II The Ladyshaws
The woods resounded with the calling of the men, the hacking of the grub-axe at roots, the clash of irons flung down, and the ceaseless snapping and crackle of the undergrowth. The wide spaces that had been cleared for the fall of the oaks were trampled and trodden, mould and bluebells and the dead brown bracken; and hazel and thorn and dark holly were speckled white as if with cuckoo-spit where the bill-hooks had shorn through them. Now and then men, stacking the brushwood about the clearings, peered into it for eggs and nests; and the frightened birds fluttered continually here and there, refusing to leave their young.
At the gnarled oak that stood lowest down the slope of the wood Willie Ramsey and Jerry Holmes were already at work with the great-axe. They swung alternately, and the white chips lay thick over their boots, and the deep notch, that was rapidly becoming deeper, made the tree look as if it was balanced on a blunt apex. A few yards beyond the flying chips lay the great double saw, a tin of grease for easing it, and a coil of rope; and Jerry’s wrinkled face twitched into wonderful folds and creases as he delivered each blow. As again, for the tenth time, the thought of the forenoon drinking that the women would bring occurred to him, he grunted “Spell,” dropped the head of his axe, and leaned on the heft to recover his breath.
“Ye look thirsty, too, my lad,” he observed by and by, glancing up at Willie.
Willie passed his fingers across his brow and looked at them all wet. He was tall, black-browed, and black-haired, and his neck lifted at his chest with his breathing, and the muscles of his forearm started sharply as his fingers played on the heft of his axe.
“Ay, this ought to be grand stuff for ribs, if th’ chopping of it’s aught to reckon by,” he answered.
“Nay, ye’re limber enow; ’tis owd bones like me it finds out,” quoth Jerry, grinning. “’Tis th’ season o’ life wi’ ye to think more o’ th’ women nor th’ drink they bring. I ken your ways; but me, I’m naughbut rare and thirsty.”
“Well, maybe I’se mend o’ that.”
“Ay, Jessie ’ll mend ye, if ye’re mendable. Ye may laugh; ginger’s for game, and al’ays was——”
“They ken best where th’ shoe pinches that has it on, Jerry.”
“Ay, when they get it on; thou’rt not shod yet, lad.—Well, wisdom’s wasted o’ youth; let’s to th’ ribs an’ knees again—— Spell——”
They turned to with the axes again.
Somewhere up the wood a man was setting a hone to a bill-hook, and away to the right they had begun to chop at another tree. Willie and Jerry were well ahead, and nowhere were they sawing yet; and as the chips started and flew, and the keen axes cut deeper and deeper into the bole, and Jerry’s mouth and eyebrow flickered and dipped, they began to pass round the tree and to cut more carefully here and there. A whiff of strong tobacco came down the glade, and the placid bailiff stood and watched them.
“Ye’ll be almost ready for th’ ropes and cross-cut,” he remarked, “and then there’ll be one on ’em down.—Eh, they must ha’ seen some scenes, must these oaks! Ay, they must.—Are ye acquainted wi’ these parts? No, say ye? Eh, things has happened i’ this neighbourhood, hundreds o’ years back. It were off th’ Head, yonder, that Paul Jones fought, that ye ’ll ha’ heard tell of.—No! Well, that’s surprising!”
He continued to talk in his mild, easy way, telling them his story of Paul Jones; and, by and by, Willie shouted out loud, “Skipjack!” A call up the wood answered him.
“Skipjack” was Charlie Dodd. He came, an ungainly youth with a long neck, a back shaped like a lad’s kite by reason of his sloping shoulders, and enormous hands and wrists.
“Nay, don’t hang yoursel’,” the bailiff observed as Charlie passed a loop of rope about his neck; and Jerry and Willie hoisted him up to a bough.
Dead bark and twigs and tree-scurf came down as the Skipjack swung from branch to branch; and he made fast the loop to a high fork, gave a grimace and shout, and came down it in three perilous-looking swings, his especial feat. Jerry smeared the great cross-cut with grease, and they set it into the notch. The sun shone warmly through the bare branches, and the ruddy oak-apples made a rich colour against the sky. Sawdust lodged in the folds of the clothing of the two men as they bent their backs to the cross-cut, and the birds cried more and more loudly. They were chopping in several places at once now, and from the top of another tree the Skipjack gave another shout. Now and then Willie and Jerry loosened the saw and rested, their faces crimson; and the bailiff mused among the oaks and told over again the story of Paul Jones. Then Willie and Jerry set the saw aside; the tree was ready for the fall; and men ran from here and there, and gathered round the oak, and took the rope and set the huge tree gently rocking on its base. The tree-scurf descended on them, and the birds made a piteous clamour. Willie ran in with a wedge; the tree tottered, hung for a moment beyond its point of balance, and then gave a long groan and twisted slowly. Men sprang for safety as it came over. There was a rushing and breaking of branches, the fibres burst with a loud crack, the boughs whipped out dangerously, and the tree left a great white blade like that of a sword standing a yard up from the butt. They stood back for a minute, as men stand back from the dying body of a formidable beast; then they ran in and set to work with saws and axes in half a dozen places at once. While some sawed and lopped its branches, Willie and Jerry marked the trunk into six-foot lengths and took the cross-cut again. Soon the women brought the morning ale; and then the pilling and bolling irons, like spoons with a solid bowl, were got out.
Fat Maggie had brought a straw hassock, and as she sat wide-lapped on it and worked her pilling-iron the points of her elbows were redder than her red arms. Nan and Jennie Holmes, Jerry’s wife and daughter, sat in a litter of brushwood, and Jennie’s face worked like her father’s as she cut the slashes with a knife and thrust in the iron. The sun caught Jessie Wheeler’s hair as she sat in the brown bracken with her skirts tucked close about her ankles; and now and then she glanced across to where Willie thrust at the noisy cross-cut. The air became fragrant with the smell of sawdust and the sharp odour of the new green timber, and the sap glistened in bright films and webs as the bark parted from the white wood. The piles of the smaller bark accumulated about the women, and the white-stripped twigs and billets turned a pale buff in an hour. The creak and rush of another falling tree came from up the wood. Fat Maggie clapped her black hands to her ears as a man began to set a saw immediately behind her; and Willie’s oak lay in three great sections, the middle one of which had rolled to one side.
The easy-going bailiff came up again as Jerry stooped to examine the face of the butt section. “What is it?” he said; and Jerry pointed at something. Willie took a bar and rolled the middle section away; and all three of them stooped again to the cut.
“If that’s a ring-shake——” Jerry began; but the bailiff rubbed his hands and beamed.
“It isn’t a ring-shake; I’ll lay I know what it is. Look you! saw this slice clean out, here.”
Other men gathered round and watched them saw a three-inch slice out of the tree. The saw polished the heart of the oak like marble, and a foot or so within the bark, and three or four inches in length, a curious mark showed. The bailiff took an axe and chopped into the flat disc; then he took up the disc and one of the fragments.
“Well!” he said, his mild face radiant, “I wouldn’t ha’ missed that for a crown! I’ve heard tell of ’em, too! D’ye see?”
Buried in the heart of the tree, and fitting together like a die and matrix, were two letters, an M and a V. They had been cut long ago in the wood itself, and had become overgrown with the newer wood, but had never healed. Men called to one another, and all pressed for a sight of the marvel. Jessie’s head rested for a moment against Willie’s shoulder, and his hand sought hers as the pieces were passed from hand to hand; and soon the bailiff said, “I’se take these home,” and put them into his pocket.
The women fetched the dinner at midday, and, after it, Willie and Jessie sat apart in a little copse of hazels. A lean-to of thick base-bark screened them from the others, and the green tassels of the hazels dangled over them. His fingers strayed in her rich hair; as she smiled up at him the corners of her mouth were dewy as the sap that glistened under the rind of the great oaks. Nellie, the retriever bitch, blinked drowsily at them both.
“It’s no deeper nor I ha’ for thee,” she whispered by and by, as if he knew without telling what she spoke of.
“What, dear?”
“Th’ tree,” she murmured; and again he caressed her burnished hair.
“Only ten days and we’se be home,” he said, presently; “shall ye be glad, Jess?”
“Yes, love; there’s no comfort wi’ yon sea all about ye, like as if something were al’ays watching ye. I’d sooner meet thee aback o’ th’ little lambing-shed at home o’ th’ hill. An’ when we’re back I’se mak’ thee a dozen shirts wi’ my wages, dear——”
Willie laughed. “And what shall we gi’e her, Nellie?” he asked the retriever; and the animal moved her tail lazily, hearing her name. Soon they heard stirrings behind the hazel copse; the women began to pack up tins and dishes; and Jerry’s voice called, “Where’s my mate?” The men scattered again about the clearings. Again the wood became noisy with the chop of the axe, the knock of the iron, and the hoarse voice of the saw. The huge sections, stripped of their thick rinds, lay white on the bracken. White faggots gleamed against the tan of the inner bark, against the pink-budding thorn and the slate-purple brambles and the quick green of the hazels and elders. The men made another spell of half-an-hour late in the afternoon; and when the sunset gun boomed sullenly from the ship off the Head, they covered the irons and saws and axes with sacking, hid them under a stack of brushwood, and turned their faces towards the sheds for supper.