Part 13

We laid Mary on the stone-flagged kitchen floor, while Sally fumbled with the latch of the wash-house. There was a door out of that into the back yard, and thence into a little orchard, and out of that into the wood which stretched away towards Finchale Priory at the back of the house to the north. It was conveniently full of old abandoned pit shafts. I knew that well enough. But it was not until we gained the door of the wash-house that it occurred to me what Sally meant to do, and had meant to do from the moment we first lifted Mary to bring her downstairs.

There was a little more light now, but still it was not light enough to see, and I hoped it would not be until we got into the shelter of the woods. Sally held the feet, as before. She swung a lantern by a string from her teeth, she had refused to let me carry it. Sally had not much faith in me at the best of times, and now when so much depended on it, I could see that she meant to see to everything herself. Roger followed us; he was very humble and submissive since Sally had spoken to him so roughly.

She swore again, but not at him, for he kept out of her way. It was when the long brambles caught the hem of her nightgown that hung below the petticoat. Her eyes flashed a little now and then in the light of the swinging lantern.…

“I can hardly walk, I’ve got the bloody hem of my shift so wet,” she said, roughly.

“Can you manage?” I asked, speaking very faint. She had said “bloody”!

“Yes. Good thing it’s dew, not blood, after all!” she reassured me. “Don’t talk. I’ve no breath for talking. My word! I sweat, and no mistake!”

I didn’t want to talk. I was thinking of Mary, slung between us, dead as dead. And the last time I saw her she was dead drunk in the streets of Cardiff, reeling about, carrying on her trade. There was no need, that was the shame and disgrace. I was earning good wages at Neath as a colliery man, and gave her her fair share. But she had always taken too much and never been respectable, not even when I married her. They say those two things go together, and luckily there were no children. As soon as I found out what she was up to, I left her, deserted her, people would say, and drifted to Durham. That was full two years ago.

How did she find out that I had come to Durham, and was working at the Elvet pit? I never wrote to her once. How did she know I was living with Sally James in her house three miles out of Durham? How had she tracked me? I could not tell, then, and I don’t know now!

I was wondering, wondering, and the undergrowth grew thick and the nut boughs lashed my cheek in the dark. I stumbled a little as we got along with _that_ between us, and I forgot to keep step with Sally, and she swore at me for an awkward fool that was giving her, a weak woman, all the work to do.

We came at last to the old pit shaft Sally and I knew of, for it had been one of our trysting places in her husband’s lifetime. Most of these disused shafts are walled round with brick, but this one wasn’t, for some reason or other. It was carelessly staked round with wattle, waiting to be done properly, I suppose. A drunken man could easily fall in and no one be any the wiser. For a pit shaft is so deep that you can see the stars in the daylight.

Mary must have walked all the way from Cardiff. It was the first time I felt sorry for her. I had been till then so angry with her for coming ferreting and spying, that if you had asked me, I should have said I was glad she had got her deserts. But I could not help seeing the worn soles of her shoes as we heaved her over the edge of the hole, and they were fairly walked through. I felt sorry for her then.

* * * * * * *

Mary was gone, without sticking or any awkwardness, and Sally breathed hard. She put out her hand and fondled Roger.

“Good dog!” she said. “He never barked. He won’t tell tales of us, will he, pet?”

Roger licked her hand, as an answer to her question. He was even at that age a wonderfully bright, intelligent dog.

Then Sally stooped, and tried to pick the long bramble trail out of the hem of her nightgown. It resisted--it was hopelessly entangled.

“Stand on it,” she said, “while I walk on a bit. One can always get rid of followers that way.”

She alluded to the old superstition that a girl who attracts the wild wood tendrils will always have plenty of sweethearts. Her white feet were quite bare.… I never knew a hardier woman than Sally. She looked down into the shaft once, though of course there was nothing to see, it was too dark and deep down; then she turned round sharp and decided.…

“We had best get back to bed now,” she said cheerfully. “There’s a good piece of night left, and I’m sure we both need a rest.”

I caught her up in my arms, and carried her home, it was only a little bit of a way, no distance at all, though coming out it had seemed so terribly long. She liked being carried. Once she put up her mouth and kissed me.

I took her in and set her down in the middle of the house place. She tottered a little, like a china ornament when you have been shifting it. She turned to go upstairs again. I could not manage it.

“Sally,” I said, “I think I’ll go and get a wash.”

“Do,” she said, “and you can draw yourself some cider. There’s plenty in the barrel in the corner there.”

I watched her ascend the stairs, rather heavily. Then I whistled my dog. The door of the house stood open, the dawn was just breaking. I latched it carefully behind me, and went away down the garden path. I looked back once--only once. Then I took my resolve definitely. I have never seen her since.

* * * * * * *

I secured a passage out West, and we sailed, my poor dog and I, the very next day. And in my panic I have never looked at a paper from that day to this. I don’t know whether there was an inquiry or not, or whether any suspicion fell on Sally; I should say not, she is too clever. Of one thing I am quite sure; the body was never found. They never are when they are lost like that. I have an idea too that my wife Mary was never even missed in Cardiff--who cares when prostitutes die or disappear? If, as was probable, no one had chanced to see her approach Dewlap Hall in the early hours of the morning, then there was absolutely no witness of Sally’s crime except myself and my dog Roger.

Yet, the thought that plagued me all through that night passes through my mind, and worries me still. I had deserted Mary--I had not seen nor communicated with her or any of my old friends in and near Cardiff--I am a Welshman--for three years!

So how did she know where to find me? Did she settle to visit all the great mining centres in turn? And did she draw Durham early in the game, and when she got to Durham, how did she get wind of my living at Dewlap with Sally James?

My thoughts, for the last seven years, have not been pleasant, but they are all the company I have had. I have worked hard here, I have even had a bit of luck and been able to lay by a little, but I have hardly spoken to a single soul. The last man who spent a night in my cabin was a taciturn Japanese who had less conversation than even Roger.

It is killing me. That is why two nights ago I took up my pen and wrote to Sally. _Mrs. James, Dewlap Hall, near Durham, England._ I must see her again. And to-day I have managed somehow or other to mail the letter. Now I wait.

* * * * * * *

I waited a good month. Then there came an answer, an answer I had ridden in for to Blizzardville every other day all through the time, speaking to no one except the clerk at the window of the post office--an uncommon dull and slow dog he was.

She wrote--

“You wretch! What a surprise to hear from you! Have you returned to your senses? I congratulate you. Your letter seems to mean that you have, and I don’t mind saying how glad I am! Oh! George, how could you walk off like that, and I lying there expecting you to come back after you had had a wash and a drink to buck you up. Men always feel these things so much more than women, at the time. As for me, you’d be surprised to hear it, but sometimes at nights I feel as much remorse as you would have me. Only then when the good daylight comes in at the pane I feel so different, one would not believe it was the same woman. Morning thoughts always are more cheerful. You see, I can’t forgive her for coming to dig me and you out in our happiness. She had nothing more to do with you. She drank, she sold herself, she got what she deserved, even if it was _me_ that gave it to her. I saw it all as I lifted that great bar. She came meddling, and like all meddlesome fools, she got what for. If you had considered it yourself for one moment you never would have left me like that. But now you have thought it over, and you’ve thought better of it, and you are coming back to me! Come, only come! All is serene, as I daresay you know. Nobody bothered. William Dysart fooled about me a little when you left the field free, but I treated him with a high hand and I am shot of him except for a lowering look he gives me over the top of his pew, in Church on Sunday. They say he is my enemy, but even he can’t see to the bottom of a pit shaft, and there’s no evidence. I am respected in the place, and I can marry any one I please, and when I please. Shan’t it be you, George? Aren’t you and I bound by the memory of that night and what I did to get you? Come. Your own wicked, level-headed Sally.

“P.S.--I suppose the dog Roger, who was a puppy then, has died a natural death? Poor old dear! I was jealous of that dog, I always felt you liked him nearly as well as you liked me. Peace be to his bones.”

Roger looked up at me, as I looked down his way when I came to that last piece all about him. I believe I read it aloud softly. I am in the habit of talking to Roger. He knows perfectly well what one says to him. I stroked him. “Dead? Not a bit of it, old dog!” I said. “We are all alive and kicking, aren’t we? Very well preserved, eyes a little bleary perhaps, not many teeth in our head, but those sound, and that’s half the battle.”

Roger fawned on me. He is a quiet, taciturn creature, like his master, and I verily believe the sound of his own voice has got to scare him almost as much as mine does me.

“You’ll come to England with me, old dog, won’t you? You and me’ll never be parted; she must take us both for better or worse, eh?”

Roger’s tail wagged. He said nothing, but of course he understood.

I could not have left him, even if I had wanted to, to die alone in a strange country. Besides, he knows all about me. He saw it all. I can still see him looking pensively down into the pit shaft, after.… He is my only confidant, for of course I never let on to any one, I could never risk giving Sally away. But a dog! Yes, I am glad he knows.

I could not get ready to leave for about a week, and before I started I got another letter from Sally. It must have been written not much more than a day after the first letter, and there seemed no particular reason why she should ever have written it. It was rather incoherent. The thought of our meeting again must have troubled her, must have a little turned her head. She mixed up all sorts of things in her letter, and mentioned Roger again three or four times, in connection with William Dysart, who she seems to fancy has got his knife into her. A despised lover, but still---- I began to fear that the sight of my dog would distress her, remind her of that awful night, when suddenly and without thought or premeditation she up and did a sin for me!

What was I to do? It was but woman’s nonsense at the best, and I could not leave my faithful beast to pine and starve because of a woman’s whim! I consoled myself with the reflection that a hard, sensible woman such as Sally had proved herself to be, would not allow any mere fancy to affect her for long. She would force herself to get over it, and ignore it as she had the other. I settled it the way I wanted to and took Roger with me.

I made one tiresome discovery on the way home. I was pretty deaf, and could hear very ill unless the speaker addressed himself especially to me, and general conversation not at all. This saddened me. Even a slight deafness makes a man such a nuisance, and I thought it might put Sally off, or even set her wilful mightiness against me. Sally was never very patient at the best of times. You see I thought of everything in relation to her. Her crime, and her heartlessness and want of feeling with regard to it, seemed not to affect my appreciation of her in any way. Indeed, I admired her devil-may-carishness because it was on the whole the most decent way for her to behave. I should have hated her to whine and snivel.…

* * * * * * *

I walked out from Durham one fine Sunday morning in May, Roger trotting at my heels. I had asked no questions about Sally and her circumstances. I knew from her letter that she was well, and moreover I experienced some difficulty in framing questions, or indeed in getting into conversation at all. I do not believe I spoke more than two consecutive sentences all the way back, and those I mumbled in my beard, for all the world as if I were tongue-tied. No one bothered about me, I expect I was singularly unattractive, and for the most part I was left severely alone. I had lost all convivial habits, I did not care to see or hear anything. I never looked at a paper, my one idea was to see Sally again.

Roger was not so unsociable. Indeed, my trouble with him was that he was the reverse. He seemed to be continually getting into conversations, and eventually into fights, with other dogs. One dog, a sandy, weedy terrier, lame of one leg, that we met as soon as we got out at Durham station, he seemed, after having fought handsomely with, to take a great fancy to, and the wretched lame cur chose to follow us all the way out to Dewlap Hall. It was disturbing, and I should have preferred to have kept my faithful dog entirely to myself at a moment like this. I was going to meet the woman I loved again after all these years. And only Roger knew what had been.

It was Sunday morning, and I heard bells ringing at the different churches all the way out. Sally was standing in the clear morning light, at the low door of her house close to the monthly rose-bush which stood as high as she did. There was but one rose on it. She wore a pink cotton dress. She had grown a little stouter. She held her hand straight across her forehead, against the sun which came into her eyes, and made her frown--or was it the sight of me? For indeed, her black eyebrows were cruelly drawn down as Roger and I and Roger’s friend came up the flagged path. But all she said was, as she took her hand away from her face and laid it in mine--

“Come in.”

She pulled me inside, and shut the door in Roger’s face. He set up a whine.

“Poor Roger!” I said in spite of myself, and my wish not to annoy her. “Don’t you remember him?”

“Yes, but why did you bring the wretched creature here? I thought he was dead. I understood you to say so.…”

She stood there, quaking, quivering with anger. I had never seen Sally so unmanned.…

“Never mind the dog, Sally,--kiss me.”

She kissed me, then she said thoughtfully--

“Perhaps, on the whole I had better have him in?”

She opened the door, and drove away the stranger dog. Roger she seized, hauling him in by the collar. She then carefully bolted the door with one hand, sticking to Roger with the other.

“Have you got a chain?”

“What for, Sally?”

“To chain him up. I can’t have him loose. He’s been talking to that mongrel of Dysart’s--I know the malicious beast--and when dogs get talking together--now----”

“Talking! My dear Sally!”

“Oh, you know what I mean. It was William Dysart who directed Mary here that night, or rather morning. He’s longing to get his knife into me--or you.”

“But was there an inquiry? I didn’t read any of the papers, I was so afraid of what I might see there… you understand?”

She looked at me narrowly. Then she tossed her head.

“Silly fellow, there was nothing to make you uneasy. There was not a word of gossip. No one knew. There was one woman less on the streets of Cardiff, that’s all.”

“But you said William Dysart directed her here?”

“Yes, that came out, in a roundabout way, but he didn’t know who she was, or that she didn’t just come here and go straight back again where she came from. If only you had taken my hint?”

“What hint?”

“About Roger.”

“You do puzzle me, Sally.… You only said you supposed he was dead. Well, he isn’t, that’s all, and mighty glad I am of it. And he isn’t used to being tied up, and I’m not going to put upon the old dog now.”

“I can’t help it. He doesn’t go free in my house! We must talk it over. Meantime.…”

She left me abruptly--Sally never dawdled, not even over a murder. Trailing Roger helplessly by the collar, she went into the wash-house next door. I followed her grumbling a little, but still quite her humble slave. She made his collar more secure and then tied him to the copper. Then she reached up to a high shelf, and gave him a handsome plateful of bones and a pat on the head that had more of monition than of kindness in it. Roger looked up at me. He seemed to understand the situation better than I did. “Keep in with her, don’t irritate her!” he seemed to say. He shivered and seemed cold.

“Tell him to be a good dog and behave himself,” she said to me, “and he shall be loosed to-morrow, if I can feel quite sure of him.… Things are changed a bit, George, since you were here, and it is easy to see you have not kept pace with them. We must brush you up, and bring you up to date.…”

She was very nervous. I followed her out of the wash-house, closing the door behind me, as she bade me, over her shoulder. In the living-room, she turned and faced me.

She was a very beautiful woman, was Sally James. Her white teeth showed keen, as her short upper lip was drawn up from them. It made her look fine, but a bit cruel. She was not a very big woman, but stately, majestic even, at times, though she was only a farmer’s widow and daughter. Just now, as she stood there, her arms at her sides, her broad breast, covered with pink print, was like a queen’s. She was holding herself in readiness for my first embrace, and I longed for it too, and yet--I distrusted her.… She was without principle, a figure of shifting sand. She would always do exactly as she liked, and at the moment when she liked.… And she hated my dog.

I invented excuses for her.…

“It is all association,” I thought, as I hung back. “She is not so heartless as she seems. The dog was in the room when it happened, and by the shaft when we heaved Her over. He reminds her.… She has some feeling.…”

My distrust turned all at once to tenderness, and I sat down on the settle and took her in my arms. She was very soft and yielding, and she sat meekly on my knee and kissed me passionately again and again. Then I kissed her back just the same. The tall clock ticked as it did on The Night… only louder.…

There did not seem to be a soul about. I asked Sally if she had no servant to help her.

“I’ve a woman--old Betty--do you remember her?--comes to help me all the week through, but she stays away on Sundays. The farm hands sleep nearly a quarter of a mile away. You’ll stop to-night, George?”

I said I would. In my heart I wondered if her room was still the same, and if I could stand it!

* * * * * * *

II

A movement in the room awoke me. I opened my eyes slowly, and in the grey light I put out my hand and missed Sally. She had left my side.

I put some clothes on and went down the little steep single stairs, lit only by one dirty, cobwebby window. The scanty twilight, for that was all it was as yet, slid in and on to the white lintels, cracked and seamed with age--I never liked the dawn, when people die. The moon was paling quietly in the sky. The morning star still lingered there. At the corner where the stairs turned sharply, I looked down at my feet and remembered the job we had to get Mary past it! Drops of sweat broke out on my forehead just as they had done then. That and the dawn! I was very nervous. It was nearly the same as that other night.

Sally was not in the house place. I stood--turning on my heels--and wondered where she was. I made no doubt that she was walking in her sleep--that seeing me had brought back all the sensations of that dreadful night, and that she was repeating them. Perhaps she had remembered the light on the lintel, the turn of the stair too?… What I feared was that she had gone wandering along the same dreary path through the wood, as far as the shaft. And then, when she got there, suppose her remorse was too much for her and she were mad enough to throw herself over!… Such things have happened--I had seen _The Bells_ and _Macbeth_. Sally was rather like Lady Macbeth, and Lady Macbeth, strong-minded as she was, rued her deed, and walked in her sleep, and rubbed her hands. Sally had no blood to think about--only dew on the hem of her nightgown that time.… You couldn’t tell blood from dew at night.…

I heard a click--something like the sound made by one earthenware pan rubbing against another, in the wash-house.… I had maligned Sally in my thoughts. She had merely gone downstairs to feed Roger! The last remark she had made on going to bed was that he looked weakly, and on his last legs, and should by rights be put away before he suffered pain. Dogs die so hard, she had said. I opened the door that led into the old stone-paved chapel Sally used as a wash-house, and stood the beer-casks in.

Sally, in her plain nightgown, was standing there barefoot on the cobbled stones. She looked a bit cranky. Her black hair hung partly down her back, and in elf locks, that were curls overnight, in her eyes. She had a great quantity of hair, and out of vanity she never took it all down when she went to bed, but half arranged it with pins and coloured ribbons. Her arm was raised to a high shelf whence she had taken Roger’s provender earlier in the day. The movement made the fronts of her nightgown gape, and show her breast.

She started when I came in, and dropped her arm guiltily.

“Go away, go away!” she screamed, and put her hand behind her back. “Go away, and let me finish the job!”

“What job, in Heaven’s name,” I cried, “at this hour of night? We saw to the dog--no need to feed him again!”

“Feed him, you idiot!… Poison him, more likely--anything to get him out of the way!”

I went up to her and laid my hand on her arm.

“I do believe the sight of Roger, who saw you murder Mary, has put you clean out of your wits, Sally, my dear.”

“And what about you and your wits, bringing the beast here----!”

She rushed at poor Roger, who squatted at the extreme length of his cord, staring at her calmly, boldly, as if inviting her to stick him with the knife she brandished. He was never like any other dog. He did not plunge or bark. I saved him, I took the knife out of her hand, and flung it into a meal-tub close by.

“Fool, fool!” she yelled, but I put my hand over her mouth, and forced her back on the tub, so that she sat on the knife. I was so sure she was going mad that it made me calm and strong, and I tried to soothe her and speak gently to her, as one does to an invalid.

“What do you want to kill my poor old dog for, Sally?”

“I must. I must. He’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous without a sound tooth in his head?”

“He has a tongue in his head----”

She looked at me narrowly, dragging down the outside corners of her eyelids like a bulldog. Then she pulled the fronts of her nightdress to, and tried to speak reasonably. She succeeded more or less, but it was a great effort to her.

“Don’t you know what has happened here while you have been away sulking at the other end of the world?”