Wood Magic: A Fable
them, but there was the gun: it was true he knew very well there was no
powder (for, in the first place, he could not smell any, and, secondly,
if there had been any he knew he should have had the shot singing about
his ears long before this; you see, he could put two and two together),
still there was the gun. The dog does not like the corner where the
walking-stick stands. The crow did not like the gun, though it was stuck
in the ground: he went back to the ash, cleaned his bill, and waited.
Something came stealthily through the grass, now stopping, now advancing
with a creeping, evil motion. It was the weasel. When he stole away from
the wood-pile, after escaping from the trap, he made up the field
towards the copse, but upon reflection he determined to abandon his lair
in the hollow elm, for he had so abused Bevis's good-nature that he
doubted whether Bevis might not attack him even there despite the
squirrel. He did not know exactly where to go, knowing that every
creature was in secret his enemy, and in his wounded state, unable to
move quickly or properly defend himself, he dreaded to trust himself
near them. After a while he remembered the old dead oak, which was also
hollow within, and which was so far from the copse it was not probable
Bevis would find it.
Thither he bent his painful steps, for his broken rib hurt him very
much, and after many pauses to rest, presently, in the afternoon, he
came near. Lifting his head above the grass he saw the dead dog, and the
sleeping keeper; he watched them a long time, and seeing that neither of
them moved he advanced closer. As he approached he saw the dead hawk,
and recognised one of Ki Ki's retainers; then coming to the dog, the
blood from the shot wounds excited his terrible thirst. But it had
ceased to flow; he sniffed at it and then went towards the man.
The crow, envious, but afraid to join the venture, watched him from the
ash. Every few inches the weasel stayed, lifted his head; looked, and
listened. Then he advanced again, paused, and again approached. In five
minutes he had reached the keeper's feet; two minutes more and he was by
his waist. He listened again; he sniffed, he knew it was dangerous, but
he could not check the resistless prompting of his appetite.
He crept up on the keeper's chest; the crow fidgeted on the ash. He
crept up to the necktie; the crow came down on a lower bough. He moved
yet another inch to the collar; the crow flew out ten yards and settled
on the ground. The collar was stiff, and partly covered that part of the
neck which fascinated the weasel's gaze. He put his foot softly on the
collar; the crow hopped thrice towards them. He brought up his other
foot, he sniffed--the breath came warm from the man's half-open lips--he
adventured the risk, and placed his paw on the keeper's neck.
Instantly--as if he had received an electric shock--the keeper started
to his knees, shuddering; the weasel dropped from his neck upon the
ground, the crow hastened back to the ash. With a blow of his open hand
the keeper knocked the weasel yards away; then, in his rage and fear,
with whitened face, he wished instead he had beaten the creature down
upon the earth, for the weasel, despite the grinding of his broken rib,
began to crawl off, and he could not reach him.
He looked round for a stick or stone, there was none; he put his hand in
his pocket, but his knife had slipped out when he fell from the tree. He
passed his hands over his waistcoat seeking for something, felt his
watch--a heavy silver one--and in his fury snatched it from the swivel,
and hurled it at the weasel. The watch thrown with such force missed the
weasel, struck the sward, and bounded up against the oak: the glass
shivered and flew sparkling a second in the sunshine; the watch glanced
aside, and dropped in the grass. When he looked again the weasel had
gone. It was an hour before the keeper recovered himself--the shuddering
terror with which he woke up haunted him in the broad daylight.
An intolerable thirst now tormented him, but the furrow was dry. In the
morning, he remembered it had contained a little water from the rain,
which during the day had sunk into the earth. He picked a bennet from
the grass and bit it, but it was sapless, dried by the summer heat. He
looked for a leaf of sorrel, but there was none. The slow hours wore on;
the sun sank below the wood, and the long shadows stretched out.
By-and-by the grass became cooler to the touch; dew was forming upon it.
Overhead the rooks streamed homewards to their roosting trees. They
cawed incessantly as they flew; they were talking about Kapchack and
Choo Hoo, but he did not understand them.
The shadows reached across the glade, and yonder the rabbits appeared
again from among the bushes where their burrows were. He began now to
seriously think that he should have to pass the night there. His ankle
was swollen, and the pain almost beyond endurance. The slightest attempt
at motion caused intense agony. His one hope now was that the same
slouching labourer who had passed in the morning would go back that way
at night; but as the shadows deepened that hope departed, and he doubted
too whether any one could see him through the underwood in the dark. The
slouching labourer purposely avoided that route home. He did not want to
see anything, if anything there was.
He went round by the high road, and having had his supper, and given his
wife a clout in the head, he sauntered down to the alehouse. After he
had taken three quarts of beer, he mentioned the curious incident of the
white handkerchief in the woods to his mates, who congratulated him on
his sense in refraining from going near it, as most likely it was one of
that keeper's tricks, just to get somebody into the wood. More talk, and
more beer. By-and-by the keeper's wife began to feel alarmed. She had
already found the dead dog in the kennel; but that did not surprise her
in the least, knowing her husband's temper, and that if a dog disobeyed
it was not at all unusual for a cartridge to go whistling after him.
But when the evening came, and the darkness fell; when she had gone down
to the alehouse, braving his wrath, and found that he was not there,
the woman began to get hysterical. The lad who acted as assistant had
gone home, so she went out into the nearest stubble herself, thinking
that her husband must have finished his round before lunch, and was
somewhere in the newly-reaped fields. But after walking about the
rustling stubble till she was weary, she came back to the alehouse, and
begged the men to tell her if they had seen anything of him. Then they
told her about the white handkerchief which the slouching poacher had
seen in the wood that morning. She turned on him like a tiger, and
fiercely upbraided him; then rushed from the house. The sloucher took up
his quart, and said that he saw "no call" to hurry.
But some of the men went after the wife. The keeper was found, and
brought home on a cart, but not before he had seen the owl go by, and
the dark speck of the bat passing to and fro overhead.
All that day Bevis did not go to the copse, being much upset with the
cheat the weasel had played him, and also because they said the grass
and the hedges would be so wet after the storm. Nor did anything take
place in the copse, for King Kapchack moped in his fortress, the
orchard, the whole day long, so greatly was he depressed by the
widespread treason of which the owl had informed him.
Choo Hoo, thinking that the treaty was concluded, relaxed the strictness
of discipline, and permitted his army to spread abroad from the camp and
forage for themselves. He expected the return of the ambassador with
further communications, and ordered search to be made for every dainty
for his entertainment; while the thrush, for whom this care was taken,
had not only ceased to exist, but it would have been impossible to
collect his feathers, blown away to every quarter.
The vast horde of barbarians were the more pleased with the liberty
accorded to them, because they had spent so ill a night while the gale
raged through their camp. So soon as the sun began to gleam through the
retreating clouds, they went forth in small parties, many of which the
keeper saw go over him while lying helpless by the dead oak-tree.
King Kapchack, after the owl had informed him of the bewildering maze of
treason with which he was surrounded, moped, as has been said before,
upon his perch. In the morning, wet and draggled from the storm, his
feathers out of place, and without the spirit to arrange them, he seemed
to have grown twenty years older in one night, so pitiable did he
appear. Nor did the glowing sun, which filled all other hearts with joy,
reach his gloomy soul. He saw no resource; no enterprise suggested
itself to him; all was dark at noonday.
An ominous accident which had befallen the aged apple-tree in which his
palace stood contributed to this depression of mind. The gale had
cracked a very large bough, which, having shown signs of weakness, had
for many years been supported by a prop carefully put up by the farmer.
But whether the prop in course of time had decayed at the line where the
air and earth exercise their corroding influence upon wood; or whether
the bough had stiffened with age, and could not swing easily to the
wind; or whether, as seems most likely, the event occurred at that
juncture in order to indicate the course of fate, it is certain that the
huge bough was torn partly away from the trunk, leaving a gaping cavity.
Kapchack viewed the injury to the tree, which had so long sustained his
family and fortune, with the utmost concern; it seemed an omen of
approaching destruction so plain and unmistakable that he could not look
at it; he turned his mournful gaze in the opposite direction. The day
passed slowly, as slowly as it did to the keeper lying beneath the oak,
and the king, though he would have resented intrusion with the sharpest
language, noticed with an increasing sense of wrong that the court was
deserted, and with one exception none called to pay their respects.
The exception was Eric, the favourite missel-thrush, who alone of all
the birds was allowed to frequent the same orchard. The missel-thrush,
loyal to the last, came, but seeing Kapchack's condition, did not
endeavour to enter into conversation. As for the rest, they did not
venture from fear of the king's violent temper, and because their
unquiet consciences made them suspect that this unusual depression was
caused by the discovery of their treachery. They remained away from
dread of his anger. Kapchack, on the other hand, put their absence down
to the mean and contemptible desire to avoid a falling house. He
observed that even the little Te-te, the tomtit, and chief of the
secret police, who invariably came twice or thrice a day with an account
of some gossip he had overheard, did not arrive. How low he must have
fallen, since the common informers disdained to associate with him!
Towards the evening he sent for his son, Prince Tchack-tchack, with the
intention of abdicating in his favour, but what were his feelings when
the messenger returned without him! Tchack-tchack refused to come. He,
too, had turned away. Thus, deserted by the lovely La Schach, for whom
he had risked his throne; deserted by the whole court and even by his
own son; the monarch welcomed the darkness of the night, the second of
his misery, which hid his disgrace from the world.
The owl came, faithful by night as the missel-thrush by day, but
Kapchack, in the deepest despondency, could not reply to his remarks.
Twice the owl came back, hoping to find his master somewhat more open to
consolation, and twice had to depart unsuccessful. At last, about