Wood Magic: A Fable

by Richard Jefferies

Either she had not left them as she had said, or else some one had taken them. No one could enter the orchard without a key, unless they went to the trouble of bringing a ladder from the rickyard, and as it was spring, there were no apples to tempt them to do that. He thought, perhaps, his mother might have taken his key and gone to the arbour, and there was a terrible scene and bitter words between them—the first time he had ever replied to her. The consequence was that she packed a chest that very day, took a bag of money, which in old-fashioned style she kept under her bed, and left her home for ever; but not before she had been to the cottage, and reviled the girl with her duplicity and her falseness, declaring that if she had not got the locket, she had not put it in the orchard, but had sold it, like the hussy she was! Fortunately, however, she added, George could now see through her.

The farmer himself, much agitated at his mother's departure, made another search for the locket, and mowed the grass in the orchard himself, thinking that perhaps the lady had dropped it, or that it had caught in her dress and dragged along, and he also took the rake, and turned over every heap of dead leaves which the wind had blown into the corners. But there was no locket and no letter. At last he thought that perhaps the magpie, Kapchack—as magpies were always famous for their fondness for glittering things, such as silver spoons—might have picked up the locket, attracted by the gleaming diamonds. He got a ladder and searched the nest, even pulling part of it to pieces, despite Kapchack's angry remonstrances, but the locket was not there.

As he came down the ladder there was the young lady, who had stolen into the orchard and watched his operations. They stood and faced each other for a minute: at least, she looked at him, his sullen gaze was bent upon the ground. As for her, the colour came and went in her cheek, and her breast heaved so that, for a while, she could not speak. At last she said very low: "So you do not believe me, but some day you will know that you have judged me wrongly". Then she turned, and without another word went swiftly from the orchard.

He did not follow her, and he never saw her again. The same evening she left the village, she and the old woman, her aunt, quietly and without any stir, and where they went (beyond the market town) no one knew or even heard. And the very same evening, too, the rich gentleman who had given her the locket, and who made an unwonted stay in his country home because of her, also left the place, and went, as was said, to London. Of course people easily put two and two together, and said no doubt the girl had arranged to meet her wealthy admirer, but no one ever saw them together. Not even the coachman, when the gentleman once more returned home years afterwards, though the great authority in those days, could say what had become of her; if she had met his master it was indeed in some secret and mysterious manner. But the folk, when he had done speaking, and had denied these things, after he had quaffed his ale and departed, nudged each other, and said that no doubt his master, foreseeing the inquiries that would be made, had bribed him with a pocketful of guineas to hold his tongue.

So the farmer, in one day, found himself alone; his dear lady, his mother, and his rival were gone. He alone remained, and alone he remained for the rest of his days. His rival, indeed, came back once now and then for short periods to his mansion; but his mother never returned, and died in a few years' time. Then indeed deserted, the farmer had nothing left but to cultivate, and dwell on, the memory of the past. He neglected his business, and his farm; he left his house to take care of itself; the cows wandered away, the horses leaped the hedges, other people's cattle entered his corn, trampled his wheat, and fattened on his clover. He did nothing. The hand of man was removed, and the fields, and the house, and the owner himself, fell to decay.

Years passed, and still it was the same, and thus it was, that when Bevis and his papa drove up, Bevis was so interested and so inquisitive about the knocker, which had fallen from the front door. One thing, and one place only, received the owner's care, and that was the orchard, the arbour, the magpie's nest, and the footpath that led to the orchard gate. Everything else fell to ruin, but these were very nearly in the same state as when the young lady used to come to the orchard daily. For the old gentleman, as he grew old, and continued to dwell yet more and more upon the happy days so long gone by, could not believe that she could be dead, though he himself had outlived the usual span of life.

He was quite certain that she would some day come back, for she had said so herself; she had said that some day he would know that he had judged her wrongly, and unless she came back it was not possible for him to understand. He was, therefore, positively certain that some day she would come along the old footpath to the gate in the orchard wall, open it with her duplicate key, walk to the arbour and sit down, and smile at the magpie's ways. The woodwork of the arbour had of course decayed long since, but it had been carefully replaced, so that it appeared exactly the same as when she last sat within it. The coping fell from the orchard wall, but it was put back; the gate came to pieces, but a new one was hung in its place.

Kapchack, thus protected, still came to his palace, which had reached an enormous size from successive additions and annual repairs. As the time went on people began to talk about Kapchack, and the extraordinary age to which he had now attained, till, by-and-by, he became the wonder of the place, and in order to see how long he would live, the gentlemen who had gamekeepers in the neighbourhood instructed them to be careful not to shoot him. His reputation extended with his years, and those curious in such things came to see him from a distance, but could never obtain entrance to the orchard, nor approach near his tree, for neither money nor persuasion could induce the owner to admit them.

In and about the village itself Kapchack was viewed by the superstitious with something like awe. His great age, his singular fortune, his peculiar appearance—having but one eye—gave him a wonderful prestige, and his chattering was firmly believed to portend a change of the weather or the wind, or even the dissolution of village personages. The knowledge that he was looked upon in this light rendered the other birds and animals still more obedient than they would have been. Kapchack was a marvel, and it gradually became a belief with them that he would never die.

Outside the orchard-gate, the footpath which crossed the lane, and along which the lady used to come, was also carefully kept in its former condition. By degrees the nut-tree faggots rotted away—they were supplanted by others; in the process of time the flints sunk into the earth, and then another waggon-load was sent for. But the waggons had all dropped to pieces except one which chanced to be under cover; this, too, was much decayed, still it held together enough for the purpose. It was while this very waggon was jolting down from the hills with a load of flints to fill this hollow that the one particular flint, out of five thousand, worked its way through a hole in the bottom and fell on the road. And the rich old gentleman, whose horse stepped on it the same evening, who was thrown from the dog-cart, and whose discharged groom shot him in his house in London, was the very same man who, years and years before, had given the diamond locket to the young lady.