"You may do as you please, but I'm going to see it out."
"No, but I say do come along; that's a good, fellow."
"Not I; why, we've only just come out. Didn't you hear? Wurley
dared me to do a night's watching, and I said I meant to do it."
"Yes; so did I. But we can change our minds. What's the good of
having a mind if you can't change it! [Greek text] ai denterai
poz phrontidez sophoterai--isn't that good Greek and good sense?"
"I don't see it. They'll only laugh and sneer if we go back now."
"They'll laugh at us twice as much if we don't. Fancy they're
just beginning pool now, on that stunning table. Come along,
Brown; don't miss your chance. We shall be sure to divide the
pools, as we've missed the claret. Cool hands and cool heads, you
know. Green on brown, pink your player in hand! That's a good
deal pleasanter than squatting here all night on the damp grass."
"Very likely."
"But you won't? Now, do be reasonable. Will you come if I stop
with you another half-hour?"
"No."
"An hour then? Say till ten o'clock?"
"If I went at all I would go at once."
"Then you won't come?"
"No."
"I'll bet you a sovereign you never see a poacher, and then how
sad you will be in the morning! It will be much worse coming in
to breakfast with empty hands and a cold in the head, than going
in now. They will chaff then, I grant you."
"Well, then, they may chaff and be hanged, for I shan't go in
now."
Tom's interlocutor put his hands in the pockets of his heather
mixture shooting coat, and took a turn or two of some dozen
yards, backwards and forwards above the place where our hero was
sitting. He didn't like going in and facing the pool players by
himself; so he stopped once more and reopened the conversation.
"What do you want to do by watching all night, Brown?"
"To show the keeper and those fellows indoors that I mean what I
say. I said I'd do it, and I will."
"You don't want to catch a poacher, then?"
"I don't much care; I'll catch one if he comes in my way--or try
it on, at any rate."
"I say, Brown, I like that; as if you don't poach yourself. Why,
I remember when the Whiteham keeper spent the best part of a week
outside the college gates, on the lookout for you and Drysdale
and some other fellows."
"What has that to do with it?"
"Why, you ought to have more fellow-feeling. I suppose you go on
the principle of set a thief to catch a thief?"
Tom made no answer, and his companion went on.
"Come along, now, like a good fellow. If you'll come in now, we
can come out again all fresh, when the rest go to bed."
"Not we. I sha'n't go in. But you can come out again if you like;
you'll find me hereabouts."
The man in the heather mixture had now shot his last bolt, and
took himself off to the house, leaving Tom by the riverside. How
they got there may be told in a few words. After his morning's
fishing, and conversation with the keeper, he had gone in full of
his subject and propounded it at the breakfast table. His
strictures on the knife and razor business produced a rather warm
discussion, which merged in the question whether a keeper's life
was a hard one, till something was said implying that Wurley's
men were overworked. The master took this in high dudgeon, and
words ran high. In the discussion, Tom remarked (apropos of
night-work) that he would never ask another man to do what he
would not do himself; which sentiment was endorsed by, amongst
others, the man in the heather mixture. The host had retorted,
that they had better in that case try it themselves; which remark
had the effect of making Tom resolve to cut short his visit, and
in the meantime had brought him and his ally to the river side on
the night in question.
The first hour, as we have seen, had been enough for the ally;
and so Tom was left in company with a plaid, a stick, and a pipe,
to spend the night by himself.
It was by no means the first night he had spent in the open air,
and promised to be a pleasant one for camping out. It was almost
the longest day in the year, and the weather was magnificent.
There was yet an hour of daylight, and the place he had chosen
was just the right one for enjoying the evening.
He was sitting under one of a clump of huge old alders, growing
on the thin strip of land already noticed, which divided the main
stream from the deep artificial ditch which fed the
water-meadows. On his left the emerald-green meadows stretched
away till they met the inclosed corn-land. On his right ran the
main stream, some fifty feet in breadth at this point; on the
opposite side of which was a rough piece of ground, half
withey-bed, half copse, with a rank growth of rushes at the
water's edge. These were the chosen haunts of the moor-hen and
water-rat, whose tracks could be seen by dozens, like small open
doorways, looking out on to the river, through which ran a number
of mysterious little paths into the rush-wilderness beyond.
The sun was now going down behind the copse, through which his
beams came aslant, chequered and mellow. The stream ran dimpling
by him, sleepily swaying the masses of weed, under the surface
and on the surface; and the trout rose under the banks, as some
moth or gnat or gleaming beetle fell into the stream; here and
there one more frolicsome than his brethren would throw himself
joyously into the air. The swifts rushed close by him, in
companies of five or six, and wheeled, and screamed, and dashed
away again, skimming along the water, baffling his eye as he
tried to follow their flight. Two kingfishers shot suddenly up on
to their supper station, on a stunted willow stump, some twenty
yards below him, and sat there in the glory of their blue backs
and cloudy red waistcoats, watching with long sagacious beaks
pointed to the water beneath, and every now and then dropping
like flashes of light into the stream, and rising again, with
what seemed one motion, to their perches. A heron or two were
fishing about the meadows; and he watched them stalking about in
their sober quaker coats, or rising on slow heavy wing, and
lumbering away home with a weird cry. He heard the strong pinions
of the wood pigeon in the air, and then from the trees above his
head came the soft call, "Take-two-cow-Taffy,
take-two-cow-Taffy," with which that fair and false bird is said
to have beguilled the hapless Welchman to the gallows. Presently,
as he lay motionless, the timid and graceful little water-hens
peered out from their doors in the rushes opposite, and, seeing
no cause for fear, stepped daintily into the water, and were
suddenly surrounded by little bundles of black soft down, which
went paddling about in and out of the weeds, encouraged by the
occasional sharp, clear, parental "keck-keck," and merry little
dabchicks popped up in mid-stream, and looked round, and nodded
at him, pert and voiceless, and dived again; even old cunning
water-rats sat up on the bank with round black noses and gleaming
eyes, or took solemn swims out, and turned up their tails and
disappeared for his amusement. A comfortable low came at
intervals from the cattle, revelling in the abundant herbage. All
living things seemed to be disporting themselves, and enjoying,
after their kind, the last gleams of the sunset, which were
making the whole vault of heaven glow and shimmer; and, as he
watched them, Tom blessed his stars as he contrasted the
river-side with the glare of lamps and the click of balls in the
noisy pool room.
Before it got dark he bethought him of making sure of his
position once more; matters might have changed since he chose it
before dinner. With all that he could extract from the keeper,
and his own experience in such matters, it had taken him several
hours' hunting up and down the river that afternoon before he had
hit on a night-line. But he had persevered, knowing that this was
the only safe evidence to start from, and at last had found
several, so cunningly set that it was clear that it was a
first-rate artist in the poaching line against whom he had pitted
himself. These lines must have been laid almost under his nose on
that very day, as the freshness of the baits proved. The one
which he had selected to watch by was under the bank, within a
few yards of the clump of alders where he was now sitting. There
was no satisfactory cover near the others; so he had chosen this
one, where he would be perfectly concealed behind the nearest
trunk from any person who might come in due time to take up the
line. With this view, then, he got up, and, stepping carefully on
the thickest grass where his foot would leave no mark, went to
the bank, and felt with the hook of his stick after the line. It
was all right, and he returned to his old seat.
And then the summer twilight came on, and the birds disappeared,
and the hush of night settled down on river, and copse, and
meadow--cool and gentle summer twilight after the hot bright day.
He welcomed it too, as it folded up the landscape, and the trees
lost their outline, and settled into soft black masses rising
here and there out of the white mist, which seemed to have crept
up to within a few yards all round him unawares. There was no
sound now but the gentle murmur of the water and an occasional
rustle of reeds, or of the leaves over his head, as a stray
wandering puff of air passed through them on its way home to bed.
Nothing to listen to and nothing to look at; for the moon had not
risen, and the light mist hid everything except a star or two
right up above him. So, the outside world having left him for the
present, he was turned inwards on himself.
This was all very well at first; and he wrapped the plaid round
his shoulders and leant against his tree, and indulged in a
little self-gratulation. There was something of strangeness and
adventure in his solitary night-watch, which had its charm for a
youngster of twenty-one; and the consciousness of not running
from his word, of doing what he had said he would do, while
others shirked and broke down, was decidedly pleasant.
But this satisfaction did not last very long, and the night began
to get a little wearisome, and too cool to be quite comfortable.
By degrees, doubts as to the wisdom of his self-imposed task
crept into his head. He dismissed them for a time by turning his
thoughts to other matters. The neighbourhood of Englebourn, some
two miles up above him, reminded him of the previous summer; and
he wondered how he should get on with his cousin when they met.
He should probably see her the next day, for he would lose no
time in calling. Would she receive him well? Would she have much
to tell him about Mary?
He had been more hopeful on this subject of late, but the
loneliness, the utter solitude and silence of his position as he
sat there in the misty night, away from all human habitations,
was not favorable somehow to hopefulness. He found himself
getting dreary and sombre in heart--more and more so as the
minutes rolled on, and the silence and loneliness pressed on him
more and more heavily. He was surprised at his own
down-heartedness, and tried to remember how he had spent former
nights so pleasantly out of doors. Ah, he had always had a
companion within call, and something to do--cray fishing, bat
fowling, or something of the kind! Sitting there doing nothing,
he fancied, must make it so heavy to-night. By a strong effort of
will he shook off the oppression. He moved, and hummed a tune to
break the silence; he got up and walked up and down, lest it
should again master him. If wind, storm, pouring rain, anything
to make sound or movement, would but come!
But neither of them came, and there was little help in sound or
movement made by himself. Besides it occurred to him that much
walking up and down might defeat the object of his watch. No one
would come near while he was on the move; and he was probably
making marks already which might catch the eye of the setter of
the nightlines at some distance, if that cunning party waited for
the morning light, and might keep him away from the place
altogether.
So he sat down again on his old seat, and leant hard against the
alder trunk, as though to steady himself, and keep all
troublesome thoughts well in front of him. In this attitude of
defense he reasoned with himself on the absurdity of allowing
himself to be depressed by the mere accidents of place, and
darkness, and silence; but all the reasoning at his command
didn't alter the fact. He felt the enemy advancing again, and,
casting, about for help, fell back on the thought that he was
going through a task, holding to his word, doing what he had said
he would do; and this brought him some relief for the moment, He
fixed his mind steadily on this task of his; but alas, here again
in his very last stronghold, the enemy began to turn his flank,
and the position every minute became more and more untenable.
He had of late fallen into a pestilent habit of cross-questioning
himself on anything which he was about--setting up himself like a
cock at Shrovetide, and pelting himself with inexorable "whys?"
and "wherefores?" A pestilent habit truly he had found it, and
one which left a man no peace of his life--a relentless,
sleepless habit, always ready to take advantage of him, but never
so viciously alert, that he remembered, as on this night.
And so this questioning self, which would never be denied for
long, began to examine him, as to his proposed night's work. This
precious task, which he was so proud of going through with, on
the score of which he had been in his heart crowing over others,
because they had not taken it on them, or had let it drop, what
then was the meaning of it?
"What was he out there for? What had he come out to do?" They
were awkward questions. He tried several answers and was driven
from one to another till he was bound to admit that he was out
there that night partly out of pique, and partly out of pride;
and that his object (next to earning the pleasure of thinking
himself a better man than his neighbours) was, if so be, to catch
a poacher. "To catch a poacher? What business had he to be
catching poachers? If all poachers were to be caught, he would
have to be caught himself." He had just had an unpleasant
reminder of this fact from him of the heather mixture--a Parthian
remark which he had thrown over his shoulder as he went off, and
which had stuck. "But then," Tom argued, "it was a very different
thing, his poaching--going out for a day's lark after game, which
he didn't care a straw for, but only for the sport--and that of
men making a trade of it, like the man the keeper spoke of."
"Why? How different? If there were any difference, was it one in
his favour?" Avoiding this suggestion, he took up new ground,
"Poachers were always the greatest blackguards in their
neighbourhoods, pests of society, and ought to be put down."
"Possibly--at any rate he had been one of the fraternity in his
time, and was scarcely the man to be casting stones at them."
"But his poaching had always been done thoughtlessly. How did he
know that others had worse motives?"
And so he went on, tossing the matter backwards and forwards in
his mind, and getting more and more uncomfortable, and unable to
answer to his own satisfaction the simple question, "What right
have you to be out here on this errand?"
He got up a second time and walked up and down, but with no
better success than before. The change of position, and exercise,
did not help him out of his difficulties. And now he got a step
further. If he had no right to be there, hadn't he better go up
to the house and say so, and go to bed like the rest? No, his
pride couldn't stand that. But if he couldn't go in, he might
turn in to a barn or outhouse, nobody would be any the wiser
then, and after all he was not pledged to stop on one spot all
night? It was a tempting suggestion, and he was very near
yielding to it at once. While he wavered, a new set of thoughts
came up to back it. How, if he stayed there, and a gang of
night-poachers came? He knew that many of them were desperate
men. He had no arms; what could he do against them? Nothing; but
he might be maimed for life in a night row which he had no
business to be in--murdered, perhaps. He stood still and listened
long and painfully.
Every moment, as he listened, the silence mastered him more and
more, and his reason became more and more powerless. It was such
a silence--a great illimitable, vague silence? The silence of a
deserted house where he could at least have felt that he was
bounded somewhere, by wall, and floor, and roof--where men must
have lived and worked once, though they might be there no
longer--would have been nothing; but this silence of the huge,
wide out-of-doors world, where there was nothing but air and
space around and above him, and the ground beneath, it was
getting irksome, intolerable, awful! The great silence seemed to
be saying to him, "You are alone, alone, alone!" and he had never
known before what horror lurked in that thought.
Every moment that he stood still the spell grew stronger on him,
and yet he dared not move; and a strange, wild feeling of
fear--unmistakable physical fear, which made his heart beat and
his limbs tremble--seized on him. He was ready to cry out, to
fall down, to run, and yet there he stood listening, still and
motionless.
The critical moment in all panics must come at last. A wild and
grewsome hissing and snoring, which seemed to come from the air
just over his head, made him start and spring forward, and gave
him the use of his limbs again at any rate, though they would not
have been worth much to him had the ghost or hobgoblin appeared
whom he half expected to see the next moment. Then came a
screech, which seemed to flit along the rough meadow opposite,
and come towards him. He drew a long breath, for he knew that
sound well enough; it was nothing after all but the owls.
The mere realized consciousness of the presence of some living
creatures, were they only owls, brought him to his senses. And
now the moon was well up, and the wayward mist had cleared away,
and he could catch glimpses of the solemn birds every now and
then, beating over the rough meadow backwards and forwards, and
over the shallow water as regularly as trained pointers.
He threw himself down again under his tree, and now bethought
himself of his pipe. Here was a companion which, wonderful to
say, he had not thought of before since the night set in. He
pulled it out, but paused before lighting. Nothing was so likely
to betray his whereabouts as tobacco. True, but anything was
better than such another fright as he had had, "so here goes," he
thought, "if I keep off all the poachers in Berkshire;" and he
accordingly lighted up, and, with the help of his pipe, once more
debated with himself the question of beating a retreat.
After a sharp inward struggle, he concluded to stay and see it
out. He should despise himself, more than he cared to face, if he
gave in now. If he left that spot before morning, the motive
would be sheer cowardice. There might be fifty other good reasons
for going; but, if he went, _his_ reason would be fear and
nothing else. It might have been wrong and foolish to come out;
it must be to go in now. "Fear never made a man do a right
action," he summed up to himself; "so here I stop, come what may
of it. I think I've seen the worst of it now. I was in a real
blue funk, and no mistake. Let's see, wasn't I laughing this
morning at the watcher who didn't like passing a night by the
river? Well, he has got the laugh on me now, if he only knew it.
I've learnt one lesson to-night at any rate; I don't think I
shall ever be very hard on cowards again."
By the time he had finished his pipe, he was a man again, and,
moreover, notwithstanding the damp, began to feel sleepy, now
that his mind was thoroughly made up, and his nerves were quiet.
So he made the best of his plaid, and picked a softish place, and
went off into a sort of dog-sleep, which lasted at intervals
through the short summer night. A poor thin sort of sleep it was,
in which he never altogether lost his consciousness, and broken
by short intervals of actual wakefulness, but a blessed release
from the self-questionings and panics of the early night.
He woke at last with a shiver. It was colder than he had yet felt
it, and it seemed lighter. He stretched his half-torpid limbs,
and sat up. Yes, it was certainly getting light, for he could
just make out the figures on the face of his watch which he
pulled out. The dawn was almost upon him, and his night watch was
over. Nothing had come of it as yet, except his fright, at which
he could now laugh comfortably enough; probably nothing more
might come of it after all, but he had done the task he had set
himself without flinching, and that was a satisfaction. He wound
up his watch, which he had forgotten to do the night before, and
then stood up, and threw his damp plaid aside, and swung his arm
across his chest to restore circulation. The crescent moon was
high up in the sky, faint and white, and he could scarcely now
make out the stars which were fading out as the glow in the
north-east got stronger and broader.
Forgetting for a moment the purpose of his vigil, he was thinking
of a long morning's fishing, and had turned to pick up his plaid
and go off to the house for his fishing-rod, when he thought he
heard the sound of dry wood snapping. He listened intently; and
the next moment it came again, some way off, but plainly to be
heard in the intense stillness of the morning. Some living thing
was moving down the stream. Another moment's listening and he was
convinced that the sound came from a hedge some hundred yards
below.
He had noticed the hedge before; the keeper had stopped up a gap
in it the day before, at the place where it came down to the
water, with some old hurdles and dry thorns. He drew himself up
behind his alder, looking out from behind it cautiously towards
the point from which the sound came. He could just make out the
hedge through the mist, but saw nothing.
But now the crackling began again, and he was sure that a man was
forcing his way over the keeper's barricade. A moment afterwards
he saw a figure drop from the hedge into the slip in which he
stood. He drew back his head hastily, and his heart beat like a
hammer as he waited the approach of the stranger. In a few
seconds the suspense was too much for him, for again there was
perfect silence. He peered out a second time cautiously round the
tree, and now he could make out the figure of a man stopping by
the water-side just above the hedge, and drawing in a line. This
was enough, and he drew back again, and made himself small behind
the tree; now he was sure that the keeper's enemy, the man he had
come out to take, was here! His next halt would be at the line
which was set within a few yards of the place where he stood. So
the struggle which he had courted was come! All his doubts of the
night wrestled in his mind for a minute; but forcing them down,
he strung himself up for the encounter, his whole frame trembling
with excitement, and his blood tingling through his veins as
though it would burst them. The next minute was as severe a trial
of nerve as he had ever been put to, and the sound of a stealthy
tread on the grass just below came to him as a relief. It
stopped, and he heard the man stoop, then came a stir in the
water, and the flapping as of a fish being landed.
Now was his time! He sprang from behind the tree, and, the next
moment, was over the stooping figure of the poacher. Before he
could seize him the man sprung up, and grappled with him. They
had come to a tight lock at once, for the poacher had risen so
close under him that he could not catch his collar and hold him
off. Too close to strike, it was a desperate trial of strength
and bottom.
Tom knew in a moment that he had his work cut out for him. He
felt the nervous power of the frame he had got hold of as he
drove his chin into the poacher's shoulder, and arched his back,
and strained every muscle in his body to force him backwards, but
in vain. It was all he could do to hold his own; but he felt that
he might hold it yet, as they staggered on the brink of the back
ditch, stamping the grass and marsh marigolds into the ground,
and drawing deep breath through their set teeth. A slip, a false
foot-hold, a failing muscle, and it would be over; down they must
go-who would be uppermost?
The poacher had trod on a soft place and Tom felt it, and,
throwing himself forward, was reckoning on victory, but reckoning
without his host. For, recovering himself with a twist of the
body which brought them still closer together, the poacher locked
his leg behind Tom's in a crook which brought the wrestlings of
his boyhood into his head with a flash, as they tottered for
another moment, and then losing balance, went headlong over with
a heavy plunge and splash into the deep back ditch, locked in
each other's arms.
The cold water closed over them, and for a moment Tom held as
tight as ever. Under or above the surface it was all the same, he
couldn't give in first. But a gulp of water, and the singing in
his ears, and a feeling of choking, brought him to his senses,
helped too, by the thought of his mother and Mary, and love of
the pleasant world up above. The folly and uselessness of being
drowned in a ditch on a point of honor stood out before him as
clearly as if he had been thinking of nothing else all his life;
and he let go his hold--much relieved to find that his companion
of the bath seemed equally willing to be quit of him--and
struggled to the surface, and seized the bank, gasping and
exhausted.
His first thought was to turn round and look for his adversary.
The poacher was by the bank too, a few feet from him. His cap had
fallen off in the struggle, and, all chance of concealment being
over, he too had turned to face the matter out, and their eyes
met.
"Good God! Harry! is it you?"
Harry Winburn answered nothing; and the two dragged their feet
out of the muddy bottom, and scrambled on to the bank, and then
with a sort of common instinct sat down, dripping and foolish,
each on the place he had reached, and looked at one another.
Probably two more thoroughly bewildered lieges of her Majesty
were not at that moment facing one another in any corner of the
United Kingdom.