She did
not loose her hold over him, for the days were few on which she did
not come with demands for a handful of shillings to procure her the
raw spirits which alone could slake her thirst. Sometimes as he sat
at work there in the north room looking on to the small garden-yard,
she would come lurching up the path, with her bloated crimson face set
on the withered neck, and tap at his window with fingers shrivelled
like bird’s claws. Body and limbs were no more than bones over which
the wrinkled skin was stretched, but her face bulged monstrously with
layers of fat. He would give her whatever he had about him, and if
it was not enough, she would plant herself there, grinning at him
and wheedling him, or with screams and curses threatening him with
such fate as he had known to overtake those who crossed her will. But
usually he gave her enough to satisfy her for that day and perhaps the
next, for thus she would the more quickly drink herself to death. Yet
death seemed long in coming.... He remembered well how first the notion of killing her came into his
head, just a little seed, small as that of mustard, which lay long
in barrenness. Only the bare idea of it was there, like an abstract
proposition. Then imperceptibly in the fruitful darkness of his mind,
it must have begun to sprout, for presently a tendril, still soft and
white, prodded out into the daylight. He almost pushed it back again,
for fear that she, by some divining art, should probe his purpose. But when next she came for supplies, he saw no gleam of surmise in
her red-rimmed eyes, and she took her money and went her way, and
his purpose put forth another leaf, and the stem of it grew sappy. All autumn through it had flourished, and grown tree-like, and fresh
ideas, fresh details, fresh precautions, flocked there like building
birds and made it gay with singing. He sat under the shadow of it and
listened with brightening hopes to their song; never had there been
such peerless melody. They knew their tunes now, there was no need for
any further rehearsal. He began to wonder how soon he would be back on the road again, with
face turned from this buffeting wind, and on his way home. His business
would not take him long; the central deed of it would be over in a
couple of minutes, and he did not anticipate delay about the setting
to work on it, for by seven o’clock of the evening, as well he knew,
she was usually snoring in the oblivion of complete drunkenness,
and even if she was not as far gone as that, she would certainly be
incapable of any serious resistance. After that, a quarter of an hour
more would finish the job, and he would leave the house secure already
from any chance of detection. Night after night during these last ten
days he had been up here, peering from the darkness into the lighted
room where she sat, then listening for her step on the stairs as
she stumbled up to bed, or hearing her snorings as she slept in her
chair below. The out-house, he knew, was well stocked with paraffin;
he needed no further apparatus than the whipcord and the matches he
carried with him. Then back he would go along the exact route by which
he had come, re-entering the village again from the eastwards, in which
direction he had set out. This walk of his was now a known and established habit; half the
village during the last week or two had seen him every evening set
forth along the coast road, for a tramp in the dusk when the light
failed for his painting, and had seen him come back again as they hung
about and smoked in the warm dusk, a couple of hours later. None knew
of his detour to the main road which took him westwards again above
the village and so to the stretch of bleak upland along which now he
fought his way against the gale. Always round about the hour of eight
he had entered the village again from the other side, and had stopped
and chatted with the loiterers. To-night, no later than was usual, he
would come up the cobbled road again, and give “good night” to any who
lingered there outside the public-house. In this wild wind it was not
likely that there would be such, and if so, no matter; he had been seen
already setting forth on his usual walk by the coast of the bay, and
if none outside saw him return, none could see the true chart of his
walk. By eight he should be back to his supper, there would be a soused
herring for him, and a cut of cheese, and the kettle would be singing
on the hob for his hot whisky-toddy. He would have a keen edge for the
enjoyment of them to-night; he would drink long healths to the damned
and the dead. Not till to-morrow, probably, would the news of what had
happened reach him, for the farmhouse lay lonely and sheltered by the
wood of firs. However high might mount the beacon of its blazing, it
would scarcely, screened by the tall trees, light up the western sky,
and be seen from the village nestling below the steep hill-crest. By now John Aylsford had come to the fir wood which bordered the road
on the left, and, as he passed into its shelter, cut off from him the
violence of the gale. All its branches were astir with the sound of
some vexed, overhead sea, and the trunks that upheld them creaked and
groaned in the fury of the tempest. Somewhere behind the thick scud
of flying cloud the moon must have risen, for the road glimmered more
visibly, and the tossing blackness of the branches was clear enough
against the grey tumult overhead. Behind the tempest she rode in serene
skies, and in the murderous clarity of his mind he likened himself to
her. Just for half an hour more he would still grope and scheme and
achieve in this hurly-burly, and then, like a balloon released, soar
through the clouds and find serenity. A couple of hundred yards now
would take him round the corner of the wood; from there the miry lane
led from the high-road to the farm. He hastened rather than retarded his going as he drew near, for the
wood, though it roared with the gale, began to whisper to him of
memories. Often in that summer before his marriage had he strayed
out at dusk into it, certain that before he had gone many paces he
would see a shadow flitting towards him through the firs, or hear the
crack of dry twigs in the stillness. Here was their tryst; she would
come up from the village with the excuse of bringing fish to the
farmhouse, after the boats had come in, and deserting the high-road
make a short cut through the wood. Like some distant blink of lightning
the memory of those evenings quivered distantly on his mind, and he
quickened his step. The years that followed had killed and buried
those recollections, but who knew what stirring of corpses and dry
bones might not yet come to them if he lingered there? He fingered the
whipcord in his pocket, and launched out, beyond the trees, into the
full fury of the gale. The farmhouse was near now and in full view, a black blot against
the clouds. A beam of light shone from an uncurtained window on the
ground-floor, and the rest was dark.