The Devil's Garden Part 12

"I only meant I've been so anxious."

"Yes, but yer bin anxious best part o' four weeks. What was the mighty difference in yesterday or day before?"

"I didn't mean any difference. I scarce knew what I was saying--or what I'm saying now."

"Oh! Just a remark let fall without a sc.r.a.p o' sense in it!"

Staring up at him, it was as if she saw the face of a stranger. His eyes were half closed and glittering fiercely; his lips protruded as if grotesquely pouting to express scorn, and on each side of the distended nostrils a deep vertical wrinkle showed like the blackened gash of a knife wound.

"Will, dear, I meant nothing at all."

"You're lying."

Abruptly he took his hands from her shoulders, got off the bed, and went to the chest of drawers. Her handbag was on the drawers; and when she saw him pick it up she sprang after him, clutching at his hands and imploring.

"You'll find nothing there. Nothing that I can't explain;" and she made a desperate gurgling laugh. "Why, Will, old man, it is you that's drunk, yourself, after chaffing me? No, you shan't. No, Will, you shan't."

He gave her a back-hander that sent her reeling. It was the first time he had struck her, and he delivered the blow quite automatically, the thought that she was preventing him from opening the bag and the action that got rid of her interference being all one process. His hand had remained open, but he swung it with unhesitating force; and now, as he plunged it into the bag, he saw that there was blood on it.

Before he had extracted all the contents of the bag she was back again, once more clinging, clutching, and impeding. He did not strike her again--merely shook her off so violently that she fell to the floor, where she lay for a moment.

In the inner pockets of the bag there were three five-pound notes, together with a tooth-brush and several small articles wrapped up in paper. These he laid on one side, while he carefully examined all the odds and ends that had been packed loose in the bag. Three or four pocket-handkerchiefs, a new piece of scented soap, a pair of nail-scissors--as he looked at each innocent article, he gave a snort.

She had come back, but she had not risen from the ground; while he slowly pursued his investigations she kept quite still, crouching close to his legs, silently waiting.

She could not see what he was doing, but presently she knew that he had begun to unfold the paper from the things she had hidden in the pocket.

"Ah," and he snorted. One of the bits of paper held hairpins; another a side-comb; and another, a bit of trebly folded paper, proved to be an envelope--the envelope of one of the letters that he had sent to her at North Ride Cottage. He looked at the postmark. The postmark told him that the envelope belonged to a letter he had written four days ago.

Then he found what she had put in the envelope before she folded it.

It was the return half of a railway ticket, from London to Rodchurch Road--he turned it in his fingers and examined the date on the back of it.

"Last Friday, my lady. Not to-day by any means--and not Manninglea Cross. Issued at Rodchurch Road o' Friday last--the day you come up to London."

"Yes, Will, I won't pretend any more."

She had put her arms round his legs and lifted herself to a kneeling position. "I _did_ come Friday. But don't be angry with me. Don't fly out at me, and I--I'll explain everything."

"May I make so bold 's t'a' ask _why_ you come, without my permission begged for nor given?"

His voice was terrible to hear, so deep and yet so harsh, and vibrating with such implacable wrath.

"Will, I did it for your sake. I thought if I asked permission, you'd say no. So I dared to do it myself--feeling certain as life that you were done for if no help came--and I thought it was my duty to bring you the help if I could."

"Go on. I'm listening, an' I'm thinking all the time."

"I thought--Auntie thought so too--she advised it--that Mr. Barradine knowing me so long, ever since I was a girl, if I went direct to him--"

"Ah!" And he made a loud guttural noise, as if on the point of choking. "Ah--so's I supposed. Then I got a bull's-eye with my first thought to-night. So you went to him. Where?"

"At his house."

"Yes, right into his house. By yourself?"

"Yes."

"You didn't think to bring your aunt with you. Two was to be comp'ny at Mr. Barradine's. So in you go--alone--without my leave--behind my back."

"Will--remember yourself, my dear one. You won't blame, you can't blame me. But for him, you were done for. All could see it, except you. I asked for his help, and I got it."

"But your next move! We're talking about Friday, aren't we? Well, after you'd bin to Mr. Barradine, what next?"

"Then I hoped he'd help us."

"Yes, but Friday, Sat.u.r.day, Sunday? Had yer forgotten my address--or didn' 'aarpen to remember that _I_ was in London, too?"

"I was afraid of your being angry. I thought I'd better wait."

"_Where_?"

She looked up at him, but did not answer.

"You've played me false. You've sold yourself to that fornicating old devil. You--"

And with a roar he burst into imprecations, blasphemies and obscenities. It was the string of foul words that, under a sufficient impetus, infallibly comes rolling from the peasant's tongue--an explosion as natural as when a thunderbolt scatters a muck-heap at the roadside.

Then, snarling and growling like an animal, he stooped and cuffed her.

"Will!" "Will!" She repeated his name between the blows. She did not utter a word of complaint, or make an effort to escape. Brave and unflinching, though almost stunned, she raised her white blood-stained face for him to strike again each time that he buffed it from him.

"Will!" "Will!"

But her courage and submissiveness were driving him mad, had changed suspicion to certainty. Only guilt could make her take her punishment this way. Nevertheless she must confess the guilt herself. Even in his fury, he remembered to hold his hand open and not clench it--like a cruelly strong animal, tormenting its prey before killing, careful to keep it alive.

"Answer me. Go on with your tale."

"Then stop beating me, and I'll tell you."

He stayed his hand, poised it, and she seized it and clung to it.

"Will--as G.o.d sees me--I did it for your sake--only to help you. I couldn't get the help unless I sacrificed myself to save you."

Wrenching his hand away he knocked her to the ground, and she lay face downward. But this blow was nothing, purely automatic, like his first blow, not bringing with it that faint sense of something refres.h.i.+ng, the momentary appeas.e.m.e.nt of his agony. For in truth the torture that he himself suffered was almost unendurable. Yet up to now his pain, though so tremendous, was unlocalized; it came from a fusion of all his thoughts, and perhaps each separate thought, when it became clear, would bring more pain than all the thoughts together.

The world had tumbled about his ears; his glorious life had shriveled to nothing; his pride was gone, his love was gone, his trust in man and his belief in man's creator; and for a few moments one thought grew a little clearer than the rest. The end of all this must be death--nothing less. He was really dead already, and he would not pretend to go on living. He would finish her, and then finish himself.

Turning his head, he looked at the window; and the open s.p.a.ce out there seemed to whisper to him, to beg to him, and to command him.

Yes, that way would be as good as another--strangle her, pitch her out, and jump out after her.