3
For sixteen days and nights we lived, Monica and I, in the presence of this fear, a fear none the less real for being non-susceptible to definition. The climax came suddenly, without any sort of warning, unless Dearth’s idiotic hostility towards myself could be regarded as a warning. The utterly unfounded idea that I was making love to his wife had taken root in the man’s mind, and every day his manner to me became more openly vindictive. This was the cue for my departure, with warm thanks for my delightful holiday; but I didn’t choose to take it. I wasn’t exactly in love with Monica, but she was my comrade in danger and I was reluctant to leave her to face her nightmare terrors alone.
The most cheerful room in that house was the kitchen, with its red-tiled floor, its oak rafters, and its great open fireplace. And when in the evenings the lamp was lit and we sat there, listening in comfort to the everlasting gale that raged round the house, I could almost have imagined myself happy, had it not been for the presence of my reluctant host. He was a skeleton at a feast, if you like! By God, we were a genial party. From seven o’clock to ten we would sit there, the three of us, fencing off silence with the most pitiful of small talk. On this particular night I had been chaffing him gently, though with intention, about his fancy for keeping a loaded rifle hanging over the kitchen mantelpiece; but at last I sickened of the pastime, and the conversation, which had been sustained only by my efforts, lapsed. I stared at the red embers in the grate, stealing a glance now and again at Monica to see how she was enduring the discomfort of such a silence. The cheap alarum clock ticked loudly, in the way that cheap alarum clocks have. When I looked again at Dearth he appeared to have fallen asleep. I say ‘appeared,’ for I instantly suspected him of shamming sleep in order to catch us out. I knew that he believed us to be in love with each other, and his total lack of evidence must have occasioned him hours of useless fury. I suspected him of the most melodramatic intentions: of hoping to see a caress pass between us that would justify him in making a scene. In that scene, as I figured it, the gun over the mantelpiece might play an important part. I don’t like loaded guns.
The sight of his closed lids exasperated me into a bitter speech designed for him to overhear. ‘Monica, your husband is asleep. He is asleep only in order that he may wake at the chosen moment and pour out the contents of his vulgar little mind upon our heads.’
This tirade astonished her, as well it might. She glanced up, first at me, then at her husband; and upon him her eyes remained fixed. ‘He’s not asleep,’ she said, rising slowly out of her chair.
‘I know he’s not,’ I replied.
By now she was at his side, bending over him. ‘No,’ she remarked coolly. ‘He’s dead.’
At those words the wind outside redoubled its fury, and it seemed as though all the anguish of the world was in its wail. The spirit of Dearth’s Farm was crying aloud in a frenzy that shook the house, making all the windows rattle. I shuddered to my feet. And in the moment of my rising the wail died away, and in the lull I heard outside the window a sudden sound of feet, of pawing, horse’s feet. My horror found vent in a sort of desperate mirth.
‘No, not dead. James Dearth doesn’t die so easily.’
Shocked by my levity, she pointed mutely to the body in the chair. But a wild idea possessed me, and I knew that my wild idea was the truth. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that may be dead as mutton. But James Dearth is outside, come to spy on you and me. Can’t you hear him?’
I stretched out my hand to the blind cord. The blind ran up with a rattle, and, pressed against the window, looking in upon us, was the face of the white horse, its teeth bared in a malevolent grin. Without losing sight of the thing for a moment, I backed towards the fire. Monica, divining my intention, took down the gun from its hook and yielded it to my desirous fingers. I took deliberate aim, and shot.
And then, with the crisis over, as I thought, my nerves went to rags. I sat down limply, Monica huddled at my feet; and I knew with a hideous certitude that the soul of James Dearth, violently expelled from the corpse that lay outside the window, was in the room with me, seeking to re-enter that human body in the chair. There was a long moment of agony during which I trembled on the verge of madness, and then a flush came back into the dead pallid cheeks, the body breathed, the eyes opened.... I had just enough strength left to drag myself out of my seat. I saw Monica’s eyes raised to mine; I can never for a moment cease to see them. Three hours later I stumbled into the arms of the stationmaster, who put me in the London train under the impression that I was drunk. Yes, I left alone. I told you I wasn’t a courageous man....