“He would have done what you will do,” she answered, with the slightest possible tremor in her tone. “He would have become a soldier again, he would have fought for his country.”
“And so must I—fight for my country,” he declared. “That is why I must leave you for an hour now while I make some calls. I shall be back to luncheon. Directly afterwards we must start. I have many things to arrange first, though. Life is not going to be very easy for the next few days.”
She held on to his arm. She seemed curiously reluctant to let him go.
“Everard,” she said, “when we are at Dominey shall I be able to see Doctor Harrison?”
“Of course,” he assured her.
“There is something I want to say to him,” she confided, “something I want to ask you, too. Are you the same person, Everard, when you are in town as when you are in the country?”
He was a little taken aback at her question—asked, too, with such almost plaintive seriousness. The very aberration it suggested seemed altogether denied by her appearance. She was wearing a dress of black and white muslin, a large black hat, Paris shoes. Her stockings, her gloves, all the trifling details of her toilette, were carefully chosen, and her clothes themselves gracefully and naturally worn. Socially, too, she had been amazingly successful. Only the week before, Caroline had come to him with a little shrug of the shoulders.
“I have been trying to be kind to Rosamund,” she said, “and finding out instead how unnecessary it is. She is quite the most popular of the younger married women in our set. You don’t deserve such luck, Everard.”
“You know the proverb about the old roue,” he had replied.
His mind had wandered for a moment. He realised Rosamund’s question with a little start.
“The same person, dear?” he repeated. “I think so. Don’t I seem so to you?”
She shook her head.
“I am not sure,” she answered, a little mysteriously. “You see, in the country I still remember sometimes that awful night when I so nearly lost my reason. I have never seen you as you looked that night.”
“You would rather not go back, perhaps?”
“That is the strange part of it,” she replied. “There is nothing in the world I want so much to do. There’s an empty taxi, dear,” she added, as they reached the gate. “I shall go in and tell Justine about the packing.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Within the course of the next few days, a strange rumour spread through Dominey and the district,—from the farm labourer to the farmer, from the school children to their homes, from the village post-office to the neighbouring hamlets. A gang of woodmen from a neighbouring county, with an engine and all the machinery of their craft, had started to work razing to the ground everything in the shape of tree or shrub at the north end of the Black Wood. The matter of the war was promptly forgotten. Before the second day, every man, woman and child in the place had paid an awed visit to the outskirts of the wood, had listened to the whirr of machinery, had gazed upon the great bridge of planks leading into the wood, had peered, in the hope of some strange discovery into the tents of the men who were camping out. The men themselves were not communicative, and the first time the foreman had been known to open his mouth was when Dominey walked down to discuss progress, on the morning after his arrival.
“It’s a dirty bit of work, sir,” he confided. “I don’t know as I ever came across a bit of woodland as was so utterly, hopelessly rotten. Why, the wood crumbles when you touch it, and the men have to be within reach of one another the whole of the time, though we’ve a matter of five hundred planks down there.”
“Come across anything unusual yet?”
“We ain’t come across anything that isn’t unusual so far, sir. My men are all wearing extra leggings to keep them from being bitten by them adders—as long as my arm, some of ‘em. And there’s fungus there which, when you touch it, sends out a smell enough to make a man faint. We killed a cat the first day, as big and as fierce as a young tigress. It’s a queer job, sir.”
“How long will it take?”
“Matter of three weeks, sir, and when we’ve got the timber out you’ll be well advised to burn it. It’s not worth a snap of the fingers.—Begging your pardon, sir,” the man went on, “the old lady in the distance there hangs about the whole of the time. Some of my men are half scared of her.”
Dominey swung around. On a mound a little distance away in the park, Rachael Unthank was standing. In her rusty black clothes, unrelieved by any trace of colour, her white cheeks and strange eyes, even in the morning light she was a repellent figure. Dominey strolled across to her.
“You see, Mrs. Unthank,” he began—
She interrupted him. Her skinny hand was stretched out towards the wood.
“What are those men doing, Sir Everard Dominey?” she demanded. “What is your will with the wood?”
“I am carrying out a determination I came to in the winter,” Dominey replied. “Those men are going to cut and hew their way from one end of the Black Wood to the other, until not a tree or a bush remains upright. As they cut, they burn. Afterwards, I shall have it drained. We may live to see a field of corn there, Mrs. Unthank.”
“You will dare to do this?” she asked hoarsely.
“Will you dare to tell me why I should not, Mrs. Unthank?”
She relapsed into silence, and Dominey passed on. But that night, as Rosamund and he were lingering over their dessert, enjoying the strange quiet and the wonderful breeze which crept in at the open window, Parkins announced a visitor.
“Mrs. Unthank is in the library, sir,” he announced. “She would be glad if you could spare her five minutes.”
Rosamund shivered slightly, but nodded as Dominey glanced towards her enquiringly.
“Don’t let me see her, please,” she begged. “You must go, of course.—Everard!”
“Yes, dear?”
“I know what you are doing out there, although you have never said a word to me about it,” she continued, with an odd little note of passion in her tone. “Don’t let her persuade you to stop. Let them cut and burn and hew till there isn’t room for a mouse to hide. You promise?”
“I promise,” he answered.
Mrs. Unthank was making every effort to keep under control her fierce discomposure. She rose as Dominey entered the room and dropped an old-fashioned curtsey.
“Well, Mrs. Unthank,” he enquired, “what can I do for you?”
“It’s about the wood again, sir,” she confessed. “I can’t bear it. All night long I seem to hear those axes, and the calling
