I
I was sitting over my fire in my hut in Penanga Creek, Wyoming, when
the idea came to me--weakly, dreamily, at first, but later on strongly
and vividly, that I must go home. It was, as I confusedly made it,
seven years since I left Europe. I felt the thing that had driven me
forth less keenly, and I realized that in seven years things must have
quieted down a bit. Sally, too, being of a cheerful, easy-going make,
would have forgotten what had happened on that one night, since in the
nature of the case there could have been no discovery, no scandal.
No one could have known anything about it, no one had witnessed her
act except Roger, my dog, who now lay so quietly, numb with advancing
age, between my feet in front of the fire. Roger had been only a year
old on that short summer night, a clumsy, flopping puppy that followed
me unsteadily, swaggering from side to side, down the garden path of
the old haunted manor house where Sally James lived. It was flagged
with broad white stones, and the gate of it opened straight on to the
road that led to Durham, to Darlington, and to the other ends of the
earth, where I am now.
I ran away, like a coward, and yet not a coward, for I loved Sally
James and I knew too much. I turned at the gate, and I gazed back at
the windows of the house with their close-drawn blinds. I thought they
looked like eyelids let down over anxious dreams. I saw the one window
in the oldest part of the house where Sally, half dressed, was peeping
through the blind, annoyed, yet uncomplaining at my departure. She
knew men; she thought I was just going to put my head under the pump,
and freshen my aching brain and my eyes that had looked on so much
since they closed in sleep the night before. Then after a walk over
the common, with my dog at my heels, I should return to her, stay with
her through the long years to come, and profit by her crime. She had
rid me of a nuisance. She did not realize--how could she, being hard
Sally James?--that I could not bear the thought of seeing her face
again. She was so careless of other people’s feelings that she knew
less of what I felt than the silly young dog who slunk at my heels--or
the pert robin that perched on the cheek of the gate-post. The robin,
with its head on one side, seemed to stare at me and leer horribly as
I closed the gate behind me, and went out into the world for ever. I
never meant to see Sally again, I never meant to write or receive a
letter; I never meant to look at a newspaper again; I never meant to
know if she were tried for murder or not. I only knew that I did not
mean to chance having to bear evidence against her.
There was very little likelihood of that. Mrs. James, the bouncing,
jolly widow and my secret love, had saved money left her by her late
husband and had managed to buy the freehold of Dewlap Hall, an old
manor house that had seen better days. It had been one of the homes of
the Conyers family, but it was now little more than a forlorn,
dejected farmhouse, standing alone in a couple of acres about three
miles out of Durham. It looked even a better place than it was. Once
you were inside you saw that its ruin was only a question of time. It
was slowly crumbling, festering, powdering away. Half the rooms were
unsafe, the walls of the others were shored up, partitioned off,
reduced to a fourth of their original size. One floor was taken bodily
away--I have been told, to lay the ghost. The sharp, jagged rafters
sagged downwards from the sides. The floor of this room was cobbled,
it had lancet windows: people said it was the old chapel. Sally used
the place as a wash-house; it opened out of her kitchen, which was the
old and only hall of the first house. That, Mr. Wilson the vicar had
told us, was built in the time of Edward II. Of course the house was
haunted. A grey lady. Sally’s bedroom, above, must have been taken off
the whole top of the hall, the floor was very bad, and though
originally it must have been a handsome-sized, airy and pleasant room
in spite of its low ceiling, the late owner had mistrusted the eastern
portion of it so much that he had walled it off with boards and some
concrete, calmly reducing the best bedroom to a cell about ten feet
square.
It was big enough for two people, for Sally and me, drunk with love. I
believe Sally and I would have made love if we had been fastened in a
barrel studded with nails, and rolled down to the sea. But not room
enough for three.
On that night, Sally and I, absorbed in each other, had not heard the
heavy drunkard’s footfall of my wife on the creaking steps of the
staircase that led up from the house place below, and the sound of the
door of the room where we were, being slowly pushed open. The heavy
bolt that should by rights have gone across it, was lying on the
wicker chair by the bed. Sally, in her wild confidence in the
impossibility of molestation in this lonely part of the country, had
omitted to run it into the thole holes on either side of the lintels,
as usual. When you did that you made the chamber into a real castle of
strength, but she had forgotten all but me.
And poor mad Mary, my wife, stood like the ghost of Dewlap Hall, and
watched us. Sally, half dazed, may have thought that she _was_ the
ghost.…
Anyway, she struck out with the heavy iron bar that lay ready to her
hand. She was strong. Hardly another woman could have wielded it. My
dog Roger looked up from where he slept, crouched on my coat at the
foot of the bed on Sally’s packing-box.…
The iron bar was immensely weighty, my poor old wife fell like a log.
Roger turned up his eyes.… I said, “Down, Roger!” and Roger lay down.
Though a mere puppy, he was well trained.
Sally dropped the bar, with a loud clang on the floor. There was
nobody below to hear it. It lay there, till seeing my eyes fixed on
it, she picked it up easily and replaced it on the chair without even
looking at it. But there was no blood or even hairs on it, I could
have told her, for I had got hold of Mary by that time, and felt her,
and I was perfectly sure that she had been stunned--killed outright.
So far as I could see, the skin was not even broken. Her clumsy straw
hat was of course smashed, battered in, and her very thick black hair
lay like a mat over the crown of her head.
Sally asked me if she were dead, and I answered, yes, stone dead.
Sally shrugged her shoulders, as who should say, It’s fate. Then
without blinking, she put a petticoat on over her nightgown, and drew
the strings of it tightly round her waist till I should have thought
they would have cut her, but I expect she didn’t feel much at that
particular moment. At least, I didn’t. I kept my eyes on her all the
time; I thought it might prevent me from going mad. And Sally was sure
to know what to do. It was her murder.…
It was a very warm night, and getting on for two o’clock, I should
have thought, but no light pierced through the pieces of red gingham
that Sally had hung up and gathered into a curtain for the window.
I watched Sally. She came up to me and took hold of Mary’s feet, and
then dropped them again after I had taken the corpse by the shoulders.
She stood a moment, a bit mazed, then she thought of the bar and went
to it where it lay on the chair by the bedside. She lifted it, and
examined its iron surface.…
“Give it to me,” I said. I stupidly thought of burning it.
“Nonsense!” Sally said, quite sharply, wiping it on her nightgown and
replacing it on the chair. “Let it stay there where it always lies.
Old Betty is used to the sight of it.”
She was wise. She returned to me and my burden. She took hold of
Mary’s feet again, and didn’t drop them this time, but tied a towel
round her ankles, thus binding them firmly together. Then, both of us
breathing heavily, we got the body down the stairs. I went first. I
could not see Mary’s face, but I saw Sally’s, and her lips were red,
and tightly primmed. Roger, clumsily trying to pass us and our burden
on the narrow flight of steps, got under our feet and nearly threw us
down, and she unclosed her lips to swear at him. If she had not
spoken, I believe I should have dropped.
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.