THORPE walked along, in the remoter out-of-the-way parts of the great gardens, as the first shadows of evening began to dull the daylight. For a long time he moved aimlessly about, sick at heart and benumbed of mind, in the stupid oppression of a bad dream.
There ran through all his confused thoughts the exasperating consciousness that it was nonsense to be frightened, or even disturbed; that, in truth, nothing whatever had happened. But he could not lay hold of it to any comforting purpose. Some perverse force within him insisted on raising new phantoms in his path, and directing his reluctant gaze to their unpleasant shapes. Forgotten terrors pushed themselves upon his recollection. It was as if he stood again in the Board Room, with the telegram telling of old Tavender\'s death in his hands, waiting to hear the knock of Scotland Yard upon the door.
The coming of Gafferson took on a kind of supernatural aspect, when Thorpe recalled its circumstances. His own curious mental ferment, which had made this present week a period apart in his life, had begun in the very hour of this man\'s approach to the house. His memory reconstructed a vivid picture of that approach—of the old ramshackle village trap, and the boy and the bags and the yellow tin trunk, and that decent, red-bearded, plebeian figure, so commonplace and yet so elusively suggestive of something out of the ordinary. It seemed to him now that he had at the time discerned a certain fateful quality in the apparition. And he and his wife had actually been talking of old Kervick at the moment! It was their disagreement over him which had prevented her explaining about the new head-gardener. There was an effect of the uncanny in all this.
And what did Gafferson want? How much did he know? The idea that perhaps old Kervick had found him out, and patched up with him a scheme of blackmail, occurred to him, and in the unreal atmosphere of his mood, became a thing of substance. With blackmail, however, one could always deal; it was almost a relief to see the complication assume that guise. But if Gafferson was intent upon revenge and exposure instead? With such a slug-like, patient, tenacious fool, was that not more likely?
Reasonable arguments presented themselves to his mind ever and again: his wife had known of Gafferson\'s work, and thought highly of it, and had been in a position to learn of his leaving Hadlow. What more natural than that she should hasten to employ him? And what was it, after all, that Gafferson could possibly know or prove? His brother-in-law had gone off, and got too drunk to live, and had died. What in the name of all that was sensible had this to do with Thorpe? Why should it even be supposed that Gafferson associated Thorpe with any phase of the business? And if he had any notion of a hostile movement, why should he have delayed action so long? Why indeed!
Reassurance did not come to him, but at last an impulse to definite action turned his footsteps toward the cluster of greenhouses in the deepening shadow of the mansion. He would find Gafferson, and probe this business to the uttermost. If there was discoverable in the man\'s manner or glance the least evidence of a malevolent intention—he would know what to do. Ah, what was it that he would do? He could not say, beyond that it would be bad for Gafferson. He instinctively clenched the fists in the pockets of his jacket as he quickened his pace. Inside the congeries of glazed houses he was somewhat at sea. It was still light enough to make one\'s way about in the passages between the stagings, but he had no idea of the general plan of the buildings, and it seemed to him that he frequently got back to places he had traversed before. There were two or three subordinate gardeners in or about the houses, but upon reflection he forbore to question them. He tried to assume an idly indifferent air as he sauntered past, nodding almost imperceptible acknowledgment of the forefingers they jerked upward in salutation.
He came at last upon a locked door, the key of which had been removed. The fact vaguely surprised him, and he looked with awakened interest through the panes of this door. The air inside seemed slightly thickened—and then his eye caught the flicker of a flame, straight ahead. It was nothing but the fumigation of a house; the burning spirits in the lamp underneath the brazier were filling the structure with vapours fatal to all insect life. In two or three hours the men would come and open the doors and windows and ventilate the place. The operation was quite familiar to him; it had indeed interested him more when he first saw it done than had anything else connected with the greenhouses.
His abstracted gaze happened to take note of the fact that the door-key was hanging on a nail overhead, and then suddenly this seemed to be related to something else in his thoughts—some obscure impression or memory which evaded him. Continuing to look at the key, a certain recollection all at once assumed great definiteness in his mind: it came to him that the labels on this patent fumigator they were using warned people against exposing themselves to its fumes more than was absolutely necessary. That meant, of course, that their full force would kill a human being. It was very interesting. He looked through the glass again, but could not see that the air was any thicker. The lamp still burned brightly.
He turned away, and beheld a man, in an old cap and apron, at the further end of the palm-house he was in, doing something to a plant. Thorpe noted the fact that he felt no surprise in seeing that it was Gafferson. Somehow the sight of the key, and of the poison-spreading flame inside the locked door, seemed to have prepared him for the spectacle of Gafferson close at hand. He moved forward slowly toward the head-gardener, and luminous plans rose in his mind, ready-made at each step. He could strangle this annoying fool, or smother him, into non-resisting insensibility, and then put him inside that death-house, and let it be supposed that he had been asphyxiated by accident. The men when they came back would find him there. But ah! they would know that they had not left him there; they would have seen him outside, no doubt, after the fire had been lighted. Well, the key could be left in the unlocked door. Then it could be supposed that he had rashly entered, and been overcome by the vapours. He approached the man silently, his brain arranging the details of the deed with calm celerity.
Then some objections to the plan rose up before him: they dealt almost exclusively with the social nuisance the thing would entail. There was to be a house-party, with that Duke and Duchess in it, of whom his wife talked so much, and it would be a miserable kind of bore to have a suffocated gardener forced upon them as a principal topic of conversation. Of course, too, it would more or less throw the whole household into confusion. And its effect upon his wife!—the progress of his thoughts was checked abruptly by this suggestion. A vision of the shock such a catastrophe might involve to her—or at the best, of the gross unpleasantness she would find in it—flashed over his mind, and then yielded to a softening, radiant consciousness of how much this meant to him. It seemed to efface everything else upon the instant. A profoundly tender desire for her happiness was in complete possession. Already the notion of doing anything to wound or grieve her appeared incredible to him.
“Well, Gafferson,” he heard himself saying, in one of the more reserved tones of his patriarchal manner. He had halted close to the inattentive man, and stood looking down upon him. His glance was at once tolerant and watchful.
Gafferson slowly rose from his slouching posture, surveyed the other while his faculties in leisurely fashion worked out the problem of recognition, aud then raised his finger to his cap-brim. “Good-evening, sir,” he said.
This gesture of deference was eloquently convincing. Thorpe, after an instant\'s alert scrutiny, smiled upon him. “I was glad to hear that you had come to us,” he said with benevolent affability. “We shall expect great things of a man of your reputation.”
“It\'ll be a fair comfort, sir,” the other replied, “to be in a place where what one does is appreciated. What use is it to succeed in hybridizing a Hippeastrum procera with a Pancratium Amancaes, after over six hundred attempts in ten years, and then spend three years a-hand-nursing the seedlings, and then your master won\'t take enough interest in the thing to pay your fare up to London to the exhibition with \'em? That\'s what \'ud break any man\'s heart.”
“Quite true,” Thorpe assented, with patrician kindliness. “You need fear nothing of that sort here, Gafferson. We give you a free hand. Whatever you want, you have only to let us know. And you can\'t do things too well to please us.” “Thank you, sir,” said Gafferson, and really, as Thorpe thought about it, the interview seemed at an end.
The master turned upon his heel, with a brief, oblique nod over his shoulder, and made his way out into the open air. Here, as he walked, he drew a succession of long consolatory breaths. It was almost as if he had emerged from the lethal presence of the fumigator itself. He took the largest cigar from his case, lighted it, and sighed smoke-laden new relief as he strolled back toward the terrace.
But a few minutes before he had been struggling helplessly in the coils of an evil nightmare. These terrors seemed infinitely far behind him now. He gave an indifferent parting glance backward at them, as one m............