The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim (books to read now txt) 📕

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 of the men.”

“What is your objection, Mrs. Unthank, to the destruction of the Black Wood?” Dominey asked bluntly. “It is nothing more nor less than a noisome pesthole. Its very presence there, after all that she has suffered, is a menace to Lady Dominey’s nerves. I am determined to sweep it from the face of the earth.”

The forced respect was already beginning to disappear from her manner.

“There’s evil will come to you if you do, Sir Everard,” she declared doggedly.

“Plenty of evil has come to me from that wood as it is,” he reminded her.

“You mean to disturb the spirit of him whose body you threw there?” she persisted.

Dominey looked at her calmly. Some sort of evil seemed to have lit in her face. Her lips had shrunk apart, showing her yellow teeth. The fire in her narrowed eyes was the fire of hatred.

“I am no murderer, Mrs. Unthank,” he said. “Your son stole out from the shadow of that wood, attacked me in a cowardly manner, and we fought. He was mad when he attacked me, he fought like a madman, and, notwithstanding my superior strength, I was glad to get away alive. I never touched his body. It lay where he fell. If he crept into the wood and died there, then his death was not at my door. He sought for my life as I never sought for his.”

“You’d done him wrong,” the woman muttered.

“That again is false. His passion for Lady Dominey was uninvited and unreciprocated. Her only feeling concerning him was one of fear; that the whole countryside knows. Your son was a lonely, a morose and an ill-living man, Mrs. Unthank. If either of us had murder in our hearts, it was he, not I. And as for you,” Dominey went on, after a moment’s pause, “I think that you have had your revenge, Mrs. Unthank. It was you who nursed my wife into insanity. It was you who fed her with the horror of your son’s so-called spirit. I think that if I had stayed away another two years, Lady Dominey would have been in a madhouse today.”

“I would to Heaven!” the woman cried, “that you’d rotted to death in Africa!”

“You carry your evil feelings far, Mrs. Unthank,” he replied. “Take my advice. Give up this foolish idea that the Black Wood is still the home of your son’s spirit. Go and live on your annuity in another part of the country and forget.”

He moved across the room to throw open