When I first came there, I didn’t see much of Nellie. I used to go out after breakfast every day with my canvases and easel, and paint pictures all day. There was no lack of subject matter; trees, creeks, funny shaped rocks and what you will. Of course I didn’t just paint photographs of the scenery. I took a few of those prissy, straight pine trees and put a few good twists into their trunks. Then I’d paint the rocks a sort of violet or magenta color, with all sorts of enticing bug-eyed creatures looking over the top, and crawling out of the cracks. I dare say you wouldn’t recognize some of the places I painted, but that’s the way I saw things, and when you’re an artist, that’s the only thing that counts — the way you see things.
I usually took some sandwiches with me so that I wouldn’t have to quit until it got dark. Nellie would just about have time to give me my dinner when I got back to the cottage, then she’d leave for home. That’s the way things would have stayed if it hadn’t been for George. I looked up from my painting one day, and there he was, Van Dyke, corduroys and all. I didn’t bother to ask him how he knew where I was. George just had a knack about those things and could find me any time he wanted. So I made some inane remark like “Who let you in?”
He laughed. “Your girl friend,” he said, then he winked at me.
“Oh, no,” I told him. “Site’s not my girl friend. She just cleans house for me.”
“Don’t give me that innocent stuff,” said George. “You’ve got a real beauty there, my boy.”
“But her legs are too short for her body,” I answered.
George was laughing himself sick. “I wasn’t suggesting you should paint her,” was all he could get out.
The next day George came again, and the next day, and the next day. Each day we spent more and more time talking about Nellie, and all the time I was getting more interested. Until then I hadn’t even tried to make a pass at her. I realized that I just hadn’t been interested in girls at all since I left the hospital. I suppose that was part of my illness, and now I was getting over it. After about a week or so, I found that I was terrifically interested, and sat there for a whole morning without painting a stroke, just thinking about Nellie.
At noon I went back to the cottage pretending that I wanted to eat lunch at home that day. Nellie seemed kind of surprised to see me, but didn’t make any comment except to ask me what I wanted to eat. She gave me my lunch, and the whole time I was eating she just went right on working, while I kept my eye on her. The more I watched her, the more I realized that George was right. That inch or two off her legs didn’t really make any difference; the part she had left was pretty good to look at, especially when she started to climb up the stepladder to dust the bookshelves.
I crept up behind her, and made a grab at her. She jumped down and pushed me away, so I tried again. This time, she pushed me away a bit harder. She was quite strong really, and she started to scold me like a mother might start scolding one of her kids. I can tell you I didn’t appreciate that at all. Nobody treats me like a kid and gets away with it. I decided then to go out again and paint, but I spent the whole afternoon brooding.
It was the same thing next morning, and by lunch time I made up my mind that something had to be done about it. I was going to show that little piece that it wasn’t a mother I was looking for. When I got back into the house, I locked the door behind me and went straight up to her. She must have seen that I really meant business because she started fighting and screaming before I had hardly touched her. But I managed to get a sort of bear hug grip on her, and squeezed her arms to her sides and forced her into the bedroom. I pushed her down on the bed and put my knee on her chest, but she still fought so hard I had to let my fingers slip round her throat to hold her down.
I was pretty mad myself by this time. I reckoned she had put up a good enough show, and it was time to quit. “What have you got against me?” I wanted to know.
“Nothing,” she gasped, “but I’m engaged to Billy Sands in the village.”
That was about the worst thing she could have said. Surely she wasn’t turning me down for one of those village yokels. Why, I bet this Billy Sands didn’t even know which end to hold a paintbrush. I know I’m no movie idol to look at, but it isn’t every day that a girl gets a chance at an artistic genius.
“You’re lying,” I said. “It’s George you mean, not Billy Sands.”
“I don’t know any George,” she shrieked. “Let me go, you’re choking me.”
“Not till you tell me the truth,” I shouted. “You’ve been meeting George up here, while I’ve been out painting.”
“I haven’t met anybody up here. Nobody ever comes around at all. Let me go.”
Now I knew she was lying. “I suppose you’ll be telling me soon that George doesn’t exist, like L. B. and H.”
She muttered something I couldn’t quite catch, and I grabbed her tighter and shook her like a dog shaking a rat. Then I noticed she was all blue and limp, so I let go of her and waited for her to come round. But she didn’t come round, and then I knew she wasn’t going to any more.
That was when I saw George standing there, leaning against the doorpost and grinning like a devil, with his arms folded across his chest. I wondered for a moment how he’d got in. It came to me in a flash. He’d been there all the time, and had seen the whole thing.
“You’ve done it this time, old man,” he said.
“Looks like it,” I answered. “What do you think I ought to do?”
He was very casual about the whole business. Made me think he must have previous experience in this sort of thing. “Why don’t you take her out and bury her? There’s a big, fallen trunk down by the creek. You could roll that over the grave, and they’d never find her.”
I asked him to give me a hand, but he just laughed. “Not likely, old man. This is your pigeon. I’ve got my own problems to look after.”
I really hadn’t expected any help from that clown, so I carried the body out and put it on a cart that was used for bringing fire logs up to the cottage. It took me the whole afternoon to bury her, and then, with the aid of some ropes and poles, I managed to push the tree trunk over the grave. After that, I stamped the earth back into place, and covered over the tracks of the cartwheels. The ground didn’t look to me quite the same as before, but then I’m an artist and notice these details. Only another artist would be likely to spot them.
I had to cook my own supper that night. When I’d eaten, I tidied up the place, read for a while, then went to bed. The sheriff got me up at two o’clock in the morning to ask me if I knew where Nellie was. She hadn’t been home and her folks were worried.
“She’s probably skylarking with Billy Sands,” I told him.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“Her boy friend.”
“How do you know about him?”
“She told me,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I seem to remember something about her having a date with him for tonight.”
He apologized for troubling me and then went off. Soon after he’d gone, it began to rain like mad, and when I got up in the morning, I went outside to see what the earth looked like. It was washed so clean, even I couldn’t see where I had made the cartwheel tracks. I got my own breakfast, then went down to the creek to paint. It was still half full of water and made a nice picture. “The Waters of Lethe” I was going to title it.
In the middle of the afternoon, the sheriff came back with another couple of men. I heard them wandering about the estate looking for me, and it took them half an hour to find out where I was.