She leaned against the bench and for a moment or two gave way to weakness now that the first part of her task was completed. It had been the part where she most ran the risk of failure and it had cost her the greatest effort of will and bodily strength. Chance had favoured her: Niall was out, but he might return at any minute. To try to do what she had to do when he was there would be infinitely harder—so difficult, indeed, that she could not see how she had ever hoped it might be possible when she had planned her course on the supposition that he might be at home.
The place was as untidy as usual. Niall had cleared his work from the bench but left all his tools out. She considered the plywood press where he kept the puppets, and picked up a wood−chisel and fell to work on the door. Not caring now what noise she made, she chopped and jabbed at the panels of the door vainly for a few minutes until it occurred to her to try to force the lock by leverage. Then, thrusting the chisel between the door and the frame she wrenched violently at it. The tool was too delicate and the blade broke in two with a loud ringing sound. Clare rushed to the bench again, and tumbling the tools about, found something that would do better—a long stout screwdriver. She made herself pause and think and having recovered a little calmness, went more methodically to work, and, as the lock was only a small one, in a short time she was able to burst it from the frame.
The two dolls lay there on the second shelf; all but complete now, their limbs fitted on, the hair in place, the painting finished; one thing only remained to be done: the filling of the cavity in the breast. Even in her fearful anxiety to be done and to escape from Brackenbine as fast as she could, Clare felt a strong curiosity to examine her own puppet now that it was finished, and she could not repress a gasp of admiration at the perfection of the little figure which she took, almost shyly, up in her hands. As she had seen earlier, it was an idealised portrait; yet it was she, and she saw with a pang of some feeling that ran counter to all her purpose, that the very characteristics which Niall had caught so well were those he had so often said he loved in her and praised above conventional prettinesses. She felt the stirrings of a desire to keep the doll; hints of arguments that she might keep it in its incomplete state without risk began to whisper in her mind. It needed all her determination—the very firmness that Niall's fine chisel had expressed in the wood —to seize the thing, turn its features from her, and banish its flattery from her mind. Jennifer's startled her, the dark−blue eyes shone so softly up at her and the features of the doll so exactly reproduced in colouring and expression the face Jennifer had turned to her that afternoon. The correspondence between these little wooden things and the living beings they were so darkly and intimately connected with frightened her, so that her heart palpitated and her hands shook as though what she was about to do was indeed a destruction of life; and a dreadful fear assailed her as she laid the dolls on the bench that at this late stage their nexus with herself and Jennifer might in fact be physical. What if when she struck, blood should spout from the little bodies, and she should hear a shriek? With the courage of extreme horror, she set the blade of a broad chisel across the neck of Jennifer's doll, laid face down so that she might not see its smile, and swinging a mallet, struck down with all her might.
The blade bit into the wood, and with a great sob Clare saw that it was but wood. Still, heart−stricken at destroying so beautiful and ingenious a thing, and in frenzied haste to be done, she struck and struck again; then seized her own and, uttering scarcely sane sounds of grief and terror, hacked and battered that small body also. The wood was very hard and she had gone too wildly about the work; she was not damaging the torsos much after chopping off the limbs. In sheer pity she was forced to stop; the savagery of the prolonged, crude dismemberment was too appalling. She could not think what was the right tool to use, the right way to go about the work: she had no longer control of her hands sufficient to use any tool effectively. She glanced distractedly round, and sight of the fireplace prompted her what to do. Sobbing and shuddering she flew about the room, tearing armfuls of straw and shavings from the old packing−cases that stood about, splintering bits of box−lids, wrenching canvas stretchers apart, heaping a pyre above the white ashes in the wide fireplace.
A vision of the day when she had saved Margaret Raines' doll from the flames came back into her mind, and she moaned to remember the love that had led her to this deed now at this hour. But she held to her purpose and, kneeling, she blew and blew at the embers until the straw and shavings caught fire; then running back to the bench she gathered up the gashed little bodies and the severed limbs, gathered up every chip of the dolls that she could find, and put them all in the heart of the fire.
Desperately as she wanted to escape now, she saw that she must stay until the things were consumed. She backed away from the fire, watching it burn up. The straw blazed with a soft roar and the dry packing−case wood kindled with crackings like pistol−shots and sent sparks flying far into the room. She watched, and gradually became a little calmer; her blind horror of the deed itself subsided and the more reasonable fear of being caught by Niall beset her. She dragged forward a small table, crowded with bottles of oil, tubes of paint and tins of turpentine, to stand under the skylight, and swept some of the stuff off on to the floor to give her footing so that she could climb up again. But in the act of doing so she stopped and in intense agitation struck herself violently on the brow, crying aloud: “O God!”
In that ghastly mimicry of butcher's work on the dolls she had forgotten the very heart of the matter: the hearts, indeed, that should fill those hollowed breasts. To leave the drops of life−blood that she and Jennifer had given was to leave themselves still in his power: that much he had let her divine. The dolls, which, because of their astounding likeness, had seemed to be the bodies of his slaves, were after all only inanimate things—things that he could make again: the power of animation dwelt in the small tubes she had glimpsed.
She snatched up the lamp and went back to the cupboard. The tubes had stood in a little wooden rack on the top shelf when she had seen inside the press with Niall that last day. She peered among the collection of glass apparatus and with mounting panic saw that they had been moved. Heedless what more damage she did she thrust and threw the whole contents of the shelf aside. The tubes were not there. Down on her knees she raked out all the contents of the bottom shelf—a collection of models and parts of beautiful toy−like things that formerly she would have lingered over in delight for hours. She dragged out the Captain's coach, searched every corner of the shelves and finally, convinced of failure, stood up, her hand pressed to her mouth, utterly at a loss, only able to groan to herself: 'O God! O God! I can't find them!' She wept, with a kind of feeble self−pity, fear and despair robbing her for a few minutes of all power to think clearly. Then she mastered herself again. There were other presses in the room.
She took up the lamp from the floor where she had set it and lifted it high, turning round to look up and down the great shadowy room. Her eye fell on one cupboard of a different design from the rest. It was made of hardwood, and was of stouter, more workmanlike construction than the others. If only she had kept her wits she would have pitched on that at once as the likeliest place for something valuable to be stored. She had seen it before, but never open.