The Devils Garden | Page 8

of his head, and the driver is sent endways from the
box-seat; the cart gallops on to where the, rest of the gang lurk waiting
for it; strong arms, long legs, and the monstrous deed is consummated.
Her Majesty's bags have been stolen.
Though so dark in this bedroom, there would be light enough out there.
There was no moon; but the summer night, as he knew, would never
deepen to real obscurity. It would keep all of a piece till dawn, like a
sort of gray dusk, heavy and impenetrable beneath the trees, but quite
transparent on the heath and in the glades; and then it would become all
silvery and trembling; the wet bracken would glisten faintly, high
branches of beech trees would glow startlingly, each needle on top of
the lofty firs would change to a tiny sword of fire--just as he had seen
happen so often years ago, when as an undisciplined lad he lay out in
the woods for his pleasure.
Now! The church clock had struck one. Barring accidents, the cart was
at its goal; and in imagination he saw the junction as clearly as if he
had been standing at Perkins' elbow. There was the train for London
already arrived--steam rising in a straight jet from the engine, guard
and porter with lanterns, and a flood of orange light streaming from the
open doors of the noble Post Office coach. Perkins hands in his up bag,
receives a bag in exchange, and half his task is done. Forty minutes to
wait before he can perform the other half of it. Then, having passed
over the metals with the cart, he will attend to the down train; hand in
his other bag, receive the London bag; and, as soon as the people in the
signal-box will release the crossing-gates, he may come home.
Dale knew now that he would not sleep until the cart returned.

When the church clock struck the half-hour after two, he lay straining
his ears to catch the sound of the horse's hoofs. Finally it came to him,
immensely remote, a rhythmic plod, plod, plod. Then in a few more
minutes the cart was at rest under his window again; they were taking
in the bags; bolts shot into their fastenings, a key turned in a lock, and
the clerk went back to bed at the top of the house. All was over now.
Nothing more would happen until the other clerk came down in a
couple of hours' time, until the bags were opened, until Ridgett came
yawning from his hired bedroom at the saddler's across the street, and
the new day's work began. And Dale would be shut out of the work--a
director who might not even assist, a master superseded, a general
under arrest in the midst of his army.
He gulped and grew hot. "By Jupiter! I'll have to tell them what I think
of them up there, and please the pigs!"
Then he remembered the pleadings of his wife. She had implored him
to keep a tight hold of himself; and in fairness to her he must exercise
discretion. She and he were one. With extraordinary tenderness he
mentally framed the words that by custom he employed when speaking
of her. "She is the wife of my boosum."
For a little while he calmed himself by thinking only of her. Then,
tossing and turning and perspiring again, he began to think of his whole
life, seeing it as a pageant full of wonder and pathos. Holy Jupiter! how
hard it had been at its opening! Everything against him--just a lout
among the woodside louts, an orphan baited and lathered by a boozy
stepfather, a tortured animal that ran into the thickets for safety, a thing
with scarce a value or promise inside it except the little flame of
courage that blows could not extinguish! And yet out of this raw
material he had built up the potent, complex, highly-dowered organism
known to the world as Mr. Dale of Rodchurch. There was the pride and
glory--from such a start to have reached so magnificent a position. But
he could not have done it--not all of it--without Mavis.
It would be unkind to wake this dear bedfellow merely because he
himself could not sleep. He clasped his hands behind his head, and by a
prolonged effort of will remained motionless. But insomnia was
exciting every nerve in his body; each memory seemed to light up the
entire labyrinth of his brain; each sense-message came inward like a
bomb-shell, reaching with its explosion the highest as well as the

deepest centers, discharging circuits of swift fire through every area of
associated ideas, and so completely shattering the normal congruity
between impressions and recognitions that the slight drag of the sheet