The box was made of mahogany. There was a brass handle; it gleamed in the light of her candle. The knives had heavy buck-horn handles. Old Jethro had been proud of them, his son took to them as a matter of course, but Pamela had sneered and said they were barbarous.
There were two sets—a dozen to each set. One was of lighter make than the other; their handles were straight and tipped with steel. The heavier set had stouter handles, which bulged out in knots at the ends. Gainah picked out the two carving-knives and scrutinized the blades. There was a weary, speculative look on her wasted, corpse-white face, in which the brilliant eyes stood out so unnaturally. The frying-pan was at her feet, but at the touch of the keen knives she absolutely whirled away from trivial offenses—she was swept by one superb, dangerous emotion.
She looked round the polished, scoured kitchen, as if asking those dumb gleaming metal things on walls and shelves to help her—to suggest.
Then she moved toward the scullery and quietly drew the long bolts of the door. She went across the yard, skirting the generous pile of farm-buildings. They had been overhauled with the rest of the place. The brick walls had been pointed; she could see every even, white line of mortar. The roofs of thick thatch had been covered with sheets of corrugated iron, which were hard and gray in the dim night. She went to the tool-shed. That, by some oversight or by intention, had been left untouched. It stood apart—the walls red patched with green, the roof of rough tiles covered with a luxurious growth of lichens and stonecrop.
She pushed back the door and went in. There were tools and labor implements of many sorts in the house: all the deadly array of weapons permitted to the peaceful agriculturist. Every one was familiar, to her; she had known them all from her very birth—pronged fork, long scythe, solid spade, rakes with long pointed teeth.
She sat down on a heap of sacks and rubbish by the wall. Her oddly bright eyes roved feverishly over the collection; some on the earthen floor, some sentinel-like against the wall, some slipped up in the rafters, lying stealthily in wait.
After a little she got up stiffly, the rheumatism gripping her cold limbs, and touched these things one by one lingeringly. She ran her fingers along edges, pressed them against teeth: the speculative, questioning look crossed her face again. Yes. She must do it. That was necessary for the peaceful carrying on of the farm life. She had never scrupled to destroy anything that came in the way of the farm. It must be done. But how?
She took the hedgebill down. It had a long rounded handle of wood; its iron head was reared, as if to strike; there was the malignity of a cobra in the curve.
There was the scythe with which through so many early summers she had seen them cut down the young grass; the sickle, the almost circular faghook, the solid billhook of shining steel with which the men chopped thick sticks that were bound in the very hearts of the fagots.
There was an old tragic tale bound round the sickle. Years ago Chalcraft had made a clean cut with it through his child’s leg—a three-year-old asleep in the quivering oats. They said that Chalcraft, when the child died, tried to hang himself in the granary; but it was before she came to Folly Corner.