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A vendetta 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 thwart and harass 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 vengeance on him for having caused their committal to gaol. But he had a great attraction for me; his magnificent physique, his great vigour and vitality, and his swarthy, gloomy face drew me.
He was a man of one idea: that all civilisation was the painted fungus of rottenness. He hated any sign of culture. I won his respect one afternoon when he found me trespassing 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 forestry, 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 folly 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 acolyte.
I went up to the quarry 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 mouldering church which stands high on a bank by the roadside, 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 melancholy above the shrinking head of the traveller.
The grassy path to the churchyard was still clogged with decayed leaves. The church is abandoned. As I drew near an owl 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 disorder, the prayer-books dragged from their ledges, scattered on the floor in the dust and rubble, 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 ragged confusion of feathers, and broken nests, and remnants of dead birds. Up into the vault overhead I tossed pieces of plaster until one hit the bell, and it “tonged” out its faint remonstrance. There was a rustle 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 yew-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 eminence, leaned to look on the Hall below, where great windows shone yellow light on the flagged courtyard, and the little fish-pool. A stone staircase descended from the graveyard to the court, between stone balustrades whose pock-marked grey columns still swelled gracefully and with dignity, encrusted with lichens. The staircase was filled with ivy and rambling roses — impassable. Ferns were unrolling round the big square halting-place, half-way down where the stairs turned.
A peacock, startled from the back premises 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-boughs 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 bent its voluptuous neck and peered about. Then it lifted up its head and yelled. The sound tore the dark sanctuary of twilight. The old grey grass seemed to stir, and I could fancy the smothered primroses and violets beneath it waking and gasping 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 crested 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 glimmering 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 perch on that old angel. I should like to wring its neck.”
Again the bird screamed, and shifted awkwardly on its legs; it seemed to stretch its beak at us in derision. Annable picked up a piece of sod and flung it at the bird, saying:
“Get out, you screeching 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 miserable brute has dirtied that angel. A woman to the end, I tell you, all vanity and screech and defilement.”
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 graveyards.”
“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 belly.”
“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 perfectly 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.