The Devil's Garden by W. B. Maxwell

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And thinking of things that she had never told Will, she wondered if
this calmness of temperament, or perhaps unusual failure in response,
was but another fatal consequence of the Barradine slavery. If so,
what cause she had to hate and curse him! The episode with him was
simply an irksomeness: it had frozen her instead of warming her,
checked her expansion, and perhaps, breaking the cycle of normal
development, made her imperfect as a woman.

Perhaps this was the real reason why she had remained childless. She
represented completed womanhood in this respect at least, that she
desired to be a mother. The possession of children was the one thing
that made her envious of other women. The idea of having a child of
her own made her almost faint with longing--a baby to nurse, a little
burden to wheel about in a perambulator, a companion to prattle to her
all day while Will was busy down-stairs. If the hope of such joy had
been taken from her by Mr. Barradine, oh, how immeasureably great was
her cause for hatred!

She sat staring at the distant point where he and his horse had just
now vanished, and for a little while her thoughts were like curses.
Any attributes of grandeur were transitory illusions; he was wholly
mean and base: he was the embodied principle of evil that had spoiled
the past and that still threatened the future. She wished that he
might eventually suffer as much as he had made her suffer. She wished
that he might be racked with rheumatism, burned up with gout, tortured
with every conceivable painful disease. She wished him dead and
crumbling to dust in his coffin.

After tea she came back to the window and stayed there till nightfall.

Little by little the street became dim and vague. Two or three futile
oil lamps were lighted, and the shop fronts shone brightly, but all
the rest grew dark, like a river or a canal instead of a street. One
heard voices, and then people showed themselves momentarily as they
passed through the lamplight.

While she watched them passing, her thoughts drifted into generalized
sadness.

The shutters went up at the saddler's, and she saw Mr. Allen for a
moment--a long, thin man, looking too tall for the frame of the
lamplit doorway. Mr. Allen used to have a fine business but he was
spoiling it by his folly. It had been his custom to go to neighboring
meets of hounds and ask the young gentlemen if the saddles he had made
for them were satisfactory, insinuate his fingers between saddle-tree
and hunter's withers to see if there was plenty of room, and generally
render himself obsequiously agreeable. That was good for trade. But
then the hunting gradually fascinated him, and he followed on foot
throughout the season, halloaing hounds to wrong foxes, standing on
banks and frightening horses, being a nuisance to the gentlemen, and
coming home to boast that although he was fifty he had walked
twenty-seven miles in the day. And his trade was all going or gone,
and he not seeming to care. His wife let lodgings to make up a bit.
Very sad.

Candle-light showed in a window of the house next door to the
saddler's, and Mavis thought of these neighbors--two sisters, old
maids--who had a very, very little money of their own and who
endeavored to add to what was barely enough for necessities by selling
butterfly nets, children's fishing-rods, stamp albums, and picture
post-cards. Two years ago the elder sister tumbled down-stairs and
injured her spine; and since then she had been bedridden, lying in the
upper room at the back of the house, with nothing to amuse her but a
view of the graveyard behind the church. Mavis had been to see her one
day this summer, had sat by the bed, and read her a chapter out of the
New Testament and then the weekly instalment of a novel in the
_Rodhaven District Courier_. Extremely sad.

Then livid-faced, matty-haired Emily Frayne passed by, carrying a
brown-paper parcel. This poor overworked girl was the only daughter
of Frayne the tailor, who was a confirmed drunkard. All day long she
was kept toiling like a slave, cutting out, beginning and finishing
gaiters, breeches, and stable-jackets, doing all the work that was
ever done at Frayne's; and at night she went round trying to get
orders, delivering the goods that she had completed, and being forced
to support the impudence and familiarity of coachmen and grooms, who
chucked her under the chin and said they'd give her a kiss for her
pains because they weren't flush enough to stand her a drink. All
painfully sad.

There was a dreadful lot of tippling at Rodchurch: in fact, one might
say that drink was the prevailing fault of the village. The vicar
publicly touched on the matter in his sermons, and privately he often
said that Mr. Cope, the fat landlord of The Gauntlet Inn, was greatly
to blame. The tradesmen had a little club at the Gauntlet, where Cope
employed a horrid brazen barmaid who sometimes sang comic songs to the
club members. Mrs. Cope felt strongly about the barmaid, and quite
took the vicar's side in the dispute the day that Cope came out of the
tap-room and was so rude and abusive to the reverend gentleman. Mrs.
Cope said she'd be glad if Mr. Norton brought her husband to book
before the magistrates and got his license taken away.

Dale openly expressed contempt for this boozing Gauntlet club, refused
to take up his membership when elected, and had received a
complimentary letter from the vicar thanking him for the fine example
he had set for others. No, dear old Will, though he liked his glass of
beer as well as anybody, would often go a whole week on tea and
coffee; and she thought what a merit his sobriety had been. Merely
considered as economy, it was a blessing. It is always the drink, and
never the food, that runs away with one's household money.

Mr. Silcox the tobacconist hurried through the lamplight,
unquestionably on his way to the Gauntlet. Silcox was a chattering
foolish creature who had lost his own and his widowed mother's savings
in a ridiculous commercial enterprise--a promptly bankrupt theater
company over at Rodhaven--and it was thought that the workhouse would
be the end for him and Mrs. Silcox. But early this summer people had
been startled by hearing that the _Courier_ had appointed Silcox as
their reporter; and local critics were of opinion that Silcox had
taken very kindly to literature, and that he was shaping well, and
might perhaps retrieve the past in making name and fortune. Dale, who
used to chaff Silcox rather heavily, was at present quite polite to
him. It had always been Will's policy to stand well with the press,
and there was no doubt that during the recent controversy Silcox had
endeavored to render aid with his pen.

Lamplight moving now--a cart coming down. Mavis, peering out, saw that
it was old Mr. Bates again, in a gig this time, going home to his
pretty little farm two miles off on the Hadleigh Road. Fancy his being
still at it so late, only finishing the day's work long after so many
younger men had done. Mr. Bates was reputed rich--a highly respected
person; but the sorrow of his old age was a bad, bad son. Richard
Bates raced, and habitually ran after women--that is, when he
possessed the use of his legs and was able to run. But he was a heavy
drinker, and it was no unusual thing for the helpers at the Roebuck
stables to have to get out a conveyance at closing time and drive
Richard, speechless, motionless, to Vine-Pits Farm. He never went to
the Gauntlet, but always to the Roebuck--beginning the evening in the
hotel billiard-room, trying to swagger it out at pool with the
solicitor and the doctor, then drifting to the stable bar, and
finishing the evening there, or outside in the open yard. One could
imagine the feelings of the old father, waiting up all alone, knowing
from experience what the sound of wheels implied after ten o'clock.
Will said once that he believed Mr. Bates was glad Mrs. Bates hadn't
been spared to see it.

And Mavis, moving at last from the window, thought that she was not
the only sad inhabitant of Rodchurch. There is a cruel lot of sorrow
in most people's lives.

IX

The second week of the fortnight was passing much quicker than the
first week. By a most happy inspiration Mavis had hit upon a means of
filling the dull empty time. On Tuesday morning she told Mary that
they would turn the master's absence to good account by giving the
house an unseasonal but complete spring cleaning, and ever since then
they had both been hard at work.

The work gave exercise as well as occupation; it furnished a ready
excuse for declining to go over and see Mrs. Petherick or to allow a
visit from her; and, moreover, it had a satisfactory calming effect on
one's nerves. While Mavis was reviewing pots and pans, standing on the
high step-ladder to unhook muslin curtains, and, most of all, while
she was going through her husband's winter underclothes in search of
moths, it seemed to her that she was not only retaining but
strengthening her hold on all these inanimate friends, and that they
themselves were eloquently though dumbly protesting against the mere
idea of forcible separation. When she sat down, hot and tired, in the
midst of shrouded masses of furniture, to enjoy a picnic meal that
Mary had set out on the one unoccupied corner of a crowded table, she
was able to eat with hearty appetite; and yet, no matter how tired she
might be by the end of the day, she could not sleep properly at
night.

If she slept, a dream of trouble woke her. As she lay awake her
trouble sometimes seemed greater than ever. It was as though the
spring cleaning, which by day proved mentally beneficial, became
deleterious during these long night watches. The neater, the cleaner,
the brighter she made her home, the more terrible must be a sentence
of perpetual banishment.

On Friday afternoon the work was nearly over. Kitchen utensils were
like shining mirrors; the flowers of the best carpet were like real
blossoms budding after rain; and Mavis on the step-ladder, with a
smudged face, untidy hair, and grimy hands, had begun to reinstate the
pictures handed to her by Mary, when Miss Yorke came knocking abruptly
at the parlor door.

"A telegram, ma'am."

"All right."

Mavis had come down the ladder, and as she opened the yellow envelope
she began to tremble.

"Answer paid, ma'am. Shall I wait?"

"No. I--I'll--No, don't wait."

It was from Dale. She had sat down on the lowest step of the ladder,
and was trembling violently. "Oh, how dreadful!" She muttered the
words mechanically, without any attempt to express her actual thought.
"How very dreadful!"

"What is it, ma'am? Bad news?"

"Oh, most dreadful. But perhaps a mistake. I'm to find out;" and she
stared stupidly at the paper that was shaking in her fingers. Then,
spreading it on her lap, she read the message aloud:--

"Evening paper says fatal accident to Mr. Barradine. Is this
true? Wire Dale, Appledore Temperance Hotel, Stamford Street,
S.E."

Then she jumped up, ran into the front room, and looked out of the
window. A glance showed her that the village was in possession of some
sensational tidings. There was a knot of people standing in front of
the saddler's, and another--quite a little crowd--in front of the
butcher's; all were talking excitedly, nodding their heads, and
gesticulating.

She ran down-stairs and joined the group at the saddler's.

"I never cared for the look of the horse," Allen was saying
sententiously. "And I might almost claim to have warned them--no
longer ago than last March. The stud-groom was riding him at a meet,
and I said, 'Mr. Yeatman, you aren't surely going to let Mr. Barradine
risk his neck with hounds on that thing?' 'No,' he said, 'Mr.
Barradine has bought him for hacking.' 'Oh,' I said, 'hacking and
hunting are two things, of course, but--'"

Then somebody interrupted.

"Chestnut horse, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said Allen, "one of these thoroughbred weeds, without a back
that you can fit with to anything bigger than a racing saddle; and
I've always maintained the same thing. A bit of blood may do very well
for young gentlemen, but to go and put a gentleman of Mr. Barradine's
years--"

"Mind you," interposed a Roebuck stableman, "Mr. Barradine liked 'em
gay. Mr. Barradine was a horseman!"

Mr. Barradine _liked_ gay horses. Mr. Barradine _was_ a horseman.
That tremendous sound of the past tense answered the question that
Mavis was breathlessly waiting to ask.

"Shocking bad business, isn't it, Mrs. Dale?"

She did not reply; but nobody noticed her silence or agitation. They
all went on talking; and she only thought: "He is dead. He is dead. He
is dead." She was temporarily tongue-tied, awestricken, full of a
strange superstitious horror.

Presently Allen spoke to her again. "There'll never be such another
kind gentleman in _our_ times, Mrs. Dale; nor one so open-handed. And
it's not only the gentry that's going to mourn him. The pore hev lost
a good friend."

"Yes," she whispered. "Indeed they have. Indeed they have."

Miss Waddy came out of her absurd little post-card shop and kept
saying, "Oh, dear!" She, like almost everybody else in the village
except Mavis Dale and Mary, had known the news for hours; but she was
greedy for the more and more particularized information that every
newcomer brought with him along the road from Manninglea.

"How was the body taken to the Abbey?"

"Sent one of the carriages."

"Oh, dear!"

They continued to talk; and Mavis, listening, for a few moments felt
gladness, nothing but gladness. He had gone out of their lives
forever. There could be no divorce. Now that he was dead, she would be
forgiven. Then again she felt the horror of it. The thing was like an
answer to her secret prayer or wish--like the mysterious overwhelming
consequence of her curse. It was as though in cursing him she had
doomed him to destruction.

"They caught the horse last night, didn't they?"

"Yes. Some chaps at Abbey Cross Roads see un go gallopin' by, and
followed un up Beacon Hill. Catched un in the quag by th' old gravel
pits."

"Oh, dear!" said Miss Waddy.

Little by little Mavis pieced the story together. Mr. Barradine had
been out riding late yesterday, and the riderless horse had given the
alarm some time about nine o'clock in the evening. But, although a
wide-spread search continued all through the night, the body was not
found until past noon to-day.

They had found it at Kibworth Rocks. These rocks, situated in Hadleigh
Wood, about two miles from the Abbey, were of curious formation--a
wide mass of jagged boulders cropping out unexpectedly from the sandy
soil, some of them half hidden with bracken, while others, the bigger
ones, rose brown and bare and strange. They provided a redoubtable
fortress for foxes, and contained what was known as the biggest
"earth" of the neighborhood. Not far off, the main ride passed through
the wood, making a broad sunlit avenue between the gloomy pines; but
no one without local knowledge would have suspected the existence of
the rocky gorge or slope, because, although only at a little distance,
it was quite invisible from the ride.

The body had been discovered lying in a narrow cleft, the head
fearfully battered; and how Mr. Barradine came by his death was
obvious. He had been riding through or near the rocks, and the horse,
probably stumbling, had thrown him; and then, frightened and
struggling away, had dragged him some considerable distance, until
the rocks held him fast and tore him free.

What remained doubtful was how or why Mr. Barradine approached the
rocks. Of course, his horse might have shied from the ride and taken
him there before he could recover control of it; or, as perhaps was
more probable, Mr. Barradine might have ridden from the safe and open
track in order quietly to examine what was called the main earth, and,
if fortunate, gratify himself with a glimpse of two or three lusty fox
cubs playing outside the burrows.

However, as Mr. Allen sagely observed, such conjectures were at
present idle. These and all other matters would be cleared up at the
inquest.

"Oh, dear!" said Miss Waddy. "Will there have to be an inquest?"

"Certainly there will," said Mr. Allen.

"Yes, that's the law always," said somebody else.

"Surely not," said Miss Waddy, "in the case of such a well-known
gentleman as Mr. Barradine."

"It would be the same," said Allen, "if it was the Prince of Wales, or
the Archbishop of Canterbury. Coroner's Court sits on everybody who
doesn't die in his bed certified by his doctor."

"And it rained, too, last night," said Miss Waddy.

"Yes, there was some heavy showers."

"Fancy the poor gentleman lying out in the rain. Oh, dear!"

Mavis Dale left them talking and went back to the post office. In her
agitation she had forgotten about the reply telegram to her husband.
She got Mr. Ridgett to write the message--her hands were trembling so
that she could scarcely hold the pencil.

"Very sorry, I'm sure," said Mr. Ridgett sympathetically. "This was
the party you told me of--the gentleman that was giving his support to
Mr. Dale?"

"Yes."

"Well, well--very sad. How will you word it?"

"Please say--'Report true. Mr. Barradine killed by fall from his horse
yesterday.' And sign it 'Mavis.' No, sign it 'Mav.'"

"Mav!--Ma-v!" Mr. Ridgett looked round, smiling. "That's hubby's pet
name for you, isn't it? Upon my word, you two _are_ a pair of
love-birds.... There, off it goes. Good night, Mrs. Dale. I'm truly
sorry that you've been deprived of such a friend."

She went up-stairs to her bedroom, and did not come out of it that
evening. For a long time she sat on the bed sobbing and shivering. She
was glad really, and she knew that she was glad, and yet all the blood
in her body seemed to be running coldly because of unreasoning
superstitious fear. It was as though she had seen a ghost, and as
though the ghost, while imparting to her a piece of surprisingly good
news, had at the same time almost frightened her out of her wits. It
is so wicked, so impiously wicked to wish for the death of a fellow
creature. But what are wishes? Common sense revolts from the
supposition that thoughts can kill. Why, if they could, half the
population of the world would succumb beneath the impalpable weapons
wielded by the other half. It is only toward nightfall, when rooms
begin to grow dark, and the deepening shadows give queer shapes to
furniture, curtains, and other familiar objects, that one can be
foolish enough to entertain such fancies.

She told Mary to bring the candles, and to run out and buy a
night-light. Then Mary helped her to undress and to get to bed; and
she slept dreamlessly. The feeling after all was one of unutterable
relief. Mr. Barradine _was_! Never again would her flesh shrink at the
sight of him; never again could those lascivious hands touch her.

Next day, between dinner-time and tea-time, while she was giving final
touches to the well-cleaned parlor, she heard her husband's voice just
outside the door. He had come up-stairs very quietly and was speaking
to Mary on the landing.

"Will, Will!" With a cry of delight, Mavis rushed out to welcome him.
"Oh, thank goodness, you've come home." She boldly took his arm, drew
him into the parlor and shut the door again. "Will--aren't you going
to kiss me?"

"No." And he disengaged himself and moved away from her. "No, I can
not kiss you."

"Oh, Will. Do try to forget and forgive." She stood stretching out her
hands toward him imploringly, with eyebrows raised, and lips
quavering.

"I can never forget," he said, after a moment's pause.

Then she tried to make him say that things would eventually come all
right, that if he could not pardon her and take her to his heart now,
he would do so some time or another. He listened to her pleadings
impassively, stolidly; his attitude was stiffly dignified, and it
seemed to her that, whatever his real frame of mind might be, he had
determined to hide it by maintaining an impenetrably solemn tone and
manner.

"Will, you've come home, and I'm grateful for it. But--but I do think
you're cruel to me. Especially considering what's happened, I did
hope you'd begin to think kinder to me."

"Mavis," he said solemnly, "it is the finger of God." And he repeated
the phrase slowly, with a solemnity that was almost pompous. "It is
the finger of God. If that man had not chanced to die in this sudden
and startling way, I could never have come home to you. It was the
decision I had arrived at before I read of his accident in the paper.
Otherwise you'd 'a' never set eyes on me. Now all I can say is, you
and I must trust to the future. It will be my endeavor not to look
back, and I ask you equally to look forward."

She was certain that this was a set speech prepared beforehand. She
knew so well the faintly unnatural note in his voice when he was
reciting sentences that he had learned by rote: she who had helped in
so many rehearsals before his public utterances could not be mistaken.
However, she had to be contented with it. And, stilted and stiff as it
was, it certainly seemed to imply that she need not relinquish hope.

He added something, in the same ponderous style, about the probability
of its being advisable to put private inclinations on one side and
attend the funeral of the deceased in his public capacity of
postmaster. This mark of respect would be expected from him, and
people would wonder if he did not pay it. Then he left the parlor, and
again spoke to Mary.

Mavis, listening, heard him give orders that an unused camp bedstead
should be brought down from the clerk's room and made up in the
kitchen. He told Mary that he wished to sleep by himself because he
felt twinges of rheumatism and was afraid of disturbing the mistress
if the pain came on during the night. And Mavis noticed that all the
time that he was talking to Mary his voice sounded perfectly natural.

Then he went down-stairs, speaking again when he was half-way down.

"How goes it, Miss Yorke? Is Mr. Ridgett in the office?"

And this time it was absolutely his old voice--rather loud, rather
authoritative, but really quite cheerful.

Thinking of his manner to her and his manner to others, she believed
that she could now understand all that he intended. She was to be held
in disgrace perhaps for a long time, but appearances were to be kept
up. No breath of scandal was to tarnish the reputation of the
Rodchurch postmaster; the curious world must not be allowed the very
slightest peep behind the scenes of his private life; and she, without
explicit instructions, was to assist in preventing any one--even poor
humble Mary--from guessing that as husband and wife they were not as
heretofore on the best possible terms.

Down below in the sorting-room Dale greeted Mr. Ridgett very heartily.

"Here I am. May I venture to come in a minute? I'm only a visitor till
Monday, you know." And he told Ridgett how he had taken a liberty in
returning before the stipulated date; but he had written to
headquarters explaining the circumstances, and he had no doubt they
would approve. "There's the funeral, you know. Though I suppose that
won't be till Tuesday or even Wednesday. But there's the inquest. And
I felt it like a duty to attend that too."

"Yes, I suppose this is a bit of a blow to you--knowing him so long.
Your good lady was mightily upset."

"So she had cause to be," said Dale gravely.

"He'd always shown himself a real friend?"

"The best friend anybody ever had," said Dale with impressive
earnestness. Then, going, he returned to speak in a confidential
whisper close to Mr. Ridgett's ear. "It was he who did the trick for
me up there. But for _him_, I was to be hoofed out of this, as sure as
eggs."

"Really! Well, I'll tell you frankly, I'm not surprised to hear it.
Ever since the little Missis came home with the happy tale, I've been
wondering what miracle pulled you through so grand with them."

Then Dale went out and down the street, talking to everybody he met.

The village received him with tranquil indifference. No one
congratulated him. The greater excitement had obliterated all memory
of the less: not a soul seemed to recollect the famous controversy,
the postmaster's campaign against detractors, his long absence or his
brilliant success. Kibworth Rocks, the drawn blinds of the Abbey
House, the decorations of the Abbey Church--these were the only things
that Rodchurch could now think of, or talk about.

The inquest, held on Monday in one of the state rooms at the Abbey,
brought to light no new facts that were of the least importance. All
sorts of people gave evidence, but no one had anything to say that was
really worth saying. Mr. Allen, it appeared, had "acted foolish" and
been reproved by the Coroner, first for irrelevance and then for
impertinence.

Allen had attempted to persuade the Court that the prime cause of the
accident was simply this, that poor Mr. Barradine's saddle was made by
a London firm instead of by him--Allen. He pooh-poohed the
stud-groom's statement that Mr. Barradine had an ineradicable
objection to patent detachable stirrups, and maintained that he would
have been able, in five minutes' quiet conversation, to prevail on the
deceased gentleman to adopt a certain device which was known to Allen
but to nobody else in the trade; and then he attempted to read a
written paper in which he advocated the superiority to the modern
plain flap of the ancient padded knee-roll as a means of rendering the
seat more secure for forehand stumbles.

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