A LIFE FOR A LIFE
Danvers--the man who had dived from the ship and saved the child--was
the bearer of a letter of introduction to George Depew, and the next day
he presented himself with it at the farmhouse.
Susan admitted him. Neither had, of course, ever seen the other.
Danvers was a rolling stone--had been a colossal failure as a moss
gatherer in the mother country.
He was keen and intelligent, and busy with other people's affairs, but
sleepy, indolent, and lazy with his own.
Every one liked him, yet every one shook his or her head when his name
was mentioned. It was felt that he would never be a success.
At last it was determined to ship him to a country where he would have
to work, from the fact that there there would be no friends to help him.
If he wanted to eat, he must earn his food by his labor. It was felt
that it was best for Danvers--and best for the friends he had been
living on so long.
The friends felt that strongly.
The exile jumped at the idea. He had long wanted to see America.
One of his friends had done business with Depew over certain
consignments, and to Depew he wrote a letter introducing Danvers, and
asking him to do what he could for the bearer.
Others of his friends purchased for him clothing and outfit generally,
and saw him off--with their pockets lighter perhaps, but a strong
feeling of relief.
Depew welcomed Danvers heartily.
Strangers were rarely seen in Oakville. Come from the mother country, he
was doubly welcome.
Danvers felt that he had dropped on both feet.
Straightway, too, he fell in love with the farmer's daughter, and it
must be admitted that his city ways found favor in the eyes of Tessie.
The farmer promised to find him work, and meanwhile put him into the
position the supposed to be holiday making Josh had filled.
This was a thing which disturbed Susan.
Days went by and she was still without news from her husband, and here
was a stranger--she knew now that he came over in the boat she had been
on--filling the post her husband had so long occupied.
She feared, too, lest any of Josh's petty delinquencies should come to
light. She knew that his books must bristle with evidence of them.
So things went on for two or three weeks, Susan working herself up to
such a state of excitement that at times the blood rushed so to her head
that her eyes were blinded to the work she was engaged in.
The acuteness of her agony nearly drove her mad; it arose from the
silence which was imposed on her; she dared not make any inquiries.
And then one day she received such a shock that she became mad in real
earnest. For she felt convinced that her husband had been murdered, and
that Danvers was his murderer.
Did she not at that very moment hold in her hands unquestionable proof
of his guilt?
She was standing at the wash-tub when she discovered it. It had been
through her hands once before at the weekly wash.
It was simply a flannel undervest, given out with the rest of his
washing by George Danvers.
But it bore her private mark, which she had with her own fingers put on
to the vest of her missing husband weeks before. It had belonged to and
been worn by Josh Todd!
There was no real mystery about it, and if she had opened her mouth the
matter would have been made plain to Susan. But her lips were sealed to
silence.
She remained with the firm conviction that her husband was dead, and
that his murderer was sleeping beneath the same roof as herself.
She became filled with a fiendish desire for revenge. It was impossible
for her to give any information which would convince the police and
bring about the murderer's punishment, but she was none the less
convinced herself.
She could not insure his sitting in the electrocution chair, but that
was no reason why he should go unpunished.
But one desire filled her--she hankered for vengeance.
She sought for means of compassing it. She never closed her eyes at
night for thinking about it--thinking how to get level with Danvers.
She wanted a life for a life.
The solution of the mystery? Simple enough. Gerald Danvers' things had
been got together by his friends. He had only handled them in packing
his portmanteau--a portmanteau which bore his initials.
When in the stoke hole on that day of the child's rescue, he had asked
one of the sailors to get his portmanteau and handed the keys from his
wet trousers. The man had singled out in the hold a portmanteau bearing
the initials "G. D." and the key fitting it--it was the ordinary key,
one of which will fit hundreds of the cheaper kind of lock--he had taken
out an undervest and shirt.
That they were not an accurate fit in no way disturbed Danvers; he had
not bought them himself, and he imagined that his friends had jumped at
his size.
As a matter of fact, the sailor had opened one of Josh Todd's
portmanteaus, which, of course, bore the initials "G. D."
It was all capable of simple explanation, but Susan Todd was not in need
of simple explanation. She had a large sized thirst for revenge on just
then--a thirst she determined should be quenched.
The woman was mad--absolutely mad; filled with all the cunning which
madness proverbially entails.
Mere death would not satisfy her. She must make this murderer suffer.
That was why she worried.
She had opportunities for killing him fifty times in a day, for she was
strong, and bony, and powerful; and an axe or a chopper would have
bought about all she wanted.
But the act itself would give her no pleasure. Her mind was full of the
leading up to it.
She wanted the man who had killed her husband to die a slow death by
torture, and she was puzzled how to devise this.
She anticipated a pleasure from watching him counting the moments to his
death. Three parts of the pleasure of life lies in its anticipation.
Then there came to her an idea. There must surely have been a strain of
the old Indian blood in her, for it savored so of those times when the
brave was honored who invented the most devilish kind of torture.
The material for her scheme was close at hand, not a mile from the
farmhouse--an old, disused water mill.
Disused for want of motor power.
It stood on the banks of what had been a swift, flowing river, but
diversion of its course nearer its rise had turned the river into a
little stream which could be crossed in almost all parts without water
coming over shoe tops. Only in wet weather was it ever deep enough to
rise to one's knees.
When it rained above, and the waters gathered, it would come down in a
little rush.
Shortly prior to its final abandonment, a new wheel had been put to the
mill. That accounted for the wheel being its soundest part--all else was
ruin.
It had been disconnected, and the machinery of the mill removed years
ago; but still the big paddle wheel rested on its axle, and every time
it rained sufficiently to swell the stream above and make the water flow
stronger, so assuredly, the wheel would revolve--revolve till the strong
flow ceased, and the water trickled again as it was wont to do in dry
weather.
How the scheme came into Susan Todd's head it is impossible to say, but
it came--came to stop.
She would lure her husband's murderer to the old mill. She had no fear
of an inability to do that. There she would overpower him by a blow from
behind, which would stun him.
His unconscious form she would drag outside the little window, and tie
it with a clothes-line to one of the blades or paddles of the wheel.
The accomplishment of the task the muscles of her brawny arms told her
would be simple, and she gloated over the enjoyment she would experience
in coming to the mill as often as possible to talk to the gagged and
bound man.
She would discuss the weather for his benefit, and let him know whether
the glass was high or low--whether rain might be expected.
And then, when the rain came, assuredly she must be there, even if it
came in the dead of the night.
She must be there to watch the agony on the upturned face of a starving,
thirsty man, an agony bred of a knowledge of what would happen when the
water was strong enough to turn the mill wheel.
She wanted to see the mill wheel start; she had watched it before and
knew how it acted, and she knew it would act just the same with its
human burden.
The water moved it just a little at first, then further, then further,
and all the while the bound wretch would be going slowly but surely to
that pool of water through which the lower paddles of the wheel always
passed.
Half drowned in that, he would be dragged up into air again for the same
ghastly performance to commence again.
Oh! it would be beautiful--she hugged herself in the joy of the
anticipation.
And when the wheel had ceased whirling, and the waters had gone down,
what easier than to cut the bonds, and let the body drop into the pool
beneath, buried from human sight forever!
What easier!