The Power of the Dead

by Henry Williamson

  Lucy, standing by Uncle John, tried to identify Phillip as the line reappeared; he would be on the right somewhere.

  At the same moment she heard trundling and chuffing noises. Mr. Johnson was bringing back his tackle. Turning round, she saw drifts of steam rising above the thatched roofs of the village. The Iron Horses were on their way to the borstal. Billy, lifted up in her arms, pointed out the important event to Hilary.

  “Iron Hosses. Daddy’s Iron Hosses come, Nuncle. Oh good!”

  *

  Across the centre of the Big Wheatfield one engine trundled, while Hilary yelled at the top of his voice for it to stop, holding out his arms.

  “What idiot arranged for that thing to come here today?”

  Covey after covey of partridges were in flight down Lobbett’s. Over the lower hedge the birds threw up, wheeled, and followed their leaders to right and left, breaking away from the monster chuffing across the Big Wheatfield. Another check before its fellow standing in the borstal and blowing off steam. Away the coveys sped south over the boundary and so to Tofield property.

  Hilary was more than incensed. His father had had nearly a thousand acres of arable deep-ploughed in the ’eighties, spent a small fortune on guano—and then had to have the land reploughed to replace the sour subsoil.

  Phillip, walking down with his unloaded 12-bore, saw the attacking waves avoiding the fortress of La Boisselle. Thank God they had outflanked the guns.

  *

  “You’re a fathead, an absolute fathead, that’s what you are,” Hilary told him after the guests had gone back in the hired Daimler to Shakesbury. “And who the devil gave you permission to hire that steam-tackle? You’re a farm-pupil, kindly remember in future. And let it be clearly understood that you are to get the agent’s approval, through Hibbs, before you undertake any hiring, buying, or selling—and that includes both live and dead stock—and if you interfere with the established policy again between now and next midsummer, when your agreement with me for the first year is up, I’ll have seriously to consider ending that agreement.”

  “I’ve already apologised for the muck-up of the last drive, sir. It won’t happen again.”

  “I sincerely hope for your sake that it won’t.”

  “The trouble was that that old wooden lea-breaker didn’t last. It should have been in a museum.”

  “Then why didn’t you ask Hibbs to lend you an iron plough?”

  Phillip hesitated, not wanting to involve the farms’ manager, before replying, “I suppose I wanted to do things on my own.”

  “Initiative is all very well in an emergency, but this wasn’t an emergency. You do see that?”

  “Yes, Uncle, I see it. By the way, talking of museums, I found this bullock shoe in one of the fields. Uncle John said it might have been used in grandfather’s time. It’s exactly like the dark brown mark on one side of a partridge’s breast.”

  “Don’t talk to me about partridges. Your damfool machinery, right across the drive, turned most of the coveys on to my neighbour’s land.”

  “Yes, I’m awfully sorry——”

  “Remember what I told you about young Tofield—keep clear of him—he’s a waster.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to meet anybody. But talking about another kind of waster, Uncle, have you time to hear my idea about the rabbits? I don’t feel I want to spend any time shooting them while the keeper ferrets them. It’s too slow a job. Yes, I know about the traps; but isn’t there another way to get rid of them? Many of them are diseased. Their livers have got yellow streaks in them, due to inbreeding.”

  “I won’t have any gin-traps on my land.”

  “I agree. Uncle John says that trapping has caused the plague. The gin-traps catch the old bucks, who are first out of the buries at half-light. If they were not trapped, they would dig up and eat nests of young rabbits, in order, it seems, to bring the does sooner into season.”

  “You don’t want them ferreted, and you don’t want them trapped. Then what do you want?”

  “Don’t let Haylock allow badgers or foxes to be dug out. They’re the natural enemies of rabbits.”

  “And of all game-birds.”

  “But surely rabbits are their main diet? Wasn’t the lack of natural enemies the cause of the devastating plague of rabbits in Australia?”

  “Rabbits are a dam’ nuisance, everyone knows that. Now no more interference in my plans, if you please. It’s time you developed a sense of balance. Well, I must be on my way. Where’s Lucy? Ah, there you are, my dear. It’s been a great pleasure to all that you were with us, and many thanks for today especially. I’ll write to you about my future movements. Hang the birds on a north wall for at least a week, they taste better then. Remember me to your father when you see him, won’t you, and to your grandmother. Give them a brace of birds apiece, with my compliments, will you? Goodbye, Billy my lad. Look after your Mother, won’t you, now the stork’s on the way.”

  “Iron Hosses come back, Nuncle. Daddy’s Iron Hosses come back,” said Billy, from behind Lucy’s skirt. “Oh, good.”

  *

  Mr. Hibbs had been appointed by Hilary on the recommendation of the agent, Captain Arkell. Exempted from service in the Army as ‘indispensable’ during the war, the young man had worked on his father’s farm; afterwards he had persuaded the old man to let him have a year at an agricultural college. On returning to his father’s farm he found that new ideas were not wanted, so he had left home: to find himself, as he put it to Phillip, out of the frying pan into the fire, condemned to carry out a policy which he believed to be old-fashioned and therefore unsound.

  About a week after the shoot he asked to see Phillip, with a view to putting his ideas before him. The two walked round the estate together.

  If he could have his way, explained the manager, he would combine all six farms in one unit, to cut out overlapping. The day of the small farm was gone; most of the hedges he would grub out, and having got rid of the rabbits, which were vermin, would replace the hedges where necessary with barbed wire.

  “I would grass down all but the best of the arable, get rid of the ewe flocks and turn the land over to milk. Look at your farm premises, Captain Maddison. They need extensive repairs, but it would be money thrown away to attempt to restore them. I’d have no truck with the present cowsheds, but milk where the herds are grazing. No, not by hand-milking, but by machinery on wheels. It’s the coming thing. Most of our winters here are soft, the herds could remain out and lie where they feed except in hard weather.”

  “Would that involve a lot of food being transported, often in wet weather, Mr. Hibbs?”

  “No, sir. To start with, I’d fold them like sheep on a catch-crop of vetches and trifolium, followed by a clover ley, followed by kale. Hay would be a stand-by, but put in portable racks. This way all dung and liquid manure will be dropped back and not wasted down the drains as in the yards at present. The fertility of the soil would soon be built up. I’d follow with a catch-crop again, then with a ley, then kale—put the arable under a six-course rotation, all held together by milk.”

  “How can you milk cows by machinery, Mr. Hibbs?”

  “Nothing in it, sir. One of our leading downland farmers does it already. Draws the bail on wheels to the fields and milks by suction from a small petrol engine through pipes to half a dozen stalls. The suction is intermittent, acting through an interrupter valve which squeezes by means of a mechanical rubber band lining a cylindrical container. After milking”—went on Mr. Hibbs, as one having learnt the routine by heart—“the machine has to be cleaned, but that is done by steam injection under pressure through pipes sterilising all channels and working parts.”

  “I see.”

  “The six-course shift would supersede the obsolete eight-course rotation of catch-crop—roots—roots—wheat—barley—catch-crop. And since it takes the same labour and fodder to feed a poor cow as it does a good cow I would have pedigree stock from the start, and for the first few years would rear my mi
lk-calves only. I would clear out the present dual-purpose rubbish, which are neither beef nor milk, and go in for the hardy breed from the Friesian isles off Holland, which are big baggers.”

  “You mean they bag most of the prizes?”

  “Well, not exactly,” replied Mr. Hibbs, allowing himself the suggestion of a smile. “With their big milk-bags they yield up to four gallons a day of two milking periods, as opposed to an average two or two-and-a-half of our present redpolls.”

  They were crossing the arable ploughed by Johnson’s Iron Horses. Mr. Hibbs kicked a lump of yellow marl.

  “That won’t grow anything, not even carlick.”

  “But isn’t that a weed?”

  “Even carlick won’t grow on sour soil.”

  He went on to explain that carlick had sprung up when some of the old pastures in the vale, which hadn’t felt the plough since Napoleonic days, were turned under on compulsory orders from the Ministry of Agriculture during the war.

  “But carlick didn’t show itself much after the first ploughing. We had a plague o’ wireworm, which bred freely in the rotting sods and left the wheat bulb alone the first season. Father’s idea was to kill two birds with one stone the following season, when we adopted the then-new beet-sugar cropping. Beet-sugar requires deep cultivations, so he got the ploughing done by Johnson’s Iron Horses set-in twelve inches deep. We had so much carlick in May and early June that father had to hire school-children to pull up the yellow weed in handfuls. We couldn’t even use the horsehoe, the drills were smothered.”

  “What a tremendous lot you know, Mr. Hibbs. Do tell me, why was there so much carlick? Surely wild mustard doesn’t grow in grass?”

  “The rind or shell of the carlick seed contains a lot of oil, which preserves it. The seed had worked its way down worm holes, and lain there for well over a hundred years. We got rid of it by hand-pulling, as I said.”

  “And you think that this sour soil is so barren that even if any carlick were here, it wouldn’t flourish? What should one do?”

  “You might try cross-ploughing in the spring, when the rubbish you put under should be well-rotted. But don’t let it worry you. You’re not the first who’s made a mistake. Rain will bring down nitrogen, and frost will help to weather the sour soil. I’ll see Cap’n Arkell and advise some artificial on the seed-beds.”

  “For folding cows on—vetches and trifolium?”

  “That’s the idea, sir. Milk. There’s an idea among the farming community to form a co-operative society to market dry milk and other milk products. If you can persuade Sir Hilary, I’ll work on the idea of milk with the agent.”

  “I think all what you’ve told me is extraordinarily interesting. I feel that I’ll never be able to learn all there is to learn.”

  “The progressive farmer learns something every day, sir. And if I may venture an opinion, you show that you have the ability to grasp the necessity of ley farming with both short and long leys. My father won’t have it, he says that milk will suck the fertility away, but I tell him that with the bail all the fertility is left behind to grow a profitable crop of wheat where before two rabbits fought for one blade of grass.”

  Chapter 4

  WEEST WEATHER

  The weather became grievous outdoors; so much the better when the north-west wind drove rain against the rattling casements, and at times the beechwood smoke wavered and bulged into the room. His farmer’s conscience was at rest, he could concentrate happily on the writing of his story of water, reed, tree, cloud, and stone. In imagination he was living with the spirit of lost love, his memories of sand and wave and tideless Mediterranean sea, where the cub, in Barley’s cage of hands, had known its first salt wave; where Shelley was of the corals and the dreaming weeds of the Mediterranean sea. Had drowned Shelley risen with her upon his Cloud, to outsoar, with Keats, the shadow of Night; to fall as rain upon the granite rocks of Dartmoor and nourish the starveling lichens, mosses, and grasses?

  *

  He knew that such derivative thoughts had no value, beyond release of constriction before the true flow began.

  When, to the new eyes of thee,

  All things, by immortal power,

  Near or far,

  Hiddenly

  To each other linkèd are,

  That thou canst not stir a flower

  Without troubling of a star;

  When thy song is shield and mirror,

  To the fair snake-curlèd Pain …

  He sat at the table with a map of Dartmoor before him. There in the fen between Great Kneeset and Whitehorse Hill five rivers were born. Should he ask Lucy to go with him?

  When she came upstairs with the mail she said, “I wish I could, Pip. But there’s the Church Council meeting this afternoon, and I promised to go with Uncle John.”

  He reversed an envelope addressed in Hilary’s clear writing. “Hide it! If I open it all feeling will go from me. What’s in this one?”

  It was from his literary agent. Cowdray & Smith offered £50 advance for The Water Wanderer, subject to contract.

  “I must finish the book,” he muttered, as Lucy took away the unopened letter; but he could not settle to work; and called down the stairs, “May I have some coffee, then will you open Nuncle’s letter and tell me if it’s adverse or favourable. No, don’t tell me what it says. Just say ‘adverse’—or ‘favourable’.”

  The coffee took a long time to arrive, it seemed, while thoughts of Nuncle were his unsettling. He ran to the landing and shouted down, “Is it good or is it bad? Tell me, don’t keep me in suspense!”

  “I am reading it,” she called up the stairs. “It’s good I think. Do you remember asking Uncle Hilary——”

  “What does Nuncle say?” he yelled.

  “He says he will be able to arrange two passages for Fiennes and Tim to go to Australia, if they are willing to work. The Laurentia sails from Tilbury, let me see—when was it—oh yes, here it is—it sails from Tilbury——”

  “You’ve already said that! When, when?”

  “He says next April.”

  “Oh, good! I’ll come down and we’ll have coffee together. Afterwards will you cut sandwiches for two? I’ll send a telegram, and ask Tim to come with me to Dartmoor. I’m sorry I shouted at you.”

  Lucy was happy. Fiennes and Tim were doing no good at home, now that the Works were more or less closed. The sooner they had jobs to go to, the better. Ernest would look after Pa; and Phillip need worry himself about the silly Works no longer.

  *

  While waiting for Phillip to arrive, Tim imagined the great liner Laurentia surging forward under the flashing stars of the Southern Cross, of which he had read in stories of his boyhood. Dolphins leapt out of phosphorescent waves as he leaned reflectively upon white rails shaking a little from the steady beat of the great engines. And then—Australia! He imagined himself building a homestead in the Back of Beyond for Pansy, his girl in the village shop, whom he saw secretly and shyly. Mocking Birds sang—or was it the Laughing Jackass? Anyway, there were kangaroos to bound away into the horizon of the setting sun. But when he thought that he might never see Pa again, and the home where he and Lulu had shared so much happiness, he felt sad, and then afraid.

  Still, it would be some time before he would have to leave. And today Phillip was going to take him to Dartmoor, a most wonderful place, known since his boyhood for The Hound of the Baskervilles. What good luck that Phillip had come into their lives, a hero of the Great War. Tim always felt reassured when in the company of Phillip, who always knew what to do in any emergency. Not much could go wrong with the old home, with Phillip in the offing to keep an eye on things when he and Fiennes were gone. Oh no, there was no need to worry. Ernest would be able to support Pa with his legacy, and by Jove, when Pa had passed on, he might even be able to join him and Fiennes ‘down under’. The Copleston Brothers were by no means a thing of the past! Engineers would be needed in Australia, ‘the land of unbounded opportunity’. By Jove, he must
telephone ‘Mister’ the good news.

  *

  They drove west into a dull morning threatening rain. There was a long drive before them, and then several hours’ walking up the valley of Taw Head to Cranmere Pool, the loneliest part of the moor.

  “I suppose Ernest will sell the Tamp after you and Fiennes have gone, Tim?”

  “I have mentioned the matter, Phil, and Ernest says he will bear it in mind, when the fine weather comes.”

  “There’s Fiennes’ ‘Peerless’ motor-bicycle as well. It’s almost unused, what about selling that? You’ll need every penny, you know, when you get to Australia. Work may not be too easy to find.”

  “Fiennes hopes to take it with him, but I understand that the cost may prove prohibitive,” replied Tim, in the mid-Victorian idiom he had learned from Pa. “But Ernest will sell it, he says, if he gets an offer.”

  “He’ll have to find a buyer, you know, Tim.”

  “Yes, I agree. I must remember to mention the matter to him——”

  When they reached Exeter and turned south-west for the moor the rain was beating into their faces with the force of half a gale. Wet and cold, they left the outfit on a track of granite gravel beyond Belstone, and followed the valley below which ran the clear waters of the little Taw. The wind had dropped but it was still raining. Through moss and bog plashes their boots squelched, for they had descended so that Phillip might observe the mossy stones, the amber water, the diminutive trout of the stream which broadened where cattle and wild ponies had broken bays along its course.

  Walking beside the stream meant water chronically in their boots, so they climbed out of the valley, coming to a dry wall of granite marked Irishman’s Wall on the map. A female sparrowhawk flew up from a small mound, its plucking place. There lay the remains of her kill, the skull and long beak of a snipe, its wings, feathers, and gizzard. The mound was also visited by a fox, Phillip pointed out to Tim: pellets of greyish fur and bone lay near it. “Perhaps the fox at night comes for what the sparrowhawk leaves by day.”