Читать книгу The Buccaneer Farmer - Harold Bindloss - Страница 7

Grace's tweed dress was wet and rather muddy when she stood with Gerald on a gravel bank at the head of a pool, where the beck from the tarn joined a larger stream that flowed through a neighboring dale. There had been some rain and the water was stained a warm claret-color by the peat. Bright sunshine pierced the tossing alder branches, and the rapid close by sparkled between belts of moving shade. Large white dogs with black and yellow spots swam uncertainly about the pool and searched the bank; a group of men stood in the rapid, while another group watched the tail of the pool. Somewhere between them a hard-pressed otter hid.

A few of the men wore red coats and belonged to the hunt; the rest were shepherds and farmers whom custom entitled to join in the sport. All carried long iron-pointed poles and waited with keen expectation the reappearance of the otter. Grace was perhaps the only one to feel a touch of pity for the exhausted animal and she wondered whether this was not a sentimental weakness. There was not much to be said for the otter's right to live; it was stealthy, cruel, and horribly destructive, killing many more fish and moorhens than it could eat. Indeed, before she went to school, she had followed the hunt with pleasant excitement, and was now rather surprised to find the sport had lost its zest.

The odds against the otter were too great, although it had for some hours baffled men who knew the river, and well-trained dogs. It had stolen up shallow rapids, slipping between the watchers' legs, dived under swimming dogs, made bold dashes along the bank, and hidden in belts of reeds. Its capture had often looked certain and yet it had escaped. At first Grace had noticed the animal's confidence, beauty of form, and strength; but it had gradually got slack, hesitating, and limp. Now, when it lurked, half-drowned, in the depths of the pool while its pitiless enemies waited for it to come up to breathe, she began to wish it would get away.

Thorn, the master of the hounds, was talking to his huntsman not far off. He was a friend of Osborn's, and Grace had once thought him a dashing and accomplished man of the world, but had recently, for no obvious reason, felt antagonistic. Alan was not as clever as she had imagined; he was smart, sometimes cheaply smart, which was another thing. Then he was beginning to get fat, and she vaguely shrank from the way he now and then looked at her. On the whole, it was a relief to note that he was occupied.

For a few moments Grace let her eyes wander up the dale to the crags where the force leaped down from the red moor at Malton Head. Belts of dry bent-grass shone like gold and mossy patches glimmered luminously green. The fall looked like white lace drawn across the stones. A streak of mist touched the lofty crag, and above it a soft white cloud trailed across the sky. Then she turned as her brother spoke.

"Alan has given us a good hunt and means to make a kill. He's rather a selfish beast and a bit too sure of himself; but he runs the pack well and knows how to get the best out of life. No Woolwich and sweating as a snubbed subaltern for him! He stopped at home, saw his tenants farmed well, and shot his game. That's my notion of a country gentleman!"

"Father can look after Tarnside and a duty goes with owning land," Grace remarked. "A landlord who need not work ought to serve the State. That idea was perhaps the best thing in the feudal system and it's not altogether forgotten yet. Father was right when he decided to make you a soldier."

"He can send me to Woolwich, but after all that's as far as he can go. You're not at your best when you're improving," Gerald rejoined; and added with a grin, "You don't like old Alan, do you? I thought you snubbed him half an hour since."

Grace colored, but did not answer. She had hurt her foot by falling from a mossy boulder and Thorn had come to help as she floundered across a shallow pool. She was draggled and her hair was loose, and Thorn's faint amusement annoyed her. Somehow it hinted at familiarity. She would not have resented it once, for they had been friends; but when she came home and he had tried to renew the friendship she had noted a subtle difference. Alan was forty, but now she had left school the disparity of their ages was, in a sense, much less marked. Then a shout roused her and she looked round.

Where the smooth, brown water ran past the alder roots, a very small, dark object moved in advance of a faint, widening ripple. Grace knew it was the point of the otter's head; the animal's lungs were empty since it remained up so long. Next moment plunging dogs churned the pool into foam, the object vanished, and men ran along the bank to the lower rapid, while those already there beat the shallow with their poles. The dogs bunched together and began to swim up stream; Gerald and one or two more plunged into the water, and for a few moments the otter showed itself again.

It looked like a fish and not an animal as it broke the surface, rising in graceful leaps. Then it went down, with the dogs swimming hard close behind, and Grace thought it must be caught. It was being steadily driven to the lower end of the stopped rapid, where the water was scarcely a foot deep. The animal reappeared, plunging in and out among the shallows but forging up stream, and the men who meant to turn it back closed up. There was one at every yard across the belt of sparkling foam. They had spiked poles to beat the water and it seemed impossible that their victim could get past.

Yet the otter vanished, and for a minute or two there was silence, until the dogs rushed up the bank. Then somebody shouted, the huntsman blew his horn, and a small, wedge-shaped ripple trailed, very slowly across the next pool. The otter had somehow stolen past the watchers' legs and reached deep water, but its slowness told that its strength had gone. The dogs took the water with a splash, and Grace turned her head. She felt pitiful and did not want to see the end. The animal had made a gallant fight, and she shrank from the butchery.

The clatter of heavy boots on stones suddenly stopped; there was a curious pause, and Grace looked up as somebody shouted: "'Gone to holt! Ca' off your hounds. Wheer's t' terrier?"

The hunt swept up the bank, smashed through a hedge, and spread along the margin of the neighboring pool. A few big alders grew beside its edge, sending down their roots into deep water; but for the most part the bank was supported by timbers driven into the soil, and freshly laid with neatly-bedded turf. Grace knew this had been done to protect the meadow, because the stream is thrown against the concave side when a pool lies in a bend.

As she stopped at the broken hedge a man ran past carrying a small wet terrier, and two or three more came up with spades. The otter could not escape now, since the hounds would watch the underwater entrance to the cave among the alder roots, while the terrier would crawl down from the other side. If a hole could not be found, the men would dig. They were interrupted soon after they began, for somebody said, "Put down your spade, Tom. Hold the terrier."

Grace studied the man who had interfered. He was young and on the whole attractive. His face was honest and sunburned; he carried himself well, and was dressed rather neatly in knickerbockers and shooting jacket. She knew Christopher Askew was the son of a neighboring farmer, who owned his land. Then, as the men stopped digging, Thorn pushed past.

"What's this?" he asked haughtily. "Why have you meddled?"

Askew looked hard at him, but answered in a quiet voice, "It cost us some trouble to mend the bank, and if you dig out the otter the stream will soon make an ugly gap."

"Then it's a matter of the cost!" said Thorn. "How much?"

"Not altogether," Askew replied, coloring. "It's a matter of the damage the next flood may do. We had an awkward job to strengthen the bank and I'm not going to have it cut."

"Noo, Kit, dinna spoil sport," the old huntsman urged. "It's none a trick for a canny lad to cheat the hounds."

"Put terrier in an' niver mind him!" shouted another, and there were cries of approval.

"Stop digging, Tom," Askew said with quiet firmness. "Pick up the dog."

"We are wasting time," Thorn remarked. "I don't like bargaining; you had better state your price."

Grace, looking on across the broken hedge, sympathized with the farmer. For one thing, she wanted the otter to escape; besides, she approved the man's resolute quietness. He had pluck, since it was plain that he was taking an unpopular line, and he used some self-control, because Thorn's tone was strongly provocative. In fact, she thought Thorn was not at his best; he was not entitled to suggest that the other was trying to extort as much money as he could.

"No more do I like bargaining," Askew replied. "There will be no digging here. You have smashed the hedge, and that's enough. Call off your dogs."

"So you mean to spoil sport, even if the damage costs you nothing? I know your kind; it's getting common."

"Oh, no," said Askew. "I won't have the bank cut down, but that is all.

If you like, you can look for another otter on our part of the stream."

Thorn gave him a searching glance, and then, seeing he was resolute, shrugged contemptuously. The huntsman blew his horn, the dogs were drawn off, and Gerald followed the others across the field. Grace, however, sat down on a fallen tree to rest her foot and for a minute or two thought herself alone. Then she rose as Askew came through the gap in the hedge. He began to pull about the broken rails and thorns, but saw her when he looked up.

"They have left you behind, Miss Osborn," he remarked with a smile.

"I think I had enough; besides, I hurt my foot."

"Badly?"

"No," said Grace. "I have only begun to feel it hurt, but I wish it wasn't quite so far to the bridge."

Askew looked at the water, measuring its height. "The stepping stones are not far off. One or two may be covered, but perhaps I could help you across and it would save you a mile."

Grace went on with him and they presently stopped beneath the alder branches by a sparkling shallow. Tall brush grew up the shady bank and briars trailed in the stream. A row of flat-topped stones ran across, but there were gaps where the current foamed over some that were lower than the rest. Grace's foot was getting worse, and sitting down on a slab of the slate stile, she glanced at her companion.

"I imagine it needed some pluck to stop the hunt," she said. "For one thing, you were alone; nobody agreed with you."

Askew smiled. "Opposition sometimes makes one obstinate. But do you think it's hard to stand alone?"

"Yes," said Grace, impulsively. "I know it's hard. Yet, of course, if you feel you are taking the proper line, you oughtn't to be daunted by what others think."

She stopped, remembering that the man was a stranger; and then resumed in a different tone, "But why did you really stop the hunt? Are you one of the people who don't believe in sport?"

"No," said Askew good humoredly. "It's curious that Mr. Thorn hinted something like that. Anyhow, I'm not a champion of the otter's right to destroy useful fish. I think they ought to be shot."

"Oh!" said Grace with a touch of indignation; "you would shoot an otter?

Well, I suppose they must be killed; but to use a gun!"

"It's better for the otter. Which do you imagine it would choose—a mercifully sudden end, or two or three hours of agony, with men and dogs close behind, until the half-drowned, exhausted animal is torn to pieces or mangled by the poles?"

"I suppose one must answer as you expect."

"You're honest," Askew remarked. "I imagine it cost you something to agree!"

"It did," Grace admitted. "After all, you know our traditions, and many people, not cruel people, like the sport."

"That is so; but let's take the hunt to-day, for an example. There were three or four men without an occupation, and no doubt they find following the hounds healthy exercise. The others had left work that ought to be done; in fact, if you think, you'll own that some were men we have not much use for in the dale."

"Yes," said Grace, with some reluctance; "I know the men you mean. All the same, it is really not our business to decide if they ought to work or hunt."

Askew looked amused and she liked his twinkle. He was obviously intelligent, and on the whole she approved his unconventional point of view. Conventional insincerities were the rule at Tarnside. Besides, although it was possible she ought not to talk to the man with such freedom, her foot hurt and the stile made a comfortable seat. She liked to watch the shadows quiver on the stream and hear the current brawl among the stones. This was an excuse for stopping, since she would not acknowledge that the young farmer's society had some charm.

After a moment or two he resumed: "It is not my business, anyhow, and I don't want to argue if otter-hunting is a proper sport; it's an advantage, so to speak, to stick to the point. All I objected to was the hunt's breaking down the mended bank. There are not many good meadows at the dale-head, and grass land is too valuable to be destroyed. Don't you think this justifies my opposition?"

"I suppose it does," Grace agreed, and then decided that she had talked to him enough. "Well, I must go on," she added with a doubtful glance at the stream. "But it doesn't look as if one could get across."

"You can try," Askew replied, and jumping down stood in the water, holding out his hand. "Come on; there's not much risk of a slip."

Since it was too late to refuse, Grace took his hand and he waded across, steadying her, while the current rippled round his legs. Some of the stones were covered, but with his support she sprang across the gaps and the effort did not hurt her foot as much as she had thought. He was not awkward. She liked his firm grasp, and his care that she did not fall; particularly since she saw he was satisfied to give her the help she needed and knew when to stop. After she got across she thanked him and let him go.

When she crossed the field Askew went home in a thoughtful mood, though he was conscious of a pleasant thrill. He had felt the girl's charm strongly as he stood near her at the stile, and now tried to recapture the scene; the dark alder branches moving overhead, the sparkle of the water, and the light and shadow that touched his companion. Her face was attractive; although he was not a judge of female beauty, he knew its molding was good. Mouth, nose, and chin were finely but firmly lined; her color was delicate pink and white, and she had rather grave blue eyes. Her figure was marked by a touch of patrician grace. Askew smiled as he admitted that patrician was a word he disliked, but he could not think of another that quite expressed what he meant. Anyhow the girl's charm was strong; she was plucky and frank, perhaps because she knew her value and need not to pretend to dignity. In a sense, this was patrician, too.

All the same, Askew, though young and romantic, was not a fool. He had had a good education and had then spent two years at an agricultural college; but he was a farmer's son and he knew where he stood, from the Osborns' point of view. He had been of help, but this was no reason Miss Osborn should recognize him when they next met; yet he somehow thought she would. In the meantime, it was rash to think about her much, although his thoughts returned to the stile beneath the alders where he had watched the sun and shadow play about her face.