The Greatest Works of J. S. Fletcher (64+ Titles in One Illustrated Edition). J. S. Fletcher
and brushed off the sweat from his forehead; then he looked at both hands curiously as if he expected to see something on them. And as if they were numb, or hurt him, he began to rub them together. All this time his eyes strayed anywhere but to the body which lay twisted up on the heap of yellow wheat at his feet; when he finally turned to it, there was a look of curiosity and speculation in his face. He stretched out his foot and touched it gingerly with the point of his boot. Something in the contact made him start, and he looked round about him with a quick, searching glance. The grey rat, watching him stealthily, vanished affrighted into the blackness behind it.
Perris's glance lighted on a pile of old sacks which lay on the further side of the granary. He went over and tore the pile apart; returning to the body, he dragged it across the floor into the shadow and covered it with the sacks. Then, taking up a broom, he carefully swept the boards clear of the grains of wheat which had been scattered broadcast in the brief struggle; there was a deep depression in the heap itself, and he smoothed it over with the head of the broom. And just as the sun sank behind the ridge of the house he went down from the granary and entered the door which he had left open only half-an-hour previously.
Some instinct made Perris go to the sink in the kitchen and wash his hands, and as he washed and dried them he again looked at them with strange inquisitiveness. When they were dried he thrust them into his pockets; one hand encountered the key which Rhoda had handed to him before she set out for the chapel. With another instinctive notion Perris went over to the cupboard in the parlour in which his wife kept the whisky, and, taking out the bottle, helped himself to a stiff dram. Something told him, as he slowly drank it, that there was no fear of his getting drunk that night—not all the whisky in the world would have made him drunk. And, setting the glass down on the table in the house-place, he took his pipe from the mantelpiece, and filling it from the old leaden tobacco-box which stood on a shelf by his easy-chair, he lighted it with a coal from the fire, and began to smoke as calmly as if nothing had happened. The tract which the preacher had given him just before leaving for the chapel lay on the table where Perris had thrown it, and he picked it up and read some paragraphs of it between his gulps of the whisky-andwater. The tract was all about the terrors of hell; he began to wonder in vague fashion if Pippany Webster was already experiencing them.
It was dusk by that time, and Perris knew that there was work before him, but he finished his drink and his pipe leisurely. When both were done, he knocked the ashes out of the pipe and put the whisky bottle away, before going outside the house and turning the corner into a strip of neglected ground which lay beneath the gable end. It was neither garden nor orchard, though an apple-tree shaded it and neglected gooseberry bushes grew rank in it. Once upon a time some former tenant of the Cherry-trees had conceived the notion of sinking a well there, and had penetrated into the soil to a considerable depth, only to give up the attempt. The cavity so made had never been filled up; its mouth was protected by rough planking; over the planking there had stood for the past year a derelict reaping-machine, one of the many ancient wrecks which had congregated about the farmstead. Perris looked at it musingly as he stood beneath the apple-tree in the rapidly gathering gloom. It would be easy to move; it would be easy to move two or three of the rotting planks on which it stood; the unfinished well beneath them would do well enough for Pippany Webster's grave. But the darkness must come first.
Perris knew that there was no fear of interruption. Few people ever came by the Cherry-trees at night; if they did, you could hear their footsteps on the road before they were anywhere near. The desolate bit of ground was thickly shielded from the lane which ran behind it; in the darkness no one could see what was happening there. And it was not likely that Rhoda would be home before half-past ten; he knew her Sunday night habits of late, though until that night he had never known the reason of them.
So Perris waited, leaning over the wall of the fold and watching the familiar shapes about him grow less and less distinct in the gathering darkness. At last, when night had fairly settled over the land, he set about his task. It was a plain and an easy task, and in a few minutes it was all over; the dead man was in the ooze and slime at the bottom of the unfinished well, the planks were in their place again, and the crazy reaping-machine was pushed back upon them. And in the silence which always brooded over the uplands at night, Perris went back into his house and lighted the lamp and his pipe, and, helping himself to another glass of whisky, sat down again and resumed his reading of the tract. And more than once, as the writer described the torments which those who are lost must needs experience, Perris again thought of Pippany Webster, and wondered if what he read was true. He possessed the countryman's almost superstitious reverence for printed matter, and knowing the preacher who had given him the tract to be a worthy man, he came to the conclusion that the account now presented to him was founded upon fact. And as he drank off his whisky, preparatory to unlacing his Sunday boots, he shook his head.
"Well, he wor a reight bad 'un, wor yon Pippany Webster," he muttered, "a reight, rank bad 'un!"
He lay awake after he had gone to bed, and listened for Rhoda's return. She had taken to occupying the spare chamber, and Perris had never troubled himself about her likes or dislikes. As a strict rule he fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, but on this night he remained purposely alive to all sounds until he heard her come in and presently enter the opposite room. Then he slept, and remained sleeping soundly until he suddenly awoke to find the morning sun shining, and to hear Rhoda moving about in the house-place. When he went down and met her it was only to begin the ordinary routine of his everyday life, and she observed nothing in his manner or conduct then or thereafter to show her that he had passed through any unusual experience.
Chapter XII
On the second day after Pippany Webster received his dismissal from this world at the hands of Perris, Uscroft, another small farmer of Martinsthorpe, who had given Pippany a regular job at thatching, knocked at Tibby Graddige's door, and, when she opened it, looked doubtfully at her.
"Don't ye clean up, like, for yon Pippany Webster?" he asked.
"I do what bit o' cleanin' t' man needs, mestur," answered Tibby Graddige. "It's none so much, 'cause he's one o' t' sort that likes to do things for theirsens."
"Ha'you seen aught on him this last day or two?" said Uscroft. "Yesterda' or to-day, like?"
"Yesterda' were Monday, and to-day, of course, is Tuesday," remarked Mrs. Graddige, reflectively. "No, mestur, I seen nowt on him sin' Sunday afternoon. I gen'lins go in to clear up o' Tuesdays and Fridays afternoons or nights, as the case may be. There's nowt wrong, mestur?"
Uscroft scratched his head, and put his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat.
"T' man's never been to his work either yesterda' or to-day," he answered. "I gev' him a job at thacking my stacks, and I'm afraid t' weather's goin' to break."
Mrs. Graddige looked across her garden in the direction of Pippany Webster's cottage, which stood, lonely and half derelict, higher up the side of the hill.
"Ha' you been to t' cottage then, mestur?" she asked. "He's happen been ta'en badly—not 'at I've heard owt about it. But then, ye see, mestur, nobody ever goes near him—he's such a queer 'un 'at he'll bear nobody to step inside his premises, 'ceptin' when I go to do a bit of cleanin'."
"I've been to t' place," replied Uscroft. "It's locked up, and I looked through t' front window; but I could see naught, except 'at there were no fire in t' grate."
Tibby Graddige rubbed her elbows, which she had just withdrawn from the washtub.
"Well, I'm sure I couldn't say where he is, Mestur Uscroft," she said. "Of course, he's that queer, is Pippany, 'at I should never be surprised at owt he did, in a way o' speakin'. As I say, I never set eyes on him sin' Sunday afternoon—I dropped in then when he were takin' a cup o' tea. He said naught to me about goin' away, nor nowt o' that sort. But, of course, he has relations livin' over yonder at Stone-by, and he might ha' taken it into his head to go there. I know he hasn't been to see 'em for a long time."
Uscroft turned in the direction of Mrs. Graddige's garden gate.