Dark Waters Read Online Free Page A

on the outside won’t stiffen it at all. We are not snails.’
    â€˜The brain is a bit like a snail, don’t you think?’
    Fidelis laughed.
    â€˜That’s amusing, but inaccurate. I am not speaking of the brain, but the mind. That requires an intrinsic skeleton of ideas to keep its shape. For most of us this consists of hope, looking forward, schemes and projects and reasonable optimism. Without these, what remains?’
    I had no idea what he was getting at.
    â€˜Mush?’ I hazarded.
    â€˜Exactly. Mush.’
    Still no wiser, I took him back to his original proposition.
    â€˜So what was it, in your opinion, that did cause Antony to come out here night after night to chase a delusion? I mean, if not that he just wanted to.’
    â€˜Habit, Titus. Habits were all he had left. He drank, he sat in the same chair, he said the same things, he went out to look at the reflection of the moon at the same hour. A hopeful, self-projecting man has no need of such repetitions, but the chronically unhappy can keep going only in that way.’
    â€˜He was certainly miserable, I can vouch for that. His son’s death, then his wife’s. But he had a few sparks of spirit left in him. You heard what they said – his plans for the election…’
    â€˜They’d have come to nothing, Titus, and you know it. His feeble thread of life was so reduced he had nothing but habits left to him, with not a sensible thought in between.’
    â€˜That is not a charitable estimate of my wife’s kinsman, Luke. Though it may be true.’
    â€˜Of course it’s true. The man was a helpless sot, was he not?’
    With a sigh I let this go.
    We came to a break in the left-hand hedge, on the opposite side of the track to that of the river, where there was a cottage standing a little back from the road. At the gate, leaning with a pipe in his mouth, was the cottager himself. His name was Isaac Satterthwaite and he was the local rat catcher. Isaac was sixty-five years old and fully bearded, but neither withered nor bent. Long ago he had been a soldier serving under the Duke of Marlborough himself, and even now his back was straight and military, his cheeks full, and his grey hair abundant enough to be drawn back and worn as a pigtail at the nape.
    We stopped to talk to him.
    â€˜How do, Isaac,’ I said. ‘You’ve heard what’s been found?’
    â€˜I have that,’ he growled. ‘Antony Egan’s fell in the water and drowned himself. It’s only a wonder it took him so long.’
    â€˜You didn’t see him last night, by any chance? In the lane here, on his nightly walk?’
    â€˜No. Not last night I didn’t.’
    â€˜Did you sometimes? He took the same walk every night, I’m told.’
    â€˜Aye, we’ve seen him out late before now, down by the landing, or in the lane. Always drunk.’
    â€˜Did you ever speak to him?’
    He swivelled his head and spat.
    â€˜Before, I might have. Not now.’
    â€˜Before what?’
    â€˜A disagreement, a year or more since.’
    â€˜You fell out?’
    He turned his head, this time the other way, and spat again.
    â€˜There was little to fall out of. We were neighbours, like, and sometimes I took a mug of beer at the inn. But he considered himself above a man in my line of trade, though he had not much cause to, when you looked at him. And then there was what they said about my granddaughter, who used to work for them. Well and good they could give her the sack, but to say … what they said.’
    He straightened up and knocked out his pipe.
    â€˜Well, I must go in. Good day to you, gentlemen.’
    Fidelis and I walked on.
    â€˜What was Maggie dismissed for?’ Fidelis asked.
    â€˜I don’t know. I heard nothing about it.’
    â€˜They must have given her a bad character. The old man took umbrage badly over it.’
    I shook my head.
    â€˜I don’t know.