The Devil's Garden by W. B. Maxwell

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Nor could Rachel give freedom. Dale embraced his daughter with the
truest paternal fervor, pumping up sweet clean love from deep
unsullied wells, thinking honestly and as of old so long as she stood
by his side. At such moments he forced himself to imagine a man
playing the fool with Rachel, and immediately there came a full normal
explosion of parental rage; and he knew, without the possibility of
doubt, that such a man had better never have been born than encounter
Rachel's father. But these imaginations could not help him. Thoughts
about Rachel and thoughts about Norah, which once had mingled, were
now like two rivers running side by side but never meeting.

Again, what had rendered the fight hopeless was his recognition of the
overwhelming fact that the spell was mutual. It was not only that he
wanted her, Norah wanted him. There lay the sweetly venomous throb of
the poison. In her eyes he was _not_ old; his gray hair did not appall
her, his rugged frame did not repel her. All night and all day,
during months, yes, during years, she had told him: "You are _not_
old; you _need_ not be old; _I_ can make you young."

He thought, as he had thought again and again, of her artlessness, her
ignorance, and her total absence of compunction. It seemed so
wonderful. She drifted toward him as the petal of a flower comes on
running water, as corn seeds blow through the air, as anything small
and light obeying a natural law. She did not in the least understand
social conventions. She was not troubled with one thought of right or
wrong; she neither meditated nor remembered. How wonderful. The ten
commandments and the catechism that she knew by heart, all the hymns
she had sung and all the sermons she had heard, did not exert the
faintest restraining influence. They had no real meaning for her
probably, and she could not therefore bring them into relation with
concrete facts. In her innocence, in her virginal simplicity, she
would keep the book of life close--sealed until he opened it roughly
for her at its ugliest page.

He, or somebody else!

Suddenly he threw away the faded wood-blossoms, sprang up from the
tree, and paced to and fro. A wave of revolt came sweeping through and
through him. Was he not making mountains out of mole-hills?

If he could trample down all this sentimental fiddle-de-dee, what was
the plain English of the case so far as she was concerned? Unbidden,
innumerable circumstances stored from local knowledge offered
themselves as guides for argument. Take any girl of that class--well,
what are her chances? Why, you are lucky if you keep 'em straight
until the time comes to send 'em out into domestic service; their
parents scarcely expect it, barely seem to desire it. But after that
time, when they get among strangers and there's nobody with an eye on
them, they fall as victims--if you choose to call it so--to the first
marauder--to the young master, the nephew home for his Christmas
holidays, or the man who comes to tune the piano. If not himself, it
would be somebody else.

And he thought. "Blast it all, am I a man or a mouse? Who's to judge
me, or stan' in my way, if I do what I please? Suppose it's found out,
well, it must be smoothed over, covered up, and put behind the
fireplace. I shan't be Number One that's bin th' same road!" and he
remembered how lightly other married men, his neighbors, country
farmers, or town tradesmen, amused themselves with their servants, and
how their middle-aged wives just had to grin and bear it. "An' Mavis,"
he thought, "can do the same. Heavens an' earth, I've got an answer
ready if she tries to make a fuss, or wants to take the dinner-bell
and go round as public crier--an answer that ought to flatten her as
if a traction engine had bin over her. 'My lass, who began it? Bring
out your slate and put it alongside mine, an' we'll see which looks
dirtiest, all said and done.'" While he was thinking in this manner,
his face became very ugly, with hard deep lines in it, and about the
mouth that cruel pouting expression once seen by Mavis.

He came back to the tree; and sat down, letting his hands hang loose,
his head droop, and his shoulders contract. The fire had gone cold
again.

Now he felt only disgust and horror. Norah's ignorance and disregard
of moral precepts, or readiness to yield to the snares of unlicensed
joy, were summed up in the better and truer word innocence. The
greater her weakness, the greater his wickedness. If he could not save
her from others, he could save her from himself. Then if she fell, it
would at least be a natural fall. It would not be a foul betrayal of
youth by age; it would not be the sort of degraded crime that makes
angels weep, and ordinary people change into judges and executioners.

When a man has reached a certain time of life he must not crave for
forbidden delights, he must not permit himself to be eaten up with new
desire, he must not risk destroying a girl's soul for the
gratification of his own body. If he does, he commits the unpardonable
sin. And there is no excuse for him.

The Devil's reasonings to which a few minutes ago he had listened
greedily were specious, futile, utterly false. That sort of argument
might do for other men--might do for every other man in the wide
world--but it would not do for _him_, William Dale. Its acceptance
would knock the very ground from under his feet.

For, if there could be any excuse, why had he killed Everard
Barradine?

XXX

Then Dale lived again for the hundred thousandth time in the thoughts
and passions of that distant period.

The forest glade grew dim, vanished. He was lying on the grass in a
London park, and Mavis' confession rang through the buzzing of his
ears, through the chaos of his mind. It seemed that the whole of his
small imagined world had gone to pieces, and the immensity of the real
world had been left to him in exchange--crushing him with an idea of
its unexplored vastness, of its many countries, its myriad races. And
yet, big as it all was, it could not provide breathing space for that
man and himself.

Soon this became an oppressive certainty. Life under the new
conditions had been rendered unendurable. And then there grew up the
one solid determination, that he must stand face to face with his
enemy and call him to account. It must _at last_ be man to man. He
must tell the man what he thought of him, call him filthy names, strip
him of every shred of dignity--and strike him. A few blows of scorn
might suffice--a backhander across the snout, a few swishes with a
stick, a kick behind when he turned. He was too rottenly weak a thing
to fight with.

His mind refused to go further than this. However deeply and darkly it
was working below the surface of consciousness, it gave him no
further directions than this.

He got rid of his wife. That was the first move in the game--anyhow.
He did not want to think about her now; she would be dealt with again
later on. At present he wished to concentrate all his attention on the
other one.

He took a bed for himself in a humbler and cheaper house farther west,
a little nearer to the house of his enemy; and almost all that day he
spent in thinking how and where he should obtain the meeting he longed
for. He understood at once that it would be hopeless to attempt such
an interview at Grosvenor Place. In imagination he saw himself
escorted by servants to that tank-like room at the back of the
mansion--the room where the man had treated him as dirt, where his
first instinct of distrust had been aroused, where all those
photographs of girls had subtly suggested the questioning doubts that
led him on to suspicion and discovery. The man would come again to
this room, with his tired eyes and baggy cheeks and drooping lip;
would stare contemptuously; and at the first words of abuse, he would
ring a bell, call for servants, call for the police, and have the
visitor ignominiously turned out. "Policeman, this ruffian has been
threatening me. He is an ill-conditioned dog that I've been
systematically kind to, and he now seems to have taken leave of his
senses and accuses me of injuring him. For the sake of his wife, who
is a good respectful sort of person, I do not give him in charge. But
I ask you to keep an eye on him. And if he dares to return to my door,
just cart him off to the police station." No, that would not do at
all. He and Mr. Barradine must meet somewhere quietly and
comfortably, out of reach of electric bells, butlers, and police
officers.

That first night after the confession he slept sound and long. In the
morning when he woke, feeling refreshed and strengthened, his
determination to bring about the interview had assumed an iron
firmness, as if all night it had been beaten on the anvil of his
thoughts while he lay idle. But he was no nearer to devising a scheme
that should give effect to the determination.

Mr. Barradine had said that he was going down to the Abbey to-morrow,
or next day, Friday, at latest; and in the course of this Wednesday
morning Dale decided that the interview must be delayed. It was
impossible up here. It would be much easier to arrange down there. He
must wait until Mr. Barradine went down to Hampshire, and go down
after him. He could call at the Abbey, where the man would be more
accessible than up here; and, by restraining himself, by simulating
his usual manner, by lulling the man to a false security, he could
lure him out of the house--get him out into the open air, away from
his servants, perhaps beyond the gardens and as far off as the park
copses. Then when they were alone, they two, at a distance from the
possibility of interruption, Dale could drop the mask of subservience,
turn upon him, and say "Now--"

No, that would not do. It was all childish. For a thousand obscure
reasons it would not do at all.

Then, brooding over his wife's confession--the things she had merely
hinted at as well as the things she had explicitly stated--he
remembered how in the beginning the wood near Long Ride was their
meeting-place, how the man had met her there, and led her slowly
beneath the trees to the cottage of the procuress. And then an
inspiration came. A note to be sent in his wife's name, as soon as Mr.
Barradine got home to the Abbey. "Meet me in the West Gate copse. I
want to show my gratitude"--or--"I want to thank you again"--something
of that sort. "Meet me at the end of North Ride by the Heronry. I will
be there if possible four o'clock to-morrow. If not there to-morrow, I
will be there next day. Mavis."

He wrote such a letter, in a hand sufficiently like his wife's. Yes,
that would fetch him. The old devil would have no suspicions.

Then a cold shiver ran down his spine. It was a thought rising from
the depths, warning him, terrifying him. The note would remain
_afterward_. If Mr. Barradine did not destroy it--and very likely he
would not do so--the note would be found afterward. But after what?

He tore up the note, tore it into tiny pieces. It seemed to him that
he had escaped from a danger. His plan had been the idea of a madman.
But why? With his skin still cold and clammy, he found himself
whispering words which sounded explanatory, but which did not explain:
"Suppose a mistake occurred. Yes, suppose a mistake occurred." Then
trying to think quietly and sensibly, instead of in this fluttered,
erratic way, he forced himself to interpret the real significance of
the whisper. Well, suppose he struck too hard, and too often. But
again there came the blankness--an abrupt check to thought--the depths
refusing to give anything more to the surface.

He decided that he would go down to Hampshire secretly, letting no
one know of his movements; and, stationing himself at some likely spot
near the Abbey, he would wait till chance brought them face to face.
Yes, that would do. Almost immediately he chose Hadleigh Wood as the
place to hide in. Instinct seemed to have suggested the wood rather
than any point nearer to the Abbey, and instinct now ordered him to go
there and nowhere else. It was a likely road to so many parts; it was
full of good hiding-places; and, although it was tricky, with its
close thickets suddenly terminating on the edge of unexpected open
spaces, he knew it all as well as the back of his right hand. He could
lie snug, or range about cautiously, seeing but unseen; and he would
not have long to wait before the grand gentleman passed by on his way
to or from the Abbey park.

He had got it now. This was right; and he laid all his plans
accordingly. First he pawned his silver watch and chain, so obtaining
a little money without bothering anybody. The pawnbroker's shop was in
Chapel Street, and he went on along the Edgware Road and up a narrow
street in search of a shop where he could procure a suit of old
clothes. Here again it was as though instinct guided him, because he
had no knowledge of London and did not know where to look for a
slop-shop; but he pushed on, noticing that the houses were shabby, and
feeling sure that he would soon find what he wanted. And this
happened. All at once he was among the second-hand clothes; every shop
on both sides of the street invited him--the whole street at this
sordid end of it was trying to help him. For a very few shillings he
bought just the garments that he had imagined--loose and big made of
drab canvas or drill, the suit of overalls that had been worn by some
kind of mechanic, with two vast inside pockets to the jacket, in which
the wearer had carried tools, food, and his bottle of drink. Dale also
bought a common soft felt hat, a thing you could pull down over your
eyes and ears, and make into any shape you pleased.

When he put on the suit and the hat in his bedroom, he felt satisfied
with their appearance. He said to himself, "After I have slept out a
night, and got plenty of earth stains and muck on this greasy old
canvas, I shall look just a tramp wandered from the highroad, and no
one will recognize me if they do chance to see me--that is, unless I
take my hat off. And I don't do _that_, until I take it off for the
purpose of being recognized by _him_."

He locked the suit of overalls and the slouch hat safely in his bag.
But next day he brought out the hat, and wore it while making a very
careful tour of inspection in the neighborhood of the Grosvenor Place
mansion. Approaching it from the western side he spied out the lie of
the land, found a mews that had an entrance in the side street, and
judged that this mews contained Mr. Barradine's horses and carriages.
This proved to be true. Sauntering up and down, and lurking at corners
on the side street, Dale waited and watched. Always seeming to be
strolling away from the house, but glancing back over his shoulder now
and then, he saw Mr. Barradine's brougham come out of the mews and
stand at Mr. Barradine's door. No luggage was brought down the steps:
Mr. Barradine was merely starting for a drive about town. Dale came in
the evening and observed the house as he strolled along the main
thoroughfare of Grosvenor Place. There were lights in several rooms,
and the window of the porch showed that the hail was lighted up. Mr.
Barradine had said that he hoped to be able to get home to-day, but
evidently his journey had been postponed until to-morrow. He had said
he would go on Friday at the latest.

He did not, however, go on Friday. Dale kept the house under
observation off and on all day, and again in the evening. Mr.
Barradine went out driving twice; but the carriage brought him back
each time. How many more postponements? Would he go to-morrow? Yes, he
would go to-morrow; but this involved more delay. It would be useless
to follow him to-morrow, because he would never pass through the wood
on Sunday. No, he would spend Sunday inside his park-rails, going to
the Abbey church, walking about the garden, looking at the stables and
the dairy. Moreover, Sunday would be the one dangerous day in the
woods--nobody at work, everybody free to wander; young men with their
sweethearts coming off the rides for privacy; cottagers with squoils
hunting the squirrels all through church time perhaps. Dale ground his
teeth, shook his fist at the lighted windows, and thought. "If he does
not go to-morrow--I can't wait. My self-control will be exhausted, and
I shall certainly do something fullish."

But Mr. Barradine went home that Saturday. Between ten and eleven in
the morning the brougham stood at the door, a four-wheeled cab was
fetched and loaded with luggage, and the two vehicles drove off round
the corner southward on their way to Waterloo. And Dale felt his
spirits lightening and a fierce gaiety filling his breast. The time
of inaction was nearly over; this hateful sitting down under one's
wrongs would not last long now; soon he would be doing something. He
took quite a pleasant walk through Chelsea, and over the river to
Lambeth, where, after a snack of lunch, he read the newspapers in a
Public Library. The Library was a quiet, convenient resort; and
yesterday he had written a letter there, to Mr. Ridgett at Rodchurch
Post Office--not because he really had anything to communicate, but
because it seemed necessary, or at least wise, to send off a letter
from London.

He enjoyed a good night's rest, and lay in bed till late on Sunday
afternoon. He intended to travel by the mail train--the train that
left Waterloo at ten-fifteen, and went through the night dropping
post-bags all the way down the line; and it was extremely improbable
that he would meet any Rodchurch friends in this train, but he
understood that the dangerous part of his proceedings would begin when
he got to Waterloo, and he was a little worried, even muddled, as to
how and where to change his clothes--or rather to put on that canvas
suit over his ordinary clothes. If he made the change here, and any
one saw him going out, it might seem a bit odd.

But then his confusion of ideas passed off, and all became clear. He
must change at the last possible moment, of course; and he thought,
"Why am I so muddled about such simple things? I must pull myself
together. Of course I don't mind being seen in London; it is down
there that I don't wish to be seen. Anybody is welcome to see me till
I'm started, an' perhaps the more people that see me the better."

He therefore shaved, and dressed neatly and carefully; packed his
valise with the bowler hat in it, turned up the brim of the common
slouch hat and wore it jauntily. The overalls were rolled in an
unobtrusive brown-paper parcel to be carried under the arm; and,
having paid for his bedroom, he went out at about eight o'clock,
walking boldly through the streets--just as Mr. Dale of Rodchurch,
dressed in blue serge and not in his best black coat--Mr. Dale dressed
for the holidays, with a rakish go-as-you-please soft hat instead of
the ceremonious hard-brimmed bowler, and not too proud to carry his
bag and parcel for himself.

All straightforward now. It would be still Mr. Dale at Waterloo,
depositing the bag at the cloak-room, buying a ticket, and getting
into the train with his brown-paper parcel. Only Mr. Dale would get
lost on the journey, and a queer shabby customer would emerge at the
other end.

But he allowed himself to modify the plan slightly. It was necessary
that he should have a good meal and also procure food to take with
him, and for these purposes he went to an eating-house in the York
Road. This turned out to be just the place he required--a room with
tables where diners could sit as long as they chose, a counter spread
out with edibles to be absorbed standing, and the company consisting
of cabmen from the station ranks, some railway porters, and a few
humble travelers.

He ordered a large beef-steak; and he ate like a boa-constrictor,
thinking the while: "This ought to stick to my ribs. I can't put away
too much now, because it may come to short commons if the luck's
against me." Then after the meal there came a temptation to hurry up
his program, and get through some of the little difficulties at once.
He observed his surroundings. The place was fuller now than when he
came in; the atmosphere was thick with tobacco smoke and the steam of
hot food; the kitchen was at its busiest; and at the counter the
stupid-looking girl in charge was handing over refreshments so fast
that it seemed as if soon there would be none left.

He paid a waitress for his supper, and then went into the dark little
lavatory behind the room and put on his canvas suit. Coming out into
the room again, he intended to say something about having slipped on
his overalls for a night job; but nothing of the kind was necessary.
Nobody cared, nobody noticed. His difficulty was to make the counter
girl attend to him at all. He spoke to her bruskly at last; and then
she sold him slices of cold meat, cheese, biscuits, a lot of chocolate
and some nuts, with which he filled those two inner pockets of his
jacket. They had become his larders now.

There were not more than a dozen passengers in the whole train, and no
one on the platform at Waterloo took the faintest notice of him.

No one noticed him three hours later when he left the train at a
station short of Manninglea Cross; and soon he was far from other men,
striking across the dark country, with the stars high over his head,
and his native air blowing into his lungs. He came down over the heath
on the Abbey side of the Cross Roads, and reached Hadleigh Wood just
before dawn.

He felt at home now, alone with the wild animals, on ground that he
had learned the tricks of when he was like a wild animal himself. He
knew his wood as well as any of them. He could make lairs beneath the
hollies, glide imperceptibly among the trees, crawl on his belly from
tussock to tussock, and startle the very foxes by creeping quite close
before they smelled peril. So he hid and glided as the sun climbed the
sky, and then waited and watched when the sun was high, now here, now
there, but always very near the open rides along which people would be
passing. And that day many passed, but not the man he wanted.

He was three days and nights in the wood; and on the morning of the
fourth day somebody saw him.

He had moved stealthily to the stream to drink, and while creeping
back on hands and knees among some holly bushes by a glade, he paused
suddenly. Out there on the grass, so small that she had not shown
above the lowest bushes, there was a little girl--a child of about
five, in a tattered pinafore, picking daisies and making a daisy
chain. Breathless and with a beating heart, he watched her, and he
dared not move forward into the sunlight or backward into the shade.
She had not seen him yet. She was playing with the chain of flowers--a
small wood goblin sprung out of nowhere, a little black-haired devil
fired up from hell through the solid earth and out into this empty
glade to squat there right in his track. Then she stood upon her feet,
and admired the length of the chain as she held it dangling.

Then she dropped the chain, gave a little cry like the note of a
frightened bird, and scampered away--never looking back.

Never looking back. But she had seen him. He tried to hope that she
had not seen him.

He was hungry now. His provisions were exhausted; he had eaten nothing
since last night, and he felt excited and fretful. He said to
himself: "If to-day my enemy is not delivered into my hands, I must go
out into the open and seek him at all risks, at all costs." It was a
dominant idea now. Nothing else mattered.

But that day the man came. When the day was almost over, when the
whole wood was fading to the neutral tints of dusk, he came. He was on
horseback, sitting easily and proudly, and his chestnut horse paced
daintily and noiselessly over the moss.

Dale took off his hat. Then presently he came out of the bracken into
the ride, gripped the horse by its bridle, and spoke to the rider.

"Halloa! Dale? But, my good fellow, what the deuce--Damn you, let go.
What are you trying to--"

"I'll show you. Yes, you"--and violent, obscene, incoherent words came
pouring from Dale in a high-pitched querulous voice. All his set
speeches had been blown to the clouds by the blast of his passion. All
his plans exploded in flame at the sight of the man's face--the eyes
that had gloated over Mavis' reluctant body, the lips that had fed on
her enforced kisses. But what did the words matter? Any words were
sufficient. They could understand each other without words now.

He was holding the bridle firmly, pulling the horse's head round; and
he grasped Mr. Barradine's foot, got it out of the stirrup, and
jerking the whole leg upward, pitched him out of the saddle. The
horse, released, sprang away, jumping this way, that way, as it dashed
through the brake to the rocks--the clatter of its hoofs sounded on
the rocks, and the last glimpse of it showed its empty saddle and the
two flying stirrup-irons.

Dale was mad now--the devil loose in him--only conscious of
unappeasable rage and hatred, as he struck with his fists, beating the
man down every time he tried to get up, and kicking at the man's head
when he lay prostrate.

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