In this final position his head had emerged into a leafless space, so that he could see in all directions; could look down at the house, at that open window, the kitchen door, and the flagged path; could look at the barn roofs, the rick-yard, the beehives; could look at his fields, where the grass lay drying; or could look away at woodland, at heath, at distant hill. He paused purposely to give himself one last look round at all he was leaving.
Yes, here was the world--the bitterly sweet world, smiling once more as it wakes from sleep. Looking down at it he felt an agony of regret. How intolerably cruel his doom. Why should he of all mortals have been made to suffer so? But God's law--his own law. Mentally he was obeying, but physically he was in fierce revolt. Every fiber of him, every drop of blood, every minute nerve-cell was crying out against the execution.
The sunlight flowed across the fields in golden waves, the colors of the flowers sprang out, the soft cool air was like a supremely magnificent wine that could give old nerveless men the strength of young giants; and the very marrow of his bones seemed to shrink and scream for mercy. "Ought to 'a' done it at night," he said to himself. "Mr. Bates didn't wait till daylight. In the dark--that's it. At the prisons they give you a bonnet--extinguishing cap; high walls all round you too; and they do it at the double quick--hoicked out of your cell and pinioned in one movement, bundled through the shed, and begun to dance before you can think. Darkness, the sound of a bell, and the chaplain's whisper, 'Merciful Lord, receive this sinner.' And I've heard say they stupefy 'em first, make 'em so drunk they don't know where they are while they shove 'em into nowhere.... Very easy compared with this set-out;" and he groaned. "O God, you've fairly put top weight on me--and no mistake."
But he would have done it if he had not heard his daughter's voice.
Rachel had come to the open window, and she uttered a frightened cry at sight of him perched high in the tree.
"Oh, dads, do take care!"
Next moment her mother came to the window; and they stood side by side, each with a hand to her eyes, watching him in the same attitude of anxiety.
"Don't speak to him," whispered Mavis; and Dale heard the whisper as clearly as if it had been close against his ear.
He could not do it before them. He had been too slow about it; he could not darken their lives with the visible horror of it. And it seemed to him that he had not sufficiently thought of its effect upon them. The whole thing had been clumsily planned. Just at first, when he was found hanging dead with the saw dangling from his neck, it might have been believed that he had slipped and fallen, and hanged himself by accident; but afterward all would have known that it was suicide. The truth would have been betrayed by the running noose, by recollections of Mr. Bates, and by everybody's knowledge of an ancient local custom.