“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.”