Years of Plenty Part 27

"That's it."

"Have you been ill this winter?"

"Yes. I was rotten for a bit; Margaret has been awfully good to me.

When she heard of it she fished me out of my lodgings and made me come here. I was in bed a fortnight and must have been a beastly nuisance.

They are splendid, all of them."

Martin agreed.

"And what about you?" she asked.

He explained his hopes and fears.

"You've no business to mope," she told him. "Don't you understand that you're an extremely lucky person? I wish I had your chances."

"I suppose I'm lucky," he said without conviction, trying to feel ashamed of his despair.

"Of course you are. Anyhow it's silly to get despondent. Besides, you're bound to do well."

"Am I? Why?"

"Because I tell you to. Do get firsts and things."

It pleased him to be ordered. He stopped in the muddy lane between two stark hedges that stood naked against the grey December sky.

"Do you care?" he asked.

"Of course I care."

"Why? I mean----" he paused awkwardly.

"Don't ask silly questions," she answered. "It's too cold to stand about."

They walked on.

"It must be pretty sickening for you," he said, "having to go on with this drudgery."

"It is rather rotten. But it can't be helped."

"Can't you get some intelligent kind of work, writing or something?"

"I'm not good enough. Don't make foolish interruptions. It's quite true. And remember I chucked up a teaching post."

"But routine must be worse for a person like you."

"It isn't nice. Really I think the most miserable people of all are those who are just too good for dull work and not good enough for real, original, creative work."

"That's painfully true," he answered. And there, gloomily, they left it.

That night Martin reflected on the events of the day. What surprised him most was the depth and intensity of his feelings about Freda. It wasn't love, it wasn't mere sympathy: was it just sentimentality? It is a habit of the younger generation in these days to turn their s.e.xual emotions into channels of political reasoning: the result is called feminism. Instead of defending hapless women with strong right arm they are eager to defend underpaid women by strike or Act of Parliament. There is little difference, for the reason that Nature cannot be cheated. The pitchfork of modernity will not keep it out, and chivalry, loathed in name, comes bravely back in disguise. In matters of personal relation feminism is dangerous just because it is insidious. Martin had already formed his picture of Freda, overworked and underpaid, homeless and driven from pillar to post. The image was painful, but it pleased him so to suffer.

On Sat.u.r.day there was to be shooting, the last of the season. People were coming down for the week-end and, doubtless, neighbours would be there. In the home coverts c.o.c.k pheasants still trumpeted in peace, but their time had come.

Martin had no gun of his own, but sometimes he used a spare weapon of his uncle's. If he had been more efficient he would have liked the actual shooting: he could see the point of it and appreciate the thrill of waiting and achieving. But he had neither the long experience nor the swift eye and he was glad when the gun was needed by someone else.

Freda would not see his lack of skill, for Robert had brought a friend from town for whom the gun would be required.

Neither Margaret nor Freda went out in the morning, and Martin also stayed in to work. The guns came back to lunch at half-past twelve, as they had begun to shoot early, for that made a better division of the short daylight. When they went out again Margaret accompanied Robert's friend and Martin took Freda to watch the first drive. The air was soft: otherwise Freda, being still convalescent, would not have been allowed to stand about. But it was considered warm enough for her if she wore a thick motoring coat of Margaret's. Here and there films of mist hung thinly over fields, but in the woods it was clear: the wind spoke gently in the trees or pa.s.sed in silence down the rides and open glades. Underfoot rustled the drifting, many-tinted leaves and the flight of a startled song-bird made the still air reverberate. The fragrance of distant pines was mingled with the scent of the leaf-mould and sometimes the glint of the birch's silver broke the splendid monotony of giant trunks.

The mystery of Ham and Eggs flashed across Martin's mind. The cult must not exclude woods.

"Aren't these trees wonderful," he said simply.

"I think they're awful, in the proper sense of the word. They make me excited and terrified and happy."

"Awful is the right word. Why did men spoil it?"

"We've managed to spoil most things."

"Will they begin shooting soon?" asked Freda after a pause.

"The beaters will be coming up soon."

"Why do people do it? It seems so unnecessary, so savage, somehow."

"So it is savage. That's just the point. It answers a need, I suppose. You wait till you hear an old c.o.c.k pheasant come cras.h.i.+ng down. There's something very satisfactory about the noise he makes."

"It's too horrible."

"Wait and perhaps you'll find that you have a few primitive instincts left in you. You may be free of them; some people are. It isn't only the pa.s.sion to kill, though. It's the pa.s.sion to get over obstacles and do something immensely difficult. That's why walking-up birds is better than driving. When I've got a gun I want to hit an object which is incidentally a bird. It isn't the killing that matters."

"But why don't you shoot at targets or clay pigeons?"

"There you have me. I suppose at that point the savagery comes in. It isn't the same to shoot at disappearing targets, and that's all one can say. Hullo, they're starting, we'd better stop talking."

Far away at the back of the covert arose the noise of cracking twigs and trampled leaves: closer and closer it came until the sounds were distinguishable, now the tapping of a stick on a tree, the beating of a bush, the long-drawn cries of "Mark" and "Forward," the swift whir of wings, and at last the sharp crack of guns. The woods, once awful with still silence, were all sound and movement. The gun, behind whom Martin and Freda were standing, had only one chance and took it--a beautiful right and left. The second bird fell close to them, cras.h.i.+ng through branches to a soft bed of leaves. Freda gasped and jumped forward. The drive was over.

"You wanted it to fall?" said Martin, taking up the warm, motionless body.

"I think I did," she confessed. "But only for a moment."

"It seemed right, didn't it?"

"I suppose so. But I couldn't touch it." She paused. "Yes, I was glad when he hit them both," she added. "The strain of waiting and looking and listening seemed to make it all different. And he was so quick. I can't think how he could have got round to the second. It was all wonderful in a horrible, alluring kind of way."

"I was right," said Martin. "There is something in it, you see."

He was glad that she understood: it gave them another point in common.

The next beat would take them some way from home, out to the bleaker side of the woods. Martin proposed that they should wait until the guns returned and Freda was willing. They went to the pines where the ground was clean and firm and there on a bank they waited.