The Devil's Garden by W. B. Maxwell

W >> W. B. Maxwell >> The Devil\'s Garden

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27

So he toiled comfortably, almost happily. Mavis was perfectly happy,
and he found increasing solace in the knowledge of this fact.

Thence onward his busy days were free from fear, except for the
transient panics which, as he surmised, he would be subject to for the
remainder of his life. They did not matter, because he could control
them to the extent of preventing the slightest outward manifestation.
All at once while transacting business he would feel the inward
collapse, deadly cold, a sensation that his intestines had been
changed from close-knitted substance to water; and he would think
"This person"--a farmer, a servant, old Mr. Bates, anybody--"suspects
my secret. He guessed it a long while ago. Or he has just discovered
the proofs of guilt." Nevertheless he went on talking in exactly the
same tone of voice, without a contraction of a single facial muscle,
with nothing at all shown unless perhaps a bead of perspiration on his
forehead.

"Good morning, sir. Many thanks, sir.... Yes, Mr. Envill, the stuff
shall be at your stables by one P.M. sharp. I'm making it my pride to
obey all orders punctually, whether big or small."

Thus he got on comfortably enough during the daylight waking hours.
But the fear that had gone out of the days had made its home in the
night. Sleep was now its stronghold.

His dreams were terrible. They were like immense highly-colored
fabrics reeling off the vast gray thought-loom--that dreadful thought
machine that worked as well when the workshop was darkened as when
all the lamps were burning. Their pattern displayed infinite variety
of detail, but a constant similarity in the main design.

They began by his being happy and light-hearted, that is, he was
_innocent_; and then gradually the horrible fact returned to his
memory. Recently, or a long time ago, he had killed a man. That was
always the end of the dream; his lightness and gaiety of spirits
vanished, and he felt again the load that he was eternally forced to
carry on his conscience.

The details of one form in which the dream worked itself out were
repeated hundreds of times. There was a strange man who at first made
himself extremely agreeable, and yet in spite of all his amiability
Dale did not like him. Nevertheless there was some mysterious
necessity to keep friends with him, even to kow-tow to him. And Dale
gradually felt sure that he and this man had met before, and that the
man knew it, but for some sinister purpose concealed his knowledge.
They went about together in gay and lively scenes, and the man grew
more and more hateful to Dale--becoming insolent, making disparaging
remarks, sneering openly; and laughing when Dale only tittered in a
nervous way and swallowed all insults. And Dale could not do
otherwise, because he was afraid of the man.

And finally this false friend disclosed his true hostile character in
some strikingly painful manner.

For instance, the man would make Dale take off his boots for him in
some public place. They were together in a place like the lounge of
some grand music-hall; the electric light shone brilliantly, a band
played at a distance, the gaily dressed crowd gathered round
them--young London swells with white waistcoats, pretty painted women,
old men and young girls, and all of them watching, all contemptuously
amused, all grinning because they understood that, though so big and
strong, he was at heart a pitiful sort of poltroon, and that his
companion was showing him up publicly. "Yes, you shall take my boots
off for me. That's all you're fit for." And in spite of his anguish of
resentment, Dale dared not refuse. The man had moved to a divan, he
reclined upon his back, lifted his feet; and Dale, pretending to laugh
it off as a bit of fun, took him by the heels.

Then he uttered a terrified cry--because he saw it was Barradine,
dead, battered, with glassy staring eyes. All the people rushed away
screaming, the lights went out, the music ceased: Dale was alone, at
dusk, in a rocky wilderness, still dragging the dead man by the heels.

And then he would wake--to find Mavis bending over him, to hear her
saying, "My dearest, you are sleeping on your back, and it is making
you dream." He clung to her desperately, muttering, "Quite right, Mav.
Don't let me dream. It's a fullish trick--dreaming."

Then he would settle himself to sleep again, thinking, "It is all no
use. I love my wife; I bless her for the generous way in which she has
risked all that money to give me a fresh start; I enjoy the work; I
believe I may succeed with the business--but I shall never know real
peace of mind. And sooner or later my crime will be brought home to
me. It is always so. I've read it in the papers a dozen times.
Murderers never get off altogether. Years and years pass; but at last
justice overtakes them."

Already, although he did not recognize it, had come remorse for the
wickedness of his deed. He had no regret for the fact itself, and not
the slightest pity for the victim. Mr. Barradine had got no more than
he deserved, the only proper adequate punishment for his offenses; but
Dale knew that, according to the tenets of all religions, God does not
allow private individuals to mete out punishment, however well
deserved--especially not the death penalty.

He resolutely revived his idea of the dead man as a thing unfit to
live--just a brute, without a man's healthy instincts--a foul
debauchee, ruining sweet and comely innocence whenever he could get at
it. Such a wretch would be executed by any sensible community. In new
countries they would lynch him as soon as they caught him--"A lot of
chaps like myself would ride off their farms, heft him up on the
nearest tree, and empty their revolvers into him. And it wouldn't be a
murder: it would be a rough and ready execution. Well, I did the job
by myself, without sharing the responsibility with my pals; and I
consider myself an executioner, not a murderer."

He could now always make the hate and horror return and be as strong
as they had ever been, and thus solidify the argument whereby he found
his justification; no mercy is possible for such brutes.
Subconsciously he was always striving to reinforce it; as if the voice
of that logical faculty which he admired as his highest attribute were
always whispering advice, reminding him: "This is your strong point.
It is the only firm ground you stand on. You can't possibly hope to
justify yourself to other people; but if you don't justify yourself to
yourself, then you are truly done for."

And he used to think: "I have justified myself to myself all along. I
was never one who considered human life so sacred as some try to make
out. Why should it be? Aren't we proved to be animals--along with the
rest? The parsons own it nowadays themselves, allowing a man's soul to
be what God counts most important, but not going so far as to say any
animal's soul isn't immortal too. Then where's the sacredness? If it's
right to kill a vicious dog or a poisonous snake, how is it so wrong
to out a man that won't behave himself?"

Insensibly this consideration had the greatest possible effect on his
conduct. Without advancing step by step in a reasoned progress, he
understood that any one holding his views on human life generally
should not attach an excessive value to his own individual life. He
must carry his life lightly, and be ready to lay it down without a lot
of fuss. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. He acted on the
maxim, risking his life freely, courting dangers that he would have
avoided in the days before the day on which he executed Mr. Barradine.

Executed--yes. But God would not have authorized him, although Judge
Lynch would. God would say: "It must be left to Me. I will attend to
it in My own good time. From My point of view perhaps, keeping the man
alive is in truth his punishment, and to kill him is to let him off.
You have come blundering with your finite intelligence into the
department of omniscient wisdom. Instead of interpreting My laws, you
have set up a law of your own invention."

And Dale sometimes thought: "But there isn't any God. All that is my
eye and my elbow. I believed it once, but I shall never believe it
again."

His thoughts about God's laws were curious, and baffling to himself.
They had been always there, always active, but in a manner secondary
and faint when compared with his thoughts about his infringement of
men's laws. Faith in God had seemed to be quite gone. It used to
permeate his entire mind; and yet it dropped out as though it had been
only in one corner of his mind, and a hole had been made under that
corner for it to fall through. Now he sometimes had the notion that it
went out through many holes, as if it had been forcibly ejected, and
that his whole mind was left in a shattered and unstable condition.

Then it began to seem that the faith had not truly been altogether got
rid of. Fragments of it remained.

Rapidly then he reached the certainty that he wished to have the faith
back again. His was an orderly solid mind that could not do with
cracks and holes in it, trimness, neatness, and firmness of outer wall
were necessary to its well-being; openness to windy doubts ruined it.
He felt that an accidental universe was the wrong box for it. He
wanted to believe in the God who created order out of chaos, the God
who settled cut-and-dried plans for the whole of creation--yes, the
God made in man's image, and yet the Maker and Ruler of man.

And some days he did believe, and some days he couldn't. But all at
once an idea came, first soothing then cheering him. He thought:
"Whether I believe or not, I'll take it for granted. I'll act as if
God is real."

He did so, acting as if God were believed in as truly by him as by the
most stanch believers. He clung to the idea. It seemed to be the way
out of all his troubles. He would make peace with God--then there
would be no need to bother about men, or offer any confession of his
guilt to _them_.

He grew calmer now. Doing things had always suited him better than
brooding over things. His new determination illuminated the reason for
reckless adventures, and lifted their purpose to a higher plane. He
thought now that he held his life at God's will--to be given back to
God at a moment's notice.

This thought made him calmer still, made him strong, almost made him
happy. A life for a life. He would expiate his offense in God's good
time. So no danger was too big for William Dale to face; his courage
became a byword; gentlefolk and peasants alike admired and wondered.

Out of the consistent course of action came the consistency of the
thought that was governing the action. Assumption of the reality of
God as a working hypothesis led to conviction of the existence of God.

Yet strangely and unexpectedly the attempt to formalize his faith
almost shook his faith out of him again. Although throughout the
episode of his acceptance by the Baptists he seemed so stolid and
matter-of-fact, he was truly suffering storms of emotion. He fell a
prey to old illusions; that unreasoning fear returned; he was thrown
back into the state of terrified egoism which rendered lofty
impersonal meditation beyond attainment.

That evening when for the first time he went to the Baptist Chapel,
the illusion was strong upon him that every man, woman, and child in
the congregation had discovered his secret. When they all stood up to
sing, it seemed that he was naked, defenseless, utterly at their
mercy. With every word of their carefully selected hymn they were
telling him that they knew all about him. When they began their third
verse, they simply roared a denunciation straight at him:

"But thus th' eternal counsel ran:
'Almighty love, _arrest that man_.'"

And the second and third hymns were just as bad, shaking him to
pieces, tumbling him headlong into the terror he had felt when his
crime was no more than a week old. The rest of the service entranced
and delighted him, made him think: "These people are in touch with
God, and their God is full of love and mercy. If He would accept me, I
should feel safe." At the end of the service he knelt, praying for
this to happen. Then he went home and doubted.

The fear was on him again in the beginning of his interview with Mr.
Osborn the pastor. He thought: "This man has seen through me. He
knows. Perhaps his past experiences have taught him to be quick in
spotting criminals. He may have been a prison chaplain some time or
other. Anyhow, he knows; and he'll try to get a confession out of me,
as sure as I sit here." But the beauty of the conception of God as
unfolded by Mr. Osborn banished the fear. He thought: "If I had been
told these things before, I should have never ceased to believe. I
feel it through and through me. This is God; and if I am not too
late, if He will still accept me, I shall be saved. Christ, the
friend, the brother of man--same as described by Mr. Osborn two
minutes ago--can do it for me if He will. He can take me home to
Father." A verse of one of those hymns echoed in his ears:

"None less than God's Almighty Son
Can move such loads of sin;
The water from His side must run,
To wash this dungeon clean."

And once more he prayed to the God of the Baptists; and then once more
doubted.

While he was walking home, he thought: "It is too good to be true.
Perhaps I'm fullish to pin my trust to it. Do I believe in it all, or
do I not?" He wanted a sign; and when the storm of thunder and
lightning burst like the most tremendous sign one could ask for, he
seized this opportunity of risking his life, and said: "Now I stand
here for God to take me or leave me."

He was left, not taken. The fear vanished, the doubt passed, and he
made his way into the Baptist Church exactly as if, as Mr. Osborn had
said, there was an irresistible pressure behind him, and he could not
make his way anywhere else.

It was all right after his baptism. He knew then that he would never
doubt again. The faith was permanent now: it would last as long as he
himself lasted. He had no more evil dreams. He slept soundly, as a man
sleeps when he has got home late after a tiring journey. And in the
morning and the evening of each day he thanked God for having
accepted him.

Then came the years of tranquillity, the respite from pain, his golden
time. He was prosperous, respected; he had a loved and loving wife,
and lovely lovable children; he had grain in his barns, money in his
bank, peace in his mind. He felt too all the better part in him
growing bigger and bigger; religion, in simplifying his ideas, had
increased their value; his intellectual power seemed wider and more
comprehensive when exercised with regard to all things that can be
learned, now that he had entirely ceased to exercise it with regard to
things that must not be questioned.

And then there had happened something that was like the knocking down
of a house of cards, the blowing out of a paper lantern, or the
obliteration of a picture scratched on sand when the inrushing tide
sweeps over it.

His soul turned sick at the thought that God had not accepted, but
rejected him. God refused his offer of humble homage, had seen the
latent wickedness in him, had kept him alive until he also could see
and loathe himself for what he really was--a wretch who in wishes and
cravings, if not in accomplished facts, was as vile as the man he had
slain.

XXXII

Dale's meditations had carried him backward and forward through the
past years, and left him against the blank wall of the present.

He was sitting on the fallen beech tree in the woodland glade. The sun
had set, and the night promised to be darker than recent nights; when
he looked at the grand gold watch given to him by his admirers, he
could only just see its hands. Nearly nine o'clock. He had been here a
long while. It was hours and hours since Norah went away. He sighed
wearily, got up, and walked back to his empty home.

Quite empty--that was the impression it made upon his mind both
to-night and all next day. He looked at it in the bright morning
sunshine, across the meadows, while the scythes laid down the first
long swathes of fragrant grass, and it seemed merely the shell of a
house. He looked at it in the midday glare, as he came up the field to
his dinner, and it seemed cold and black and cheerless. He looked at
it in the softer, kinder light of late afternoon, and it seemed to him
tragically sad--a monument of woe rather than a house, a fantastic
tomb built in the shape of a house in order to symbolize the homely
joy that had perished on this spot.

Yet smoke was rising from its chimneys, sound issuing from its
windows. All day long it had been full of active cheerful life. It and
the fields were happy in the animating harvest toil. Men with
harvesters' hats, women with sunbonnets, cracked their rustic jokes,
laughed, and sang at their labor; Mavis cooked food, filled the big
white bobs with beer, sent out bannocks and tin bottles of tea; Dale's
children had rakes and played at hay-making. Only the master, the
husband, the father, was unhappy.

No one knew it, of course. To other people he appeared to be just the
same as usual, naturally preoccupied with thoughts about the weather
as one always is at grass-cutting time, giving his orders firmly, and
seeing that they were obeyed promptly, smiling and nodding when you
showed yourself handy, frowning and looking rather black if you did
anything "okkard or feckless." Who could have guessed, as he looked at
his watch and then at the sky, that he was thinking: "It wants five
minutes of noon, and she is prob'ly out on what they term an
esplanade. There is a nice breeze down there, comin' to her over the
waater, blowin' her hair a bit loose, flappin' her skirts, sendin' out
her neck ribbon like a little flag behind her. It's all jolly, wi' the
mil'tary band, an' the smell o' the waves, an' crowds an' crowds o'
people--an' she won't have occasion to think o' me. P'raps they've bid
her wear her best--the white frock Mavis gave her, with the stockings
to match, and the new buckle-shoes--and likely young lads'll eye her
all over as they pass. Yes, she's seeing now the young uns--the mates
for her age--the proper article to make a photograph of a suitable
pair; and she'll soon stop thinking anything about me, if she hasn't
done it a'ready."

He was in his office still thinking of her, after the busy day, when
the postman brought the last delivery of letters.

"Good evening, sir. Only three to-night."

"Thank you. Good night, George," and Dale had a friendly smile for
this old acquaintance.

Postman George was growing fat and heavy, betraying signs of age. He
had been a sprightly telegraph boy when Dale was postmaster of
Rodchurch.

"Good night, sir. Fine weather for the hay."

"Yes, capital."

When the postman had gone Dale stood trembling. One of the letters was
from her. He felt unnerved by the mere sight of her handwriting on the
envelope--the hand that was so like his own, the hand that she had
taught herself by laborious study and imitation of his official
copper-plate; and he thought, "If I was wise I shouldn't open it. If I
was strong enough, I should just burn it, without reading. For,
whatever's inside, it's going to make me one bit more desp'rate than I
am now."

He snatched up his hat, went out of the house, and walked along the
road holding her letter pressed tight against his heart. There was a
gentle air that floated pleasantly over the fields, and in spite of
all the heavy rain that had fallen such a little while ago, the white
dust rose in high clouds when a motor-car came whizzing by. After the
car two timber wagons crept slowly, and then there were children
trailing a broken perambulator; but directly the road became vacant
again, he leaned against a gate and opened the envelope. He had felt
that he must be quite alone when he read what she said to him, and had
intended to go farther, but he could not wait any more.

"Sir, I beg to say"--That was how he had taught her to begin all
letters: she knew no other mode of address. "I beg to say this is a
very large place and you can see the sea from the bedrooms."

He read on; and his pleasure was so exquisite and his pain so
laceratingly sharp that the sky and the acids swam round and round.

... "There's nice girls here, one or two. Nellie Evans do all she can
to make me not so miserable She has a sweetheart at Rodchurch. They
all have their boys if you believe their talk.

"And all the marks at the end are the sweet kisses I give my boy. For
you are my boy now--my own secret one, and I am your loving girl

"Norah."

She was thinking only of him; she wanted no one younger and handsomer;
in her eyes and thoughts he was not old: he was her boy. Those words
had a terrible effect upon him. They entered his blood as if they had
been an injection of some sweetly narcotic drug; thy lanced deep into
his bowels as if they had been a surgeon's knife; they made him like a
half-anesthetized patient who at the same time dreams of paradise and
feels that he is bleeding to death.

"You are my boy ... and I am your loving girl."

He moved from the gate, hurried along the dusty road, and entered
Hadleigh Wood at the first footpath. As he got over the stile he was
saying to himself, "This letter finishes me. I can't go on with it
after this. I'm done for."

Then, as he walked in the cool silence beneath the dark firs, he held
her letter to his lips--kissed the inked crosses that she had set as
marks to represent her kisses--counted and kissed them and counted
them until his hot tears blinded him.

She wanted him; she longed for him; he was her boy.

He could get to her to-night. She was only twenty or twenty-two miles
away, as the crow flies--say half an hour's journey if one had the
wings of a heron. He could rush home, jump into his gig, and send the
horse at a gallop; he could get there by road or rail, somehow; he
could telegraph, telling her not to go to bed, telling her to go to
the station and wait for him there.

Then he would walk with her in the moonlight by the sea, on the wet
sand, close to the breaking waves. When they came back to the
Institution no light would be showing from any of the windows, and she
might say, "I'm shut out. When they come down to let me in, won't they
make a fuss?" But he would say, "You are not going in there again."
"What," she would say, "are you taking me back to Vine-Pits after only
two days? Don't you think Mrs. Dale will be angry?"

Then he would say, "I'm not taking you back. I'm going to take you
half across the world with me. I've tried hard, Norah, but I can't do
without you. I own up, I'm beat, I take the consequences. I'm not
good, I'm bad. I've done wicked things, and now I'm ripe for the
crowning wickedness. I'm going to break my wife's heart, dishonor my
children's name, and take you down to hell with me."

Or if he could not say and do all that, he might at least do this. He
could pick her up in his arms and wade out to sea with her; he could
whisper and kiss and wade until the ribbed sand went from under his
feet; and then he would swim, go on whispering, kissing, and swimming
until his strength failed him--yes, he could drown himself and her, so
that they died locked fast in each other's arms, taking in death the
embraces that had been denied them in life.

He was crying now as a child cries, abandoning himself to his tears,
not troubling to wipe them away, temporarily overcome by self-pity.
But soon he shook off this particular form of weakness, and thought,
"What nonsense comes into a man's head, when he's once off his right
balance--such wild nonsense, such mad nonsense. Drown _her_, poor
innocent. Make her pay _my_ bill. Think of it even--when I'd swim the
Atlantic to save her life, if it was in danger."

And then the thought that had been the impetus or origin of these
fantastic imaginations presented itself again, and more strongly than
before. He said to himself, "This letter is my death-warrant. I can't
go on. It is my death-warrant."

He had made straight for the main ride, and he walked straight along
it in the direction of Kibworth Rocks. As he drew toward them it was
as if the spirit of the dead man called him, seeming to say: "Come and
keep me company. Our old quarrel is over. You and I understand each
other _now_. We are two of a kind, just as like as two hogs from one
litter--you the sanctimonious psalm-singer and I the conscienceless
profligate--we are brothers at last in our beastliness."

Dale walked with his hands clasped behind his back, thoughtfully
looking at the trees, and trying to suppress his wild imaginations.
But he could not suppress them. The dead man seemed to say, "Don't be
a humbug, don't pretend. You know we are alike. Why, when you looked
in the glass the other day, you _saw_ the resemblance. You saw my
puffy eye-orbits and my pendulous lip in your own face."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27