Betty said nothing at all, but the steady pressure of her hands upon his breast increased, and, as before, Dick recoiled beneath it. Her eyes were blazing in her white face; her dishevelled fair hair fell about her shoulders. Dick gazed at her remorsefully, suffering her unresistingly to push him the length of the little room and through an open doorway. He imagined her to be ejecting him from the house, but all in a moment she threw her whole weight upon him with such violence that he stumbled and fell. Before he could recover he found the door closed upon him and bolted. He heard hasty steps in the inner room and the dragging across the floor of some heavy piece of furniture, which was presently pushed against the door.
“Mrs. Whittle!” he called out, “what are you doing? Are you mad?”
Then came Betty’s voice, harsh and broken: “I’ve got ye, Dick Tuffin! Ye can’t get out; there’s no window and no other door. I’ve got ye and I mean to keep ye! Ye’ve killed my husband—ye’ve made me a widow and my child an orphan—an’ I’ll not rest till I do the same by your wife and your child.”
And then something else came battering up against the door. Dick had no doubt but that the barricade was now complete. He felt about him in the darkness, identifying shelves, one or two small barrels, a crock: he was in the buttery most likely. He might possibly force his way out; the bolt was in all probability not very strong, and once the door was opened he could soon do away with all other obstacles; but then he would have that fierce woman to encounter. He could not escape without doing her some hurt, and the awful face of the wounded man would again meet his gaze. Besides, of what use would it be to attempt to escape? He was well known in the place, and the police would soon track him.
He sat down, therefore, with the resignation of despair, shivering from time to time, and straining his ears for every sound in the next room. He heard poor Jim groan now and then, and Betty speak to him in a voice of such yearning tenderness that it was scarcely recognisable as the same which had threatened himself a little while before. He thought of Betty as she had first come upon him, so young and gay in her pink dress, and with her yellow hair glancing in the sun, and of the child which he had so often dandled in his arms. Widow and orphan! Widow and orphan! And all because Dick Tuffin had gone out with a few idle chaps for a night’s frolic. And then he thought of his own little woman at home: he seemed to see her in her “deep”. And the little one, who would never be able to hold up his head because they hanged his father.
Thus did he muse very sorrowfully until slumber overtook him in that inexplicable fashion with which it will sometimes come upon the weary and anxious of heart. And he slept until the grey light of morning began to creep through the chinks of the barricaded door.
He heard voices in the adjoining room—men’s voices, and Betty’s; then the tread of feet walking in unison. The little stairs creaked; the heavy footfalls now tramped in the room overhead, then descended again, and crossed the kitchen. Now the folks were leaving the house; he could hear them clattering down the path, and caught the swing of the gate.
“It’s all over,” he said to himself, “they’ve carried the poor chap upstairs.”
A sudden numbness came upon him: it was true, then, and not a bad dream. Poor Jim Whittle was dead, and he, Dick, had killed him; and now Betty would give him up to the police, and he would be tried and convicted and hanged.
Dick was not very learned in the statutes of his country, and had no manner of doubt that since the keeper had been killed in struggling with him—by his hand, it might be said, for the gun had gone off owing to Dick’s endeavour to wrench it away—he would have to pay the full penalty of the law. To be hanged by the neck until he was dead. He put his hand to his throat, and drew a long sobbing breath.