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!”