So in the bleak beginning of that cold January day this new-made man came to his journey’s end. Nightingale Roughs was as wild as its name: an unfrequented wilderness sloping down from Glatting Wood and up to the strip of level heath that skirted the northern flank of the little rural town called Glatting City. It was a region deserted and all but forgotten; primitively wild, full of rank growth; a no man’s land between Marden and Glatting that had never, within living memory, suffered taming by sickle or plough, though rumour said it had once been used as a sheepwalk. Lying a full two miles from the track between Fee and City, it now lived its secret life unmolested by man. In effect, though not geographically, it was remote from both places, and the outcast therefore chose it for his own. Here a man could hide his face and nurse his hatred and grow proud in his isolation, always provided he did not perish of cold. Harry Noke had no intention of perishing, and it was perhaps his good fortune that the business of keeping alive occupied him to the exclusion of revengeful dreams. Nature was an enemy more to be feared, and more worthy of battle, than those pesty villagers, whose malice, he knew, had varied directly with their envy of his amorous pleasures. What would they have done in my place, he grumbled to himself. But there were many more urgent questions to be answered. How to keep the cold out of his belly: that was his first concern. He had brought a store of food with him, and some horse-fodder; and he had, to begin with, a sufficient supply of firing. He contrived, as he had done before on Dyking Common, to get some sort of shack over his head before nightfall; and, weary though he was, did not neglect to set half a dozen rabbit-snares before turning in. The horse must share his house till warmer weather came; but, even so, this was the coldest and loneliest night he had ever known, and, being what he was, he could not fail to recall having heard a queer account of this desolate region: how in a past century a murder had been done here, and how at midnight a dismembered ghost came haunting the scene of its impious enlargement: a bodiless head with wide eyes and streaming hair. And another death was still all too fresh in his memory; for the ill-favoured rogue that had shot the dog Roger was but a few days in his grave. That memory, having been obscured by more recent distresses, now returned with a fresh vividness. Lying cold and wakeful in his dark cubby-hole, with the wind moaning outside and whistling in at a score of cracks, he saw again the staring face of the dead man in the grass: evil, distorted by anger, a livid-grey face with a black ball of tongue pointing out at him; and it flashed into his mind that perhaps all the evil that had befallen him since had been that dead man’s doing. His thoughts addressed themselves to this infernal avenger. You coon’t get me strung up, so this is what you done. Tain’t fair dealing, mate. Tain’t fair, tellee. You’ve no call to come worritten me. I can’t fight wi’ ghostses, can I now? Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways . . . But the magic of prayer did not avail, for he could not believe himself in favour with heaven. The evil vision stayed; the eyes stared; the tongue pointed. Go to bed, blast you, and lea’ me to mine. God rot ye and hell take ye . . . But curses were no better; and not till he remembered the dog Roger did he get relief from the vile obsession. Good Roger. At ’im, Roger. Bite the baastard, Roger. Ghost against ghost: twas a rare notion. He laughed at his own cunning. And the dead man rose from the grass and slunk away, with Roger snapping savagely at his heels.
Noke had settled himself snugly at the bottom of the valley, within sight and hearing of a stream. Hills sheltered him on three sides from the worst of the wind’s violence; and the trees and scrub immediately surrounding him afforded a nearer shelter. The whole region formed a great natural bowl, broken only on its southern sector by a wedge of open sky. But though the hurricane rushed past him high overhead, many a minor wind came moaning and swirling round the bottom of the bowl to work what havoc it could. Dank was a more dangerous foe, and the exile’s first task, after building his shanty, was to dike and drain the small terrace of land on which, following his own precedent, he had chosen to place it. February was a drear month, but the prospect of spring heartened him to endure its asperities. In the long evenings, when darkness drove him indoors, he thought often of his dog Roger. At nights the horse’s presence was something of a comfort, but the horse was not Roger. Pride forbade him to wish for a human companion. Already his hair was long and tangled, his face covered with black beard: he had forsaken mankind and was resolved to end his days in the wilderness. March came in like a lion, but his blood was still warm with anger and he went on fighting for his life. In April, despite the imminence of floods that might destroy all his work, he counted the battle won, and then a new ambition was born in him. He had kept alive, but that was not enough. He wanted to prove himself more than master. He wanted to grow rich and powerful. He had already-reclaimed and subdued an acre of this wilderness, but that was far from contenting him. With horse and wagon, and all the money he possessed, he went to Glatting City: a strange and rather sinister-looking man, and as different as can be imagined from the shy, blarneying, soft-speaking young fellow who had come to Marden Fee five years before. He asked many questions and answered none, or answered only with lies; and before nightfall he was back at his clearing, and grimly satisfied with the day’s work, for he had acquired, partly by simple theft and partly by purchase, a horse-plough, a hoe, a scythe, a bushel or two of seed potatoes, wheat and barley for sowing, and a pair of household scissors. Among these articles there was enough stolen property to hang him ten times over, five shillings being the degree in theft at which a thief’s life became forfeit to the law. But this did not dismay him: it was a small necessary risk and he took it in his stride.
It was about a week later, just as dusk was falling, that he saw, for the first time, a human creature wandering across his kingdom. His first impulse was to shoot; his second, more sober, was to hide himself. But, the figure coming nearer, he recognized it for a woman’s, and conflict began raging in his bosom. Was this his chance of vengeance? He stepped from his shelter and strode forward, empty-handed. The woman saw him, threw up her arms, and screamed. She began running, but he was with her in a moment and had seized her. She screamed again.
‘Eh, Jenny Mykelborne. What be you a-doen these parts?’ His voice was cruel.
She became limp and quiet in his arms. He released her contemptuously, and she fell to staring at him.
‘I din knaw twas you, Harry, in that great beard. You look fair wild, you do.’
He regretted the beard; for he read in her eyes that by his neglect he had made himself an ill-favoured and terrifying spectacle; and, being resolved to hate her, for her part in his downfall, he was angry to be seen at a disadvantage. ‘Nemmind beards, my pigeon. What you doen these parts? Tis late for a good girl the likes of thee to be from home, bainta?’
‘I came seeken you, Harry Noke,’ she answered. And it was true. She had run away from sound of her scolding mother and from sight of her father’s reproachfulness. Being desperate, and because no other man would look at her, she was resolved to devote herself to Noke, could she but find him. And so, when a chance rumour came——
‘Howdee knaw I were here?’ demanded Noke suspiciously.
‘Folks said.’