Eli nodded. “All right, all right, I’m going. I’m not for throwing away a good boat any more’n you are. Just let me finish this gate. I shan’t be a minute.”
Teresa turned away. He would go—and there was over an hour to spare—he would go fast enough, go blindly to his fate. She turned up the valley with a feeling that she would like to be as far from the dark scene of action as possible. But it would not do Eli any harm, she told herself; he was not being murdered; he was going to serve in the Navy for a little while as tens of thousands of men were doing. Every sailor was not killed, only a small percentage. No harm would come to him; good, rather. He would see the world and enlarge his mind. In reality she was doing him a service.
Nevertheless her nerves were jumping uncomfortably. Eli was her own flesh and blood after all, John’s son. What would John, in heaven, say to all this? She had grasped the marvelous opportunity of getting rid of Eli without thinking of the consequences; she was an opportunist by blood and training, could not help herself.
Well, it was done now; there was no going back—and it would clear the way for Ortho.
Yet she could not rid herself of a vision of the evil midshipman crouching in the adit with his four manhandlers and sand-bags waiting, waiting, and Eli striding towards them through the dusk, whistling, all unconscious. She began to blubber softly, but she did not go home; she waddled on up the valley, sniffling, blundering into trees, blinking the tears back, talking to herself, telling John, in heaven, that it was all for the best. She would not go back to Bosula till after dark, till it was all over.
Eli strapped the blankets on more firmly, kicked the straw up round the horse’s belly, picked up the oil bottle and stood back.
“Think he’ll do now,” he said.
Bohenna nodded. “ ’Es, but ’twas a mercy I catched you in time, gived me a fair fright when I found en.”
“I’ll get Ortho to speak to mother,” Eli said. “ ’Tisn’t her fault the horse isn’t dead. Here, take this bottle in with you.”