VII.
"Oh, Roddy—look! Little, little grouse, making nice noises."
The nestlings went flapping and stumbling through the roots of the heather. Roddy gazed at them with his fixed and mournful eyes. He couldn't share your excitement. He drew back his shoulders, bracing himself to bear it; his lips tightened in a hard, bleak grin. He grinned at the absurdity of your supposing that he could be interested in anything any more.
Roddy's beautiful face was bleached and sharpened; the sallow, mauve-tinted skin stretched close over the bone; but below the edge of his cap you could see the fine spring of his head from his neck, like the spring of Mark's head.
They were in April now. He was getting better. He could walk up the lower slopes of Karva without panting.
"Why are we ever out?" he said. "Supposing we went home?"
"All right. Let's."
He was like that. When he was in the house he wanted to be on the moor; when he was on the moor he wanted to be back in the house. They started to go home, and he turned again towards Karva. They went on till they came to the round pit sunk below the track. They rested there, sitting on the stones at the bottom of the pit.
"Mary," he said, "I can't stay here. I shall have to go back. To Canada,
I mean."
"You shall never go back to Canada," she said.
"I must. Not to the Aldersons. I can't go there again, because—I can't tell you why. But if I could I wouldn't. I was no good there. They let you know it."
"Jem?"
"No. He was all right. That beastly woman."
"What woman?"
"His aunt. She didn't want me there. I wasn't fit for anything but driving cattle and cleaning out their stinking pigsties…. She used to look at me when I was eating. You could see she was thinking 'He isn't worth his keep.' … Her mouth had black teeth in it, with horrible gummy gaps between. The women were like that. I wanted to hit her on the mouth and smash her teeth…. But of course I couldn't."
"It's all over. You mustn't think about it."
"I'm not. I'm thinking about the other thing…. The thing I did. And the dog, Mary; the dog."
She knew what was coming.
"You can't imagine what that place was like. Their sheep-run was miles from the farm. Miles from anything. You had to take it in turns to sleep there a month at a time, in a beastly hut. You couldn't sleep because of that dog. Jem would give him me. He yapped. You had to put him in the shed to keep him from straying. He yapped all night. The yapping was the only sound there was. It tore pieces out of your brain…. I didn't think I could hate a dog…. But I did hate him. I simply couldn't stand the yapping. And one night I got up and hung him. I hung him."
"You didn't, Roddy. You know you didn't. The first time you told me that story you said you found him hanging. Don't you remember? He was a bad dog. He bit the sheep. Jem's uncle hung him."
"No. It was me. Do you know what he did? He licked my hands when I was tying the rope round his neck. He played with my hands. He was a yellow dog with a white breast and white paws…. And that isn't the worst. That isn't It."
"It?"
"The other thing. What I did…. I haven't told you that. You couldn't stand me if you knew. It was why I had to go. Somebody must have known. Jem must have known."
"I don't believe you did anything. Anything at all."
"I tell you I did."
"No, Roddy. You only think you did. You only think you hung the dog."
They got up out of the pit. They took the track to the schoolhouse lane. A sheep staggered from its bed and stalked away, bleating, with head thrown back and shaking buttocks. Plovers got up, wheeling round, sweeping close. "Pee-vit—Pee-vit. Pee-vitt!"
"This damned place is full of noises," Roddy said.