A SHADOW IN SPRING With spring came trouble. The Saxtons declared they were being bitten off the estate by rabbits. Suddenly, in a fit of despair, the father bought a gun. Although he knew that the would not for one moment tolerate the shooting of that manna, the rabbits, yet he was out in the first cold morning banging away. At first he but scared the , and brought Annable on the scene; then, blooded by the use of the weapon, he played among the beasts, bringing home some eight or nine couples.
 
George approved of this measure; it rejoiced him even; yet he had never had the initiative to begin the like himself, or even to urge his father to it. He trouble, and possible loss of the farm. It disturbed him somewhat, to think they must look out for another place, but he the thought of the evil day till the time should be upon him.
 
A was established between the Mill and the keeper, Annable. The latter cherished his rabbits:
 
"Call 'em vermin!" he said. "I only know one sort of vermin—and that's the talkin sort." So he set himself to and the rabbit slayers.
 
It was about this time I cultivated the acquaintance of the keeper. All the world hated him—to the people in the villages he was like a devil of the woods. Some miners had sworn on him for having caused their committal to . But he had a great attraction for me; his magnificent physique, his great and , and his swarthy, gloomy face drew me.
 
He was a man of one idea:—that all was the painted of rottenness. He hated any sign of culture. I won his respect one afternoon when he found me in the woods because I was watching some maggots at work in a dead rabbit. That led us to a discussion of life. He was a thorough materialist—he scorned religion and all mysticism. He spent his days sleeping, making intricate traps for weasels and men, putting together a gun, or doing some amateur , cutting down timber, splitting it in logs for use in the hall, and planting young trees. When he thought, he reflected on the decay of mankind—the decline of the human race into and weakness and rottenness. "Be a good animal, true to your animal instinct," was his motto. With all this, he was fundamentally very unhappy—and he made me also wretched. It was this power to communicate his unhappiness that made me somewhat dear to him, I think. He treated me as an affectionate father treats a delicate son; I noticed he liked to put his hand on my shoulder or my knee as we talked; yet withal, he asked me questions, and saved his thoughts to tell me, and believed in my knowledge like any .
 
I went up to the woods one evening in early April, taking a look for Annable. I could not find him, however, in the wood. So I left the wildlands, and went along by the old red wall of the kitchen garden, along the main road as far as the church which stands high on a bank by the road-side, just where the trees tunnel the darkness, and the gloom of the highway startles the travellers at noon. Great trees growing on the banks suddenly fold over everything at this point in the swinging road, and in the obscurity rots the Hall church, black and above the shrinking head of the traveller.
 
The path to the churchyard was still with decayed leaves. The church is abandoned. As I drew near an floated softly out of the black tower. Grass overgrew the threshold. I pushed open the door, grinding back a heap of fallen plaster and rubbish and entered the place. In the twilight the pews were leaning in ghostly , the prayer-books dragged from their , on the floor in the dust and , torn by mice and birds. Birds scuffled in the darkness of the roof. I looked up. In the upward well of the tower I could see a bell hanging. I stooped and picked up a piece of plaster from the confusion of feathers, and broken nests, and remnants of dead birds. Up into the overhead I tossed pieces of plaster until one hit the bell, and it "tonged" out its faint . There was a of many birds like spirits. I sounded the bell again, and dark forms moved with cries of alarm overhead, and something fell heavily. I shivered in the dark, evil-smelling place, and hurried to get out of doors. I clutched my hands with relief and pleasure when I saw the sky above me quivering with the last crystal lights, and the lowest red of sunset behind the -boles. I drank the fresh air, that sparkled with the sound of the blackbirds and thrushes whistling their strong bright notes.
 
I strayed round to where the headstones, from their leaned to look on the Hall below, where great windows shone yellow light on to the flagged court-yard, and the little fish pool. A stone staircase from the to the court, between stone balustrades whose pock-marked grey columns still and with dignity, encrusted with . The staircase was filled with and roses—impassable. Ferns were unrolling round the big square halting place, half way down where the stairs turned.
 
A peacock, startled from the back of the Hall, came flapping up the terraces to the churchyard. Then a heavy footstep crossed the flags. It was the keeper. I whistled the whistle he knew, and he broke his way through the vicious rose- up the stairs. The peacock flapped beyond me, on to the neck of an old bowed angel, rough and dark, an angel which had long ceased sorrowing for the lost Lucy, and had died also. The bird its neck and peered about. Then it lifted up its head and yelled. The sound tore the dark of twilight. The old grey grass seemed to stir, and I could fancy the and violets beneath it waking and for fear.
 
The keeper looked at me and smiled. He nodded his head towards the peacock, saying:
 
"Hark at that damned thing!"
 
Again the bird lifted its head and gave a cry, at the same time turning awkwardly on its ugly legs, so that it showed us the full wealth of its tail like a stream of coloured stars over the sunken face of the angel.
 
"The proud fool!—look at it! Perched on an angel, too, as if it were a pedestal for vanity. That's the soul of a woman—or it's the devil."
 
He was silent for a time, and we watched the great bird moving uneasily before us in the twilight.
 
"That's the very soul of a lady," he said, "the very, very soul. Damn the thing, to on that old angel. I should like to its neck."
 
Again the bird screamed, and shifted awkwardly on its legs; it seemed to stretch its at us in derision. Annable picked up a piece of sod and flung it at the bird, saying:
 
"Get out, you devil! God!" he laughed. "There must be plenty of hearts twisting under here,"—and he stamped on a grave, "when they hear that row."
 
He kicked another sod from a grave and threw at the big bird. The peacock flapped away, over the tombs, down the terraces.
 
"Just look!" he said, "the has dirtied that angel. A woman to the end, I tell you, all vanity and and ."
 
He sat down on a vault and lit his pipe. But before he had smoked two minutes, it was out again. I had not seen him in a state of perturbation before.
 
"The church," said I, "is rotten. I suppose they'll stand all over the country like this, soon—with peacocks trailing the ."
 
"Ay," he muttered, taking no notice of me.
 
"This stone is cold," I said, rising.
 
He got up too, and stretched his arms as if he were tired. It was quite dark, save for the waxing moon which leaned over the east.
 
"It is a very fine night," I said. "Don't you notice a smell of violets?"
 
"Ay! The moon looks like a woman with child. I wonder what Time's got in her ."
 
"You?" I said. "You don't expect anything exciting do you?"
 
"Exciting!—No—about as exciting as this rotten old place—just rot off—Oh, my God!—I'm like a good house, built and finished, and left to tumble down again with nobody to live in it."
 
"Why—what's up—really?"
 
He laughed bitterly, saying, "Come and sit down."
 
He led me off to a seat by the north door, between two pews, very black and silent. There we sat, he putting his gun carefully beside him. He remained still, thinking.
 
"Whot's up?" he said at last, "Why—I'll tell you. I went to Cambridge—my father was a big cattle dealer—he died bankrupt while I was in college, and I never took my degree. They persuaded me to be a parson, and a parson I was.
 
I went a curate to a little place in Leicestershire—a bonnie place with not many people, and a fine old church, and a great rich parsonage. I hadn't overmuch to do, and the rector—he was the son of an Earl—was generous. He lent me a horse and would have me hunt like the rest. I always think of that place with a smell of honeysuckle while the grass is wet in the morning. It was fine, and I enjoyed myself, and did the parish work all right. I believe I was pretty good.
 
A cousin of the rector's used to come in the hunting season—a Lady Crystabel, lady in her own right. The second year I was there she came in June. There wasn't much company, so she used to talk to me—I used to read then—and she used to pretend to be so childish and unknowing, and would get me telling her things, and talking to her, and I was hot on things. We must play tennis together, and ride together, and I must row her down the river. She said we were in the and could do as we liked. She made me wear and soft clothes. She was very fine and frank and unconventional—ripping, I thought her. All the summer she stopped on. I should meet her in the garden early in the morning when I came from a swim in the river—it was cleared and deepened on purpose—and she'd blush and make me walk with her. I can remember I used to stand and dry myself on the bank full where she might see me—I was mad on her—and she was madder on me.
 
We went to some caves in Derbyshire once, and she would wander from the rest, and loiter, and, for a game, we played a sort of hide and seek with the party. They thought we'd gone, and they went and locked the door. Then she pretended to be frightened and clung to me, and said what would they think, and hid her face in my coat. I took her and kissed her, and we made it up properly. I found out afterwards—she actually told me—she'd got the idea from a French novel—the Romance of A Poor Young Man. I was the Poor Young Man.
 
We got married. She gave me a living she had in her parsonage, and we went to live at her Hall. She wouldn't let me out of her sight. Lord!—we were an infatuated couple—and she would choose to view me in an light. I was Greek statues for her, bless you: Croton, Hercules, I don't know what! She had her own way too much—I let her do as she liked with me.
 
Then gradually she got tired—it took her three years to be really with me. I had a physique then—for that matter I have now."
 
He held out his arm to me, and bade me try his muscle. I was startled. The hard flesh almost filled his sleeve.
 
"Ah," he continued, "You don't know what it is to have the pride of a body like mine. But she wouldn't have children—no, she wouldn't—said she daren't. That was the root of the difference at first. But she cooled down, and if you don't know the pride of my body you'd never know my . I tried to remonstrate—and she looked simply at my cheek. I never got over that .
 
She began to get souly. A poet got hold of her, and she began to affect Burne-Jones—or Waterhouse—it was Waterhouse—she was a lot like one of his women—Lady of Shalott, I believe. At any rate, she got souly, and I was her animal—son animal—son boeuf. I put up with that for above a year. Then I got some servants' clothes and went.
 
I was seen in France—then in Australia—though I never left England. I was supposed to have died in the bush. She married a young fellow. Then I was proved to have died, and I read a little notice on myself in a woman's paper she to. She wrote it herself—as a warning to other young ladies of position not to be by "Poor Young Men."
 
Now she's dead. They've got the paper—her paper—in the kitchen down there, and it's full of photographs, even an old photo of me—"an unfortunate misalliance." I feel, somehow, as if I were at an end too. I thought I'd grown a solid, middle-aged-man, and here I feel sore as I did at twenty-six, and I talk as I used to.
 
One thing—I have got some children, and they're of a breed as you'd not meet anywhere. I was a good animal before everything, and I've got some children."
 
He sat looking up where the big moon swam through the black branches of the yew.
 
"So she's dead—your poor peacock!" I murmured.
 
He got up, looking always at the sky, and stretched himself again. He was an impressive figure massed in blackness against the moonlight, with his arms outspread.
 
"I suppose," he said, "it wasn't all her fault."
 
"A white peacock, we will say," I suggested.
 
He laughed.
 
"Go home by the top road, will you!" he said. "I believe there's something on in the bottom wood."
 
"All right," I answered, with a quiver of .
 
"Yes, she was fair enough," he muttered.
 
"Ay," said I, rising. I held out my hand from the shadow. I was startled myself by the white sympathy it seemed to express, extended towards him in the moonlight. He gripped it, and to me for a moment, then he was gone.
 
I went out of the churchyard feeling a against the tousled graves that lay inanimate across my way. The air was heavy to breathe, and fearful in the shadow of the great trees. I was glad when I came out on the bare white road, and could see the lights from the reflectors of a pony-cart's lamps, and could hear the chat-chat of the towards me. I was lonely when they had passed.
 
Over the hill, the big flushed face of the moon just above the treetops, very , and far off—yet . I turned with swift sudden to the net of elm-boughs spread over my head, dotted with soft clusters . I jumped up and pulled the cool soft tufts against my face for company; and as I ............