Complete weird tales of.., p.1281
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1281
“Your mother was different,” he said, slowly.
Instinctively they both turned towards the shanty. Beside the doorstep rose a granite headstone.
After a while Jocelyn drew out his jack-knife and laid the fish on the dead grass, and the girl carried the bucket of water back to the house. She reappeared a moment later, wearing her father’s shooting-jacket and cap, and with a quiet “good-bye” to Jocelyn she started across the hill-side towards the woods above.
Jocelyn watched her out of sight, then turning the pickerel over, he slit the firm, white belly from vent to gill.
About that time, just over the scrubby hill to the north, young Gordon was walking, knee deep in the bronzed sweet fern, gun cocked, eyes alert. His two beautiful dogs were working close, quartering the birch-dotted hill-side in perfect form. But they made no points; no dropping woodcock whistled up from the shelter of birch or alder; no partridge blundered away from bramble covert or willow fringe. Only the blue-jays screamed at him as he passed; only the heavy hawks, sailing, watched him with bright eyes.
He was a dark-eyed, spare young man, with well-shaped head and a good mouth. He wore his canvas shooting-clothes like a soldier, and handled his gun and his dogs with a careless ease that might have appeared slovenly had the results been less precise. But even an amateur could see how thoroughly the ground was covered by those silent dogs. Gordon never spoke to them; a motion of his hand was enough.
Once a scared rabbit scuttled out of the sweet fern and bounded away, displaying the piteous flag of truce, and Gordon smiled to himself when his perfectly trained dogs crossed the alluring trail without a tremor, swerving not an inch for bunny and his antics.
But what could good dogs do, even if well handled, when there had been no flight from the north? So Gordon signalled the dogs and walked on.
That part of his property which he had avoided for years he now came in sight of from the hill, and he halted, gun under his arm. There was the fringe of alders, mirrored in Rat’s Run; there was Jocelyn’s shanty, the one plague-spot in his estate; there, too, was old man Jocelyn, on his knees beside the stream, fussing with something that glistened, probably a fish.
The young man on the hill-top tossed his gun over his shoulder and called his two silvery-coated dogs to heel; then he started to descend the slope, the November sunlight dancing on the polished gun-barrels. Down through the scrubby thickets he strode; burr and thorn scraped his canvas jacket, blackberry-vines caught at elbow and knee. With an unfeigned scowl he kept his eyes on Jocelyn, who was still pottering on the stream’s bank, but when Jocelyn heard him come crackling through the stubble and looked up the scowl faded, leaving Gordon’s face unpleasantly placid.
“Good-morning, Jocelyn,” said the young man, stepping briskly to the bank of the stream; “I want a word or two with you.”
“Words are cheap,” said Jocelyn, sitting up on his haunches; “how many will you have, Mr. Gordon?”
“I want you,” said Gordon, slowly emphasizing each word, “to stop your depredations on my property, once and for all.”
Squatting there on the dead grass, Jocelyn eyed him sullenly without replying.
“Do you understand?” said Gordon, sharply.
“Well, what’s the trouble now—” began Jocelyn, but Gordon cut him short.
“Trouble! You’ve shot out every swale along Brier Brook! There isn’t a partridge left between here and the lake! And it’s a shabby business, Jocelyn — a shabby business.”
He flung his fowling-piece into the hollow of his left arm and began to walk up and down the bank.
“This is my land,” he said, “and I want no tenants. There were a dozen farms on the property when it came to me; I gave every tenant a year’s lease, rent free, and when they moved out I gave them their houses to take down and rebuild outside of my boundary-lines. Do you know any other man who would do as much?”
Jocelyn was silent.
“As for you,” continued Gordon, “you were left in that house because your wife’s grave is there at your very threshold. You have your house free, you pay no rent for the land, you cut your wood without payment. My gardener has supplied you with seed, but you never cultivate the land; my manager has sent you cows, but you sell them.”
“One died,” muttered Jocelyn.
“Yes — with a cut throat,” replied Gordon. “See here, Jocelyn, I don’t expect gratitude or civility from you, but I do expect you to stop robbing me!”
“Robbing!” repeated Jocelyn, angrily, rising to his feet.
“Yes, robbing! My land is posted, warning people not to shoot or fish or cut trees. The land, the game, and the forests are mine, and you have no more right to kill a bird or cut a tree on my property than I have to enter your house and steal your shoes!”
Gordon’s face was flushed now, and he came and stood squarely in front of Jocelyn. “You rob me,” he said, “and you break not only my own private rules, but also the State laws. You shoot for the market, and it’s a dirty, contemptible thing to do!”
Jocelyn glared at him, but Gordon looked him straight in the eye and went on, calmly: “You are a law-breaker, and you know it! You snare my trout, you cover the streams with set-lines and gang-hooks, you get more partridges with winter grapes and deadfalls than you do with powder and shot. As long as your cursed poaching served to fill your own stomach I stood it, but now that you’ve started wholesale game slaughter for the market I am going to stop the whole thing.”
The two men faced each other in silence for a moment; then Jocelyn said: “Are you going to tear down my house?”
Gordon did not answer. It was what he wanted to do, but he looked at the gaunt, granite headstone in the door-yard, then dropped the butt of his gun to the dead sod again. “Can’t you be decent, Jocelyn?” he asked, harshly.
Jocelyn was silent.
“I don’t want to turn you out,” said Gordon. “Can’t you let my game alone? Come, let’s start again; shall we? I’ll send Banks down to-morrow with a couple of cows and a crate or two of chickens, and Murphy shall bring you what seeds you want for late planting—”
“To hell with your seeds!” roared Jocelyn, in a burst of fury. “To hell with your cows and your Murphys and your money and yourself, you loafing millionaire! Do you think I want to dig turnips any more than you do? I was born free in a free land before you were born at all! I hunted these swales and fished these streams while you were squalling for your pap!”
With blazing eyes the ragged fellow shook his fist at Gordon, cursing him fiercely, then with a violent gesture he pointed at the ground under his feet: “Let those whose calling is to dig, dig!” he snarled. “I’ve turned my last sod!”
Except that Gordon’s handsome face had grown a little white under the heavy coat of tan, he betrayed no emotion as he said: “You are welcome to live as you please — under the law. But if you fire one more shot on this land I shall be obliged to ask you to go elsewhere.”
“Keep your ears open, then!” shouted Jocelyn, “for I’ll knock a pillowful of feathers out of the first partridge I run over!”
“Better not,” said Gordon, gravely.
Jocelyn hitched up his weather-stained trousers and drew his leather belt tighter. “I told you just now,” he said, “that I’d never turn another sod. I’ll take that back.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Gordon, pleasantly.
“Yes,” continued Jocelyn, with a grim gesture, “I’ll take it back. You see, I buried my wife yonder, and I guess I’m free to dig up what I planted. And I’ll do it.”
After a pause he added: “Tear the house down. I’m done with it. I guess I can find room somewhere underground for her, and a few inches on top of the ground for me to sit down on.”
“Don’t talk like that,” said Gordon, reddening to the roots of his hair. “You are welcome to the house and the land, and you know it. I only ask you to let my game alone.”
“Your game?” retorted Jocelyn. “They’re wild creatures, put there by Him who fashioned them.”
“Nonsense!” said Gordon, dryly. “My land is my own. Would you shoot the poultry in my barn-yard?”
“If I did,” cried Jocelyn, with eyes ablaze, “I’d not be in your debt, young man. You are walking on my father’s land. Ask your father why! Yes, go back to the city and hunt him up at his millionaire’s club and ask him why you are driving Tom Jocelyn off of his old land!”
“My father died three years ago,” said Gordon, between his set teeth. “What do you mean?”
Jocelyn looked at him blankly.
“What do you mean?” repeated Gordon, with narrowing eyes.
Jocelyn stood quite still. Presently he looked down at the fish on the ground and moved it with his foot. Then Gordon asked him for the third time what he meant, and Jocelyn, raising his eyes, answered him: “With the dead all quarrels die.”
“That is not enough!” said Gordon, harshly. “Do you believe my father wronged you?”
“He’s dead,” said Jocelyn, as though speaking to himself.
Presently he picked up the fish and walked towards his house, gray head bent between his shoulders.
For a moment Gordon hesitated, then he threw his gun smartly over his shoulder and motioned his dogs to heel. But his step had lost something of its elasticity, and he climbed the hill slowly, following with troubled eyes his own shadow, which led him on over the dead grass.
The edge of the woods was warm in the sunshine. Faint perfumes of the vanished summer lingered in fern and bramble.
He did not enter the woods. There was a fallen log, rotten and fragrant, half buried in the briers, and on it he found a seat, calling his dogs to his feet.
In the silence of morning he could hear the pine-borers at work in the log he was sitting on, scra-ape! scra-ape! scr-r-rape! deep in the soft, dry pulp under the bark. There were no insects abroad except the white-faced pine hornets, crawling stiffly across the moss. He noticed no birds, either, at first, until, glancing up, he saw a great drab butcher-bird staring at him from a dead pine.
At first that inert oppression which always came when the memory of his father returned to him touched his fine lips with a gravity too deep for his years. No man had ever said that his father had dealt unfairly with men, yet for years now his son had accumulated impressions, vague and indefinable at first, but clearer as he grew older, and the impressions had already left the faintest tracery of a line between his eyebrows. He had known his father as a hard man; he knew that the world had found him hard and shrewd. And now, as he grew older and understood what the tribute of honest men was worth, even to the dead, he waited to hear one word. But he never heard it. He had heard other things, however, but always veiled, like the menacing outbreak of old man Jocelyn — nothing tangible, nothing that he could answer or refute. At times he became morbid, believing he could read reproach in men’s eyes, detect sarcasm in friendly voices. Then for months he would shun men, as he was doing now, living alone month after month in the great, silent house where his father and his grandfather’s father had been born. Yet even here among the Sagamore Hills he had found it — that haunting hint that honor had been moulded to fit occasions when old Gordon dealt with his fellow-men.
He glanced up again at the butcher-bird, and rose to his feet. The bird’s cruel eyes regarded him steadily.
“You wholesale murderer,” thought Gordon, “I’ll just give you a charge of shot.”
But before he could raise his gun, the shrike, to his amazement, burst into an exquisite song, sweet and pure as a thrush’s melody, and, spreading its slaty wings, it sailed off through the sunshine.
“That’s a new trick to me,” said Gordon, aloud, wondering to hear such music from the fierce feathered criminal. But he let it go for the sake of its song, and, lowering his gun again, he pushed into the underbrush.
The yellow beech leaves illuminated the woods above and under foot; he smelled the scent of ripened foliage, he saw the purple gentians wistfully raising their buds which neither sun nor frost could ever unseal.
In a glade where brambles covered a tiny stream, creeping through layers of jewel-weed and mint, the white setter in the lead swung suddenly west, quartered, wheeled, crept forward and stiffened to a point. Behind him his mate froze into a silvery statue. But Gordon walked on, gun under his arm, and the covey rose with a roar of heavy wings, driving blindly through the tangle deep into the dim wood’s depths.
Gordon was not in a killing mood that morning.
When the puzzled dogs had come wagging in and had been quietly motioned to heel, Gordon stood still and looked around at the mottled tree-trunks glimmering above the underbrush. The first beechnuts had dropped; a few dainty sweet acorns lay under the white oaks. Somewhere above a squirrel scolded incessantly.
As he was on the point of moving forward, stooping to avoid an ozier, something on the edge of the thicket caught his eye. It was a twig, freshly broken, hanging downward by a film of bark.
After he had examined it he looked around cautiously, peering into the thicket until, a few yards to the right, he discovered another twig, freshly broken, hanging by its film of bark.
An ugly flush stained his forehead; he set his lips together and moved on noiselessly. Other twigs hung dangling every few yards, yet it took an expert’s eye to detect them among the tangles and clustering branches. But he knew what he was to find at the end of the blind trail, and in a few minutes he found it. It was a deadfall, set, and baited with winter grapes.
Noiselessly he destroyed it, setting the heavy stone on the moss without a sound; then he searched the thicket for the next “line,” and in a few moments he discovered another broken twig leading to the left.
He had been on the trail for some time, losing it again and again before the suspicion flashed over him that there was somebody ahead who had either seen or heard him and who was deliberately leading him astray with false “lines” that would end in nothing. He listened; there was no sound either of steps or of cracking twigs, but both dogs had begun growling and staring into the demi-light ahead. He motioned them on and followed. A moment later both dogs barked sharply.
As he stepped out of the thicket on one side, a young girl, standing in the more open and heavier timber, raised her head and looked at him with grave, brown eyes. Her hands were on the silky heads of his dogs; from her belt hung a great, fluffy cock-partridge, outspread wings still limber.
He knew her in an instant; he had seen her often in church. Perplexed and astonished, he took off his cap in silence, finding absolutely nothing to say, although the dead partridge at her belt furnished a text on which he had often displayed biting eloquence.
After a moment he smiled, partly at the situation, partly to put her at her ease.
“If I had known it was you,” he said, “I should not have followed those very inviting twigs I saw dangling from the oziers and moose-vines.”
“Lined deadfalls are thoroughfares to woodsmen,” she answered, defiantly. “You are as free as I am in these woods — but not more free.”
The defiance, instead of irritating him, touched him. In it he felt a strange pathos — the proud protest of a heart that beat as free as the thudding wings of the wild birds he sometimes silenced with a shot.
“It is quite true,” he said, gently; “you are perfectly free in these woods.”
“But not by your leave!” she said, and the quick color stung her cheeks.
“It is not necessary to ask it,” he replied.
“I mean,” she said, desperately, “that neither I nor my father recognize your right to these woods.”
“Your father?” he repeated, puzzled.
“Don’t you know who I am?” she said, in surprise.
“I know you sing very beautifully in church,” he said, smiling.
“My name,” she said, quietly, “is the name of your father’s old neighbor. I am Jessie Jocelyn.”
His face was troubled, even in his surprise. The line between his eyes deepened. “I did not know you were Mr. Jocelyn’s daughter,” he said, at last.
Neither spoke for a moment. Presently Gordon raised his head and found her brown eyes on him.
“I wish,” he said, wistfully, “that you would let me walk with you a little way. I want to ask your advice. Will you?”
“I am going home,” she said, coldly.
She turned away, moving two or three paces, then the next step was less hasty, and the next was slower still. As he joined her she looked up a trifle startled, then bent her head.
“Miss Jocelyn,” he said, abruptly, “have you ever heard your father say that my father treated him harshly?”
She stopped short beside him. “Have you?” he repeated, firmly.
“I think,” she said, scornfully, “your father can answer that question.”
“If he could,” said Gordon, “I would ask him. He is dead.”
She was listening to him with face half averted, but now she turned around and met his eyes again.
“Will you answer my question?” he said.
“No,” she replied, slowly; “not if he is dead.”
Young Gordon’s face was painfully white. “I beg you, Miss Jocelyn, to answer me,” he said. “I beg you will answer for your father’s sake and — in justice to my father’s son.”
“What do you care—” she began, but stopped short. To her surprise her own bitterness seemed forced. She saw he did care. Suddenly she pitied him.
“There was a promise broken,” she said, gravely.
“What else?”
“A man’s spirit.”
They walked on, he clasping his gun with nerveless hands, she breaking the sapless twigs as she passed, with delicate, idle fingers.
Presently he said, as though speaking to himself: “He had no quarrel with the dead, nor has the dead with him — now. What my father would now wish I can do — I can do even yet—”
Under her deep lashes her brown eyes rested on him pitifully. But at his slightest motion she turned away, walking in silence.
As they reached the edge of the woods in a burst of sunshine he looked up at her and she stopped. Below them the smoke curled from her weather-racked house. “Will you have me for a guest?” he said, suddenly.
