CHAPTER VI
THE BUSH-BEATING
In all the bleak country "the wood" represented mystery, glamour. It made a dark wedge between two folds of moorland, its tree-tops level with the piled boulders on the northern side, like a deeply green tarn lapping the edge of some rocky shore. Oak, beech and ash, hawthorn, sycamore and elder, went to make the solid bosses of verdure that filled the valley, while at one end a grove of furs stood up blackly, winter and summer. Giant laurels, twisted and writhing creations of a nightmare, spread their snake-like branches beneath the rocky wall at one side of the wood, and in spring they shook their pale, sickly tassels in a gloom that was as green, as freckled with shallows of light, as underseas. A stream gurgled through its depths, increasing the illusion of a watery element. All over the sloping floor of the wood, where the red leaves drifted high in due season, huge boulders were piled, moss-grown, lividly decked with orange fungi, and surrounded by a thick undergrowth of holly and elder bushes. This place had no name beyond "the wood"—enough distinction in that county where a copse of ash or fir was all that scarred moor and pasture with shadow. It was just within Ishmael's property, marking his most inland boundary, and he cherished it as something dearer than all his money-yielding acres. It had been his ambition to make it the home of every bird that built its nest there, of every badger or rabbit or toad or slow-worm that sheltered in its fastnesses. No life should cry there for the teeth of the trap, no feathers scatter for the brutal violating of the sheltering bushes. Thus Ishmael, but otherwise Archelaus…. There was little doubt what he and his fellows had come for: there were a half-dozen of them when all were met, and all carried cudgels or flails made of knotted cloth, and walked cautiously, whispering to each other lest the birds should take premature flight. Ishmael and Killigrew lagged behind them, waiting for certainty before discovering themselves.
It was deadlily dark in the wood, with a darkness more unbroken than the stillness which yet seemed part of it. A thousand little scraping noises broke the quiet air, chill and dank. Leaves pattered against each other, twigs rubbed faintly, brittle things broke under the lightest foot. Still hardly a wing unfolded ever so little, not a distressful chirp heralded the slaughter that threatened. Gradually, to eyes growing used to the gloom, differing shades of darkness became apparent; it was faintly marked by them as the silence by the sounds….
Still the feathers were unstirred on the breasts where tiny beaks were thrust in sleep; round, bright eyes were filmed by the delicate lids; the bushes held undisturbed the little lives confided to them.
Suddenly a funnel of light flared into the darkness, intensifying it, waking into vivid green a full-foliaged holly; a rain of blows echoed back and forth through the night, a whirr of bewildered wings mingled with it, a frantic piping that was drowned in the clamour even as it burst forth. High overhead the startled wood-pigeons flew out into the free air above the tree-tops, their clamour filling the whole place with the beating of wings that in the dark seemed mighty as the wings of avenging angels, but availed their tiny brethren nothing. In that one minute there fell, beaten into the undergrowth to die miserably or flailed into the greedy hands and caps of the murderers, some half a hundred innocent and lovely lives, all of them torn out in an agony of fear without knowing why. Ishmael ran forward, not even hearing his own voice as it shouted oaths he never knew he had used.
The men stopped at their work, caps and sticks in hand, staring stupidly; only Archelaus, after a first moment's pause, showed no astonishment. It was not till long afterwards that it occurred to Ishmael to wonder whether his brother had all along known he followed, and it was a question that was to remain for ever unanswered. Archelaus lifted his lantern, which first gleamed on the red surprise of John-Willy Jacka's face, then on the foolish mask of Silly Peter, the local idiot, who stood slackly agape between a couple of miners. Then Archelaus brought the light round, to fall on Ishmael's pale face ere swinging it on to Killigrew.
"Lads, here's the young gentlemen from the Manor!" he cried—"come to see a bit o' bush-beaten; let's show 'en, shall us?" And, still holding his lantern so that its light fell on them, he deliberately let drive with his great stick at a branch where a wounded bird was crushed upon a sharp twig.
Ishmael sprang forward and laid hands on the stick, twisting at it with all his strength. Archelaus gave for a flash under the sudden onslaught, but, recovering himself at once, held the stick steady with one hand against all the twisting of Ishmael's two. He laughed a little as he did so. Silly Peter, under the impression that it was all part of the fun, laughed too.
"You beast!… you beast!…" Ishmael was saying as he tussled.
Killigrew caught at his arm.