the leaping of the
trout, for the waves they raised were hardly noticeable even where the
water was shallowest. The otters rose at different parts of the pool,
each with a trout in its mouth, swam to the bank, and there lay at full
length to devour their take. After fishing for nearly half an hour the
animals fell to playing, now in the water, now on the bank, at times
even in the open spaces among the bushes. From one of these the cubs
espied the leveret. At once ceasing their gambols, they watched him
nibble the herbage, their nostrils working all the time. The leveret,
who showed no fear of the strange, short-legged creatures, was still
feeding when the otter recalled her cubs and led them up the stream, but
he was nearly satisfied, and shortly made his way along the dam and up
the opposite hill to the downs, over which he kept wandering and
wandering as if in search of a seat. Yet this was not his object. He had
already made up his mind where he would pass the coming day, took the
hint from a homing badger that it was time to be ensconced, returned to
the valley, and hid amongst the rushes bordering the mill-pool, at a
spot almost midway between the inflow and the hatch.
He had hardly settled down when the otter and her cubs hurried by along
the opposite bank, on their way to a reedy marsh a mile above. Then all
was quiet till, at peep of day, a kingfisher came and fished from a
branch of the alder overhanging the inflow; the tinkle of the water as
she struck it made a pretty sound in the silent dawn. Later, just as the
smoke rose from the miller’s chimney, a moorhen led out her brood as if
to teach them the geography of the pool, for she kept taking them from
creeklet to creeklet till the miller came to raise the hatch and drove
them all away. The hum of the water-wheel brought back to the leveret’s
memory the swarm of bees and the unforgettable din of the reapers; but
if he looked for the invasion of his new quarters by a posse of men and
boys he must have been agreeably disappointed when, early in the
forenoon, there came only a solitary angler, whose entry was so
noiseless as scarcely to disturb the peace of the quiet spot. Indeed the
newcomer stood for a second or two surveying the pool from the opening
between the withies before the leveret was aware of his presence. On the
discovery the timid creature thought, naturally enough, that the pair of
restless black eyes were scanning the bank in search of him; he did not
know they were drawn now here, now there, by the rising trout. The
angler was a tall, spare man of aquiline features, attired in grey tweed
suit and wearing a dove-coloured top-hat, about which some fly-casts
were neatly wound. His upright figure, thick black curly hair, in which
the few grey hairs seemed out of place, above all the comeliness of
face, marked him as a man between thirty and forty years of age. So one
would have judged as he stood, though the ease with which he leapt the
ditch to the sedges spoke rather of twenty-five.
He took his position on the turfy bank over against the leveret, and at
once began whipping together the three pieces of the rod he had removed
from the cloth case, working with extreme haste as if he feared that the
fish would cease to rise before he was ready. When the joints were
securely tied, he fixed the reel, ran the line through the rings, and
attached the cast with coch-y-bondhu for end fly, and red palmer for
dropper. Surely he is too impatient to soak the gut before casting; no,
he flings it into the little creek at his side and, to kill the time of
waiting, paces nervously up and down the bank. After four turns he took
up the rod and began casting, the flies falling lightly on the rippled
surface. At the third throw he was fast in a fish, but just failed to
steer it clear of a bed of weeds for which it made, and consequently
lost it. At the very next cast, when the flies fell close to the hatch,
he rose and hooked a bigger fish. This leapt out of the water and broke
its hold. He was much vexed, as the suddenly compressed lips showed, but
as he was about to give vent to his feelings a still larger fish rose
under the bank, close to the leveret. This sight checked the word on the
very tip of his tongue. The cast, a long one even from the edge of the
bank to which he now moved up, was rendered difficult if not impossible
by the withies, which twice caught the tail-fly at the beginning of the
forward cast and as often caused the Squire to give utterance to a
monosyllable delivered with staccato sharpness. At length he succeeded
in clearing the withies and getting the line out to its full length. It
was a good, clean cast, and would have been perfect had the pool been a
yard wider; as it was, the coch-y-bondhu caught in the rushes and,
despite the coaxing treatment to which the Squire subjected it, refused
to come away, the only result being to alarm the hare and raise the ire
of the angler. Worse was to come; for presently the trout, which kept
rising with irritating persistence, seized the dropper, hooked itself,
and in the violent struggle that followed broke the tackle and got away
with the red palmer in its jaw.
The situation was beyond the power of words, and it was strange to see
how the Squire met it. He dashed the rod to the ground, he paced up and
down the bank like a man demented, he shook his fist at the withies, he
shook it at the rushes, and kept shaking it till at length, after having
beaten a path on the turf, he had worked off his rage. Then he sat down
on the bank, filled his pipe and blew clouds of smoke. The tobacco had a
soothing effect: soon he was debating with himself whether to break the
cast or go and release the hook. He resolved to go round, but first he
would try to free it where he sat. So he took up the rod, flicked the
line, and then, as bad luck would have it, the fly came away. Yes, it
was bad luck, for few things would have surprised and delighted the
Squire more than the sight of a hare, whom he must have disturbed had he
been compelled to go round. He would have been thrilled by the discovery
that the hare was not, as he believed, extinct on his land. But it was a
joy postponed; he was to see the hare before the year was out, in
circumstances as different from those as imagination can conceive.
And meanwhile the hare, whose immunity from molestation had been
remarkable, was destined to undergo a series of terrible trials, the
first of which, strangely enough, befell it that very night.
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[2] Barley-bread and skimmed milk.
[3] The old harvest custom of “crying the neck.”