In the Days of the Comet Read online

  Section 5

  You must understand that I had no set plan of murder when I walkedover to Checkshill. I had no set plan of any sort. There was agreat confusion of dramatically conceived intentions in my head,scenes of threatening and denunciation and terror, but I did not meanto kill. The revolver was to turn upon my rival my disadvantagein age and physique. . . .

  But that was not it really! The revolver!--I took the revolverbecause I had the revolver and was a foolish young lout. It was adramatic sort of thing to take. I had, I say, no plan at all.

  Ever and again during that second trudge to Checkshill I wasirradiated with a novel unreasonable hope. I had awakened in themorning with the hope, it may have been the last unfaded trail ofsome obliterated dream, that after all Nettie might relent toward me,that her heart was kind toward me in spite of all that I imaginedhad happened. I even thought it possible that I might have misinterpretedwhat I had seen. Perhaps she would explain everything. My revolverwas in my pocket for all that.

  I limped at the outset, but after the second mile my ankle warmedto forgetfulness, and the rest of the way I walked well. Suppose,after all, I was wrong?

  I was still debating that, as I came through the park. By the cornerof the paddock near the keeper's cottage, I was reminded by somebelated blue hyacinths of a time when I and Nettie had gatheredthem together. It seemed impossible that we could really have partedourselves for good and all. A wave of tenderness flowed over me,and still flooded me as I came through the little dell and drewtowards the hollies. But there the sweet Nettie of my boy's lovefaded, and I thought of the new Nettie of desire and the man I hadcome upon in the moonlight, I thought of the narrow, hot purposethat had grown so strongly out of my springtime freshness, and mymood darkened to night.

  I crossed the beech wood and came towards the gardens with a resoluteand sorrowful heart. When I reached the green door in the gardenwall I was seized for a space with so violent a trembling that Icould not grip the latch to lift it, for I no longer had any doubthow this would end. That trembling was succeeded by a feelingof cold, and whiteness, and self-pity. I was astonished to findmyself grimacing, to feel my cheeks wet, and thereupon I gave waycompletely to a wild passion of weeping. I must take just a littletime before the thing was done. . . . I turned away from the doorand stumbled for a little distance, sobbing loudly, and lay downout of sight among the bracken, and so presently became calm again.I lay there some time. I had half a mind to desist, and then myemotion passed like the shadow of a cloud, and I walked very coollyinto the gardens.

  Through the open door of one of the glass houses I saw old Stuart.He was leaning against the staging, his hands in his pockets, andso deep in thought he gave no heed to me.

  I hesitated and went on towards the cottage, slowly.

  Something struck me as unusual about the place, but I could nottell at first what it was. One of the bedroom windows was open,and the customary short blind, with its brass upper rail partlyunfastened, drooped obliquely across the vacant space. It lookednegligent and odd, for usually everything about the cottage wasconspicuously trim.

  The door was standing wide open, and everything was still. But givingthat usually orderly hall an odd look--it was about half-past twoin the afternoon--was a pile of three dirty plates, with used knivesand forks upon them, on one of the hall chairs.

  I went into the hall, looked into either room, and hesitated.

  Then I fell to upon the door-knocker and gave a loud rat-tat-too,and followed this up with an amiable "Hel-lo!"

  For a time no one answered me, and I stood listening and expectant,with my fingers about my weapon. Some one moved about upstairspresently, and was still again. The tension of waiting seemed tobrace my nerves.

  I had my hand on the knocker for the second time, when Puss appearedin the doorway.

  For a moment we remained staring at one another without speaking.Her hair was disheveled, her face dirty, tear-stained, and irregularlyred. Her expression at the sight of me was pure astonishment.I thought she was about to say something, and then she had dartedaway out of the house again.

  "I say, Puss!" I said. "Puss!"

  I followed her out of the door. "Puss! What's the matter? Where'sNettie?"

  She vanished round the corner of the house.

  I hesitated, perplexed whether I should pursue her. What did itall mean? Then I heard some one upstairs.

  "Willie!" cried the voice of Mrs. Stuart. "Is that you?"

  "Yes," I answered. "Where's every one? Where's Nettie? I want tohave a talk with her."

  She did not answer, but I heard her dress rustle as she moved. IJudged she was upon the landing overhead.

  I paused at the foot of the stairs, expecting her to appear andcome down.

  Suddenly came a strange sound, a rush of sounds, words jumbledand hurrying, confused and shapeless, borne along upon a note ofthroaty distress that at last submerged the words altogether andended in a wail. Except that it came from a woman's throat it wasexactly the babbling sound of a weeping child with a grievance. "Ican't," she said, "I can't," and that was all I could distinguish.It was to my young ears the strangest sound conceivable from akindly motherly little woman, whom I had always thought of chieflyas an unparalleled maker of cakes. It frightened me. I went upstairsat once in a state of infinite alarm, and there she was upon thelanding, leaning forward over the top of the chest of drawers besideher open bedroom door, and weeping. I never saw such weeping. Onethick strand of black hair had escaped, and hung with a spiraltwist down her back; never before had I noticed that she had grayhairs.

  As I came up upon the landing her voice rose again. "Oh that I shouldhave to tell you, Willie! Oh that I should have to tell you!" Shedropped her head again, and a fresh gust of tears swept all furtherwords away.

  I said nothing, I was too astonished; but I drew nearerto her, and waited. . . .

  I never saw such weeping; the extraordinary wetness of her drippinghandkerchief abides with me to this day.

  "That I should have lived to see this day!" she wailed. "I hadrather a thousand times she was struck dead at my feet."

  I began to understand.

  "Mrs. Stuart," I said, clearing my throat; "what has become ofNettie?"

  "That I should have lived to see this day!" she said by way ofreply.

  I waited till her passion abated.

  There came a lull. I forgot the weapon in my pocket. I said nothing,and suddenly she stood erect before me, wiping her swollen eyes."Willie," she gulped, "she's gone!"

  "Nettie?"

  "Gone! . . . Run away. . . . Run away from her home. Oh, Willie,Willie! The shame of it! The sin and shame of it!"

  She flung herself upon my shoulder, and clung to me, and beganagain to wish her daughter lying dead at our feet.

  "There, there," said I, and all my being was a-tremble. "Where hasshe gone?" I said as softly as I could.

  But for the time she was preoccupied with her own sorrow, and I hadto hold her there, and comfort her with the blackness of finalityspreading over my soul.

  "Where has she gone?" I asked for the fourth time.

  "I don't know--we don't know. And oh, Willie, she went out yesterdaymorning! I said to her, 'Nettie,' I said to her, 'you're mightyfine for a morning call.' 'Fine clo's for a fine day,' she said,and that was her last words to me!--Willie!--the child I suckledat my breast!"

  "Yes, yes. But where has she gone?" I said.

  She went on with sobs, and now telling her story with a sort offragmentary hurry: "She went out bright and shining, out of thishouse for ever. She was smiling, Willie--as if she was glad to begoing. ("Glad to be going," I echoed with soundless lips.) 'You'remighty fine for the morning,' I says; 'mighty fine.' 'Let the girlbe pretty,' says her father, 'while she's young!' And somewhereshe'd got a parcel of her things hidden to pick up, and she wasgoing off--out of this house for ever!"

  She became quiet.

  "Let the girl be pretty," she repeated; "let the girl be prettywhile she's young. . . .
Oh! how can we go on LIVING, Willie? Hedoesn't show it, but he's like a stricken beast. He's wounded tothe heart. She was always his favorite. He never seemed to carefor Puss like he did for her. And she's wounded him--"

  "Where has she gone?" I reverted at last to that.

  "We don't know. She leaves her own blood, she trusts herself-- Oh,Willie, it'll kill me! I wish she and me together were lying inour graves."

  "But"--I moistened my lips and spoke slowly--"she may have goneto marry."

  "If that was so! I've prayed to God it might be so, Willie. I'veprayed that he'd take pity on her--him, I mean, she's with."

  I jerked out: "Who's that?"

  "In her letter, she said he was a gentleman. She did say he wasa gentleman."

  "In her letter. Has she written? Can I see her letter?"

  "Her father took it."

  "But if she writes-- When did she write?"

  "It came this morning."

  "But where did it come from? You can tell--"

  "She didn't say. She said she was happy. She said love took onelike a storm--"

  "Curse that! Where is her letter? Let me see it. And as for thisgentleman--"

  She stared at me.

  "You know who it is."

  "Willie!" she protested.

  "You know who it is, whether she said or not?" Her eyes made a muteunconfident denial.

  "Young Verrall?"

  She made no answer. "All I could do for you, Willie," she beganpresently.

  "Was it young Verrall?" I insisted.

  For a second, perhaps, we faced one another in stark understanding.. . . Then she plumped back to the chest of drawers, and her wetpocket-handkerchief, and I knew she sought refuge from my relentlesseyes.

  My pity for her vanished. She knew it was her mistress's son aswell as I! And for some time she had known, she had felt.

  I hovered over her for a moment, sick with amazed disgust. I suddenlybethought me of old Stuart, out in the greenhouse, and turned andwent downstairs. As I did so, I looked up to see Mrs. Stuart movingdroopingly and lamely back into her own room.