“Besides,” said the authority, “you’ll dish the blighters over rates.”
He received a final letter from the U.D.C.
Yours of the 8th duly noted. Please understand that in no case must the wooden structure be used as a habitation. We reserve to ourselves the right to inspect the site from time to time.
Aubrey indulged in a mild chuckle. He felt that he had finished with the official world. He would be left in peace now to play the hermit as he pleased. In his innocence he rejoiced, and purchased a minute sleeping hutch on wheels.
He enjoyed four successive peaceful week-ends. Certainly, his first experience of trailing a caravan was somewhat hectic, but he consoled himself by reflecting that his hutch on wheels could be left in Lady Wood during the season and if he so chose it could be stored at Tillworth for the winter. The weather was perfect, what the journalists describe as Flaming June, and Aubrey mooched about in an old tennis shirt and grey flannel trousers.
His last week-end in June produced other happenings. Bob had been restraining himself under protest, though there were sounds in and about the wood that his master did not seem to hear. On the Sunday morning Aubrey and his dog were about very early, and on the edge of the rough grassland westwards of the trees Bob made a sudden dash at something. There was a scuffle in the grass before Aubrey pounced and dragged the dog away from a rabbit in a snare.
A rabbit in a snare on his land! Poachers!
The rabbit was still alive, its red and congested eyes expressing throttled anguish, and Aubrey went down on his knees and set about releasing the creature. Bob attempted to join in and received a cuff from his humane master. He stood off and whimpered while Aubrey fiddled with the wire noose. The rabbit’s struggles to escape had drawn it tight, and it was not easy to get a finger between the wire and the creature’s neck, but he managed it, and the bit of brown fur crouched there panting and dazed.
Aubrey held Bob by the collar.
“No you don’t, my lad.”
The rabbit gave three or four feeble and tentative jumps, crouched and then as though realizing that life and liberty had returned it broke into an amble and disappeared behind some furze bushes. Aubrey stood up and released the dog. He did not know that he was being watched by a man lying prone behind a thorn tree.
“Poachers, Bob.”
He supposed that he ought to inform the police. Or should he put up one or two notices—“Trespassers will be prosecuted.”
He had other trespassers that afternoon. He was enjoying an afternoon nap on his camp bed when he was roused by the sounds of an invasion, voices, the noise of cars.
“Up a bit more, Jack.”
“That’ll do. Easy all.”
Bob, couchant, watched his master. Was barking in order, or was this one of the occasions when a dog lay still? Aubrey got up and went down through the wood to investigate. He found three cars parked on the track from gate to chalk pit, and a dozen young things preparing to picnic.
He addressed the party.
“Excuse me, you’re trespassing.”
Of course they were trespassing, but they were not doing any harm. They had come up the lane and seen the gate. They were quite nice young things, and the lads addressed Aubrey as “sir.” And suddenly he felt rather ashamed of interfering with them. Was he going to be the selfish curmudgeon and forbid them the wood on a lovely day in June? He relented for this one occasion.
“All right. I’ll allow you to stay to-day, but please don’t leave litter about.”
“Thanks most awfully, sir. We’ll clear up everything.”
But Aubrey proposed to exclude all invaders in the future. He had two notice boards prepared at Tillworth and erected them, one at the gate and one on the piece of grassland where he had found the rabbit, and in his innocence he supposed that he had warned off all intruders.
Next week-end, in spite of his notice, another car party invaded the wood. They were rude people. They argued. They propounded brusque opinions upon the owners of private property. Aubrey ordered them out.
“I’ve got your car numbers. If you don’t go—I shall prosecute.”
They went, and Aubrey purchased a padlock and chain and secured the gate against future crashers.
But—somehow—Lady Wood had lost for him some of its tranquillity. It was not quite his, or the haven of peace that he had expected. Its green silences held an atmosphere that was almost sinister. He would find himself listening for sounds of some invasion. He began to see imagined figures in the wood, shapes skulking behind trees. At night he would lie and listen, and the dog too was restless.
He was taking his fortnight’s holiday in September, and he proposed to spend it in Lady Wood, loafing and dreaming, and again the official world had something to say in the matter.
One Saturday afternoon a surly and heated postman delivered a letter.
“I’ve been trying to get rid of this all the week.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You ought to have a box on your—— gate.”
Aubrey opened the letter. It was an official communication from a person of whose existence he had never dreamed, a person who was called the County Agricultural Officer. To the letter was attached a nice little map with a blue line traced on it. The letter informed Aubrey that a complaint had been received on the state of the ditch marked blue in the plan. It gave Aubrey curt orders to clean the ditch.
He was annoyed. He went and inspected the offending fosse and found that it was a bramble-grown hollow extending along the edge of his property between the wood and a meadow, and that it ran for nearly a quarter of a mile and ended in another ditch skirting the lane. He was still more annoyed. Did the official expect him to clear and dig a sort of miniature Devil’s Dyke? Moreover, if the ditch had been allowed to get into that disgraceful condition by the previous owner why hadn’t the official world dealt with that person and not descended upon an innocent neophyte?
He stuffed the letter into his pocket and decided to take no notice of it, but the thing worried him, and on Monday he consulted young Blaber, a fellow clerk whose father was a farmer.
“I’ve had this. Is it of any significance?”
Blaber read the letter.
“Oh, yes, you’ll have to do it.”
“What, clear out a quarter of a mile of ditch which some other fellow neglected?”
“Yes, they can make you do it.”
The mild Aubrey swore.
“Well—I’m damned! One goes into the country to be peaceful.”
And young Blaber laughed.
“You’ll find much less trouble in Piccadilly.”
Aubrey was both annoyed and worried. He had spent more money on Lady Wood than he had intended; in fact, he was short of money, and his holiday was to have been both a joy and an economy. And now he had orders to shift so many tons of useless earth. How much would it cost to clear that ditch? Ten pounds? He hadn’t the faintest idea, but he did know that he couldn’t afford the money.
“I’ll do it myself.”
He would spend his holiday clearing that damned ditch. He supposed if he scraped the bottom of it he could report obedience to the official world. And who was the complainer? Why hadn’t the fellow had the decency to come straight to him and not go sneaking behind his back to a little mandarin in an office?
He bought a spade and a bagging hook. He was hopelessly inexpert in the use of either, and on that first September day, he tidied up about ten yards of ditch, and got his hands blistered and scratched. He was mobbed by flies and mosquitoes. He sweated. He even swore a little. Arcady was not teaching him poetry and tweety-sweety sentiment. In fact it was preparing to teach this city clerk the redness of tooth and claw creed, and to uncover in him strange, primitive things.
One night somebody walked off with the notice board from his piece of grassland.
Was it a challenge?
On another evening he found himself short of water, and he took the car down to Tillworth and din
ed at a local inn. He was growing perhaps just a little tired of cold tongue and jam and boiled eggs. When he returned to Lady Wood and shone his torch upon the tent and trailer he saw that the grey ropes of the tent had been cut. Bob was sniffing suspiciously at the steps of the trailer. Aubrey flashed his torch into the interior. The place had been raided. His blankets had gone.
“Well—I’m damned!”
Then, quite suddenly in the stillness he heard the report of a gun. It was in his wood. He was quite sure about it. What infernal cheek! Someone with a gun in his wood! Besides, how could they see to shoot anything?
He went exploring with an alert and growling Bob, and found nothing. He returned and slept in his clothes, and next day he called upon the local police.
The local sergeant was a genial cynic. Didn’t the gentleman know that Lady Wood had been a poachers’ paradise for the last twenty years? The late owners had not bothered, and here was a fellow from London buying up the local playground and living in it and putting up boards. Aubrey wasn’t popular, and setting the law on one side the sergeant rather sympathized with the local toughs whose delight was to set snares or pot at something with a gun by moonlight or in the grey of the dawn.
“You mean to tell me, sergeant, that I’ve no right to control my own property?”
“I was just putting the situation to you, sir, that’s all. Besides—theft is theft, not like pinching a rabbit. Of course, we’ll take the matter up.”
But some primitive streak glowed in the mild townsman. These savages came into his wood to trap and kill, and his wish was to make of Lady Wood a wild sanctuary.
“All right, sergeant. I mean to stop this cruelty. I’ll deal with it myself.”
The officer opened blue eyes rather wide. Cruelty! Could anything that was done to a cony be called cruelty? Obviously, the gentleman was a crank. Also, he thought it his duty to warn him.
“Some of these chaps are a bit rough, sir. What’s more we’ve had cases recently of the new sort of poaching, fellows who crowd down from London by car and shoot up estates. They are pretty sly, and difficult to catch. What’s more—they’re dangerous. A keeper was shot at over at Rookhurst last week.”
“What nice people. But I’m not afraid of men with guns. I don’t keep a gun.”
As a matter of fact he wasn’t afraid. He had the courage of innocence. The sergeant smoothed his moustache. He wanted to say to Aubrey—“Look here, sir, if you hear a gun in your wood at night, I’d just turn over and go to sleep again, or you may be asking for trouble.” But what he could have said to Aubrey as a man he could not say as an official.
Meanwhile Aubrey persevered with his ditch, and purchased two new blankets and went to bed fagged out, and slept like a log. On that particular night he did not hear a car crawl up and through the gate and park itself in the blackness under the trees. A full moon was up. The car extruded six men. As a matter of fact they knew nothing of Aubrey and his hermitage. They climbed up through the wood and were heard by Bob the dog.
Bob, full of a sense of doggish duty, rushed out to his doom. He ran straight at the dim figures. There was a flash and a report, a poignant yelp. Aubrey, suddenly awake, heard the bitter howling of his dog. He dashed out just as he was and saw something white twitching in the moonlight.
“Bob.”
The men saw him as a dim figure. The supposition was that he was a keeper.
“Clear out—you——”
Aubrey stood still for a moment, his eyes searching the shadows for the owner of that snarling voice.
“Damn you, who’s shot my dog?”
He was down on his knees beside Bob, a Bob who had ceased to twitch. Something gathered in Aubrey’s throat. This devil had murdered his dog, the best friend he had ever had. He rose, shaking at the knees, furious.
“You swine. I’ll——”
Figures moved in the shadows. A shape confronted him with levelled gun.
“Here, you keep a civil tongue in your head. What the hell are you doing here?”
Aubrey, in a blood rage, moved towards the figure.
“This is my wood—and you’ve——”
“Stand off, or I’ll blow your bloody——”
Another voice chimed in.
“Easy, Alf. The chap’s in pyjamas. Say, what are you exactly?”
“I’m living in this wood. I’ve bought it—I’ll make you pay for this——”
He became aware of figures surrounding him. The same unpleasant voice addressed him.
“Got a crib here?”
“A what?”
“A hut or something?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you damned well kennel up in it, see. None of your sauce or your interference.”
Something wild and primeval exploded in Aubrey. He made a dash for that man, but before he had taken three steps the figures closed on him. A fist caught him full in the jaw. He went down and was kicked by heavy boots.
“Tie the swine up, Fred.”
“Where’s his hut? Better truss him up and shove him inside.”
And that was what they did, making a sort of mummy of him with roped sheets and blankets, and leaving him on his bed.
“You keep quiet, my lad, or something worse will happen to you.”
He lay still. It was not that he was frightened. Had he had a gun he would have shot that man even as the brute had shot his dog. But he was helpless, and something seemed dead in him, romance, an illusion, the loveliness of Nature. And out there his dog lay still, his best friend. Oh, damn this fatal wood! If he had never sat eyes on it his dog would not have died.
They had trussed him up pretty securely, and squirm as he would he could not free himself. He heard distant gun shots. There was a pheasant preserve on the other side of the hill. He felt bruised and sore and savage. Later, in the grey of the dawn he heard footsteps going down through the wood, and the sound of a car being driven off down the lane.
Somewhere about six in the morning Aubrey was released by a police constable who had been sent up to patrol the lane. He went at once to where the dead dog was lying, and bending down, touched Bob’s bloody head.
“They killed my best friend, constable.”
“Crashers from London. A dangerous crowd, sir. Motor-cars have made things pretty difficult for us. It was a dirty trick shooting your dog. Can you give me any description of the men?”
But Aubrey was not listening to the officer. He picked up the dog, and holding him in his arms, looked around him at the fallacious green deeps of the woodland. Leaves and bracken were utterly still.
He spoke—“One would have thought—one could find peace here.”
“Beg your pardon, sir?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing.”
The constable went back to report, and Aubrey, having dressed himself, brought out his spade and buried Bob in the centre of the glade. Sunlight was sifting in, burning the bracken with gold, but to Aubrey the place had become sinister and hateful. When he had put Bob to sleep he went and tossed the spade into the ditch that he had been ordered to clean.
After a breakfast of tea and bread and butter he packed everything into the trailer and car, and collecting all the rubbish he could find he piled it in a corner of the hut and set light to it. The place was blazing cheerfully when he ran car and trailer down to the gate. The chain had been cut through, and the gate was open. He left it like that.
Thus, Aubrey abandoned his dream of Arcady. He returned to Barnes and a more calculable environment. At the end of six months he bought a cairn, and was Content with Nature as she showed herself in Richmond Park or at the Zoo. It took him two years to sell Lady Wood. It was bought by a wealthy merchant, who built a house there, and felled many trees, and who—growing wise as to his poachers’ paradise—kept two fierce Alsatians and left them loose at night.
Aubrey’s correspondence with the Agricultural Officer lasted for five months, and in the end he had to pay two men to dig out that ditch.
He n
ever visited Lady Wood again. Its other name was too real for him.
And Bob lies buried under the new owner’s rock garden. Aubrey had dug deeply, and Bob’s bones were not disturbed.
MISS TELFORD’S BED
Twice a year, on the first of January and the first of June, Mr. Verreker took a bus or a taxi to Highbury Station and walked down the Canonbury Road to Vigo Place.
Vigo Place was Georgian, a single row of massive old houses fronting upon a broad alleyway that ended in a cul-de-sac, and in its day Vigo Place had known some notable people, but now the houses had a decayed and battered look. Plaster had flaked from the cornices; woodwork needed painting; shabby muslin or lace curtains hung like ghosts in the windows; the splendid old doors had not been treated kindly.
But even in this derelict terrace No. 7 shamed its neighbours in the quality of its shabbiness. It stood at the end of the row, and its two lower windows had been boarded up, while the windows on the first floor had had pieces of wood and cardboard inserted where the glass had been broken. The area gate was fastened with a rusty chain and padlock, and the area itself was full of rubbish. Presumably, to the casual eye, No. 7, Vigo Place was uninhabited, but Mr. Verreker knew that it contained a very singular person—Miss Caroline Telford.
Mr. Verreker was sixty-five and able to remember the Caroline Telford of the seventies. As a boy he had seen her act. She had been a great beauty, one of those big, dark, dominant women, fierce in her tempers and in her infatuations, but into the life of Caroline Telford there had fallen some strange catastrophe. In the early nineties, as Caroline Telford, she had disappeared.
Mr. Verreker paused outside No. 7. He looked at the house as though he never ceased to be astonished by its appearance. As a lawyer he had found himself involved in many queer situations, but the quality of No. 7, Vigo Place had a queerness that was both fantastic and perennial. He came here twice a year; he was expected, but on this particular June 1st his visit had other urgencies. Until two months ago the house had held two women, but one of them had died, old Eliza who had lived with Miss Telford for more than thirty years, and had been almost as odd a person as her mistress.
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