Not one of them spoke, but all of them, little and big, looked at him--very shyly, and yet with intense interest. He stood staring after them, and presently their tuneful young voices sounded again, filled the air with virginal music. He swung his leg over the stile, and went along the path through the trees where he had followed Norah yesterday.
He had not intended to leave the highroad, but it was as if that dead man"s girls had driven him into the wood to get away from their shyly questioning eyes. He might meet them again if he stayed out there. In here he could be alone with his thoughts.
To-day there was plenty of sunlight, and instead of turning off the path he went straight on to the main ride. This too was bright with sunshine, a splendid broad avenue that was shut close on either side by the thickly planted firs; the mossy track seeming soft as a bed, and the sky like an immensely high canopy of delicate blue gauze. A heron crossed quickly but easily, making only three flaps of its powerful wings before it disappeared; there was an unceasing hum of insects; and two wood-cutters came by and wished Dale good afternoon and touched their weather-stained hats.
"Good afternoon," he said, in a friendly tone. "A bit cooler and pleasanter to-day, isn"t it?"
"You"re right, sir. "Bout time too."
Then he walked on, alone with his thoughts again, along the wide sunlit ride toward Kibworth Rocks; and a phrase kept echoing in his ears, sounding as if he said it aloud. "It is the finger of G.o.d. It is the finger of G.o.d." He was quoting himself really, because he had once used that phrase in a pompously effective manner. Could one repeat it as effectively in regard to what happened near here yesterday? Could one dare to say that the finger of G.o.d interposed, touching his blood with ice, making his muscles relax, forcing him to loosen his hold on the delicious morsel that like a beast of prey he was about to devour and enjoy.
He walked with hunched shoulders and lowered head, but there was great resolution, even an odd sort of swaggering defiance in his gait. He stopped short, raised his head, and looked about him at a certain point of the ride. Here he was very near to the open glade where he met Norah; but he was nearer still to the strewn boulders, jagged ridges, and hollow clefts of Kibworth Rocks. If he left the ride, he would see them, brown and gray, glittering in the sunshine.
And he thought again of those fifty orphans or waifs. Why weren"t they here to bow and do honor to him who had been the friend of girls in life and who was the guardian angel of girls in death? This was the hallowed spot, the benefactor"s resting-place till devout hands raised him and priests sang over him, the rocky shrine of their patron saint.
Dale grunted, shook himself, and went off the ride in the opposite direction--to tread the moss that had been crushed by Norah"s footsteps, to push against the branches that had touched her shoulders, to see the dead flowers that had dropped from her hands. He found a shriveled sprig or two of her woodland posy, and carried them to the fallen beech tree.
She was gone now--already a long way from him--at the railway station, with ticket bought, and box labeled, waiting for the train to take her still farther from him. Only a heron could fly fast enough to get to her now before the train possessed her. And he quoted himself again, really saying the words aloud this time. "Good-by--my darling--good-by, good-by."
That was what he meant when he gave her the last kiss. He had said so.
He had called it the last kiss. But she--poor lamb--thought it was the last kiss till next time; that it was good-by for three weeks, not good-by forever. He must never see her again. There could be no two ways about _that_ decision. He mustn"t palter, or trifle, or shilly-shally about that iron certainty. But how without Heaven"s unceasing aid would he have strength to keep such a vow?
And sitting on the tree, and thinking for a little while about himself rather than about her, he endeavored to survey his situation in the logical clear-sighted way that had once been customary with him. To what a blank no-thoroughfare he had brought himself. What a d.a.m.nable mess he had made of his peaceful, happy home.
Of course he had known for a long time what was the matter with him.
His disgust with himself at the revelation of his own weakness dated from a long time ago; but the progress of his pa.s.sing from perfectly pure and normal thoughts about the girl to cravings that he struggled with as morbid impurities was so subtle that it defied a.n.a.lysis. At first when he put his hand on her head, or patted her shoulder, every thought behind the fatherly gesture was itself fatherly; and then, without anything to startle one by a recognition of change, the time had come when he felt a slight thrill in touching her, when he was always seeking occasions or excuses for doing it, when the wider the contact the more ma.s.sive was his satisfaction. Her white neck, her round fore-arms, her thin wrists, irresistibly attracted a caress. He could not keep his hands off her--and it distressed and worried him whenever he saw anybody else doing quite innocently what he did with an unavowable purpose. Perhaps this was the real cause of his dislike for the new pastor. After Mr. Furnival"s initial appearance at the chapel, they all three walked a little way together, and the good-looking young man paid Norah compliments about her singing, and held her hand and patted it. Nothing could have been more innoxious, more completely ministerial; and yet Dale had felt that he would like to take the clerical gentleman by the collar of his black coat and the seat of his gray trousers, and send him sprawling over a quick-set hedge into a ploughed field.
He knew then the nature of the poison that had crept insidiously into his blood and was beginning to spread and rage with deadly power. He fought against it bravely, he fought against it despairingly. He hoped that chance would cure him, he prayed that heaven would cleanse him.
He would not believe that his ruin was irretrievable. That would be too monstrous and absurd. Because, except for this expanding trouble, everything inside him, all the main component parts that made up the vast and still solid thinking organism which had been labeled for external observers by the name of William Dale, remained quite unchanged. His religious faith stood absolutely firm, was strengthened rather than shaken; he regarded his wife with exactly the same affection; he loved his children as much as, more than ever; only this astounding dreadful new thing was added to him: he worshiped Norah.
In his struggles to free himself from the new mental growth, he had turned to his children. Instinct seemed to say that from them and through them should come an influence sufficiently potent to resist temptation, however tremendous. He felt so proud of the boy. Billy was never afraid of him, looked at him so firmly even when threatened, holding up the pink and white face, with its soft unformed features and yet a determined set to the chin and mouth already--a real little man. Dale took his son"s hand in his, took Billy with him into the granary, the hay loft, or across the fields, cut bits of willow and showed how to make a whistle, took a hedge sparrow"s nest and blew the eggs; and the boy was proud and happy in such n.o.ble society, but he could not exorcise the evil spell for his grand companion.
Nor could Rachel give freedom. Dale embraced his daughter with the truest paternal fervor, pumping up sweet clean love from deep unsullied wells, thinking honestly and as of old so long as she stood by his side. At such moments he forced himself to imagine a man playing the fool with Rachel, and immediately there came a full normal explosion of parental rage; and he knew, without the possibility of doubt, that such a man had better never have been born than encounter Rachel"s father. But these imaginations could not help him. Thoughts about Rachel and thoughts about Norah, which once had mingled, were now like two rivers running side by side but never meeting.
Again, what had rendered the fight hopeless was his recognition of the overwhelming fact that the spell was mutual. It was not only that he wanted her, Norah wanted him. There lay the sweetly venomous throb of the poison. In her eyes he was _not_ old; his gray hair did not appall her, his rugged frame did not repel her. All night and all day, during months, yes, during years, she had told him: "You are _not_ old; you _need_ not be old; _I_ can make you young."
He thought, as he had thought again and again, of her artlessness, her ignorance, and her total absence of compunction. It seemed so wonderful. She drifted toward him as the petal of a flower comes on running water, as corn seeds blow through the air, as anything small and light obeying a natural law. She did not in the least understand social conventions. She was not troubled with one thought of right or wrong; she neither meditated nor remembered. How wonderful. The ten commandments and the catechism that she knew by heart, all the hymns she had sung and all the sermons she had heard, did not exert the faintest restraining influence. They had no real meaning for her probably, and she could not therefore bring them into relation with concrete facts. In her innocence, in her virginal simplicity, she would keep the book of life close--sealed until he opened it roughly for her at its ugliest page.
He, or somebody else!
Suddenly he threw away the faded wood-blossoms, sprang up from the tree, and paced to and fro. A wave of revolt came sweeping through and through him. Was he not making mountains out of mole-hills?
If he could trample down all this sentimental fiddle-de-dee, what was the plain English of the case so far as she was concerned? Unbidden, innumerable circ.u.mstances stored from local knowledge offered themselves as guides for argument. Take any girl of that cla.s.s--well, what are her chances? Why, you are lucky if you keep "em straight until the time comes to send "em out into domestic service; their parents scarcely expect it, barely seem to desire it. But after that time, when they get among strangers and there"s n.o.body with an eye on them, they fall as victims--if you choose to call it so--to the first marauder--to the young master, the nephew home for his Christmas holidays, or the man who comes to tune the piano. If not himself, it would be somebody else.
And he thought. "Blast it all, am I a man or a mouse? Who"s to judge me, or stan" in my way, if I do what I please? Suppose it"s found out, well, it must be smoothed over, covered up, and put behind the fireplace. I shan"t be Number One that"s bin th" same road!" and he remembered how lightly other married men, his neighbors, country farmers, or town tradesmen, amused themselves with their servants, and how their middle-aged wives just had to grin and bear it. "An" Mavis,"
he thought, "can do the same. Heavens an" earth, I"ve got an answer ready if she tries to make a fuss, or wants to take the dinner-bell and go round as public crier--an answer that ought to flatten her as if a traction engine had bin over her. "My la.s.s, who began it? Bring out your slate and put it alongside mine, an" we"ll see which looks dirtiest, all said and done."" While he was thinking in this manner, his face became very ugly, with hard deep lines in it, and about the mouth that cruel pouting expression once seen by Mavis.
He came back to the tree; and sat down, letting his hands hang loose, his head droop, and his shoulders contract. The fire had gone cold again.
Now he felt only disgust and horror. Norah"s ignorance and disregard of moral precepts, or readiness to yield to the snares of unlicensed joy, were summed up in the better and truer word innocence. The greater her weakness, the greater his wickedness. If he could not save her from others, he could save her from himself. Then if she fell, it would at least be a natural fall. It would not be a foul betrayal of youth by age; it would not be the sort of degraded crime that makes angels weep, and ordinary people change into judges and executioners.
When a man has reached a certain time of life he must not crave for forbidden delights, he must not permit himself to be eaten up with new desire, he must not risk destroying a girl"s soul for the gratification of his own body. If he does, he commits the unpardonable sin. And there is no excuse for him.
The Devil"s reasonings to which a few minutes ago he had listened greedily were specious, futile, utterly false. That sort of argument might do for other men--might do for every other man in the wide world--but it would not do for _him_, William Dale. Its acceptance would knock the very ground from under his feet.
For, if there could be any excuse, why had he killed Everard Barradine?
x.x.x
Then Dale lived again for the hundred thousandth time in the thoughts and pa.s.sions of that distant period.
The forest glade grew dim, vanished. He was lying on the gra.s.s in a London park, and Mavis" confession rang through the buzzing of his ears, through the chaos of his mind. It seemed that the whole of his small imagined world had gone to pieces, and the immensity of the real world had been left to him in exchange--crushing him with an idea of its unexplored vastness, of its many countries, its myriad races. And yet, big as it all was, it could not provide breathing s.p.a.ce for that man and himself.
Soon this became an oppressive certainty. Life under the new conditions had been rendered unendurable. And then there grew up the one solid determination, that he must stand face to face with his enemy and call him to account. It must _at last_ be man to man. He must tell the man what he thought of him, call him filthy names, strip him of every shred of dignity--and strike him. A few blows of scorn might suffice--a backhander across the snout, a few swishes with a stick, a kick behind when he turned. He was too rottenly weak a thing to fight with.
His mind refused to go further than this. However deeply and darkly it was working below the surface of consciousness, it gave him no further directions than this.
He got rid of his wife. That was the first move in the game--anyhow.
He did not want to think about her now; she would be dealt with again later on. At present he wished to concentrate all his attention on the other one.
He took a bed for himself in a humbler and cheaper house farther west, a little nearer to the house of his enemy; and almost all that day he spent in thinking how and where he should obtain the meeting he longed for. He understood at once that it would be hopeless to attempt such an interview at Grosvenor Place. In imagination he saw himself escorted by servants to that tank-like room at the back of the mansion--the room where the man had treated him as dirt, where his first instinct of distrust had been aroused, where all those photographs of girls had subtly suggested the questioning doubts that led him on to suspicion and discovery. The man would come again to this room, with his tired eyes and baggy cheeks and drooping lip; would stare contemptuously; and at the first words of abuse, he would ring a bell, call for servants, call for the police, and have the visitor ignominiously turned out. "Policeman, this ruffian has been threatening me. He is an ill-conditioned dog that I"ve been systematically kind to, and he now seems to have taken leave of his senses and accuses me of injuring him. For the sake of his wife, who is a good respectful sort of person, I do not give him in charge. But I ask you to keep an eye on him. And if he dares to return to my door, just cart him off to the police station." No, that would not do at all. He and Mr. Barradine must meet somewhere quietly and comfortably, out of reach of electric bells, butlers, and police officers.
That first night after the confession he slept sound and long. In the morning when he woke, feeling refreshed and strengthened, his determination to bring about the interview had a.s.sumed an iron firmness, as if all night it had been beaten on the anvil of his thoughts while he lay idle. But he was no nearer to devising a scheme that should give effect to the determination.
Mr. Barradine had said that he was going down to the Abbey to-morrow, or next day, Friday, at latest; and in the course of this Wednesday morning Dale decided that the interview must be delayed. It was impossible up here. It would be much easier to arrange down there. He must wait until Mr. Barradine went down to Hampshire, and go down after him. He could call at the Abbey, where the man would be more accessible than up here; and, by restraining himself, by simulating his usual manner, by lulling the man to a false security, he could lure him out of the house--get him out into the open air, away from his servants, perhaps beyond the gardens and as far off as the park copses. Then when they were alone, they two, at a distance from the possibility of interruption, Dale could drop the mask of subservience, turn upon him, and say "Now--"
No, that would not do. It was all childish. For a thousand obscure reasons it would not do at all.
Then, brooding over his wife"s confession--the things she had merely hinted at as well as the things she had explicitly stated--he remembered how in the beginning the wood near Long Ride was their meeting-place, how the man had met her there, and led her slowly beneath the trees to the cottage of the procuress. And then an inspiration came. A note to be sent in his wife"s name, as soon as Mr.
Barradine got home to the Abbey. "Meet me in the West Gate copse. I want to show my grat.i.tude"--or--"I want to thank you again"--something of that sort. "Meet me at the end of North Ride by the Heronry. I will be there if possible four o"clock to-morrow. If not there to-morrow, I will be there next day. Mavis."
He wrote such a letter, in a hand sufficiently like his wife"s. Yes, that would fetch him. The old devil would have no suspicions.
Then a cold shiver ran down his spine. It was a thought rising from the depths, warning him, terrifying him. The note would remain _afterward_. If Mr. Barradine did not destroy it--and very likely he would not do so--the note would be found afterward. But after what?
He tore up the note, tore it into tiny pieces. It seemed to him that he had escaped from a danger. His plan had been the idea of a madman.
But why? With his skin still cold and clammy, he found himself whispering words which sounded explanatory, but which did not explain: "Suppose a mistake occurred. Yes, suppose a mistake occurred." Then trying to think quietly and sensibly, instead of in this fluttered, erratic way, he forced himself to interpret the real significance of the whisper. Well, suppose he struck too hard, and too often. But again there came the blankness--an abrupt check to thought--the depths refusing to give anything more to the surface.
He decided that he would go down to Hampshire secretly, letting no one know of his movements; and, stationing himself at some likely spot near the Abbey, he would wait till chance brought them face to face.
Yes, that would do. Almost immediately he chose Hadleigh Wood as the place to hide in. Instinct seemed to have suggested the wood rather than any point nearer to the Abbey, and instinct now ordered him to go there and nowhere else. It was a likely road to so many parts; it was full of good hiding-places; and, although it was tricky, with its close thickets suddenly terminating on the edge of unexpected open s.p.a.ces, he knew it all as well as the back of his right hand. He could lie snug, or range about cautiously, seeing but unseen; and he would not have long to wait before the grand gentleman pa.s.sed by on his way to or from the Abbey park.
He had got it now. This was right; and he laid all his plans accordingly. First he p.a.w.ned his silver watch and chain, so obtaining a little money without bothering anybody. The p.a.w.nbroker"s shop was in Chapel Street, and he went on along the Edgware Road and up a narrow street in search of a shop where he could procure a suit of old clothes. Here again it was as though instinct guided him, because he had no knowledge of London and did not know where to look for a slop-shop; but he pushed on, noticing that the houses were shabby, and feeling sure that he would soon find what he wanted. And this happened. All at once he was among the second-hand clothes; every shop on both sides of the street invited him--the whole street at this sordid end of it was trying to help him. For a very few shillings he bought just the garments that he had imagined--loose and big made of drab canvas or drill, the suit of overalls that had been worn by some kind of mechanic, with two vast inside pockets to the jacket, in which the wearer had carried tools, food, and his bottle of drink. Dale also bought a common soft felt hat, a thing you could pull down over your eyes and ears, and make into any shape you pleased.