Beyond them lay a patch of flat, foul, betrampled, houseless, roadless, grassless ground. It was an expanse of thick sticky mud; on it stood pools of dirty water, held by the clay from sinking into the earth; old bricks (why are ancient broken bricks so peculiarly sordid and depressing in appearance?) and bent rusty tin cans. Over the whole brooded a raw, poisonous, yellow-black fog. Across the waste ground crawled the canal that started in the clean green-brown country; here it ran between a clammy grassless towing path and a brick wall. “Ran” is too jocund a word to describe its action. It crept stickily along, a slimy glaze coating its surface, whereon floated the hairless swollen body of a drowned rat.
Ralph Campion stood at the side of the black canal, and looked at the sheer drop of the brick work. This might be a place in which to vanish. Very few of the words he heard that afternoon lingered with him; but the thought fashioned by the reputable citizen who wished that he was dead, pursued him during the ten mile walk, and was with him still. It was the unspoken words which Campion remembered; he knew as well as the other the way in which he must disappear. Oddly enough, it never struck him he might have demanded protection as a price for silence; he did not realise that family and business complications might be the result of evidence elicited by cross-examination; simplicity and generosity clave to him still; perhaps this was why the powers were sorry for him and dealt with him mercifully. The place was lonely; it was growing dusk, there were no barges about; the street was but just finished, the houses were unlet. Only—he could swim. He did not want to live to face public shame, and loneliness, and bitter remorse; this was a man who wanted to live an honourable life, and leave an honourable name. But though he wished to die his body would struggle for life, and this conviction struck him with fear lest he was not this body which willed otherwise than he; if so, perhaps he could not kill himself. Well! if there was hell on the other side, at any rate there was not prison, and his friends staring at and cutting him. There could not be superior persons amongst lost souls. The thought was momentarily cheering.
His body would struggle to live; perhaps poison would be the better way; but drowning might mean accident or murder, whereas if he bought poison——. He took a silk scarf from his pocket and tried to tie his wrists, but his hands were cold and he was clumsy. He flung his watch, chain, and purse into the water—when his body was found their absence would suggest robbery and murder; he kept a little silver loose in his pocket lest poison should after all prove to be the better way.
Suddenly he noticed what, till now, he had not seen. There was a tumble-down hut within a few paces of where he stood; coming towards it was a woman with a huge bundle on her bowed shoulders. As she drew near he saw she carried willow withies; she was a tall old woman, very poorly clad; her feet were naked, and in spite of her burden she walked with a stately step, as lightly as a girl.
This young man was poor, and a criminal to boot, but he was also a gentleman; when he saw this woman, he, though he was thinking of his sins, his despair, and his coming death, showed to her, half mechanically, what all should show at all times, especially to a woman very old and poor, namely, courtesy and helpfulness.
“Let me carry those to the hut,” he said. “They are surely much too heavy for you.”
“Take them,” she said briefly. He took them; they were indeed very heavy. He threw them on the ground by her door.
“You had better enter my hut,” she said gravely.
Now there was no reason why Ralph Campion should enter her hut; in fact there was every reason why he should not do so. Nevertheless, he went in. It was not very dark there; by no means so dark as the waning light warranted it should be. There were willow withies on the floor; the woman sat on the ground, leaned against the door-post, and began to weave them.
“Do you weave baskets?” said Ralph Campion.