IV

I had business on hand which would not wait. By seven, Jobson, who had

been sent for, was waiting for me in the library. I knew by his grim

face that here I had a very good substitute for a prophet of the Lord.

"You were right," I said. "I have read the 11th chapter of Ist Kings,

and I have spent such a night as I pray God I shall never spend again.

"I thought you would," he replied. "I've had the same experience

myself."

"The Grove?" I said.

"Ay, the wud," was the answer in broad Scots.

I wanted to see how much he understood. "Mr. Lawson's family is from

the Scottish Border?"

"Ay. I understand they come off Borthwick Water side," he replied, but

I saw by his eyes that he knew what I meant.

"Mr. Lawson is my oldest friend," I went on, "and I am going to take

measures to cure him. For what I am going to do I take the sole

responsibility. I will make that plain to your master. But if I am to

succeed I want your help. Will you give it me? It sounds like madness

and you are a sensible man and may like to keep out of it. I leave it

to your discretion."

Jobson looked me straight in the face. "Have no fear for me," he said;

"there is an unholy thing in that place, and if I have the strength in

me I will destroy it. He has been a good master to me, and, forbye I

am a believing Christian. So say on, sir."

There was no mistaking the air. I had found my Tishbite.

"I want men," I said, "--as many as we can get."

Jobson mused. "The Kaffirs will no' gang near the place, but there's

some thirty white men on the tobacco farm. They'll do your will, if

you give them an indemnity in writing."

"Good," said I. "Then we will take our instructions from the only

authority which meets the case. We will follow the example of King

Josiah. I turned up the 23rd chapter of end Kings, and read--

"And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the

right hand of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel

had builded for Ashtaroth the abomination of the Zidonians ... did the

king defile.

"And he brake in Pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and

filled their places with the bones of men....'

"Moreover the altar that was at Beth-el, and the high place which

Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that

altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and

stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove."

Jobson nodded. "It'll need dinnymite. But I've plenty of yon down at

the workshops. I'll be off to collect the lads."

Before nine the men had assembled at Jobson's house. They were a hardy

lot of young farmers from home, who took their instructions docilely

from the masterful factor. On my orders they had brought their

shotguns. We armed them with spades and woodmen's axes, and one man

wheeled some coils of rope in a handcart.

In the clear, windless air of morning the Grove, set amid its lawns,

looked too innocent and exquisite for ill. I had a pang of regret that

a thing so fair should suffer; nay, if I had come alone, I think I

might have repented. But the men were there, and the grim-faced Jobson

was waiting for orders. I placed the guns, and sent beaters to the far

side. I told them that every dove must be shot.

It was only a small flock, and we killed fifteen at the first drive.

The poor birds flew over the glen to another spinney, but we brought

them back over the guns and seven fell. Four more were got in the

trees, and the last I killed myself with a long shot. In half an hour

there was a pile of little green bodies on the sward.

Then we went to work to cut down the trees. The slim stems were an

easy task to a good woodman, and one after another they toppled to the

ground. And meantime, as I watched, I became conscious of a strange

emotion.

It was as if someone were pleading with me. A gentle voice, not

threatening, but pleading--something too fine for the sensual ear, but

touching inner chords of the spirit. So tenuous it was and distant

that I could think of no personality behind it. Rather it was the

viewless, bodiless grace of this delectable vale, some old exquisite

divinity of the groves. There was the heart of all sorrow in it, and

the soul of all loveliness. It seemed a woman's voice, some lost lady

who had brought nothing but goodness unrepaid to the world. And what

the voice told me was that I was destroying her last shelter.

That was the pathos of it--the voice was homeless. As the axes flashed

in the sunlight and the wood grew thin, that gentle spirit was pleading

with me for mercy and a brief respite. It seemed to be telling of a

world for centuries grown coarse and pitiless, of long sad wanderings,

of hardly-won shelter, and a peace which was the little all she sought

from men. There was nothing terrible in it. No thought of

wrong-doing. The spell, which to Semitic blood held the mystery of

evil, was to me, of the Northern race, only delicate and rare and

beautiful. Jobson and the rest did not feel it, I with my finer senses

caught nothing but the hopeless sadness of it. That which had stirred

the passion in Lawson was only wringing my heart. It was almost too

pitiful to bear. As the trees crashed down and the men wiped the sweat

from their brows, I seemed to myself like the murderer of fair women

and innocent children. I remember that the tears were running over my

cheeks. More than once I opened my mouth to countermand the work, but

the face of Jobson, that grim Tishbite, held me back.

I knew now what gave the Prophets of the Lord their mastery, and I knew

also why the people sometimes stoned them.

The last tree fell, and the little tower stood like a ravished shrine,

stripped of all defence against the world. I heard Jobson's voice

speaking. "We'd better blast that stane thing now. We'll trench on

four sides and lay the dinnymite. Ye're no' looking weel, sir. Ye'd

better go and sit down on the braeface."

I went up the hillside and lay down. Below me, in the waste of shorn

trunks, men were running about, and I saw the mining begin. It all

seemed like an aimless dream in which I had no part. The voice of that

homeless goddess was still pleading. It was the innocence of it that

tortured me Even so must a merciful Inquisitor have suffered from the

plea of some fair girl with the aureole of death on her hair. I knew I

was killing rare and unrecoverable beauty. As I sat dazed and

heartsick, the whole loveliness of Nature seemed to plead for its

divinity. The sun in the heavens, the mellow lines of upland, the blue

mystery of the far plains, were all part of that soft voice. I felt

bitter scorn for myself. I was guilty of blood; nay, I was guilty of

the sin against light which knows no forgiveness. I was murdering

innocent gentleness--and there would be no peace on earth for me. Yet

I sat helpless. The power of a sterner will constrained me. And all

the while the voice was growing fainter and dying away into unutterable

sorrow.

Suddenly a great flame sprang to heaven, and a pall of smoke. I heard

men crying out, and fragments of stone fell around the ruins of the

grove. When the air cleared, the little tower had gone out of sight.

The voice had ceased and there seemed to me to be a bereaved silence in

the world. The shock moved me to my feet, and I ran down the slope to

where Jobson stood rubbing his eyes.

"That's done the job. Now we maun get up the tree roots. We've no

time to howk. We'll just blast the feck o' them."

The work of destruction went on, but I was coming back to my senses. I

forced myself to be practical and reasonable. I thought of the night's

experience and Lawson's haggard eyes, and I screwed myself into a

determination to see the thing through. I had done the deed; it was my

business to make it complete. A text in Jeremiah came into my head:

"Their children remember their altars and their groves by the green

trees upon the high hills."