They entered the wood together, and sat down side by side upon a fallen tree trunk. Jim questioned him about Dolly, and was told that she was living quietly at the Manor, a little widow in a pretty black dress; and that her mother sometimes came to stay with her, but was not at present in Eversfield, so far as he knew.
“Do you think she misses me?” Jim asked.
Smiley wagged his head. “I wouldn’t like to say for sure,” he answered; “but betwixt you and me, sir, that there Mr. Merrivall do spend a deal o’ time at the Manor. Jane Potts, his ’ousekeeper, be terrible mad about it. They do say her watches him like a ferret. It’s jealousy, seeing her’s been as good as a wife to ’im, these many years. But he’s that took with your lady, sir, he can’t see what’s brewing. Seems like as they’d make a match of it when her mourning’s up.”
“The devil they would!” Jim exclaimed, his face lighting up. “Why, then, she’ll be very willing to divorce me.... That’s good news, Smiley!”
The poacher looked perplexed. “Divorce you?” he asked. “Baint you staying dead, then?”
Jim put his hand on Smiley’s shoulder again. “Look here,” he said, “I told you once that if ever I confided my troubles to anybody it would be to you. Can I trust you to hold your tongue?”
Smiley exposed all his yellow teeth in a wide grin. “You can trust I through thick and thin, same as what you said once. They could tear my liver out, but they’d not make I tell what you said I mustn’t tell; and that’s gospel.”
Thereupon Jim explained the whole situation to him, telling him how in a far country he had found again the woman he ought to have married, and how he hoped that Dolly would free him.
“It’s life or death, Smiley,” he said earnestly. “If my wife welcomes me back from the grave, and claims her rights, I shall put a bullet through my head, for I could not be the husband of a sham thing now that I know what it is to love a real woman. Oh, man, I’m devoured by love. I’m burning to be back with her, and with the son she has borne me. Don’t you see I’m in hell, and the fires of hell are consuming me?”
The poacher scratched his towsled red hair. “Yes, I see,” he said. “And I reckon her’s waiting for you over there in them furrin lands where the sun’s shining and the birds are singing. When they told I you was dead I says to old Jenny you’d only gone to those countries you used to talk about, where the trees are green the year round, and you look down into the water and see the trout a-sliding over mother-o’-pearl. ‘’E’s heard the temple-bells a-calling,’ I says, ‘the same as ’e sang about that day in the parish-room,’ I says, ‘and ’e’s just sitting lazy by the river, and maybe the queen of them parts is a-kissing of ’is ’and.’”