‘Then he knows you have discovered—’
Her voice failed. Such explanation of her father’s absence was a new terror.
‘Yes, he knows,’ Dagworthy answered, cruelty resuming its fascination. ‘I couldn’t keep him at the mill, you know, though I let him off his punishment.’
‘You dismissed him?’
‘I did. It’s not too late to have him back, and something better.’
‘Let me go!’ she said hoarsely.
He moved from the door; sight of such misery vanquished even him.
When she reached home, her mother was standing with two or three neighbours in front of the house at the sight of Emily there were exclamations of relief and welcome.
‘My child, where can you have been?’ Mrs. Hood cried, following the girl who passed the garden-gate without pausing.
‘Is father come?’ was the reply.
‘No, not yet. But where have you been? Why, you were coming from the Heath, Emily, in the night air, and you so ill!’
‘I have been to ask Mr. Dagworthy,’ Emily said in a tired voice. ‘He knows nothing of him.’
Her strength bore her into the parlour, then she sank upon the couch and closed her eyes. Mrs. Hood summoned the help of her friends. Unresisting, with eyes still closed, silent, she was carried upstairs and laid in her bed. Her mother sat by her. Midnight came, and Hood did not return. Already Mrs. Hood had begun to suspect something mysterious in Emily’s anxiety; her own fears now became active. She went to the front door and stood there with impatience, by turns angry and alarmed. Her husband had never been so late. She returned to the bedroom.
‘Emily, are you awake, dear?’
The girl’s eyes opened, but she did not speak.
‘Do you know any reason why your father should stay away?’
A slight shake of the head was the reply.
The deepest stillness of night was upon the house. As Mrs. Hood seated herself with murmured bewailing of such wretchedness, there sounded a heavy crash out on the staircase; it was followed by a peculiar ringing reverberation. Emily rose with a shriek.
‘My love—hush! hush!’ said her mother. ‘It’s only the clock-weight fallen. How that does shake my nerves! It did it only last week, and gave me such a start.’
Grasping her mother’s hand, the girl lay back, death-pale. The silence was deeper than before, for not even the clock ticked….
Dagworthy could not sleep. At sunrise he had wearied himself so with vain efforts to lie still, that he resolved to take a turn across the Heath, and then rest if he felt able to. He rose and went into the still morning air.
The Heath was beautiful, seen thus in the purple flush of the dawn. He had called forth a dog to accompany him, and the animal careered in great circles over the dewy sward, barking at the birds it started up, leaping high from the ground, mad with the joy of life. He ran a race with it to the wall which bounded the top of the quarry. The exercise did him good, driving from his mind shadows which had clung about it in the night. Beaching the wall he rested his arms upon it, and looked over Dunfield to the glory of the rising sun. The smoke of the mill-chimneys, thickening as fires were coaled for the day’s work, caught delicate reflection from the sky; the lofty spire of the church seemed built of some beautiful rose-hued stone. The grassy country round about wore a fresher green than it was wont to show; the very river, so foul in reality with the refuse of manufactures, gleamed like a pure current.
Dagworthy’s eyes fixed themselves on the horizon, and grew wide with the sense of things half understood.
The dog had left him and was gone round into the quarry. A bark came from below. At a second bark Dagworthy looked down. The dog was snuffing at a man who lay between a big piece of quarried stone and a little grass-bordered pool. Asleep—was he? Yet it was not the attitude in which men sleep. The dog barked a third time.
He left his position, and followed the circuit which would bring him down to where the man lay. Whilst still a few yards off, he checked himself. If the man slept, his body was strangely distorted; one arm seemed to be beneath him, the other was extended stiffly; the face looked at the sky. A few steps, and Dagworthy, gazing upon the face, knew it.
A cold shudder thrilled him, and he drew back. His foot struck against something; it was a bottle. He picked it up, and read a word in large print on the white label.
The temptation to look full into the face again was irresistible, though horror shook him as he approached. The features were hideous, the eyes starting from their sockets, the lips drawn back over the teeth. He turned and walked away rapidly, followed by the dog, which roused the quarry echoes with its barking.
‘My God! I never thought of that.’
The words uttered themselves as he speeded on. Only at the garden-gate he stayed, and then seemed to reflect upon what he should do. The temptation was to return into the house and leave others to spread the news; there would be workmen in the quarry in less than an hour. Yet he did not do this, but hurried past his own door to the house of a doctor not a hundred yards away. Him he called forth….
About midday a covered burden was brought in a cart to Banbrigg; the cart stopped before the Hoods’ house, and two men, lifting the burden, carried it through the gate and to the door. Mrs. Hood had already opened to them, and stood with her face half-hidden. The burden was taken into the parlour, and placed upon the couch. The outline was that of a man’s form.
