“Some years ago,” I said. “I was in Macedonia. Up in the mountains, I
remember, there was an old churchyard, quite full of graves.” I looked
about me. “The place was not unlike this. . . . And every grave had been
opened—to release the spirits of the dead. It was a local superstition.
Now, what do you think lived _and grew fat_. . . . in that churchyard?”
There was a long silence.
At length I leaned forward.
“Snakes, Perowne, snakes. Snakes that traded on devotion . . . turned
piteous piety to their own ends . . . used women’s love for their
husbands to fill their bellies . . . battened upon the dead . . . And
you ask if I’m out for blood. What do you think?”
“Think?” said he. “Why, I think you’re very confident.”
“I confess it,” said I. “I’m a poacher to-day. But you should watch your
preserves.”
He stared at the edge of the road and into the depths beyond. Then he
tilted his chin and scanned the grandeur of Navarre—all mountains and
sudden valleys and again mountains like footstools to mountains greater
than they, so that the world seemed nothing but a black sea of breakers
foam-crested, petrified.
“You’re sore, of course,” he mused. “It’s a way relicts have. . . . But
why have you left it so long?”
“I thought she was happy,” I said. “It never occurred to me that the man
was born who could treat such a lady ill. But it seems you struck her,
Perowne.”
He cried out at that, but the blood was in my head and I shouted him
down.
“More,” I raved, “more. You jeered at her grief . . . . . . mocked at
her misery . . . twisted those delicate arms . . . cursed her for
weeping because it spoiled your sleep . . . bullied my dying girl . . .
My God! My God!” I bowed my head and covered my eyes with my hands.
“Don’t think she told me,” I muttered. “She never gave you away.
But——”
As I lifted my head, the spare wheel caught me full in the face.
I went down like a log, with the wheel on the top of me. I never
remember feeling so shaken up. I wasn’t exactly unconscious but things
were distorted—unreal.
I saw Perowne seize a kit-bag and drop it into the ditch. I saw him slip
into the car and I heard her start. I saw her begin to move . . . lurch
. . . pitch to and fro. I saw the pitches grow longer—more pronounced.
I began to get quite interested, wondering at every failure whether
he’ld get her out at the next attempt. All the time his engine kept
storming like an angry fiend. . . .
Suddenly my brain cleared, and I realized that he was like to be gone
and leave me sitting in the road with a wheel in my lap.
I heaved the wheel off my legs and leapt for the luggage-grid, as the
car shot back. Its off hind wheel went over the spare with a couple of
jerks that nearly threw me off. Then he clapped her into first, bumped
over the spare wheel again and flung up the pass all out. . . .
Perhaps for the very first time in all his life Perowne had lost his
nerve. I thought he had, and the moment I saw him I knew. And the
knowledge did me more good than the wind in my face. The man was not
sitting: he was crouched—with his shoulders up to his ears. His one
idea was to get away from that spot. The silence, perhaps. . . .
He never saw me climb up over the hood or settle myself on the seat
behind his back. But I did. As a matter of fact, I sat there a minute or
two—to get my breath and recover—before I put him wise.
Strangely enough, my touch seemed to bring his confidence back.
He gave one whoop. . . . Then he threw back his head and laughed up into
my eyes.
“You do work hard,” he said. “I thought you were done.”
The road was falling now for a long half-mile.