Chapter VI: The Search

Shrinking away from the body of the unhappy Grimjaw, and fleeing from the solitary spot in which it lay, I ran down towards the Heronry, where, in the distance, I could now perceive a number of persons assembled upon the lake-side. Below and above it, the stream flowed on as usual; but the larger area of water which contained the island, was frozen over with a thin coating of ice. This was being broken by men armed with long and heavy poles, after which the work of dragging the water was commenced. The scene was as desolate as the occupation was ghastly and depressing. Perched upon stony slabs of their now leafless home, the huge birds watched the proceedings with grave and serious air: at first, they imagined, I think, that the thing was done for their own behoof, and to the end that they might supply themselves with fish as usual; but the appearance of the grappling-irons disabused them of this idea. Now one, and now another, unable to restrain their curiosity, would rise slowly and warily into the air, and making a circuit over our heads, return to their old position to reflect, with head aside, upon what they had seen. The presence as spectators of these gigantic creatures, certainly increased the weird and awful character of the employment in which we were engaged, and struck quite a terror into the village folk, who were unaccustomed to see them in such close proximity. Still the work was not gone about by any means in reverent and solemn silence. If any man wishes his neighbours to speak their mind about him thoroughly and unreservedly, I should say, judging from what I heard on that occasion, Let him disappear, and be dragged for. It is not so certain he is dead, that any delicacy need be exercised in telling the severest truths about him; nor yet is there sufficient chance of his reappearance to make folks reticent through fear. Only when the drags halted a little, meeting with some hidden obstruction, all tongues were silent, and pale faces clustered about the toilers, expecting that the dreadful thing they sought was about to be brought to land.

"I thought we had him then," said one of the men, after an occasion of this sort; "but it was only a piece of stone."

"It might have been his _heart_, for all that," muttered another, cynically; and a murmur of "Ay, that's true," went round them all.

"Has anybody been about the Home Spinney this morning?" inquired I of Oliver Bradford, who had just given up his place at the ropes to a fresh man.

"No, sir, nor last night either, as it turns out. It will be bad for somebody if Sir Massingberd does return, and finds out that the watcher who ought to have been there was wiled away elsewhere by what he thought was poachers holloing to one another--some owl's cry, as I should judge. And to-day, I doubt if a creature has been near the place, for none of my men seem to fancy going there alone."

"And who _was_ the watcher there last night, Oliver?"

"Well, sir, we must not make mischief; he was a young chap new at the business, a sort of grand-nevvy of mine by the wife's side. He'll do better next time, will young Dick Westlock. He was over-eager, that's all. And when you hear a cry in these woods, unless you are thoroughly accustomed to them, it may lead you a pretty dance: it takes a practised ear to tell rightly where it comes from."

"You should know me better, Bradford," returned I, "than to suppose I would bring a lad to harm by mentioning such a matter; but I should like to ask him a question or two, if you will point him out."

"There he is then, sir," answered Oliver, pointing to a good-looking, honest lad enough, but one who perhaps would scarcely have been considered sufficiently old for so trustworthy a part as sentinel of the home preserves, had he not been grand-nephew to the head keeper.

"Why, Dick," said I, "your uncle telly me that you took an owl for a poacher last night, and followed his voice all over the Chase."

"It wasn't no owl," sir, quoth Dick, stoutly; "it were the voice of a man, whosoever it was."

"Don't thee be a fool," exclaimed his uncle, roughly. "I tell thee it was a bird, and called like this;" and the keeper gave a very excellent imitation of the cry of an owl.

This was not greatly unlike the sound which had so recently affrighted my own ears; but then owls rarely cry in the daytime.

"Dick," cried I, "never mind your uncle; listen to me. If you thought it was a human voice, what do you think it said?"

"Well, I can't rightly say as it said anything; it seemed to me to be a sort of wobbling in the throat; and I thought it might be a sound among some poaching fellars, made with a bird-call, or the like of that."

"Supposing it said any word at all, Dick, what word was it most like?"

Mr. Richard Westlock looked as nonplused and embarrassed as though I had propounded to him some extremely complicated riddle.

"Was it anything like 'Hel--p, hel--p?'" said I, imitating as well as I could those terrible tones.

"Bless my body," quoth Mr. Richard, slapping his legs with his hands, in admiration of my sagacity, "if them ain't the very words as it _did_ say!"

"What think you of that, Oliver Bradford?" inquired I, gravely.

"As the bell tinks, so the fool thinks," responded the head keeper, sententiously. "If you had asked Dick whether the word wasn't 'Jerusalem,' he would have said, 'Ay, that was the very word.'"

"Still," urged I, "since there may be something more than fancy in the thing, and the voice, if it was one, could not have come from under water, let the Park woods be thoroughly searched at once. There are men enough outside the gates to do that, without suspending the work that is going on here, and why should we lose time?"

The head keeper sulkily muttered something about not wanting a caddel of people poking their noses into every part of Fairburn Chase; then with earnest distinctness, as though the thought had only just struck him, "Besides, Mr. Meredith, let me tell you that they may get to know more than is good for them."

At these words, I cast an involuntary glance at the plantation within a few hundred feet of us, in the recesses of which dwelt Sinnamenta, Lady Heath.

"_You_ may know, sir," continued the keeper, translating my thought, "but everybody don't know, and it's much better that they shouldn't."

Certainly the objection was a grave one, and I was glad enough to perceive Mr. Long coming down from the Hall towards us, an authority by whom the question could be decided.

"You had better ask him yourself, Oliver," said I; for as my tutor had never spoken to me of the existence of the unfortunate maniac, I did not like to address him upon the subject. Bradford therefore went forward to meet him; and after they had had some talk together, Mr. Long beckoned me to him.

"I think with you, Peter," said he, "that in any case, we should lose no time in searching the Chase. If we do not discover what we seek, we can scarcely fail to find some trace of a struggle, if struggle there has been, between such a man as Sir Massingberd and whoever may have assailed him. If he has been murdered, it is, of course, just possible that the assassins threw the body into the water, although not here, since the ice would scarcely have formed over it like this; otherwise, they could not have removed it without leaving some visible trace. Do you, Bradford, and a couple of your own men, examine that plantation yonder thoroughly, so that it need not be searched again; and in the meantime I will go and fetch more help."

I have taken part in my time in many a "quest" for game, both large and little: I have sought on foot in the rook-crannies of the north for the hill-fox; I have penetrated the tangled jungles of Hindustan for tiger; I have stood alone, gun in hand, on the skirts of a tropical forest, not knowing what bird or beast the beaters within might chance at any moment to drive forth; but I have never experienced such excitement as that which I felt when, one of forty men, I walked from end to end of Fairburn Chase in search of its lost master.

In one long line, and at the distance of about twenty yards from one another, we plodded on slowly and steadily; and with eyes that left no bush unexamined. This work, which in summer would have been toil indeed, was rendered comparatively easy by the bareness of the season; the frost, too, made the swamps in the hollows safe to the tread, and the tangled underwood brittle before us. Many a sunken spot we found hidden in brake and brier, and scarcely known to the keepers themselves, such as might easily have held, and we could not but think how fitly, the Thing we feared to find, and sometimes, when one man called to his neighbours, the whole line would halt, and each could scarcely restrain himself from running in, and seeing with his own eyes what trace of the missing man it was which had provoked the exclamation. We began at the outskirts of the Park, and worked towards the Hall, so that the Home Spinney, which was the likeliest spot of all, since he had been last seen going in that direction, was reserved for the end. As the men approached it, the excitement increased; they almost ran over the large open space in which stood the Wolsey Oak, extending its gnarled and naked arms aloft, as if in horror; but when they searched the coppice itself, and found the body of Grimjaw, stiffened into stone since I last saw it, many of them were not so eager to push on. I had omitted to tell them of the wretched animal's death, and the effect of the sight upon them was really considerable.

That "the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense," is in nothing more true than in the emotion produced by the sufferings or decease of animals upon gentle folks and upon labouring persons. Greater familiarity with such spectacles, and perhaps, too, a larger experience of hardship and sorrow among his own fellow-creatures--which naturally tends to weaken his sense of pity for mere animals--prevents the peasant from being moved at all by some sights at which his superiors would be really shocked: a dead horse lying in the road is, to the stonebreaker, a dead horse, and nothing more; whereas, to him who goes by on wheels, unless he is a veterinary surgeon, the sight is positively distressing. I am sure that the spectacle of half a dozen ordinary dead dogs would not have affected Oliver Bradford, for instance, in the least, while if they had been "lurchers," and given to poaching practices, such a funereal scene would have afforded him unmixed satisfaction. But when he saw Grimjaw lying dead, and frozen, he shook his head very gravely, and bade us mark his words, "That that ere dog didn't die for nothing, but for a sign. That he would never have died, not he, if his master and constant companion had still had breath in him, and more than that, we should find, we might take his word for it, that that there body, and that of Sir Massingberd Heath, were not very far from one another."

There were murmurs of hushed and awe-struck adhesion to these remarks, but not a dissentient voice in all the company, and in a frame of mind which would now undoubtedly be called "sensational," and not in a broken line of march, as heretofore, but almost shoulder to shoulder, we entered the Home Spinney.