John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the kind, cheek-bones wide
apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks to complete the perfect
round, and the nose, broad and pudgy, equidistant from the circumference,
flattened against the very centre of the face like a dough-ball upon the
ceiling. Perhaps that is why I hated him, for truly he had become an
offense to my eyes, and I believed the earth to be cumbered with his
presence. Perhaps my mother may have been superstitious of the moon and
looked upon it over the wrong shoulder at the wrong time.
Be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me what
society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it. The evil was
of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as to defy clear,
definite analysis in words. We all experience such things at some period
in our lives. For the first time we see a certain individual, one who the
very instant before we did not dream existed; and yet, at the first moment
of meeting, we say: “I do not like that man.” Why do we not like him? Ah,
we do not know why; we know only that we do not. We have taken a dislike,
that is all. And so I with John Claverhouse.
What right had such a man to be happy? Yet he was an optimist. He was
always gleeful and laughing. All things were always all right, curse him!
Ah I how it grated on my soul that he should be so happy! Other men could
laugh, and it did not bother me. I even used to laugh myself—before
I met John Claverhouse.
But his laugh! It irritated me, maddened me, as nothing else under the sun
could irritate or madden me. It haunted me, gripped hold of me, and would
not let me go. It was a huge, Gargantuan laugh. Waking or sleeping it was
always with me, whirring and jarring across my heart-strings like an
enormous rasp. At break of day it came whooping across the fields to spoil
my pleasant morning revery. Under the aching noonday glare, when the green
things drooped and the birds withdrew to the depths of the forest, and all
nature drowsed, his great “Ha! ha!” and “Ho! ho!” rose up to the sky and
challenged the sun. And at black midnight, from the lonely cross-roads
where he turned from town into his own place, came his plaguey
cachinnations to rouse me from my sleep and make me writhe and clench my
nails into my palms.
I went forth privily in the night-time, and turned his cattle into his
fields, and in the morning heard his whooping laugh as he drove them out
again. “It is nothing,” he said; “the poor, dumb beasties are not to be
blamed for straying into fatter pastures.”
He had a dog he called “Mars,” a big, splendid brute, part deer-hound and
part blood-hound, and resembling both. Mars was a great delight to him,
and they were always together. But I bided my time, and one day, when
opportunity was ripe, lured the animal away and settled for him with
strychnine and beefsteak. It made positively no impression on John
Claverhouse. His laugh was as hearty and frequent as ever, and his face as
much like the full moon as it always had been.
Then I set fire to his haystacks and his barn. But the next morning, being
Sunday, he went forth blithe and cheerful.
“Where are you going?” I asked him, as he went by the cross-roads.
“Trout,” he said, and his face beamed like a full moon. “I just dote on
trout.”
Was there ever such an impossible man! His whole harvest had gone up in
his haystacks and barn. It was uninsured, I knew. And yet, in the face of
famine and the rigorous winter, he went out gayly in quest of a mess of
trout, forsooth, because he “doted” on them! Had gloom but rested, no
matter how lightly, on his brow, or had his bovine countenance grown long
and serious and less like the moon, or had he removed that smile but once
from off his face, I am sure I could have forgiven him for existing. But
no, he grew only more cheerful under misfortune.
I insulted him. He looked at me in slow and smiling surprise.
“I fight you? Why?” he asked slowly. And then he laughed. “You are so
funny! Ho! ho! You’ll be the death of me! He! he! he! Oh! Ho! ho! ho!”
What would you? It was past endurance. By the blood of Judas, how I hated
him! Then there was that name—Claverhouse! What a name! Wasn’t it
absurd? Claverhouse! Merciful heaven, WHY Claverhouse? Again and again I
asked myself that question. I should not have minded Smith, or Brown, or
Jones—but CLAVERHOUSE! I leave it to you. Repeat it to yourself—Claverhouse.
Just listen to the ridiculous sound of it—Claverhouse! Should a man
live with such a name? I ask of you. “No,” you say. And “No” said I.
But I bethought me of his mortgage. What of his crops and barn destroyed,
I knew he would be unable to meet it. So I got a shrewd, close-mouthed,
tight-fisted money-lender to get the mortgage transferred to him. I did
not appear but through this agent I forced the foreclosure, and but few
days (no more, believe me, than the law allowed) were given John
Claverhouse to remove his goods and chattels from the premises. Then I
strolled down to see how he took it, for he had lived there upward of
twenty years. But he met me with his saucer-eyes twinkling, and the light
glowing and spreading in his face till it was as a full-risen moon.
“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed. “The funniest tike, that youngster of mine! Did
you ever hear the like? Let me tell you. He was down playing by the edge
of the river when a piece of the bank caved in and splashed him. ‘O papa!’
he cried; ‘a great big puddle flewed up and hit me.’”
He stopped and waited for me to join him in his infernal glee.
“I don’t see any laugh in it,” I said shortly, and I know my face went
sour.
He regarded me with wonderment, and then came the damnable light, glowing
and spreading, as I have described it, till his face shone soft and warm,
like the summer moon, and then the laugh—“Ha! ha! That’s funny! You
don’t see it, eh? He! he! Ho! ho! ho! He doesn’t see it! Why, look here.
You know a puddle—”
But I turned on my heel and left him. That was the last. I could stand it
no longer. The thing must end right there, I thought, curse him! The earth
should be quit of him. And as I went over the hill, I could hear his
monstrous laugh reverberating against the sky.
Now, I pride myself on doing things neatly, and when I resolved to kill
John Claverhouse I had it in mind to do so in such fashion that I should
not look back upon it and feel ashamed. I hate bungling, and I hate
brutality. To me there is something repugnant in merely striking a man
with one’s naked fist—faugh! it is sickening! So, to shoot, or stab,
or club John Claverhouse (oh, that name!) did not appeal to me. And not
only was I impelled to do it neatly and artistically, but also in such
manner that not the slightest possible suspicion could be directed against
me.
To this end I bent my intellect, and, after a week of profound incubation,
I hatched the scheme. Then I set to work. I bought a water spaniel bitch,
five months old, and devoted my whole attention to her training. Had any
one spied upon me, they would have remarked that this training consisted
entirely of one thing—RETRIEVING. I taught the dog, which I called
“Bellona,” to fetch sticks I threw into the water, and not only to fetch,
but to fetch at once, without mouthing or playing with them. The point was
that she was to stop for nothing, but to deliver the stick in all haste. I
made a practice of running away and leaving her to chase me, with the
stick in her mouth, till she caught me. She was a bright animal, and took
to the game with such eagerness that I was soon content.
After that, at the first casual opportunity, I presented Bellona to John
Claverhouse. I knew what I was about, for I was aware of a little weakness
of his, and of a little private sinning of which he was regularly and
inveterately guilty.
“No,” he said, when I placed the end of the rope in his hand. “No, you
don’t mean it.” And his mouth opened wide and he grinned all over his
damnable moon-face.
“I—I kind of thought, somehow, you didn’t like me,” he explained.
“Wasn’t it funny for me to make such a mistake?” And at the thought he
held his sides with laughter.
“What is her name?” he managed to ask between paroxysms.
“Bellona,” I said.
“He! he!” he tittered. “What a funny name.”
I gritted my teeth, for his mirth put them on edge, and snapped out
between them, “She was the wife of Mars, you know.”
Then the light of the full moon began to suffuse his face, until he
exploded with: “That was my other dog. Well, I guess she’s a widow now.
Oh! Ho! ho! E! he! he! Ho!” he whooped after me, and I turned and fled
swiftly over the hill.
The week passed by, and on Saturday evening I said to him, “You go away
Monday, don’t you?”
He nodded his head and grinned.
“Then you won’t have another chance to get a mess of those trout you just
‘dote’ on.”
But he did not notice the sneer. “Oh, I don’t know,” he chuckled. “I’m
going up to-morrow to try pretty hard.”
Thus was assurance made doubly sure, and I went back to my house hugging
myself with rapture.
Early next morning I saw him go by with a dip-net and gunnysack, and
Bellona trotting at his heels. I knew where he was bound, and cut out by
the back pasture and climbed through the underbrush to the top of the
mountain. Keeping carefully out of sight, I followed the crest along for a
couple of miles to a natural amphitheatre in the hills, where the little
river raced down out of a gorge and stopped for breath in a large and
placid rock-bound pool. That was the spot! I sat down on the croup of the
mountain, where I could see all that occurred, and lighted my pipe.
Ere many minutes had passed, John Claverhouse came plodding up the bed of
the stream. Bellona was ambling about him, and they were in high feather,
her short, snappy barks mingling with his deeper chest-notes. Arrived at
the pool, he threw down the dip-net and sack, and drew from his hip-pocket
what looked like a large, fat candle. But I knew it to be a stick of
“giant”; for such was his method of catching trout. He dynamited them. He
attached the fuse by wrapping the “giant” tightly in a piece of cotton.
Then he ignited the fuse and tossed the explosive into the pool.
Like a flash, Bellona was into the pool after it. I could have shrieked
aloud for joy. Claverhouse yelled at her, but without avail. He pelted her
with clods and rocks, but she swam steadily on till she got the stick of
“giant” in her mouth, when she whirled about and headed for shore. Then,
for the first time, he realized his danger, and started to run. As
foreseen and planned by me, she made the bank and took out after him. Oh,
I tell you, it was great! As I have said, the pool lay in a sort of
amphitheatre. Above and below, the stream could be crossed on
stepping-stones. And around and around, up and down and across the stones,
raced Claverhouse and Bellona. I could never have believed that such an
ungainly man could run so fast. But run he did, Bellona hot-footed after
him, and gaining. And then, just as she caught up, he in full stride, and
she leaping with nose at his knee, there was a sudden flash, a burst of
smoke, a terrific detonation, and where man and dog had been the instant
before there was naught to be seen but a big hole in the ground.
“Death from accident while engaged in illegal fishing.” That was the
verdict of the coroner’s jury; and that is why I pride myself on the neat
and artistic way in which I finished off John Claverhouse. There was no
bungling, no brutality; nothing of which to be ashamed in the whole
transaction, as I am sure you will agree. No more does his infernal laugh
go echoing among the hills, and no more does his fat moon-face rise up to
vex me. My days are peaceful now, and my night’s sleep deep.
