The Devil's Garden Part 51

And then there had happened something that was like the knocking down of a house of cards, the blowing out of a paper lantern, or the obliteration of a picture scratched on sand when the inrushing tide sweeps over it.

His soul turned sick at the thought that G.o.d had not accepted, but rejected him. G.o.d refused his offer of humble homage, had seen the latent wickedness in him, had kept him alive until he also could see and loathe himself for what he really was--a wretch who in wishes and cravings, if not in accomplished facts, was as vile as the man he had slain.

x.x.xII

Dale's meditations had carried him backward and forward through the past years, and left him against the blank wall of the present.

He was sitting on the fallen beech tree in the woodland glade. The sun had set, and the night promised to be darker than recent nights; when he looked at the grand gold watch given to him by his admirers, he could only just see its hands. Nearly nine o'clock. He had been here a long while. It was hours and hours since Norah went away. He sighed wearily, got up, and walked back to his empty home.

Quite empty--that was the impression it made upon his mind both to-night and all next day. He looked at it in the bright morning sunshine, across the meadows, while the scythes laid down the first long swathes of fragrant gra.s.s, and it seemed merely the sh.e.l.l of a house. He looked at it in the midday glare, as he came up the field to his dinner, and it seemed cold and black and cheerless. He looked at it in the softer, kinder light of late afternoon, and it seemed to him tragically sad--a monument of woe rather than a house, a fantastic tomb built in the shape of a house in order to symbolize the homely joy that had perished on this spot.

Yet smoke was rising from its chimneys, sound issuing from its windows. All day long it had been full of active cheerful life. It and the fields were happy in the animating harvest toil. Men with harvesters' hats, women with sunbonnets, cracked their rustic jokes, laughed, and sang at their labor; Mavis cooked food, filled the big white bobs with beer, sent out bannocks and tin bottles of tea; Dale's children had rakes and played at hay-making. Only the master, the husband, the father, was unhappy.

No one knew it, of course. To other people he appeared to be just the same as usual, naturally preoccupied with thoughts about the weather as one always is at gra.s.s-cutting time, giving his orders firmly, and seeing that they were obeyed promptly, smiling and nodding when you showed yourself handy, frowning and looking rather black if you did anything "okkard or f.e.c.kless." Who could have guessed, as he looked at his watch and then at the sky, that he was thinking: "It wants five minutes of noon, and she is prob'ly out on what they term an esplanade. There is a nice breeze down there, comin' to her over the waater, blowin' her hair a bit loose, flappin' her skirts, sendin' out her neck ribbon like a little flag behind her. It's all jolly, wi' the mil'tary band, an' the smell o' the waves, an' crowds an' crowds o'

people--an' she won't have occasion to think o' me. P'raps they've bid her wear her best--the white frock Mavis gave her, with the stockings to match, and the new buckle-shoes--and likely young lads'll eye her all over as they pa.s.s. Yes, she's seeing now the young uns--the mates for her age--the proper article to make a photograph of a suitable pair; and she'll soon stop thinking anything about me, if she hasn't done it a'ready."

He was in his office still thinking of her, after the busy day, when the postman brought the last delivery of letters.

"Good evening, sir. Only three to-night."

"Thank you. Good night, George," and Dale had a friendly smile for this old acquaintance.

Postman George was growing fat and heavy, betraying signs of age. He had been a sprightly telegraph boy when Dale was postmaster of Rodchurch.

"Good night, sir. Fine weather for the hay."

"Yes, capital."

When the postman had gone Dale stood trembling. One of the letters was from her. He felt unnerved by the mere sight of her handwriting on the envelope--the hand that was so like his own, the hand that she had taught herself by laborious study and imitation of his official copper-plate; and he thought, "If I was wise I shouldn't open it. If I was strong enough, I should just burn it, without reading. For, whatever's inside, it's going to make me one bit more desp'rate than I am now."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up his hat, went out of the house, and walked along the road holding her letter pressed tight against his heart. There was a gentle air that floated pleasantly over the fields, and in spite of all the heavy rain that had fallen such a little while ago, the white dust rose in high clouds when a motor-car came whizzing by. After the car two timber wagons crept slowly, and then there were children trailing a broken perambulator; but directly the road became vacant again, he leaned against a gate and opened the envelope. He had felt that he must be quite alone when he read what she said to him, and had intended to go farther, but he could not wait any more.

"Sir, I beg to say"--That was how he had taught her to begin all letters: she knew no other mode of address. "I beg to say this is a very large place and you can see the sea from the bedrooms."

He read on; and his pleasure was so exquisite and his pain so laceratingly sharp that the sky and the acids swam round and round.

... "There's nice girls here, one or two. Nellie Evans do all she can to make me not so miserable She has a sweetheart at Rodchurch. They all have their boys if you believe their talk.

"And all the marks at the end are the sweet kisses I give my boy. For you are my boy now--my own secret one, and I am your loving girl

"Norah."

She was thinking only of him; she wanted no one younger and handsomer; in her eyes and thoughts he was not old: he was her boy. Those words had a terrible effect upon him. They entered his blood as if they had been an injection of some sweetly narcotic drug; thy lanced deep into his bowels as if they had been a surgeon's knife; they made him like a half-anesthetized patient who at the same time dreams of paradise and feels that he is bleeding to death.

"You are my boy ... and I am your loving girl."

He moved from the gate, hurried along the dusty road, and entered Hadleigh Wood at the first footpath. As he got over the stile he was saying to himself, "This letter finishes me. I can't go on with it after this. I'm done for."

Then, as he walked in the cool silence beneath the dark firs, he held her letter to his lips--kissed the inked crosses that she had set as marks to represent her kisses--counted and kissed them and counted them until his hot tears blinded him.

She wanted him; she longed for him; he was her boy.

He could get to her to-night. She was only twenty or twenty-two miles away, as the crow flies--say half an hour's journey if one had the wings of a heron. He could rush home, jump into his gig, and send the horse at a gallop; he could get there by road or rail, somehow; he could telegraph, telling her not to go to bed, telling her to go to the station and wait for him there.

Then he would walk with her in the moonlight by the sea, on the wet sand, close to the breaking waves. When they came back to the Inst.i.tution no light would be showing from any of the windows, and she might say, "I'm shut out. When they come down to let me in, won't they make a fuss?" But he would say, "You are not going in there again."

"What," she would say, "are you taking me back to Vine-Pits after only two days? Don't you think Mrs. Dale will be angry?"

Then he would say, "I'm not taking you back. I'm going to take you half across the world with me. I've tried hard, Norah, but I can't do without you. I own up, I'm beat, I take the consequences. I'm not good, I'm bad. I've done wicked things, and now I'm ripe for the crowning wickedness. I'm going to break my wife's heart, dishonor my children's name, and take you down to h.e.l.l with me."

Or if he could not say and do all that, he might at least do this. He could pick her up in his arms and wade out to sea with her; he could whisper and kiss and wade until the ribbed sand went from under his feet; and then he would swim, go on whispering, kissing, and swimming until his strength failed him--yes, he could drown himself and her, so that they died locked fast in each other's arms, taking in death the embraces that had been denied them in life.

He was crying now as a child cries, abandoning himself to his tears, not troubling to wipe them away, temporarily overcome by self-pity.

But soon he shook off this particular form of weakness, and thought, "What nonsense comes into a man's head, when he's once off his right balance--such wild nonsense, such mad nonsense. Drown _her_, poor innocent. Make her pay _my_ bill. Think of it even--when I'd swim the Atlantic to save her life, if it was in danger."

And then the thought that had been the impetus or origin of these fantastic imaginations presented itself again, and more strongly than before. He said to himself, "This letter is my death-warrant. I can't go on. It is my death-warrant."

He had made straight for the main ride, and he walked straight along it in the direction of Kibworth Rocks. As he drew toward them it was as if the spirit of the dead man called him, seeming to say: "Come and keep me company. Our old quarrel is over. You and I understand each other _now_. We are two of a kind, just as like as two hogs from one litter--you the sanctimonious psalm-singer and I the conscienceless profligate--we are brothers at last in our beastliness."

Dale walked with his hands clasped behind his back, thoughtfully looking at the trees, and trying to suppress his wild imaginations.

But he could not suppress them. The dead man seemed to say, "Don't be a humbug, don't pretend. You know we are alike. Why, when you looked in the gla.s.s the other day, you _saw_ the resemblance. You saw my puffy eye-orbits and my pendulous lip in your own face."

Dale shrugged his shoulders, held his head high, and grunted fiercely.

But when he was abreast of the rocks, this imagined voice seemed to speak to him again.

"You and I have drawn so near together that there's only one difference now--that you are alive and I am dead. But even that difference will be gone soon."

And Dale, walking on rather slower than before, made an odd gesture of his left hand, a wave of hand and arm together, as of a dignified well-to-do citizen waving off some impudent mendicant: seeming to say, "Be d.a.m.ned to you. Just you lie quiet where I put you, and don't worry. I decline to have anything to do with you, or to allow the slightest communication between us. I simply don't recognize you--nor will I ever admit again that I see the faintest resemblance. If I wished, I could explain why. Only I shan't condescend to do so--certainly not to _you_."

Out of the big ride he went into one of the narrower cuts, and followed it until he came to the woodside boundary of the Barradine Orphanage. This was where Mavis had stood looking at it years ago, when the building was in course of construction. The wooden fence that she had thought so stiff and ugly then was all weak and old, green and moss-covered, completely broken down in many places. Inside, the privet hedge had grown broad and thick; and this barrier, although any one could easily thrust himself through it, was evidently considered sufficient, since no trouble had been taken to repair the outer fence. Indeed, what protective barriers could be needed for such an enclosure? It contained no money or other kind of treasure; and who, however base, would attack or in any way threaten a lot of children?

Dale looked at the top of the belfry tower and the roof of the central block, and thought of it as a temple of youth, a sacred place dedicated to the worship of tender and innocent life. He moved through the trees and found a point where, on higher ground, he could look across into the garden and see a part of the terrace and verandas.

None of the girls was visible. They had been gathered into those hospitable walls for the night.

Presently he thought he heard them singing. Yes, that was an evening hymn. The girls were thanking G.o.d for the long daylight of a summer's day, before they lay down to rest, to sleep, to forget they were alive till G.o.d's sun rose again.

And Dale began once more to think of G.o.d. To-night he would not fly from the sound of the girls' voices. All that reluctance and distaste was over and done with; it belonged to the time when he was still struggling against the inevitable drift of his inclinations. Now he had pa.s.sed to a state of mind that nothing external could really affect.

"The finger of G.o.d"--Yes, those were unforgivable words. He stretched himself at full length upon the ground, leaned his head on his elbow, and lay musing.

He taxed his imagination in order to give himself a concept of what such a tremendous figure of speech should in truth convey. One said finger, of course, because one wished to imply that no effort was used, scarcely any of the divine force drawn upon--just as one says of a man, he did so-and-so with a turn of the wrist, that is, quite easily, without putting his back into it. Yes, he thought, that's about right. Then to make up something for an instance, just to spread the idea as big as it ought properly to be, one might say that once upon a time G.o.d gave our sun and all the other suns the slightest push with His finger, _and they haven't done moving yet_.

And it seemed to him that, look where one pleased, one could see the real work of the finger of G.o.d. It had been giving him, William Dale, faint imperceptible pushes for fifteen years, and see now at the end where it had pushed him. First it had pushed him upward, higher and higher, to a position of conspicuous pride, to the topmost summit of a fair mountain, where he could look round and say, "I have all that I pined for. This is the world's castle, and I am the king of the castle." Then it had begun to push him down the other side of this mountain, the dark side, the side that was always in shadow, downward and still downward to the miasmic unhealthy plain where all was rankness, downward to the level of corruption and death. Yes, it had brought him, the bold, proud law-maker, down and down till he stood no higher than the victim of his law.

He remembered the common phrase--so often employed by himself--comparing mice with men. Am I a man or a mouse? And it seemed that no cat had ever played with a mouse as the Infinite Ruling Power of the universe had been playing with the man William Dale. He had been allowed to break loose, to frisk and jump, to fancy he was free to run right round the earth if he wished to do so; and all the while he had truly been a prisoner, the helpless prey of his captor, held close to the place of ultimate doom.