Timber (Galsworthy)

by John Galsworthy

 

Timber

By John Galsworthy

A short story by Galsworthy is an event—he writes so few and those few always so movingly and searchingly fine. His new play, “The Skin Game,” such a success in London, will be seen here this winter, and there are rumors that he himself may be over. In Alexander Woollcott's article on another page of this issue, there are some interesting things about this play and about him. Turn to them after you read this masterly story.

SIR ARTHUR HIRRIES, Baronet of Hirriehugh, in a northern county, came to the decision to sell his timber in that state of mind—common during the war—which may be called patrio-profiteering. Like newspaper proprietors, writers on strategy, ship-builders, owners of works, makers of arms and the rest of the working classes at large, his mood was: “Let me serve my country, and if thereby my profits are increased, let me put up with it, and invest in national bonds.”

With an encumbered estate and some of the best coverts in that northern county, it had not become practical politics to sell his timber till the Government wanted it at any price. To let his shooting had been more profitable, till now a patriotic action and a stroke of business had become synonymous. A man of sixty-five, but not yet gray, with a reddish tinge in his mustache, cheeks, lips and eyelids, slightly knock-kneed, and with large, rather spreading feet, he moved in the best circles in a somewhat embarrassed manner. At the enhanced price the timber at Hirriehugh would enfranchise him for the remainder of his days. He sold it, therefore, one day of April, when the war news was bad, to a Government official on the spot. He sold it at half-past five in the afternoon, practically for cash down, and drank a stiff whisky and soda to wash away the taste of the transaction; for, though no sentimentalist, his great-great-grandfather had planted most of it and his grandfather the rest. Royalty, too, had shot there in its time; and he himself (never much of a sportsman) had missed more birds in the rides and hollows of his fine coverts than he cared to remember. But the country was in need and the price considerable. Bidding the Government official good-by, he lighted a cigar and went across the park to take a farewell stroll among his timber.

He entered the home covert by a path leading through a group of pear-trees just coming into bloom. Smoking cigars and drinking whisky in the afternoon in preference to tea, Sir Arthur Hirries had not much sense of natural beauty. But those pear-trees impressed him, greenish white against the blue sky and fleecy thick clouds which looked as if they had snow in them. They were deuced pretty, and promised a good year for fruit, if they escaped the late frosts, though it certainly looked like freezing to-night! He paused a moment at the wicket gate to glance back at those scantily clothed white maidens posing on the outskirts of his timber. Such was not the vision of Sir Arthur Hirries, who was considering how he should invest the balance of the cash down after paying off his mortgages. National bonds—the country was in need!

Passing through the gate, he entered the the ride of the home covert. Variety lay like color on his woods. They stretched for miles, and his ancestors had planted almost every kind of tree; beech, oak, birch, sycamore, ash, elm, hazel, holly, pine; a lime-tree and a hornbeam here and there, and, farther in among the winding coverts, spinney's and belts of larch. The evening air was sharp, and sleet showers came whirling from those bright clouds; he walked briskly, drawing at his richly fragrant cigar, the whisky still warm within him. He walked thinking, with a gentle melancholy slowly turning a little sulky, that he would never again be pointing out with his shooting-stick to such or such a guest where he was to stand to get the best birds over him.

The pheasants had been let down during the war, but he put up two or three old cocks, who went clattering and whirring out to left and right; and rabbits crossed the rides quietly to and fro within easy shot. He came to where royalty had stood fifteen years ago during the last drive. He remembered royalty saying: “Very pretty shooting at that last stand, Hirries; birds just about as high as I like them.” The ground indeed rose rather steeply there, and the timber was oak and ash, with a few dark pines sprinkled into the bare grayish twiggery of the oaks, always costive in spring, and the just greening feather of the ashes.

“They'll be cutting those pines first,” he thought—strapping trees, straight as lines in Euclid, and free of branches, save at their tops. In the brisk wind those tops swayed a little and gave forth soft complaint. “Three times my age,” he thought; “prime timber.”

THE ride wound sharply and entered a belt of larch, whose steep rise entirely barred off the rather sinister sunset—a dark and wistful wood, delicate dun and gray, whose green shoots and crimson tips would have scented the evening coolness, but for the cigar smoke in his nostrils. “They'll have this spinney for pit-props,” he thought; and, taking a cross ride through it, he emerged in a heathery glen of birch-trees. No forester, he wondered if they would make anything of those whitened, glistening shapes. His cigar had gone out now, and he leaned against one of the satin-smooth stems, under the lacery of twig and bud, sheltering the flame of a relighting match. A hare loped away among the bilberry shoots; a jay, paint like a fan, squawked and flustered past him up the glen. Interested in birds, and wanting just one more jay to complete a fine stuffed group of them, Sir Arthur, though devoid of a gun, followed, to see where “the beggar's” nest was.

The glen dipped rapidly, and the character of the timber changed, assuming greater girth and solidity. There was a lot of beech here—a bit he did not know, for though taken in by the beaters, no guns could be stationed there because of the lack of undergrowth. The jay had vanished, and light had begun to fail. “I must get back,” he thought, “or I shall be late for dinner.” He debated for a moment whether to retrace his steps or to cut across the beeches and regain the home covert by a loop. The jay, reappearing to the left, decided him to cross the beech grove. He did so, and took a narrow ride up through a dark bit of mixed timber with heavy undergrowth. The ride, after favoring the left for a little, bent away to the right; Sir Arthur followed it hurriedly, conscious that twilight was gathering fast. It must bend again to the left in a minute! It did and then to the right, and, the undergrowth remaining thick, he could only follow on, or else retrace his steps. He followed on, beginning to get hot in spite of a sleet shower falling through the dusk. He was not framed by nature for swift traveling—his knees turning in and his toes turning out—but he went at a good bat, uncomfortably aware that the ride was still taking him away from home, and expecting it at any minute to turn left again. It did not, and hot, out of breath, a little bewildered, he stood still in three-quarter darkness, to listen. Not a sound, save that of wind in the tops of the trees and a faint creaking of timber where two stems had grown athwart and were touching.

THE path was a regular will-o'-the-wisp. He must make a bee-line of it through the undergrowth into another ride! He had never before been among his timber in the dusk, and he found the shapes of the confounded trees more weird, and as if menacing, than he had ever dreamed of. He stumbled quickly on in and out of them among the undergrowth without coming to a ride.

“Here I am stuck in this damned wood!” he thought. To call these formidably encircling shapes “a wood” gave him relief. After all, it was his wood, and nothing very untoward could happen to a man in his own wood, however dark it might get; he could not be more than a mile and a half at the outside from his dining-room! He looked at his watch, whose hands he could just see—nearly half-past seven! The sleet had become snow, but it hardly fell on him, so thick was the timber just here. But he had no overcoat, and suddenly he felt that first sickening little drop in his chest which presages alarm. Nobody knew he was in this damned wood! And in a quarter of an hour it would be black as your hat! He must get on and out! The trees among which he was stumbling produced quite a sick feeling now in one who hitherto had never taken trees seriously.

What monstrous growths they were! The thought that seeds, tiny seeds or saplings, planted by his ancestors, could attain huge impending and imprisoning bulk—ghostly great growths mounting up to heaven and shutting off this world—exasperated and unnerved him. He began to run, caught his foot in a root and fell flat on his face. The cursed trees—they seemed to have a down on him! Rubbing elbows and forehead with his snow-wetted hands, he leaned against a trunk to get his breath and summon the sense of direction to his brain. Once as a young man he had been “bushed” at night in Vancouver Island; quite a scary business! But he had come out all right, though his camp had been the only civilized spot within a radius of twenty miles. And here he was, on his own estate, within a mile or two of home, getting into a funk. It was childish! And he laughed. The wind answered, sighing and threshing in the tree-tops. There must be a regular blizzard blowing now, and, to judge by the cold, from the north—but whether northeast or northwest was the question. Besides, how keep definite direction without a compass in the dark?

THE timber, too, with its trunks, diverted the wind into keen, directionless drafts. He looked up, but could make nothing of the two or three stars that he could see. It was a mess! And he lighted a second cigar with some difficulty, for he had begun to shiver. The wind in this blasted wood cut through his Norfolk jacket and crawled about his body, which had become hot from his exertions, and now felt clammy and half-frozen. This would mean pneumonia, if he didn't look out! And, half feeling his way from trunk to trunk, he started on again, but for all he could tell he might be going round in a circle, might even be crossing rides without realizing, and-again that sickening drop occurred in his chest. He stood still and shouted. He had the feeling of shouting into walls of timber, dark and heavy, which threw the sound back at him.

“Curse you!” he thought. “I wish I'd sold you six months ago!” The wind fleered and mowed in the tree-tops; and he started off again at a run in that dark wilderness; till, hitting his head against a low branch, he fell stunned. He lay several minutes unconscious, came to himself deadly cold, and struggled up on to his feet.

“By Jove!” he thought, with a sort of stammer in his brain, “this is a bad business! I may be out here all night!” For an unimaginative man, it was extraordinary what vivid images he had just then. He saw the face of the Government official who had bought his timber, and the slight grimace with which he had agreed to the price. He saw his butler, after the gong had gone, standing like a stuck pig by the sideboard, waiting for him to come down. What would they do when he didn't come? Would they have the sense to imagine that he might have lost his way in the coverts, and take lanterns and search for him? Far more likely they would think he had walked over to “Greenlands” or “Berrymoor,” and stayed there to dinner. And suddenly he saw himself slowly freezing out here, in the snowy night, among this cursed timber. With a vigorous shake, he butted again into the darkness among the tree-trunks. He was angry now—with himself, with the night, with the trees; so angry that he actually let out with his fist at a trunk against which he had stumbled, and scored his knuckles. It was humiliating; and Sir Arthur Hirries was not accustomed to humiliation. In anybody else's wood—yes; but to be lost like this in one's own coverts! Well, if he had to walk all night, he would get out! And he plunged on doggedly in the darkness.

He was fighting with his timber now, as if the thing were alive and each tree an enemy. In the interminable stumbling exertion of that groping progress his angry mood gave place to half-comatose philosophy. Trees! His great-great-grandfather had planted them! His own was the fifth man's life, but the trees were almost as young as ever; they made nothing of a man's life! He sniggered: and a man made nothing of theirs! Did they know they were going to be cut down? All the better if they did, and were sweating in their shoes. He pinched himself—his thoughts were becoming so queer! He remembered that once, when his liver was out of order, trees had seemed to him like solid, tall diseases—bulbous, scarred, cavernous, witch-armed, fungoid emanations of the earth. Well, so they were! And he was among them, on a snowy pitch-black night, engaged in this death-struggle!

The occurrence of the word death in his thoughts brought him up all standing. Why couldn't he concentrate his mind on getting out; why was he mooning about the life and nature of trees instead of trying to remember the conformation of his coverts, so as to rekindle, in himself some sense of general direction? He struck a number of matches, to get a sight of his watch again. Great heaven! He had been walking nearly two hours since he last looked at it; and in what direction?

They said a man in a fog went round and round because of some kink in his brain!

HE BEGAN now to feel the trees, searching for a hollow trunk. A hollow would be some protection from the cold—his first conscious confession of exhaustion. He was not in training, and he was sixty-five. The thought, “I can't keep this up much longer,” caused a second explosion of sullen anger. Danmation! Here he was—for all he could tell—standing where he had sat perhaps a dozen times on his spread shooting-stick; watching sunlight on bare twigs, or the nose of his spaniel twitching beside him, listening to the tap of the beaters' sticks, and the shrill, drawn-out: “Mar-r-k! Cock over!”

Would they let the dogs out, to pick up his tracks? No! Ten to one they would assume he was staying the night at the Summertons, or at Lady Mary's, as he had done before now, after dining there. And suddenly his strained heart leaped. He had struck a ride again! His mind slipped back into place like an elastic let-go, relaxed, quivering gratefully. He had only to follow this ride, and somewhere, somehow, he would come out. And be hanged if he would let them know what a fool he had made of himself! Right or left—which way? He turned so that the flying snow came on his back, hurrying forward between the denser darkness on either hand, where the timber stood in walls, moving his arms across and across his body, as if dragging a concertina to full stretch, to make sure that he was keeping in the patch.

He went what seemed an interminable way like this, till he was brought up all standing by trees, and could find no outlet, no continuation. Turning in his tracks, with the snow in his face now, he retraced his steps till once more he was brought up short by trees. He stood panting. It was ghastly—ghastly! And in a panic he dived this way and that to find the bend, the turning, the way on. The sleet stung his eyes, the wind fleered and whistled, the boughs sloughed and moaned. He struck matches, trying to shade them with his cold, wet hands, but one by one they went out, and still he found no turning. The ride must have a blind alley at either end; the turning must be down the side somewhere! Hope revived in him. Never say die!

HE began a second retracing of his steps, feeling the trunks along one side, to find a gap. His breath came with difficulty. What would old Brodley say if he could see him, soaked, sweating, frozen, tired to death, stumbling along in the darkness among this cursed timber—old Brodley who had told him his heart was in poor case! A gap? Ah! No trunks—a ride! He turned, felt a sharp pain in his knee and pitched forward. He could not rise—the knee dislocated six years ago was out again. Sir Arthur Hirries clenched his teeth. Nothing more could happen to him! But after a minute—blank and bitter—he began to crawl along the new ride. Oddly he felt less discouraged and alarmed on hands and knee—for he could use but one. It was a relief to have his eye fixed on the ground, not peering at the tree-trunks; or perhaps there was less strain for the moment on his heart. He crawled, stepping every minute or so to renew his strength. He crawled mechanically, waiting for his heart, his knee, his lungs to stop him.

The earth was snowed over, and he could feel its cold wetness as he scraped along. Good tracks to follow, if anybody struck them! But in this dark forest—! In one of his halts, drying his hands as best he could, he struck a match, and sheltering it desperately, fumbled out his watch. Past ten o'clock! He wound the watch, and put it back against his heart. If only he could wind his heart! And squatting there he counted his matches—four! “Well,” he thought grimly, “I won't light them to show me my blasted trees. I've got a cigar left; I'll keep them for that.” And he crawled on again. He must keep going while he could!

He crawled till his heart and lungs and knee struck work; and, leaning his back against a tree, sat huddled together, so exhausted that he felt nothing save a sort of bitter heartache. He even dropped asleep, waking with a shudder, dragged from a dream armchair at the club into this cold, wet darkness and the blizzard moaning in the trees. He tried to crawl again, but could not, and for some minute stayed motionless, hugging his body with his arms. “Well,” he thought dimly, “I have done it!” His mind was in such lethargy that he could not even pity himself. Then he remembered his cigar. He got it out, bit the end off, and began with infinite precautions to prepare for lighting it.

The first two matches went out. The third burned, and the cigar drew. He had one match left, in case he dozed and let the thing go out. Looking up through the blackness he could see a star. He fixed his eyes on it, and leaning against the trunk, drew the smoke down into lungs. With his arms crossed tightly on his breast he smoked very slowly. When it was finished—what? Cold, and the wind in the trees until the morning! Half-way through the cigar, he dozed off, slept a long time, and woke up so cold that he could barely summon vitality enough to strike his last match. By some miracle it burned, and he got his cigar to draw again. This time he smoked it nearly to its end, without mentality, almost without feeling, except the physical sense of bitter cold. Once with a sudden clearing of the brain, he thought faintly: “Thank God, I sold the —— trees, and they'll all come down!” The thought drifted away in frozen incoherence, drifted out like his cigar smoke into the sleet; and with a faint grin on his lips he dozed off again. . . .

An underkeeper found him at ten o'clock next morning, blue from cold, under a tall elm-tree, within a mile of his bed, one leg stretched out, the other hunched up toward his chest, with its foot dug into the undergrowth for warmth, his head huddled into the collar of his coat his arms crossed on his breast. They said he must have been dead at least six hours. Along one side snow had drifted against him; but the trunk had saved his back and other side. Above him, the spindly top boughs of that tall tree were covered with green-gold clusters of tiny crinkled elm flowers, against a deep-blue sky—gay as a young song of perfect praise. The wind had dropped, and after the cold of the night the birds were singing their clearest in the sunshine.

They did not cut down the elm-tree under which they found his body, with the rest of the sold timber, but put a little iron fence round it and a little tablet on its trunk.