The Thing in the Copse
H. B. Marriott Watson
"A melancholy silence held the nether wastes as I came down upon the back of the village. I had
no thought of horror or remorse; no revulsion turned me from the sober contemplation of that
still, stiff figure in the copse, its eyes open upon the dusk unmeaningly.
"It was true the thing bobbed in and out of my mind persistently, as though that fell moment of
fury had stamped an indelible picture on my brain; but its motions had come to be well-nigh
mechanical, and it was only at intervals I was aware that it was dancing there. Flitting as a speck
in the eyesight, it was no distress to me; I had no care lest it should come a permanent visual
sensation. Of the dead itself I recked nothing; there was no relic of hatred in me for the strewn
and helpless body, nor any fear of its particular vengeance. I had put from her for ever (it seemed
to me) the material object of her shame and madness; and though my soul now should keep the
earth until the crack of doom, it should have the solace of her
desolate company. In vain, after
all, had she turned from me; the empty world gaped for her now as it had done for me since that
terrible hour two nights gone. The horrid glee of this reflection ran through my veins, but no
malignity for the dead or for the living had part in my peculiar joy. Indeed, now he had
withdrawn from the possibility of her touch, and there was no longer the mocking picture of her
delicate caress, I seemed to myself clean rid of animosity against him; and that last thought of
admiration which had flashed so strangely upon me at the supreme moment of his fall recurred to
my newly dispassionate mind. I would not deny him a fine courage and a rude air of distinction;
he had made no craven struggle in his end, but dropped softly in the
long ferns without a word,
gone to his shameful account unwincingly.
"The steep thin track, banked and overarched with the gloom of deep thickets, widened upon a
sudden in a place of heaving yews. The winds brushing round a corner in the downs swept past
me
upon the deep valley, raising a dismal singing in the pines. Against the low lights of heaven
the still, black body with its open eyes tossed and swayed, and low noises were growing in the
long corn, when from the darkness of the lower reaches she fluttered into my sight. She came as
a white shadow of skirts out of the heart of the rustling thicket, but I knew her on the instant in
that blackness, as I have ever known her by her mere proximity. I was acquainted with her
errand, too; for he had thrust a gibe at my frenzy; and where he had waited for the tryst, there had
he perished. Standing in the centre of the way, I watched her draw near; she came with a start
and a slight cry; shrank into the shadows; moved as to pass me swiftly; then, pausing, she raise
d
one arm across her face and bowed her head upon her moving bosom. I could not discern her
features; but the lithe grace of her familiar body leapt into possession of my soul. The black
Thing dangled in my eyes upon the trees—I took a step to her and saw
her face, the face that had
touched mine so often, aghast with fear and shame. Could sorrow turn that laughing face to this
pallid spectre of loveliness? I had not seen her since that hour when I had all but thrown her from
the Hall into the howling night.
"'You!' said I tensely. 'You!'" . . .
