The Graftons: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

As she made her way across the park she saw the figure of a man making his way towards the spot where the most havoc had been done, and recognised it for that of Maurice Bradby. He saw her and came towards her. When they met they laughed at one another. "Isn't it glorious?" she said. "I thought you'd be out to enjoy it."

Her face was wet with the rain. Her hair, where it showed under her close-fitting felt hat, was pearled with it. She had never looked more lovely, to him, than then as she smiled up to him. His rugged, rather unkempt strength also showed to advantage in this battle of the elements. He had gained the country look, which is not affected by chances of weather, but shows a spirit attuneable to expressions of all nature's moods.

"I've come out to see what damage has been done," he said; and they went on together.

In the shelter of the trees progression was easier, but the gale still roared and shrieked above them, and twigs and small branches were being torn off and falling all about. Once a branch of considerable size cracked and fell within a few yards of them, and Bradby looked anxiously at her, and suggested that it would be safer in the open. But he was keen on the work he had come out for, and she was interested in it too. So they went on.

He was noting the trees that had fallen and measuring them with his eye for their timber. He seemed to her to be doing it with a wonderful sureness and competence, as he did everything in connection with his work, and she tested herself as to her own understanding of the matter in hand, and received congratulations from him on her eye for timber. This pleased her. It was more interesting, doing things, than just walking and talking, and to do them with him was to do them with some one who could teach her a lot of what she liked knowing about. And she liked helping him, too. He had a master mind in all that had to do with the commodities of nature; she had long since come to recognise that. In all outward aspects her inferior, here he was on a plane which put her at his feet, and he exercised his knowledge with a quiet assurance that made his mastery evident. It was worth while to work with him; and to gain his commendation brought a thrill.

They went to where the great elm had fallen. It was the tallest of a group of three standing among the beeches on the highest point to be seen from the Abbey. It had been a magnificent tree, but had passed its age of healthy growth, and the amount of sound timber to be reckoned with was difficult to gauge. They interested themselves deeply in it, while the gale, which seemed to have increased in violence again, raged all about them.

They were standing by the uprooted hole, wondering at the exposed roots, which seemed to have so little to anchor such a giant to the earth, when suddenly Bradby seized Caroline and threw her violently into the hollow from which the tree had been uprooted. She fell and lay in a puddle of water, and was instantly overwhelmed by the branches and twigs of a great bough, some of which whipped her in the face, drawing blood, and one more solid hit her heavily on the arm and drove it into her side.

When she had recovered a little from the fright and shock she wriggled herself free from it. If it had been set ever so little more at an angle it must have crushed her body, for the bough that had been torn from one of the elms still standing was of great size and weight, and this was one of its biggest branches.

She raised herself with difficulty through the mass that was hemming her in, and called to Bradby. But there was no answer; only the wind and the driving rain.