The fury of the gale had increased with nightfall, and as he went
downstairs again he heard the rattle of loosened tiles on the roof, and
the crash as they shattered themselves on the cobbles of the yard. At
that a sudden misgiving made his breath to catch in his throat, as he
pictured to himself some maniac blast falling on the house and crashing
in the walls that now trembled and shuddered. Supposing the whole
house fell, even if he escaped with his life from the toppling ruin,
what would his life be worth? There would be search made in the fallen
débris to find the body of her who lay strangled with the whipcord
round her neck, and he pictured to himself the slow, relentless march
of justice. He had bought whipcord only yesterday at a shop in the
village, insisting on its strength and toughness ... would it be wiser
now, this moment, to untie the noose and take it back with him or add
it to his brushwood?... He paused on the staircase, pondering that; but
his flesh quaked at the thought, and master of himself though he had
been during those few struggling minutes, he distrusted his power of
making himself handle once more that which could struggle no longer. But even as he tried to screw his courage to the point, the violence
of the squall passed, and the shuddering house braced itself again. He need not fear that; the gale was his friend that would blow on the
flames, not his enemy. The blasts that trumpeted overhead were the
voices of the allies who had come to aid him. All was arranged then upstairs for the pouring of the paraffin and the
lighting of the pyre; it remained but to make similar dispositions in
the studio. He would stay to feed the flames till they raged beyond all
power of extinction; and now he began to plan the line of his retreat. There were two doors in the studio: one by the fireplace which opened
on to the little garden; the other gave into the passage entrance from
which mounted the stairs and so to the door through which he had come
into the house. He decided to use the garden-door for his exit; but
when he came to open it, he found that the key was stiff in the rusty
lock, and did not yield to his efforts. There was no use in wasting
time over that; it made no difference through which door he finally
emerged, and he began piling up his heap of wood at that end of the
room. The lamp was burning low; but the fire, which only so few minutes
ago she had fed with a broken chair, shone brightly, and a flaming
ember from it would serve to set light to his conflagration. There was
a straw mat in front of it, which would make fine kindling, and with
these two fires, one in the bedroom upstairs and the other here, there
would be no mistake about the incineration of the house and all that
it contained. His own crime, if crime it was, would perish, too, and
all evidence thereof, victim and whipcord, and the very walls of the
house of sin and hate. It was a great deed and a fine adventure, and
as the liquor he had drunk began to circulate more buoyantly through
his veins, he gloried at the thought of the approaching consummation. He would slip out of the sordid tragedy of his past life, as from a
discarded garment that he threw into the bonfire he would soon kindle. All was ready now for the soaking of the fuel he had piled with the
paraffin, and he went out to the shed in the yard where the barrel
stood. A big tin ewer stood beside it, which he filled and carried
indoors. That would be sufficient for the soaking of the pile upstairs,
and fetching the smoky and flickering lamp from the studio, he went
up again, and like a careful gardener watering some bed of choice
blossoms, he sprinkled and poured till his ewer was empty. He gave
but one glance to the bed behind him, where the huddled thing lay
so quietly, and as he turned, lamp in hand, to go down again, the
draught that came in through the window against which the gale blew,
extinguished it. A little blue flame of burning vapour rose in the
chimney and went out; so, having no further use for it, he pitched it
on to the pile of soaked material. As he left the room he thought he
heard some small stir of movement behind him, but he told himself that
it was but something slipping in the heap he had built there. Again he went out into the storm. The clouds that scudded overhead were
thinner now, though the gale blew not less fiercely, and the blurred,
watery moonlight was brighter. Once for a moment, as he approached
the shed, he caught sight of the full orb plunging madly among the
streaming vapours; then she was hidden again behind the wrack. Close in
front of him were the fir trees of the wood where those sweet trysts
had been held, and once again the vision of her as she had been broke
into his mind and the queer conviction that it was no withered and
bloated hag, who lay on the bed upstairs but the fair, comely limbs
and the golden head. It was even more vivid now, and he made haste to
get back to the studio, where he would find the trusty medicine that
had dispelled that vision before. He would have to make two journeys
at least with his tin ewer before he transported enough oil to feed
the larger pyre below, and so, to save time, he took the barrel off
its stand, and rolled it along the path and into the house. He paused
at the foot of the stairs, listening to hear if anything stirred, but
all was silent. Whatever had slipped up there was steady again; from
outside only came the squeal and bellow of the wind. The studio was brightly but fitfully lit by the flames on the hearth;
at one moment a noonday blazed there, the next but the last smoulder of
some red sunset. It was easier to decant from the barrel into his ewer
than carry the heavy keg and sprinkle from it, and once and once again
he filled and emptied it. One more application would be sufficient,
and after that he could let what remained trickle out on to the floor. But by some awkward movement he managed to spill a splash of it down
the front of his trousers: he must be sure, therefore (how quickly his
brain responded with counsels of precautions), to have some accident
with his lamp when he came in to his supper, which should account for
this little misadventure. Or, probably, the wind through which he would
presently be walking would dry it before he reached the village. So, for the last time with matches ready in his hand, he mounted the
stairs to set light to the fuel piled in the room above. His second
dose of whisky sang in his head, and he said to himself, smiling at
the humour of the notion, “She always liked a fire in her bedroom; she
shall have it now.” That seemed a very comical idea, and it dwelt in
his head as he struck the match which should light it for her. Then,
still grinning, he gave one glance to the bed, and the smile died on
his face, and the wild cymbals of panic crashed in his brain. The bed
was empty; no huddled shape lay there.