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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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MY name is Priscilla Chute, and I am a poacher. But I do not think I could have done otherwise, and under the same circumstances I would certainly do it again.
It was partly the fault of the Boer war, partly of the failure of a large commercial corporation, and surely I am not to blame for either.
The Chutes and the Baldrans had lived at Sleetham Regis since the days of the Stuarts—the Chutes at Blackstead and the Baldrans at the Hall. The Baldrans own the land all round; the Chutes have always been rolling stones and gathered very little moss indeed; they say at Fleetham, "The Chutes only come home to die."
Most of them failed to do even that; fighting or by fever, they have died all over the world, and their graves are high-tide marks of the British Empire. We know, if anyone does, that "on the bones of the English the English flag is stayed."
When I was a child; there were six of us at Blackstead; five boys, two brothers and three cousins, and myself. During their holidays they teased me a great deal and bullied me a little; but I learned to do most things that boys do—I am even a quite decent featherweight boxer—and some things that many boys have no chance of doing.
In the house my mother ruled us; out of it "them little Chute devils" were known for miles round. Of the poor boys only Tom is left. Harry and Noel lie on the North-West frontier, Roger and Jack on the banks of the Tugela. Tom had stayed at Blackstead partly because he had failed for Sandhurst, partly to look after me when our mother had died: but he had been one of the first of the Yeomanry to volunteer for the Cape, and in November he was invalided home. It looked, indeed, as if he had only come home to die; and Jane, our old nurse, and I set ourselves to drag him back, inch by inch, from death. We nursed him night and day, watching and sleeping turn-about, until at last he began to mend a very little.
Then the last blow fell. T had been short of money before Tom came back; I had been waiting and waiting for the dividend from the company above mentioned, and it never came; then; on the morning of my nineteenth birthday, a circular came to say that it would pay no dividend at all, at any rate, for a long while. It was a birthday! I thought, and worried, and puzzled my brain, but I could see no way of getting money. There was £6 in the house, three people to feed, and one of them, an invalid; needing the most delicate and nourishing food. I knew of no one to ask help of. I worried and worried until, in the afternoon, I had that rarest of all things for me, a headache. Fortunately Tom fell asleep, and, leaving Jane to watch him, I set out for a walk with the dogs.
I was walking along with my eyes on the road instead of on the fields and hedgerows as usual, still working and still hopeless, when I was aroused by a rustling in the hedge and a rush from the dogs. There was a squeaking and fluttering, and Vixen came out of the ditch with a partridge in her mouth. I took it from her; and found that it had been badly wounded and had crept away to die; she had killed it. I slipped it under my cloak, rejoicing at the windfall, since it would make Tom an appetising soup, when it flashed upon me that I had stumbled upon a mine of food: During the last two years the game had been strictly preserved, for Sir John Baldran, the new baronet, was going to shoot over his Fleetham estate. There had even been talk of his spending part of the winter at the Hall, which had been shut up for nearly thirty years, since his father, Sir Hubert, had never been able to endure the place after my mother's marriage. The country was fuller of game and rabbits than ever it had been before, and I was soon glowing at visions of abundance of the most tempting food for an invalid. My £6 would last six months, for our cow gave us milk and butter, our hens eggs; we only needed flour and groceries. By that time Tom would be well and able to make money somehow, and the company—such was my fond hope—would pay a dividend...
I turned and set out home, my headache gone.
As I went I considered the other side of the matter. Poaching was wrong, of course; but I had done so much of it a with the poor boys that to that particular sin my conscience was hardened. And if it had not been hardened I could not have listened to it, because Tom came first. But unfortunately poaching had grown far more dangerous than it used to be. The keepers were new men, strangers to the neighbourhood, and by the number of poachers they had prosecuted plainly bent on doing their work thoroughly.
It did not matter; I must take the risk. The sight of many scampering rabbits, and the calling of pheasants from coppice to coppice, cheered me. I had never had a bicycle, and consequently knew every foot of the country for five miles round; while, thanks to my early training, I had learned to watch the ways or the wild dwellers in. it. On the other hand, I was handicapped by a great disadvantage. Though I do not mind shooting creatures, because the gun does the killing, I could; not possibly kill any I caught, in cold-blood, with my hands; and I should have to rely on snares which would strangle them for me. The boys had laughed often enough at my squeamishness, as they called it; and I tried hard to argue myself out of it. It was no use; much as I should have preferred birds, I must be content with hares and rabbits. I might, indeed, set horsehair springes for pheasants, but we had never had any luck with them; and they are so conspicuous when thrown, for they hold the bird hanging in the air. It must be hares and rabbits.
When I reached home I lighted a lantern and went up into the big loft above the empty stables where the boys had kept most of their sporting paraphernalia, and there in a corner I found a score of snares, their pegs still hanging to them by the rotten strings, and even a bundle of the little notched sticks in which you set up the wires. I carried half a dozen up to Tom's room and set about cleaning them with sand. They had been put away greased and were very little rusted.
Then I made sure that the slipknots ran easily, and fastened them to their pegs with fresh string. In less than an hour they were ready for use, and I took my old cloak and sewed inside it two great pockets, either of which would hold three rabbits. Then I made my first plan.
AT 9.30 I set out with my snares for Horton's Dingle, which lies a mile and a half further from the village than Blackstead. I went quickly till I came to where the road runs within a hundred yards of Fleetham Wood, and then I stole very quietly along the grass, that no watcher posted in the wood might hear me. A quarter of a mile from the wood lies the dingle mouth, twenty yards from the road, and I slipped into it quickly. I knew every foot of it; and, besides, it is an easy place to set a wire in.
One's skirts are the chief difficulty; unless you are very careful they brush across the rim and no rabbit or hare will pass along it. But here I could stand in the dingle and reach up to the runs which ran along the banks. It was dark, but, looking upward, I could see dimly the big trees which were my landmarks. I went a dozen yards into the dingle and set my first wire, driving the peg into the bank three feet below the run with my foot, and rubbing my glove in the dead leaves to take all human scent from it, before I stuck into the middle of the run the little notched stick which holds up the wire noose. Moving along as noiselessly as a cat, I set all my wires in the first forty yards of the dingle, three on either bank; then I retraced my steps; and when I came out on the road I found myself breathing quickly and sighing with relief. Whether it was that I had grown unused to poaching or that I had never before poached alone I had not enjoyed setting my wires one little bit. I was soon home and in bed.
AT two o'clock Jane woke me to take my spell of nursing till six. When she relieved me I went straight off to my wires. After the watching and sleeplessness the dark morning was horribly chilling; but hope and hard walking warmed me, and I reached the dingle in a glow. I slipped into it, with my heart beating quickly; so much depended on success. The first two wires had not been thrown; I pulled them up, and my heart began to sink. When I felt for the third it was not there. I groped about my feet found the string taut, and at the end of it a noosed rabbit.
My spirits rose. I pulled up the peg and dropped rabbit and snare together into my pocket. The fourth wire had not been thrown; coming to the fifth I trod on a rabbit it had caught, and pouched him; the sixth was empty. I came out of the dingle very happy; my hand had not forgotten its cunning, and my anxiety was gone. I hurried home, had breakfast, went to bed and slept till eleven.
I AWOKE to dreams of affluence on the strength of two rabbits, and began at once to make my plan for the day. My heart was set on a hare. I was cleaning the wires by Tom's bedside, when I looked up to find him watching me with the first interest I had seen on his face since he came back.
"Ah!" he said, in his shadow of a voice, "you're going to have a shot at Bunter."
"At a hare," I said. "I got two rabbits last night." And I told him of my wiring the dingle.
His eyes grew almost bright as he listened, and I felt that I had stimulated the desire to live in him. But he was so weak that the moment I had done he fell asleep.
I was indeed impatient for the twilight, and as soon as it fell I hurried off through the village to the down which runs along above the Hall. A footpath rises to the top of it, and half-way up a belt of larch and fir stretches across the side of the slope. I had often noticed that the hares came down to the meadows through the stile and through a gap in the hedge on the further side of the belt of trees. At the stile I paused and looked up and down. No one was coming. Below me, to the right, lay Baldran Hall; and I was surprised to see many of the windows brightly lighted. Sir John Baldran must have come down for his shoot.
Of course I had not heard of it. Tom kept Jane and myself prisoners; we had not even been to church since his return. I wasted no time, but went along the lower side of the hedge to the gap, which lay about fifty yards from the stile. I set my wire in the gap itself, taking the greatest care not to touch the run. Then I went back to the stile, climbed over it, went twenty yards down the hedge, and walked out into the field, letting my skirts drag through the stubble. I waffled in a half-circle to a point in the hedge twenty yards on the other side of the stile. I was pretty sure that not a hare would cross that half-circle for several hours. I had closed the passage to the stile; they would all go through the gap. Then I went quietly home.
When I had told Tom what I had done he said, "I should like some hare soup."
It was the first time he had fancied anything, and I knew well that he had only fancied hare soup made from poached hare. The next day he had it, for going to my wire at ten that night, I found it thrown and a plump young hare in it. Tom took his soup as though he actually enjoyed it, and made me keener than ever on my neighbour's game.
THE next night I stayed at home, but the night after that I tried for another hare. I had set my wire in the gap, and was coming down the slope, when I heard the squeal, a little muffled, of a hare.
This was luck; I was saved a journey. I went back to the gap slowly, for if the hare was not dead when I reached it I know that I should let her go. She was dead; and, slipping her neck out of the wire, I put her in my pocket. I was pulling the peg, when a voice made my heart jump into my mouth, saying quietly, "I say, this must be great fun."
And a man stepped through the gap.
I dropped the wire; I was caught. Plainly, he had been on his way from the top of the down, and turning aside to find out I why the hare squealed had seen me pocket her.
I could say nothing; I could only stare; and he raised his cap and said, "I beg your pardon. I'm afraid I startled you."
"Not at all," I stammered; and my tongue stuck. He picked up the wire and examined it carefully; and as he did I examined him. He seemed about twenty-seven, tall, and slight, with a longish, rather pale face, dark, and clean-shaven. I thought he had a foreign air. I began to gather my scattered wits and wonder what was coming next.
"This is very ingenious," he said, dangling the wire and looking at me in a queer, solemn kind of way. "Do you know, I think I'm coming into this."
"What—what do you mean?" I stammered
"I'm going to join in the chase and help you."
"Indeed you're not!" I cried.
"Indeed I am. I have a tender conscience, and it must be humored."
"What has that got to do with it?"
"It is bidding me to take you along, hare, snare, and all, to the nearest keeper, by force if necessary"—his eyes sparkled queerly, as though he would have really enjoyed taking me along by force. "I can only quiet it by at once becoming useful and helpful to a fellow-creature. Therefore I'm going to help you in your nefarious occupation."
"But I don't want any help."
"That's a pity—a great pity," he said, with a deep sigh. "Come along to a keeper." He put out his hand to my arm, and I saw that he meant it. I jumped back crying, "Oh, you are hateful!"
"I am. How did you guess it? I have a perfectly fiendish nature, cruel and malignant. Sometimes it surprises even me. But come along."
"No, no!" I cried, edging away. "Let me think a moment."
"You shall have three minutes," he said, and looked at his watch, holding, it in the moonlight.
I was almost too angry to think; and if it hadn't been for Tom and the six pounds I needn't have thought at all. But I might be locked up for the night—poachers are—and then the fine and the costs. I was in a mess. I thought of bolting, but that was no use.
He kept looking from my face to his watch; then he said, "Time's up."
"Very , well," I said very sulkily; "you shall help. But I think you're utterly detestable."
"I am. I told you I was," he said almost proudly."But it is an' honest promise?"
"Oh, you shall help," I said; and then and there I made up my mind to, make every use of him. If I caught anything alive he should kill it; and if a keeper caught us, he would get into all the trouble.
I turned and walked down the hill, and he walked by my side, talking of the beauty of the country in the frosty moonlight, and asking who lived at the big lighted building. My short, sulky answers did not spoil his cheerfulness. He told me that his name was Hubertson, that he was no sportsman except in the matter of big game, out of which you could get some excitement; but he thought that poaching might be exciting, too. I showed no interest in him at all. As we went through the village he asked which was the road to Swyre, which is four miles off; and I was so glad to hear that he was living so far away that I was less sulky with him the rest of the way to Blackstead. At the gates we, or rather he, arranged to meet there at nine o'clock the night after next, and he said good-night.
I HAD plenty of time the next two days to try to find a way out of this unwelcome companionship, but could find none. I thought for a little while of giving up poaching altogether, but necessity and my promise to let him help me prevented it; I must make the best of it.
I was very punctual at the gates, hoping that he would be late and I should get away by myself; but he was there, quite unconcerned, not in the least shamefaced at having forced himself on me. He talked cheerfully on the way to the dingle, till I bade him follow me noiselessly on the grass past Fleetham Wood. I set the wires, and very little he saw of their setting in that darkness. On the way back he talked of the sense of adventure, the excitement and the risk; and once I found myself forgetting my resolve to treat him as the intruder he was, and actually talking to him of the creepy sounds of the night. I stopped short when I remembered.
When we reached Blackstead he asked when we should go and see what we had caught; and when I said at six in the morning, he cried, "Good heavens! How am I to be here at six in the morning?"
"I can go alone quite well," I said triumphantly. "I'd rather."
"My conscience will not suffer me to let you go about these lonely lanes in the dark," he said; and at six o'clock he was waiting for me, rather subdued. We got three rabbits.
THAT was the first of a dozen expeditions. I do not know how it was, but little by little, except for an occasional quarrel, we grew quite friendly; snubbing and stiffness only made him more cheerful.
The whole business was strange and quite wrong; but I could not help myself. Indeed, I began at last to look forward to our expeditions. He had seen so much, and could talk of it so well; and after all the country is very dull. He drew from me, without my perceiving what he was doing, the reason of my poaching, and showed himself quite anxious about Tom. I could never make out why he came poaching, for he never learned anything, not even how to set a wire; and as for helping, he never helped at all. That was why I fell into the way of calling him Helper. I always used to say, "Good evening, Helper," and "Good-bye, Helper." I thought he must come with me for the pleasure of having someone to talk to, for I knew that anyone staying at Swyre would find it very dull.
Then I did make him useful. Tom heard a pheasant call across the meadows one evening and said he would like, some pheasant. I made up my mind to get one; and the Helper should kill it.
That night he went up to the little fir plantation about two hundred yards from the north end of Fleetham Wood, to which I had often seen at least a dozen pheasants going to roost. It was a long walk, for we had to make a circuit to come at the plantation from the side furthest from the wood, but the Helper kept me laughing most of the way, and it seemed short. We had to cross a hundred yards of open meadow to get into the plantation, and we crossed it at a run; for if there were a watcher in it we must be seen. Once inside the plantation I hunted noiselessly about for a convenient pheasant. Most of them were roosting too high or in awkward trees; but at last I found one about ten feet from the ground which I could get at.
I told the Helper to stand ready to wring its neck, and then scrambled, noiselessly on to a bough four feet from the ground. I stood up on it, and gripping the bough on which the pheasant was roosting with my left hand, I slipped my right softly along it till I had him by the legs. I pulled him from his perch; thrust him downward, squawking and struggling, into the Helper's hands, and sprang down. I thought he was never going to kill it; it seemed to go on squawking for an age, and he was swearing under his breath. At last it was quiet.
I put it into my pocket. We hurried out of the plantation and ran for the road. When we reached it I laughed with excited delight; then, turning to the Helper, I saw that his face was working with angry disgust.
"Never in my life did I do anything so beastly," he burst out. "I feel like a murdering poulterer!"
"Never mind, come along," I said, and started briskly for home. He walked along angry and sulky; and I wondered at him. Presently be growled, "Why couldn't we stick to hares and rabbits? They don't want any necks wringing."
"I wanted a change," I said stiffly.
"It was mere thoughtless selfishness," he cried. "You never thought how I should feel playing the poulterer."
"I don't care how you feel," I said hotly. "You thrust you help on me, and the first time you are of any use you grumble."
"It was beastly," he said.
"You will have to harden yourself to it or not come with me. Now that I've got you to kill them for me I'm going to try for birds often. However, you needn't come if you don't like."
He growled like a bear, and we walked on in silence. I could not understand his squeamishness about a pheasant, for he had killed moose, elk, and three kinds of bears; besides, the boys had been able to kill anything with their hands without the slightest discomfort.
At the gates of Blackstead we stopped, and I was just going to say good-night when he said, "I think I deserve something for killing that bird." And his eyes were shining curiously.
"Yes—yes—you do," I said slowly. "But what—can I give you?"
"I want a kiss," he said, in a breathless kind of voice.
For a moment I experienced the strangest feeling I have ever felt; a kind of thrilling feeling; and I knew that I was blushing to the roots of my hair. Then I turned very angry and cried, "You will have nothing of the kind. How dare you talk of such a thing?"
"I dare—oh, I dare," he said slowly. "I'm certainly going to have one."
"You're not!"
"You showed no considerations for my feelings about that beastly bird, and I won't show any for yours—so there." And with that he made a quick movement to catch hold of me...
Without a thought I hit out with all my might and he went down in a heap. I jumped back and stood staring down at him panting. He lay quite still, and of a sudden I realised that I must have hurt him very badly. I dropped on one knee beside him, with a sinking heart, and propped him up against the other; his limbs and back were all limp; and I guessed what had happened. I had caught him on the point of the jaw—a thing I mightn't have done in a hundred times trying to do it.
For three or four minutes I knelt, propping him up and trying feebly to bring him to; then I laid him flat, ran to the tool house and brought a wheelbarrow. I lifted him into it, wheeled him up to the back door, and dragged him into the kitchen, where the fire was still burning, and huddled him into a big oak chair in front of it. I got some brandy and forced a little, into, his mouth; then I brought a basin of cold water and a sponge and bathed his temples and forehead, till at last he heaved a deep sigh.
He was coming to, but he looked so horribly pale, and shaken that, though I never cry, the tears would keep coming into my eyes at having hurt him so.
Presently he said faintly, "Where—where am I? Oh, my head."
"In Blackstead kitchen," I said. "But keep quite quiet, and you'll soon feel better."
He shut his eyes obediently, and I went to the dining-room and wheeled a light sofa into the kitchen. I helped him, half-carrying him, on to it and covered him with rugs. In five minutes he was sleeping heavily, and I went up to Tom. During the next two hours I kept coming down to my new patient, but he slept on and began to look better, and, at last, tired out, I went to sleep myself on the sofa in Tom's room.
I slept heavily; and only awakened at half-past five. I went down at once to see how the Helper was and to, my surprise and dismay I found the sofa empty; he had gone.
I put on my cloak and hat, and hurried down the road and through the village half way to Swyre, expecting every moment to find him lying by the roadside. Two miles from Swyre. I met a couple of labourers coming from it; they had met and seen no one. I came home anxious enough, but assuring myself that he had been less hurt than I thought and had reached Swyre safely.
At nine that night, and again at ten, I went to the gates in the hope that he might come to go poaching. He did not come, and I went to bed very anxious.
THE next morning there came a letter bearing the Swyre postmark. It ran:
Dear Miss Chute,
I am sorry that I behaved so badly last night; I deserved the penalty I paid for it. My head is only just beginning to join on to my shoulders. I hope that in consideration of having nearly killed me, you will forgive. I shall come round at nine this evening to help, but chiefly to deprecate your just resentment.
J. Hubertson
THE letter cleared away my last anxiety, but it gave me the freedom to grow angry. I saw plainly that I ought never to have accepted such a situation, and I made up my mind that he should help me no more. I went down to the gates at a few minutes to nine and locked them.
Presently the Helper came striding up, greeted me in a shamefaced way, and began to apologise. I accepted his apologies and told him that he was never coming poaching with me again. He begged me not to punish him so cruelly, promised never to offend again, and at last lost his temper, as I knew he would, and stormed furiously. Then he made a dash at the gates, tried to open them, and, failing, shook and shook them.
I said, "You see how right I was. Goodbye." And I turned and went up the drive, never turning my head for all his entreaties that I would, stay and talk to him, if only for two minutes.
FOR some days I never went out of the grounds and kept the gates locked after midday. Twice I saw him, leaning disconsolately against them. But I missed our expeditions very much; so much that I wished, for all that they were pleasant to look back on, that I had never snared that wretched hare which had been to blame for them. Sometimes I wondered whether, when Tom was better, the Helper would find a way of meeting me again; but I was still very angry with him.
AT last I had to go out and seek more food. I was bent on getting pheasants, and I took the boys' old muzzle-loader, and charged it with a very little powder and a full charge of shot. I did not think that the report would be heard a hundred yards off.
At eleven that night I set out for the fir plantation. It seemed a much longer walk than when I went with the Helper. Once in it I soon found a brace of pheasants roosting at a convenient height, and getting them against a patch of the Milky Way, fired; they both came tumbling down. I thrust them quickly into my pockets and hurried through the plantation toward the road. I had not gone twenty yards when a man jumped from between two firs and gripped my arm, crying, "I've got you, my lad!"
For a moment I tried to shake myself free, but on his heels came another man and caught my other arm, and I said—"Don't tear my cloak to pieces, my good men; I'll go quietly."
"Good Lord, it's a woman!" cried one of them, and they began, to discuss what they had better do with me. They decided to take me to the Hall.
It was a dismal walk. If I had been a girl in a book I should have gone dauntlessly to meet my judges, but I felt very downhearted. Now that they were upon me, the appearing before the bench, the having my name in the papers, and the scandal, seemed terrible. Besides, there was the fine, and they might lock me up for the night, and Tom, though on the mend, needed every care.
We went to the back door of the hall, and after looking at me the butler said: "You'd better bring the young person to the library and I'll fetch Sir John."
He led the way to the library, lighted two lamps in it, and poked up the fire. Without thinking, I took an easy chair by it and stretched out my feet to the blaze. The butler frowned at me and went out, leaving the door ajar. I heard another door open, a babble of voices, clicking billiard balls, and the butler's voice, saying,
"Please, Sir John, Jenkins and Smith have got a poacher in the library."
"A poacher!"
"Let's see the rascal!"
"I vote we duck him!"
"Give him a horsewhipping!" cried half a dozen voices. There was a hurrying of feet in the hall, and what seemed a crowd of men in evening dress poured in through the library door. How I hated them! and I think I must have looked like it, for they hushed suddenly, and some or their mouths opened.
"What on earth did the idiots bring him here for?" said a voice in the hall, a voice I knew very well; and the Helper came into the room.
At once I felt quite safe, but at the sight of me his face filled with a dismayed surprise, and he cried, "What senseless idiocy have you been to now, Jenkins?" and came swiftly across the room with outstretched hand, saying, "How do you do, Miss Chute; I hope to goodness my idiots have not annoyed you?"
Then he turned angrily on the keepers and said, "Clear out, you dunderheaded idiots."
"But, Sir John—" said the keeper.
"Clear out, will you!" roared the Helper furiously, stamping his foot, and they shuffled out quickly.
Then he turned to his friends and practically, drove them back to their game, telling them that he must see me home, and refusing curtly two or three offers to come with him that he might not have to walk back alone. The butler brought his hat and coat, and in two minutes we were out of the house.
We had not gone ten yards down the drive when I turned on him and said furiously, "How dare you?"
"How dare I what?" he said.
"You're—you're Sir John Baldran. You've been practically giving me all that game we caught. It was disgraceful of you. I'm—I'm glad—yes; I'm glad that I hit you so hard."
He looked at me gravely and said, "I'm afraid, my dear, Priscilla, that you have a bad temper."
"I'm not you dear Priscilla. How dare you-"
"Oh, yes, you are. I always think of you as my dear Priscilla," he said calmly.
"You've no right-"
"Oh, yes, I have," he interrupted again. "You've made me your partner in crime, a poacher; you've bullyragged me continually; you've knocked me down and nearly killed me; with a cold cruelty you've tried to drive me to suicide by denying me the sight of you when you knew I was dying for it. Look what you've cost me in mental, moral, and physical anguish—it gives me every right to call you my dear Priscilla. You're the dearest creature I ever came across, and it was a bad day for me when I met you."
"Well, that will soon be mended! We shan't meet again!" I gasped out, almost choking with rage.
"No; there's no mending it," he said, in the saddest, voice. "I can't do without you, you're my one extravagance—my, dearest Priscilla; you'll have to take pity on me and—and beggar me."
It was no use my saying anything; he would only twist my words. I know that way of his well! We walked on without speaking and my anger cooled a little. Then suddenly he said in a very different voice, "Do be kind to me, Priscilla; you've been cruel so long."
It was not fair. My nerves had been shaken by my capture and that horrible walk with the keepers; the sudden gentleness upset me, and I rather broke down.
We were some time saying good-bye at Blackstead gates, and—well, I did not knock him down this time.
As I went up the drive he called, after me, "By the way, my dearest Priscilla, I'm going to take a long and severe course of boxing lessons before we're married."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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