"Moreover the altar that was at Beth-el, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove."Jobson nodded."It'll need dinnymite.But I've plenty of yon down at the workshops.I'll be off to collect the lads."Before nine the men had assembled at Jobson's house.They were a hardy lot of young farmers from home, who took their instructions docilely from the masterful factor.On my orders they had brought their shotguns.We armed them with spades and woodmen's axes, and one man wheeled some coils of rope in a handcart.
In the clear, windless air of morning the Grove, set amid its lawns, looked too innocent and exquisite for ill.I had a pang of regret that a thing so fair should suffer; nay, if I had come alone, I think I might have repented.But the men were there, and the grim-faced Jobson was waiting for orders.Iplaced the guns, and sent beaters to the far side.I told them that every dove must be shot.
It was only a small flock, and we killed fifteen at the first drive.The poor birds flew over the glen to another spinney, but we brought them back over the guns and seven fell.Four more were got in the trees, and the last I killed myself with a long shot.In half an hour there was a pile of little green bodies on the sward.
Then we went to work to cut down the trees.The slim stems were an easy task to a good woodman, and one after another they toppled to the ground.And meantime, as I watched, I became conscious of a strange emotion.
It was as if someone were pleading with me.A gentle voice, not threatening, but pleading--something too fine for the sensual ear, but touching inner chords of the spirit.So tenuous it was and distant that I could think of no personality behind it.
Rather it was the viewless, bodiless grace of this delectable vale, some old exquisite divinity of the groves.There was the heart of all sorrow in it, and the soul of all loveliness.It seemed a woman's voice, some lost lady who had brought nothing but goodness unrepaid to the world.And what the voice told me was that I was destroying her last shelter.
That was the pathos of it--the voice was homeless.As the axes flashed in the sunlight and the wood grew thin, that gentle spirit was pleading with me for mercy and a brief respite.It seemed to be telling of a world for centuries grown coarse and pitiless, of long sad wanderings, of hardly-won shelter, and a peace which was the little all she sought from men.There was nothing terrible in it.No thought of wrong-doing.The spell, which to Semitic blood held the mystery of evil, was to me, of the Northern race, only delicate and rare and beautiful.Jobson and the rest did not feel it, I with my finer senses caught nothing but the hopeless sadness of it.That which had stirred the passion in Lawson was only wringing my heart.It was almost too pitiful to bear.As the trees crashed down and the men wiped the sweat from their brows, I seemed to myself like the murderer of fair women and innocent children.I remember that the tears were running over my cheeks.More than once I opened my mouth to countermand the work, but the face of Jobson, that grim Tishbite, held me back.
I knew now what gave the Prophets of the Lord their mastery, and I knew also why the people sometimes stoned them.
The last tree fell, and the little tower stood like a ravished shrine, stripped of all defence against the world.I heard Jobson's voice speaking."We'd better blast that stane thing now.We'll trench on four sides and lay the dinnymite.Ye're no' looking weel, sir.!Ye'd better go and sit down on the braeface."I went up the hillside and lay down.Below me, in the waste of shorn trunks, men were running about, and I saw the mining begin.
It all seemed like an aimless dream in which I had no part.The voice of that homeless goddess was still pleading.It was the innocence of it that tortured me Even so must a merciful Inquisitor have suffered from the plea of some fair girl with the aureole of death on her hair.I knew I was killing rare and unrecoverable beauty.As I sat dazed and heartsick, the whole loveliness of Nature seemed to plead for its divinity.The sun in the heavens, the mellow lines of upland, the blue mystery of the far plains, were all part of that soft voice.I felt bitter scorn for myself.I was guilty of blood; nay, I was guilty of the sin against light which knows no forgiveness.I was murdering innocent gentleness--and there would be no peace on earth for me.Yet I sat helpless.The power of a sterner will constrained me.And all the while the voice was growing fainter and dying away into unutterable sorrow.
Suddenly a great flame sprang to heaven, and a pall of smoke.Iheard men crying out, and fragments of stone fell around the ruins of the grove.When the air cleared, the little tower had gone out of sight.
