 CHAPTER 33 When Jasper Fay was tried for the murder of Claude Masterman and acquitted of the charge, it was generally felt that the ends of justice had been served. No human being, whatever his secret opinion, could have desired the further punishment of that little old man whose sufferings might have expiated any possible crime in advance. The jury having found it improbable that at his age and with his infirmities he should have been lurking in the village at ten o'clock at night and waiting in the neighbourhood of Colcourt jail at dawn of the next morning, the verdict was accepted with relief, not only in the little courthouse of the county town, but by the outside public. To none was this absolution more nearly of the nature of a joy than to the unfortunate young man's family. That was in the winter of 1912, and in the meanwhile Lois had been led so successfully by her substitute for love as to be at times unaware of her lack of the divine original. For she was busy, so it seemed to her, every day of every week and every minute of every day. The first dreadful necessities on that night of the ninth of July having been attended to, her thought flew at once to the father and mother of the dead boy. Thor, dear, I know exactly what I am going to do about them, if you'll let me. It was early morning by the time she said that, and all that was immediately pressing was over. Claude was lying in one of the spare rooms that had been prepared for him, and Dr. Noonan, together with the four or five grave, burlier men, Irish-Americans as far as she could judge, who had been in and about the house all night hunting for traces of the crime, had gone away. Those who were still beating the shrubbery on the grounds were not in view from the library windows. Mags and his wife were in the house, as well as dear love and Brightston, getting it ready for reoccupation, since it was but seemingly that the dread guest who had come under its roof should be decently lodged. Thor, having spent some hours before the stupified village authorities, was surprised and obscurely disappointed, not to be put under arrest. Public disgrace would have appeased in a measure of the clamour of self-accusation. To be treated with respect and taken at his word in his account of what had happened between himself and Claude was like an insult to a martyr's memory. When dismissed to his house, he found it hard to go. Having dragged himself back through the gray morning light, it was to discover strange wonders wrought in the immediate surroundings. Lois and her four assistants had whisked the coverings from the furniture and restored something like an air of life. Even the library, having been sufficiently noted and described, had been set in what was approximately order, the broken picture taken from its nail and the broken window hidden by a curtain. On the threshold of the room, Thor paused, shrinking from a spot which henceforth he must regard as cursed. But Lois insisted, Come in, Thor, dear. Come in. She felt it imperative that she should overcome on the instant anything in the way of terrible association. He must counteract remorse. He must not let himself be haunted. She herself sat still, therefore, with the restrained demeanour of one who has seen nothing in the circumstances with which she has not been able to cope. Pale, with dark rings under the eyes betraying the inner effect of the night of stress, she nevertheless carried herself as if equal to confronting developments graver still. The strength she inspired came from rising to the facts as to some tremendous matter, of course. Now that there was a lull in the excitement, she had been quietly discussing the conditions with Uncle Sim and Dr. Hillary. The latter went forward as Thor, tall, gaunt, red-eyed, the wound in his forehead staunched with plaster, advanced into the room. Your face-to-face with the great moral test, my dear Thor, he said, laying his hands on the young man's shoulders. But you'll rise to it. Thor started back, less in Ignatian than in horror. Rise, me? Yes, you, my dear Thor. You'll climb upon it and get it under your feet. The best use we can make of mistake and calamity is to stand on them and be that much higher up. I don't care what your sin has been or what your self-reproach. Now that they're there, you'll utilize them for your spiritual growth. Neither do I say God help you, for I'm convinced in my soul that he's doing it. Thor moved uneasily from under the weight of the benedictory hands. It was as part of his rejection of mercy that he muttered. I don't know anything about him. Don't you now? Well, that's not so important. He knows all about you. It's not what we know about God, but what God knows about us that tells most in the long run. He passed on into the hall where he picked up his hat and went out. Uncle Sim, who, with more of Don Coyote in his face than ever, had been pacing up and down the room, threw over his shoulder, or which said you were on the side of the Angel's Thor, and you are. Thor found his way wearily to the chimney-piece, where he stood with his face buried in his hands and his back to his two companions. He groaned impatiently. Ah, don't talk about Angels. Uncle Sim continued his pacing. But I will, as the time. What, after all, are they but the forces in life that make for the best, and who's ever been on their side more than you? Thor groaned again. What good does that do me now? This good that when you've been with them they'll be with you, and don't you forget it? Life doesn't forsake the children who've been trying to serve it, not even when they lose control of themselves for a few minutes and do what they're sorry for afterwards. Thor writhe. I killed, Claude. Oh, no you didn't, Thor, dear. Lois said quietly. It's wrong for you to keep saying so. We can see perfectly well what has happened. Can't we, Uncle Sim? If Claude revived while you were away and went out to get more air, and someone, as you think, was lurky in the shrubbery. But if it hadn't been for me. As far as that goes, I might as well say if it hadn't been for me. I've told you how he came to me two days ago and how I discouraged him. We're all involved. You know more than the rest of us. If he is involved more than the rest of us, Uncle Sim declared, it's all the more reason why the good forces by which he stood should now stand by him. It's a matter of common experience to all who've ever made the test that they do. He turned more directly to Thor. There's a verse in one of those old songs on fond of quoting at you, I'll never trouble you with another, he promised hurriedly, in answer to a movement of protest on his nephew's part. If you'll only listen to this. It's right, to the point, and run this way. The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivereth them. They're camping round about you now, Thor, as I've always told you they would. Thor raised his head just enough to say savagely over his shoulder. But when I never have feared him in the way you mean, and don't. Oh! but you have, and do. There's two types for that sort of thing, both sketched in graphic style by the Master. There's the two sons sent to work in the vineyard of whom one said to his father, I go, sir, and went not. The other said, I will not, but went. Other of them twain, the Master asks, to the will of his father. I leave it to yourself, Thor. I'm able to escape from his ingenious pardon that caught and blessed him whether he would or no, for remain to silent, while the uncle addressed himself to the niece. I'll be off now, noise, but I'll come back before long and bring Amy. We'll stay here. The house will need to have people in it to make it look as if it was lived in, till Archie and Ena can be got at and brought home. They turned and looked from one to the other distressfully. Poor father and mother, what about them? It was then that Lois showed that the matter had already received her attention. Thor, dear, I know exactly what I'm going to do, if you'll let me. She had been so efficient throughout the night that both men listened expectantly while she sketched her plan. She would cable the facts as succinctly as she could put them to her own father and mother, who were in their pitty-through pâchère on the north coast of France. They would then cross to England and break the news to Mr. and Mrs. Masterman. The very fact of the breach between her parents on the one side and the bereaved couple on the other was an additional reason for charging the former with the errand of mercy. Where so much had been taken, it was the more necessary to rally what remained. Having expressed his approval of these suggestions, Uncle T'sim took his departure. Where is he? Thor asked at once. Come! Though she rose, she lingered to say, with a manner purposely kept down to the simplest and most matter-of-fact plane. You'll come up to the house and have breakfast whence you thaw. It will be ready about eight. As he began to demure on the ground that he couldn't eat, she insisted, O, but you must. You know that yourself. You'll feel better, too, when you've had a bath. You can't take one here, because Mrs. Maggs hasn't put the towels out. Cousin Amy will attend to that when she comes down. These and similar maternal consuls having been given and received, she led the way into the hall, and into pause again at the foot of the stairs. I should go out now to send my caber-ground to Mamar. The sooner I get it off, the better it will be, so that they can cross from our after to Southampton to-night. I've got it all thawed out and condensed, and I shall write it in French, so as to keep it from the people in her own office here. I suppose that everything will be in the papers by the afternoon, and we shall have to accept the publicity. Seeing the pain in his face, she took the opportunity to say, Oh, we can do that well enough, four dear. We mustn't be afraid of it. We mustn't flinch at anything. Whatever has to come out will get its significance only from the way we bear it, and we can bear it well. Having advanced a few steps up the stairs, she turned again on the first landing, speaking down toward him as he mounted. If possible, I shall like to tell Rosie myself. It would be a shock to her, of course, but I want to be with her when she has to meet it. Don't you think I ought to be? On his expressing some form of mute agreement, she continued, Then if you approve I shall telephone to Jim Breen, asking him to bring her to see me. Rosie will guess by my sending for her that something strange has happened. I shall word my message to her in that way. Her last appeal was made to him, and she stood with one hand on the knob of the door beyond which Claude was lying. Four dear, I hope you get at the truth of the things Uncle Sam and Dr. Hillary have been saying. There's a great message to you there. You are on the side of the good things you know. You always have been, and always will be. He shook his head. It's too late to say that to me now. Oh, no it isn't. And what's also not too late to say is that you mustn't let yourself be ridden by remorse. His haggard eyes seeming to ask her how he could help it, she continued. Remorse is one of the most futile things we know anything about. It can't undo the past, when it destroys the present and poisons the future. He was almost indignant. But when you've given way as you say you gave way last night, you braced yourself against doing it again. You make it a new starting point. Isn't that it? Yes, but if you're like me. With her free hand she brushed back the shock of dark hair from his forehead. It was the first touch of personal contact between them since his sudden reappearance. If one is like you, Thor, of course it's harder. You're a terrific creature. I begin to see that now. I never took it in before, because in general you're so restrained. I know it's the people who are most restrained who can be swept most terribly by passion. But I hadn't expected it of you. Even so, it's the sort of thing which only goes with something big in the soul. He put up a hand, protestantly. Don't. But I must. It ought to be said. You should understand it. Fundamentally, I see it quite plainly now, you're the big primitive creature that's only partially tamed by the tenderness of tender hearts. Do you know what you remind me of? Have a great St. Bernard dog that asks nothing better than to love everyone and save life, but which, when it's roused— You see what I mean, as you went on, with a kind of soothing, serious cojolary. Thor, dear, I was never so afraid of you as I've been this night, and I never— Loved, was what she was going to say, but as on the day in the winter woods she suppressed the word for another. I never admired you so much. I'm going to make a confession. What you say you felt toward Claude is what I've often felt myself in glimpses. God knows I don't say that to malign him. I shouldn't say it at all if it were not to point out that you wouldn't have done him any more harm, not that when he came to the act, that I myself. Would you know? He hung his head murmuring brokenly. No. What we've got to see is that you're very human, isn't it? And that's what they mean, Uncle Sim and Dr. Hillary, when they say that you're face-to-face with a great moral test. They mean that after you've used what's happened with in the last few hours, as you can use it, as you can use it, Thor, dear, you'll be a far stronger man than you were before, and you were a strong man already. With eyes downcast he murmured words to the effect that it was difficult to see the way. Won't the way be to take each new thing as it comes? And there are some very hard things still to come, you know, as a step to climb by, to get it under our feet as something that holds us up instead of over our heads as something that crushes us down. Won't that be the way? Maybe like climbing a calvary, but all the same we should be there up instead of down. And, she added with a smile so faint that it was in her eyes rather than on her lips. And you know, Thor, darling, that no one is ever on a calvary alone. With these words she turned the handle of the door, leading him into a room from which the morning light was only partially excluded, and about which vases and bowls of roses had already been set. Claude was lying naturally, wearing a suit of his own pyjamas, white with a little pink stripe. His face turned slightly, and, as it were, expectantly toward the two who approached. Having entered the room first, Lowe's kept to the background, leaving Thor to go to the bedside alone. The difference between the dead Claude and the sleeping one was in the expression. In the sleeping Claude the features were always as if chiseled in marble, and like marble, cold. The dead Claude's face, on the contrary, radiated that which might have passed for warmth and life. The look was one he would have worn if mystified and pleased by something he was trying to understand. In any other case, Thor would have explained away this phenomenon on ground purely physiological. But since he was Claude, he found himself swept by an invading wonder. He knew what people more credulous than himself would say. They would say that on the instant of the great change toward which he had been so suddenly impelled, even poor Claude, with his narrow earthly vision, had been dowered with an increase of perception that bewildered and perhaps rejoiced him. Thor couldn't say this himself, but he could wonder. Was it possible that Claude, with this pleasing puzzled dawn upon his face, could have entered into phases of life more vivid than any it had left behind? Thor found the question surging within his soul, but before he could silence it with any of his customary answers, he heard the counsel of wise old Hervieux of the Ancetue Pasteur, n'y est jamais rien. But his knee was emotional and not philosophical. Stooping, he kissed once more the lips on which there was this quiver of a new life than almost made them move, and sank on his knees beside the bed. Lois, who knew that beyond any subsequent moment this would be the one of last farewell, slipped softly from the room and closed the door behind her. She remembered, as she did so, that apart from her tibet to touch on his hair, there had been no greeting between her husband and herself since his cry to her as she sat on the balcony in the darkness. But perhaps the substitute for love didn't call for it. She went downstairs to carry out her intentions of bringing up Jim Breen and sending her cable-gram to France. Since the necessity for doing the form I would take her to her own house, she would have the chance of changing her dress before the relative publicity of the telegraph office in the square. She would need also to explain the circumstances to her servants, who by this hour would be moving about the house and might be alarmed on finding that her room had not been occupied. The door to the garden portico, being that which would probably be unlocked, she turned into Willoughby's Lane, where her attention was caught by the sight of two men coming down the hill. What she saw was a young man helping an older one. The old man leaned heavily on his companion, hobbling with the weariness of one who can barely drag himself along. Lois was seized by sudden faintness, but a saving thought restored her. It was no more than the prompting to give this spent wayfarer a cup of coffee as he passed her door, but it met the instant's need. By a deliberate effort of the will she banished every suggestion beyond this kindly impulse. If there were graver arguments to urge themselves, they were for others, rather than for her. That she was not the only person within eight or ten hours to be startled by the sight of that little old man was abundantly evidenced later. John Stanchfield, Elias Palmer, Harold Ormthwaite, and Nathan Ridge, all farmers or market gardeners of the Colcord District, testified to frights and spooky feelings on being accosted by a dim grey figure plodding along the Colcord Road in the lonely interval between midnight and morning. The dim grey figure seemed to have recognized the different teams by the section of the road through which they jolted or by their flickering lamps. That you, Elias! Why, yes, who be you? Darn if it ain't Jasper Faye! What under the everlasting canopy be you doing this way so late at night, and so early in the morning, as you might say? My poor boy to be let out of five! Grunts of sympathy and inquiries concerning the nature of the truck being taken to market made up the rest of the conversation, which ended in a mutual. So long! With John Stanchfield and Harold Ormthwaite the exchange of sedentations had been on similar lines. No one but old Nathan Ridge had had the curiosity to ask, What are you tramping the eight mile for? Could have took the train at Marchfield and got out of the old door. Well, the grazer didn't, just suit. Marchfield's three miles from my place, and if it comes from tramping three miles you might as well make it eight. Guess you pretty well had took it out, aren't ya? Well, I'm some time. Been taking it easy, though. They've told me about eight o'clock last night and just strolled along. About as, Nathan, I had to be out of my little place last night, Root and Branch, and it's kind of eased my mind like to be footing it through the dark. Guess you feel pretty bad, don't you? Well, I do. Don't so much now. Got used to it? No, it ain't that so much. It's just that if I've suffered, others will. But according to Mr. Ridge, further explanation was withheld. The speaker going on, disappointingly, to say, But guess I'll be keeping along. Hope you get your price on the MPs, awful sight of them in the market off this last dry smell. So Jasper Fay trudged on. He trudged on patiently, with the ease of a man accustomed all his life to plodding through the soil, though now and then he paused. He paused for breath, or for a minute's repose, and sometimes to listen. He listened most frequently to sounds behind him, as of expecting pursuit. He listened to the barking of dogs, the gallop of grazing horses across the dark pastures, or to the occasional bray of a motorist's horn. When nothing happened, he went on again, though with each renewal of the effort his footsteps lagged more wearily. Dawn was gray by the time he had come face to face with the long, grim house of sorrow. It was grim unintentionally, grim in spite of well-meant efforts to cheer it up and make it alluring, at least to the passer-by. For him, anperopsis had been allowed to clamber over the red-pick walls. For him, a fine piece of lawn was kept neatly cut. For him, the national flag floated during daylight over a grotesque pinnacle. For him, a fountain plashed on feast days. Neither fountain nor flag nor sword nor vime was visible except to the outsider, but it was for him the effect was planned. For him, too, a little common had been set apart on the other side of the roadway, and garnished with a wooden bench under a noble, fan-shaped elm. Jasper Faye sat down on the bench, as he had sat down on it many a time before, hunched and weary. For the three years, more nearly, in which Matt had been shut up here, the father had spent with him as many as possible of the minutes allowed for intercourse, prolonging the sense of communion by sitting and staring at the walls. In times past he had stared impatient longing for the moment of the boy's release. But this morning he only stared. Behind the staring thought was too inactive for either retrospect or forecast, and thought was inactive because both past and future now contained elements too big for the overtaxed mind to deal with. He could only sit wearily and expectantly on the bench, watching, at the end of one of those long wings, a small gray door on which he had been told to keep his eyes. After the first flicker of light the day came slowly. The lowlands around the prison were shrouded in a thin gray mist, through which lombardy populars and water's cottages and prison walls loomed ghostly. When, a few minutes after the clock and the pinnacle of struck five, the gray door opened soundlessly and a shadowy form slipped out. The effect was like that of a departed spirit materializing within human ken. The shadowy form shook hands with someone who remained unseen, and after it had taken a step or two forward, the soundless door shut it out. It looked timorous and lone in the wide ghostly landscape, advancing a few places, stopping, searching, advancing again, but uncertainly. As it emerged more fully into view it disclosed a bundle in the hand, a light gray suit, and a common round straw hat. It moved as though testing ground that might give way beneath it, or as trying the conditions of some new and awesome sphere of existence into which it had suddenly been thrust. With all his remaining forces concentrated into one sharp, eager look, Jasper Fay crept forward. The ground missed, blurring his outlines. The two dim figures were face to face before the sun perceived his father's presence or approach. On doing so he started back. Why, Father, what's the matter? You look— His voice dropped faintly. You look terrible! But the father's faculties were already too exhausted to catch the movement and note of dismay. He was drained, even of emotion. All he could do was to extend his hand with the casual greeting, Well, mad, how are you? Come to meet you. He explained to her for the immediate program, which was to go by the five-thirty train to Marchfield. Went, by taking the shortcut through Willoughby's Lane and Counties Street, they would reach home for breakfast by seven. Home, it had to be told, was no longer the little place on the north bank of the pond, but a three-family house on the thawley estate, with the back piazza for the yard, and nothing at all in the way of garden. A home without a garden to an old man who lived in gardens all his life was more of an irony than a home without a roof-tree. But even this evoked from the sufferer only a mild statement of the fact. Milderness, resigned and apparently satisfied, marked all the turnings of the narrative unfolded as they plodded to the station, while the sun took the opportunity to scan at his leisure those changes in the sunken face that had shocked him at the moment of encounter. It was no new tale that Matt heard, but it pieced together the isolated facts made known to him in the few letters he had received and the scattered bits of family news he'd been able to pick up on visiting days. For all of it he was prepared. He would have been prepared for it even if he had received no hint in advance, since it was nothing but what the weak must expect from the strong and the poor from the rich. We'll change all that, was his only comment, but he made it whenever he found an opening. Only once did he permit himself to go beyond the dogged repetition of this phrase. Got him with some fellows there. He joined his head backward in the direction from which they'd come. Who thought the whole business out? Could always get together, as trustees. International's them fellows were. The IIA. Heard of them, haven't ya? No bread and treacle in their program. Been handing out that too long. The difference between the face Matt Fay had looked forward to seeing and the one which was now turned up to him, was that between a mirror and a pane of glass. In a mirror there would have been reflection and responsiveness. Here there was nothing but a blank, shiny stare, vitrious and unintelligent. Jasper Fay, it seemed to his son, had passed into some pitiful and premature stage of dotage. To the release prisoner that change was but one more determining factor in his own state of mind. He was prepared to find his mother in worse case than his father and Rosie in worse case still. Poor little Rosie. She was the traditional victim of the rich man's son. So be it. Since it was for him to see that she was avenged, he asked nothing better. The more wrongs there were beside his own, the more he was justified in joining the campaign of blood and fire, of eloquence and dynamite, to which he felt a call. He thought suddenly over these things, as the train jogged through the rich fields and market gardens on the way to Marchfield, and the quiet little man with the glassy stare and the gentle, satisfied, senile smile sat silent in the seat beside him. Matt Fay was glad of the silence. It left him the more free to gaze at the meadows and pastures, at the turnips and carrots and cabbages of which the dewy glimpses fled by in successive visions of wonder. It was difficult not to believe that the sky had grown bluer, the earth greener, and the whole round of nature more productive during the years in which he had been put away. His surprise in this recognition of the beauty of the world gave a poignant, unexpected blend to his wrath at having been compelled to forfeit it. He got the same effect from every bird and bee and butterfly that crossed his path between Marchfield and the village. No yellowing spray of golden rod, no blue-eyed ragged robin, but symbolized the blessings of which he had been cheated. In proportion, as the sun broke through the bank of cloud, burning away the mist and drawing dueled rays from the dew-drops, the new recruit in revolution found his zeal more eager to begin. The very flagging and stumbling of the steps that tottered beside his own intensified his ardour. CHAPTER XXXIV It was more strange than I dare tell you, mother dear. Lois added to the letter of details which she wrote at odd minutes during the day, that that poor old man should have broken down just at our door. There was a kind of fatality in it, as if he had come to throw himself at our feet. The sun would have gone on if his father had been able to drag himself another yard, but he wasn't. It was all we could do to get him up the portico steps and into the nearest seat. I wonder if you remember him, old Mr. Fay. If so, you wouldn't know him now. I can only compare him to a tree that's been attacked at the roots and shrivels and dries in a season. He seemed to have passed from sixty to ninety in the course of a few months, as if the very principle of life had failed him. It would be pitiful if it wasn't worse. I mean that we're afraid it may be worse, though that is a matter which has yet I mustn't write about. The sun puzzles me, or rather he would if there was not something in him like all the other phase, desperate and yet attractive, appealing and yet hostile. He looks like his sister, which means that he's handsome, with those extraordinary eyes of the shade of the paler kinds of jade, and a finish to the features quite unusual in a man. The present shows in his pallor, in his cropped hair, and in something furtive in the glance which, forays, will probably pass as he gets used again to freedom. I remember that Dr. Hillary once said of him that he's the staff out of which they make revolutionaries and anarchists. In that case I should think he might be a valuable addition to the cause, for as with the Rosie there's a quality in him that wins you at the very moment when you're most repelled. He makes you sorry for him. We're sorry for them all. Even now, with poor Claude lying there, we've no other feeling than that. We've had enough of retaliations and revenges. Nothing could prove their uselessness more thoroughly than what happened here last night. If we could at everything rest where it is leaving the crime to be its own punishment, God knows we would do it gladly. Later in the day she continued, I wish you could have seen the meeting between Thor and that poor fellow who has just come out of jail. Thor was superb, so gentle and kind and tender, and all with an air that a tragic sorrow has made noble. There are things I cannot tell you about him that Thor must tell to his father if they're ever told at all. But this I can say even now, that if any good is to come out of all this, it will be through Thor more than any one. He doesn't see his ways yet, but he'll find it. He'll find it by the same impulse that made him march up to Mattfay, putting his hand on his shoulder, and looking him in the eyes with a simple man-to-man sympathy which no one could resist. The very fact that Thor feels so deeply that he's been to blame, very, very much to blame, gives intensity now to his kindness. As for Mattfay, he coloured and stammered and shuffled, and though he tried to maintain his bravado, it was without much success. He was still more embarrassed when after the old man had finished his coffee and was able to move again, Thor ordered Sims to bring round the car and drive the two of them home. We said nothing to them about Claude. I couldn't have borne it's being mentioned to them here, or to have been obliged to watch the effect. It would be like having to look on at a vivisection. There are things I don't want to see or to know. All that is really imperative is that whatever the outcome, they should consider us their friends. The letter was not finished till she was alone that night. She wrote carefully at first, choosing just the right words. Thor is sleeping at the other house and may continue to do so for some time. He seems to want to be there, as you can understand. Not only does he make it more bearable for Uncle Sim and cousin Amy, but he gets a kind of assuagement to his grief in being near Claude. You needn't be surprised, therefore, if he remains a little longer, perhaps longer than you might expect. Up to this point she'd been cautious, but for a minute something less controlled escaped her. Oh, Mother Darling, I want to be a good wife to Thor as you've been a good wife to Papa. He needs me, and yet in his most heart he is bearing this great trial alone. Don't misunderstand me. I haven't broken down. Perhaps as I could have broken down a little it would have brought me nearer to him. But I'm not near to him. There's the truth. I'm infinitely far away from him. In a sense I'm infinitely below him. Though I've been right in certain matters in which he has been wrong, I feel strangely his inferior. He has things on his conscience for which I know he finds it hard to see the ways of repentance. And I have nothing on mine. Nothing that is but a vague discomfort and a sense of not being wholly right. And yet I feel that he's—how shall I put it—that he's the nearer to God of us two. He needs me, and I want to help him. But it's like helping someone who's on a tower while I stand on the ground. Oh, Mother Darling, why can't I be to him what you've been to Papa? What is it that men get from women which saves them? Thor needs saving just as much as other men, though you might not suppose so. I know you think him perfect, and I used to think the same. But he's not. He has faults, grave ones. I even know that he's weak, where I'm strong. That the thing he needs is the thing I can supply. Only I don't supply it. Mother Dear, you've given it to Papa, or he wouldn't be recovering as he is. Why can't I give it, too? He's there in that house, and I'm here in this. His heart is aching for grief and mine because I don't know how to comfort him. And all because the glimmer of light that leads me on isn't strong enough. It's better than nothing. I don't deny that. I can grope my way by it when I might expect to be utterly bewildered. But, O Mother Dear, it's not love. But having read this page in the morning, she suppressed and destroyed it. After the night's rest she was more sure of herself. Since she had any clue at all, she felt it wise to possess her soul in patience, and to see to what issue it would lead her. For the passages she withdrew, she substituted, therefore, such an account of rosy as would put her mother in touch with that portion of Claude's life. It's hard to know how the little thing feels just now, she went on, when the main facts have been given, because she's so stunned by dread. It's the same dread that oppresses us all, but which is so much more terrible for them. For poor little Rosie, the things that have happened are secondary now to what may happen still. That almost blots Claude out of her mind. Luckily she has a great deal of pluck. Of what in our old-fashioned New England phrase was called grit. That shall win in the end, and come out at last to a kind of happiness I haven't the least doubt. Especially she has that fine fellow Jim Breen to turn to. You remember him, don't you? It's touching to see his tenderness to Rosie now that she has such a need of him. It's the more touching because she doesn't give him anything but the most indirect encouragement. He knows perfectly well that whatever he gets from her now will be only her second best. But he's grateful even for that. She came to me yesterday morning of her own accord, before I could get words to her. William Sweet-Apple had heard the news and told her as he passed the house where they had just gone to live in Susan Street. Rosie had been early to the door to taking the milk, and Sweet-Apple was going by. She flew here at once. I'd expected her to be crushed. But she wasn't. As I've just said, she seemed to be looking forward rather than looking back. She was looking forward to what I've hinted at and dare not say, and setting her face as a flint. That is how I can best describe her. And yet it was as a flint with a wonderful shine on it, as if something had come to her in the way of inner illumination that used not to be in her at all. Jim Breen is fond of saying that this is not the Rosie of a year or two ago. And it isn't. It's not even the Rosie of the episode with Claude. Her face is now like a lighted lamp, as compared with the time when it was blank. I'm not enough in her confidence to know exactly what has wrought the change, so that I can only guess. It seems to me the same thing that has given the mother a new view of life, only that Rosie has probably come to it by another way. They're strangely alike those two, each so tense, so strong, so demanding, each broken on the wheel, and each with that something firm and fine in the grain to which the wheel can do no more than impart a higher patina of polishing. They seem to me to bring down into our rather sugary life some of the old, narrow, splendidly austere New England qualities that have almost passed away, and to make them bloom. Bloom, that is, as the Portulaca blooms in a parched soil where any other plant would bake, and yet with an almost painfully vivid brilliancy. Doesn't George Meredith say in one of his books, is it the egoist, that the light of the soul should burn upward? Well, that's what it seems to do in them. To burn upward with a persistent glow, in spite of conditions that might reasonably put it out. The old man is a mystery to me, she wrote later, chiefly because it is so impossible to connect him with any of the things we fear. He seemed so small and shrunken and harmless as he sat on the Portulaca yesterday morning, drinking his coffee and munching a slice of toast, that he appealed to me only as something to be taken care of. That sinister element which I have seen in him of late had gone all together, leaving nothing but his old, faded, dreamy madness, contented and appeased. That is the really uncanny thing, that he seems satisfied. He showed no fear of us at all, nor the slightest nervousness, not even when Thor came. Thor was startled to see him there at first, but I managed to whisper a word or two in French, so that he went straight up to Faye and shook hands. I was glad of that. It put us in the right attitude, that of not trying to find a victim or looking for revenge. Before adding her next paragraph, she waited subject matter pensively. It was not necessary to her letter. It was nothing her mother was obliged to know. She decided to say it, however, from an instinct resembling that of self-preservation. If her mother were ever to hear anything, Thor saw Rosie too. He was coming downstairs from taking a bath just as she was in the hall going away. It was the first time he'd seen us since before we were married. He was so lovely to her. I wish I could tell you. You know he used to be interested in her in the days when her mother was his only patient. It was through him, if you remember, that Rosie and I came to be friends in the first place. He asked me to go and see her, to be nice to her. He feels very strongly that we people of the old, simple American stock should have held together in a way we haven't done, and that we shouldn't have allowed money to dig the abyss between us, which I'm afraid is there now. I know that you personally are not interested in ideals of this kind, and yet Thor wouldn't be the Thor you love unless he had them. So he was lovely with Rosie, holding her hand and looking down at her with those kind eyes of his, and begging her, whatever happened, whatever happened, mind you, to throw everything on him in the way they would do if he was brother to them all. People talk about the brotherhood of man, but there will never be any such thing as the brotherhood of man till more men and more women too get the spirit that's in him. Claude had been a week or more in his grave when the letters began to arrive from Mrs. Willoughby. As to our sailing, she wrote from London, everything depends on Ena. My pig-able rams would have told you that she's better, but not exactly how. She's better mentally and very sweet. I think it's surprising. Now that the first shock is past, she's calmer too, and doesn't say so often that she's expected it. Why should she have expected it, and I couldn't make out to her last night, when art she told me that there had been something between Claude and a girl named Fay. I remember those Fays, queer people they always were, rather upish. She was a big handsome girl when I was a little one. Eliza Grimes was her name, and as long as goes that she couldn't keep her place. I remember how she came for a while to Aunt Rachel's school, though not for long. Aunt Rachel couldn't draw too exclusively a line at first, but she did drop her in the end. I should never have thought that Claude would take up with a girl like that, Claude of all people. You can't run counter to class distinctions without making trouble, I always say, and you see how it acts. You were in for a far too Republican or too Democratic or whatever it is, but I never thought that of Paul Claude. Not that art she attributes this dreadful thing to the connection with the Fays, he won't hear of any such suggestion. Eliza seems to look on it at first as a retribution, but art she insists that there never was anything to retribute. There may be two opinions about that, though, mind you. I'm not saying so. To the best of my ability I'm letting bygones be bygones, as I think I've shown. But Ina certainly thought so at first, and it's my belief she does still. She's told me herself that when they were motoring through Devon and Cornwall they never reached their destination for the night without her being afraid of a cable-gram awaiting their arrival. She was sure something terrible was going to happen, and knew it before they left home. I asked her in that case why in the name of goodness they should have come. But she couldn't answer me. Or rather she did answer me, just the kind of answer you'd expect from her. It was to get some new things, and she's got them. Lovely some of them are, especially the dinner-gowns from Marriott's, but with their money and where it comes from, it's easy to dress. Retribution indeed. It must be retribution enough for the poor thing just to look at them. She's already had a woman from Jays to talk over her morning. Seems heartless, doesn't it? But then, of course, she must have it. Jays' woman had to take her measurements from the grey travelling suit, for the doctor won't let her get up for another week, not even to be fitted. That will show you how far we are from sailing, and poor Archie has changed the bookings twice. As for him, I can't tell for the life of me how he feels about being kept here. He's so frightfully the gentleman. I've always said that he wore good manners, not as his natural face, but as a mask, and I feel it now more than ever. It's a mask that hides even his tears. Though I'm sure, poor man, they flow fast enough beneath it. All the same, I suspect that he finds it something of a relief to be held up here, for a while at any rate. He wishes he was home, and yet for some reason he's afraid to get there. Terrible as everything is. I know he feels that it will be more terrible still when he's on the spot. He was in a subsequent matter that Mrs. Willoughby wrote. I had to scrawl so hurriedly yesterday to catch the first mail, but I couldn't begin at the beginning, or get to the point, or anything. I'll try now, though. As for the beginning, it's like going back to the Dark Ages, it all seemed so long ago. Your first Kegelgram, giving thus the news, arrived at Les Dalles in the middle of the afternoon, and such a scramble as we had to get over to Harvard in time for the night-boat. I can't tell you how we felt, for it was one of those shocks so awful that you don't feel anything. At least I didn't feel anything, though I can't say the same of your father. He poor lamb has felt it terribly so sensitive as he is, and so easily upset. Well, we managed to get to Harvard in time, and had a fair crossing. We reached London about ten in the morning, and of course had no notion of where Archie and Ena were. So we drove to their bankers, and as luck would have it, found they were in London on their way between Cornwall and the North. Once we'd learned that, we came straight to this hotel and sent up our cards. After that we waited. Waited, I should say so. Your father got crosser and crosser, threatening to go away without breaking the news at all. We knew they thought we'd come to make trouble about old scores, and we were discussing whether or not to see us. When word came at last that we were to be shown up, your father was in such a state that I had to leave him in the public parlour and go and face it alone. I wonder if you've ever had the experience of being ushered into a room where you could see you weren't wanted. I don't suppose so. I never had it before, and I hope I never shall again. It was one of those chintzy, English-sitting rooms with flowers in every corner. I shall never see sheardy poppies again without thinking of poor Claude. Archie was standing in the middle of the floor, looking more gentleman than ever, but no Ena. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Bessie, he said, with that frigid sympathy of his which to me is always like iced water down the spine. Is there anything I can do for you? We were facing each other with a round table between us. No, Archie, I said it didn't come on my account, but on yours. I can see him still the way he stood with a queer little upward flash of the eyebrows. Indeed? Yes, I had a cable-gram yesterday afternoon from Lowe's. I gave him time to take that in. We came over at once, Len and I. I had scarcely said this when my heart leaped into my mouth, for Ena cried out from behind the door leading into the bedroom, where I felt sure she was. It's about Claude. It was the strangest sound I ever heard, the kind of sound she might have made if she saw something falling on her that would kill her. Archie stood motionless, but he turned a kind of gray white. Is it? was all he asked. I waited again, waited long enough to let them see that what I had to tell was grave. It is Archie, I said then. Is he? Archie began, but I saw he couldn't finish. In fact, he didn't need to finish, because Ena cried out again. He's dead. Archie could only question me with his eyes, so that I said, I'm sorry to have been the one to bring you the news. I got no further than that when a kind of strangling moan came from Ena and a sound as if she was falling. Archie ran into the bedroom, and the first thing I heard was, Bessie forgot to say come here. When I got there Ena was lying on a little tumbled heap beside the couch. She had on a lilac kimono and could just as well have seen me as not, so I knew that what we had said downstairs had been true. They did want to give us the cold shoulder. Well, you can imagine that it was all over with that. We had everything we could do to bring Ena around and get her on the couch. It took the longest time, and while we were doing it, before she could follow anything we said, Archie asked me what I knew, and I told him. I was glad to be able to do it in just that way, because I could break it up and get it in by pieces, a fact at a time. There was so much for him to do, too, that he couldn't give his whole mind to it, which was another mercy. When I could leave Ena, I slipped into the sitting-room, shutting the door behind me, and letting Archie tell her what I had been able to tell him. While he was doing that, I scribbled a little note, saying that Len and I were going to Garlands, where they would find us in case we could do anything more to help them. Without waiting for him to come out of the bedroom, I left the note on the table and went away. In succeeding letters Mrs. Willoughby told how Archie had come to them at Garlands, and insisted on their returning with him to the hotel in Brookstreet, and had installed them in a suite of rooms contiguous to his own. Moreover, he'd lunged to them, begging them not to leave him. It was the most extraordinary turning of the table's best he had ever known. He produced the impression of a man not only stunned, but terrified. If the hand that had smitten Claude had been stretched right out of heaven, he could not have seemed more overawed. He was afraid, that was what it amounted to. If Mrs. Willoughby read him a right, the tragic thing affected him, like the first trumpet note of doom. It was as if he saw the house he had built with so much calculation, beginning to tumble down, laid low by some dread power to which he was holding up his hands. He was holding up his hands not merely in petition, but in propitiation. She was not blind to the fact that there was a measure of propitiation in his boarding and lodging her husband and herself. He'd clung to them because his desolation needed something that stood for old friendship to cling to. But in addition to that, he had dim visions of the dread power that had smitten Claude looming up behind them and acting somehow on their behalf. It's all very well to insist that there's nothing to retribute, ran a passage in one of the letters. But the poor fellow is saying one thing with his lips and another in his soul. What's the play in which the ghosts come back? Is it Hamlet or Macbeth or one of Ibsen's? Well, it's like that. He's seeing ghosts. He wants us to be on hand because we persuade him that they're not there, that they can't be there, so long as we're all on friendly terms, and that we're not laying up anything against him. The very fact that he pays our bills makes him hope that the ghosts will keep away. We've promised to go back with them. She informed her daughter elsewhere. For one thing, Ina needs me. If I didn't go, she'd have to have a nurse, and I'd rather not leave her till she's safe in your hands. I must say I can't make her out. She puzzles me more than Archie does. Now that a week has gone by and the first shock is over, she's like a person coming out of a trance. She's so sweet and gentle that it's positively weird. Of course she's always been sweet, that's her style. But not in this way. For my word, I don't know whether she has a soul or not, whether she'd never have one, or whether one is being born in her. But she's patient and, you might even say, resigned. There's no question about that. She's not a bit hard to take care of, making little or no demand, and just trying to get up strength enough to sell. She's grieving over Claude. And yet her grief has the touching quality in it that you get from a sweet old tune. I must say I don't understand it. Not in her. It was when she was able to announce that Mrs. Masterman was well enough to sell that Mrs. Willoughby acknowledged the first letters from my daughter. We go by the Rorytania on the third. Archie is simply furious that the hints you're all throwing out about that old man Faye. Perfectly preposterous is what he calls them. He seems to think that once he is on the spot he'll be able to show everyone that Faye had no possible reason to want to avenge himself, and must therefore be beyond suspicion. I must say Archie doesn't strike me as vindictive, which is another surprise if one could ever be surprised in a Masterman. They're all queer, for as much as any of them, though he's queer in such lovable ways. I mean that you never can tell what freaks they'll take, whether for evil or for good. Nothing would astonish me less than to see Archie himself in sackcloth and ashes one of these days, and I do believe that it's the thing he's afraid of himself. What he's fighting in all this business about Faye is his own impulse to do penance. He's thinking of the figure he'll cut wearing a shroud and carrying a lighted candle. Of course it interests us, because, well, because it may turn out to be a matter of dollars and cents. Not that I count on it. I put all that behind me, and I must say that your father and I have never been so happy together as during these last few months. We get along perfectly on what we have, and we don't lack for anything. Of course the way in which your father, the sweet lamb, is improving makes all the difference in the world to me. So while she needn't repent on our account, we've had all that go. It only strikes me as funny the way he can't do enough for us. Taxes at the door the minute we put our noses out, flowers in the sitting-room, and everything. I know perfectly well what it means. It isn't us. He's simply sacrificing to the hoodoo or the voodoo that he sees behind us, just like any other masterman. She added in a post-script. You can read Thor as much or as little of my letters as you choose. I don't care, not a bit. I told him before you were married, but I always intended to speak my mind about his father. Like it or lump it, who would? End of Chapter 34 The rest of that year became to Archie Masterman a period of popularity and triumph. Insofar as such terms could be used of a man so sorely bereaved. Nothing ever sat on him with finer effect than the air of dignity, charity, and sorrow with which he returned from Europe. While his stand toward poor old Just-Bafet brought him a degree of sympathy new even to one whose personality had been sympathetic at all times. The letter he wrote to Eliza Fay when her husband was put under arrest, dissociating himself from the act of the guardians of the law and protesting his belief in his former tenants' innocence, was conceived in a spirit so noble as to raise the estimate of human nature in the minds of all who knew its contents. Whatever the inner convictions of the much-stride woman to whom it was addressed, the document was too precious to her husband's cause not to be exhibited. I wouldn't put it beyond him, not a might, Mrs. Fay had confessed, with tragic matter of fact. Not after the way he's talked, I wouldn't, and that don't either. As your son said so. Oh, he said worse. He said that if he didn't do it, he ought to have. That's the way he talks. Oh, he's no comfort to me. I knew he wouldn't be after that awful place. But I didn't look for him to be quite what he is, wanting to kill and blow up everything. An IIA is what he calls himself, and the Lord only knows what that is. I blame myself, she went on, with dry, unrelenting statement of the case. I didn't bring him up right. I was discontented. Oh, but there's a discontent that's divine. Lo, he's broken, consideringly. Well, this wasn't it. He was hateful and hating one another, as Paul says. I'll put it into their heads. I mean, Fay's and the children's. Matt would commit murder now as quick as a kitten or lap milk. We says he would. And as for Fay. Lo, he's interrupted hurriedly. We shouldn't do him the injustice of condemning him in advance, should we? The woman held herself erect. Her hard, uncompromising eyes, in which there was nevertheless an odd suffusion of softness, looked straight over her companion's head. I can't help what I know. And I can't help what I know, which is that you and I have nothing to do with judgment, still less with condemnation. There are others to attend to that, while we try to bring— shut up the word with diffidence— try to bring love. Oh, love! But home was that of one who had long ago given up anything so illusory. Then whatever we can find that will take the place of love. Lo's replied, with the relief of getting back to ground of which she was more sure. Let us call it Goodwill. Goodwill was, in fact, what Reuben Hillary had called it, and it was from him she was quoting. Having gone to him for the analysis of her own state of mind, she had been comforted to learn that she placed no impediment in the way of public justice through being privately merciful. The mission of Christ mid-air, Mrs. Thor, was salvation. And what do we mean by salvation? Isn't it the state of being saved? And what do we want to be saved from? Isn't it from trouble and evil of all kinds? And where and when do we want to be saved from them? Isn't it right here and right now? And who are the people that need most to be saved? Isn't it those that are threatened with danger? And who is to save them? Isn't it you and I? What more do you ask? So that when it comes to justice, ah, now I'm not bothering about justice. Justice has her sword and her scales. Let her look after her own affairs. What you and I are out after is Goodwill. So Lo's got further light upon her way and followed it. She followed it the more easily, because her father-in-law seemed willing to follow it too. He could do this with a touching grace, since more fully than by letter, she assured him that Claude had come back to redeem his word. Oh, thank God! Ina had exclaimed, on hearing this information emphasised, the darling boy was always the soul of honour. An ethereal vision in black, she was having a cup of tea in the library before going upstairs to take off her travelling-dress. For, who had met the party of the dog, had accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby to their own house, so that Lo's was able to get a few words for the soaring parents alone, giving them in full a detail that which her letters had only sketched. She'd assumed the privilege of the daughter of the house to sit at the tea-table, while for the minute the returned voyagers took their place as guests. There were reasons now why Archie was able to echo his vice rejoicing in Claude's change of heart. In this new turn to the situation, which he had but imperfectly seized from what had been written, he could get the same kind of consolation that a father draws from the death of a son in a war with which he has no sympathy. It was the death of a brave man, when all was said and done. It was also death in conditions that made his own position the stronger, since it was an age to the clearing of his conscience. It attracted nothing from his grief that he should use Claude's yearning for redemption as a fresh proof that Jasper Faye had not even a shadowy motive for revenge. And, with the elimination of Faye's motive for revenge, he, Archie Masterman, was more amply acquitted at the bar before which the hereditary Masterman impulse summoned him. Lois had the greater confidence, therefore, in making her appeals. If they do imprison him, you see, the family will be left without means. One of these days I think Rosie will marry Jim Breen. Ena gave a little crowd his approval. What? After Claude? Oh, it won't be for a long time yet, and while this trouble is hanging over her father, she won't listen to any suggestion of the kind, little as she would before. Still, in the end it will be only natural. She left Rosie there, and thought it's been so good about the son, only, well, the IIA, whatever that is, has got hold of him, so that we can't counter on him to do anything for the poor mother. If she's left alone, or for Rosie. I'll take care of him. It was probably that Archie Masterman had never in his life said anything that gave him so complete a satisfaction. Before Lois could respond to his generosity, he went on to add, Why didn't it appear in the matter? I'll leave it to your ingenuity to find the way to take care of them without mentioning me at all. Unless you think it would be a comfort to them as a sign of my confidence in poor old Faye. That, I should like to have generally known, that I absolve him entirely. If she had nothing to do with condemnation in the case of Jasper Faye, she had nothing to do with it, she reminded herself, in that of Archie Masterman. Her part in life was to accept everyone at his nominal face value, for only so could she put good will into effective operation. T was over, and they were on their feet when she felt her own need demanding consideration. It was not without nervousness that she said, You know Thor has been staying here with a cousin Amy and Uncle Sim? Say we understood. Well, I think he might like to say a little longer. That's not necessary on our account, Masterman said promptly. It wouldn't be on your account but on his own. That is, she explained, he might think it was on your account, but in reality to feel that he was comforting you would be a comfort to him. Plaud's mother gave way to the first little sob since entering the house. While the father's face settled to the stenderness that masked his suffering. Wouldn't it look very queer, as all he said? People might not understand it. Oh, they haven't understood it as it is. But does that matter? I know there's been talk in the village during the past few weeks, but surely we're in a position to ignore it. In the hope of opening up the way for Thor, in what he had to make clear, she decided to go further. While speaking she kept her eyes on Masterman. You may not need him, but he may need you. As a matter of fact he has still something to explain to you, which I may as well tell you now. On that night, the night of the ninth of July, Thor and Claude were here in the house together. There was trouble between them. Mrs. Masterman gasped. Her husband breathed hard, saying merely, go on. I don't know what the quarrel was exactly, but there were blows. Not the blow. Masterman began with horror in his tone. Oh, no, not that. Lois interposed hastily, going on to explain briefly the incidents of the struggle between the brothers as far as she knew them. That part of it was all over, she continued eagerly, before either of the parents could comment on this new phase of the event. Claude wasn't much hurt. You can see that from the way he was able to get up and come out into the air while Thor was running up to our house for Brandy. If there hadn't been someone lurking in the shrubbery— He's been a terrible son to me, Masterman broke in rothfully, when it isn't in one way, it's in another. What have I done to deserve? He is terrible, Lois admitted soothingly, but, oh, Mr. Masterman, he's terrible in such splendid ways. He hasn't found himself yet, but he will if you'll give him time. Whatever he's done wrong, he'll atone for nobly. You'll see. The mother's intervention came to Lois as a new surprise. Whatever he's done wrong, he's sorry for we can be sure of that. She turned to her husband. Archie, Claude was my son, and I wanted to tell you now, before we go any further, that no matter what happened between Thor and him, I forgive it, if there's anything to forgive. I know Thor feels there was something to forgive, Lois confessed on her husband's behalf, whether there was or not. Then tell him to come to me, you know, commanded, in a tone such as Lois had never heard from her. I'll tell him to go to you, if you'll ask him to stay here with you a little longer. I shan't ask him. Archie will, won't you, Archie? She laid her hand on his arm pleadingly. If you do, it will mean that you and I are not trying to judge our two boys, or take sides between them. Give a little sob. Now, when it's no use, they quarreled as brothers will, but they were fond of each other for all that. Thor adored Lord, Lois said simply. I think he cared for him more than any one in the world that I know of. Masterman wheeled suddenly and walked away, while his wife made signs to Lois that they had won. But it was in another frame of mind that Thor's wife said to herself, as she saw him coming to water along County Street, now I shall see, I shall see if he will. She meant that now he might return to her, that he might return as a matter of course. If he came of his own accord, something within her would leap to greet him, so much she knew, but beyond it she would not trust herself to go. I shall see if he will, she repeated, with emphasis, throwing the responsibility of taking the first step on him. It was on him, she felt, that it lay. She had asked him to leave her until she was prepared to call him back, and she was not prepared. If he were to ask to be taken back, her attitude could lawfully be different. Since it was he who had made void the union she had supposed to be based on love, it was for him to suggest another, built on whatever they could find as a substitute. Great as her pity for him was, she could not by so much as a glance or a smile relieve him from that necessity. As they drew near each other she recognized the minute as one that would be decisive, if not for the rest of life, yet for a long time to come. She could look ahead and select the very tree under which they would meet. As a result of the few words that would be then exchanged, their lives would blend again, or he would go to the one house and she to the other, and they would be further apart than they had ever been before. He might not think it or see it, because members so dense, but she would be as quick to read the signs of which he would remain unconscious as a bird to centre storm. For this very reason she reduced her manner, when they came face to face, to the simplest and most casual. It was a matter of pride with her to exert no influence, to leave him free. Not that she found it necessary to take pains, for she saw from the first minutes of encounter that his mind was far away from that part of their interests which she put first. Into her comments on the wonderful courage displayed by Mr. and Mrs. Masterman, he broke abruptly. They've arrested Faye. What came next was as nearly of the nature of a vow as a man could venture on without metatraumatic eloquence. All his energies, all his money, all his time, would be dedicated to securing Faye's acquittal. For towards death, one man and one man only was to blame. It was probable enough that Faye had actually struck the blow. It was probable, too, that he had done it not to avenge himself primarily on Claude, but on Claude's father. To thaw, that was secondary, almost of no importance. Had he not allowed himself to become a prey to whatever was most ferocious and malignant in human nature, the crime would never have been committed. Granted that Faye would have lain in wait for Claude in any case, an agile young man would have been more than a match for so infebal than antagonist even when armed with a knife. Had not some preceding struggle exhausted him. To thaw, it was so clear that he was beyond the reach of argument. He was likewise beyond the reach of anything that would be called a purpose or a wish, but that of seeing that another man shouldn't suffer in his stead. From the region into which this absorption and consecration carried him, Lois found herself and her claims on him thrust out. Whether he went back to her, or whether he did not, was, for the time being at any rate, have so little moment in his eyes that apparently no thought of this aspect of their situation had occurred to him. It was more stinging to her pride that he should not consider it than that he should consider it and refuse. She was fully aware that her irony was thrown away when she said, in a tone kept down to the matter of fact and colloquial. And, Thor, dear, if they ask you to stay on at the other house, don't think of me. I've got papa and mama again. They'll keep me company as long as— she was obliged to think of an expression that would imply a term, as long as I may need them. In response to these words he merely nodded. Very well. This ent was given as if, whatever the arrangement, it would be a matter of indifference to them both. So he went his way, and she went hers. Monstrous as it was, monstrous as she found him, and she found herself, she could hardly conceive of there doing anything else. If she was unhappy, her unhappiness lay too deep in subliminal abysses to struggle to the surface of her consciousness, that he should go to the one house, and she to the other, was as right as it had been ten years before. It was so right that she was stupified by its rightness. It was so right that the rightness acted on her like an opiate. It was a minute in which sheer helplessness might have relaxed her hold on her substitute for love, and she not had such pressing need to make use of it there and then. She made use of it as, on occasions requiring a show of lavishness, people leak out a meagre supply of silver with plenty of plausible electroplate. In installing her parents in their old rooms, admitting them take their place as masters and forget that they were to guests, she simulated the pleasure not only of a happy daughter, but of a happy wife. While the circumstances of the homecoming tempered anything in the nature of exuberance, they couldn't forbid all joy, and of joy of just the right sparkle she was as prodigal as if her treasure-chest had been stocked with it. Moreover, she was sure that except for the protest, if we take these rooms what are you going to do with Thor? The worthy couple didn't know the difference between what she placed before them and the sterling metal with the hallmark. If there was a suspicion in her mother's mind, it reserved itself till, on kissing them good night, Lois fled to the room she had occupied as a girl. Though she'd closed the door behind her, the mother pushed it open. Look here, Lois! Missy said, not quite with anxiety and yet not quite without it. There's nothing between you and Thor, is there? Lois felt that the form of the question saved her. It enabled her to answer so much more truthfully than her mother knew. No, my dear, there's nothing at all between us. She went so fast to make the declaration emphatic and indulge in a tone of faint bitterness. Absolutely nothing at all. And I doubt if there ever will be now. Though the mother retired before she could catch the concluding syllable, Lois regretted the bitterness as soon as she felt it escape her. There was no bitterness in her substitute for love, for the substitute for love was—she'd always admitted that she didn't know what it was—but that came back to her mind the words she'd been acting upon for a fortnight and more. The mission of Christ's media, Mrs. Thor, was salvation. And there was no bitterness in that. To hear him, you'd think there was no salvation except for sin, and not even for that but what is post-mortem. Post-mortem salvation may be all very well, but if there's anything blessed, I want it right now. Of course, with a good man like you—good—good's got nothing to do with it, or not much. The man who was called the Saviour above everyone else didn't wait for people to be good before he saved them. He saved them first and said, send no more to them afterward. Oh, but with his extraordinary means. He had no means that you haven't got yourself, in essence. Difference between you and him is not in kind, but in degree. If he could save all men, you and I can at least save one or two, or a dozen, or do something toward it. You mean save them here? Saving them here is saving them anywhere, isn't it? And you don't mean saving them only in the theological sense of saving their souls. Mean saving them anyhow. Save a man from hanging, or a child from tumbling in the mud, or an old woman from having her best bonnet spoiled by rain. It's all salvation. It all meets the human need. It's all part of the same principle. It all works to the same end. And what is the end? The same is the middle, and the same is the beginning, and the same is his all through. He rose and stretched himself. I leave you to find your own name for it. I call it by a word of four letters, he laughed, and it begins with an L. You can't have too much of it, you know what it is, which is just what many people don't know. She stood before him, colouring, smiling a little, but with eyes lowered. I wonder if I know what it is, Uncle Sim. If you don't, he smiled down at her. You're taking a good way to learn. This view of the principle she was using as a guide was not new to her. It was only illuminating and corroborative. It was spectrum analysis, where she had seen a star. It was the kingdom of heaven reduced from a noble phrase to such terms of simple, kindly living, and she knew herself able to fulfil. It was the ideal become practical, and the present rendered one with the eternal, with the fruits of righteousness sown in peace of them that made peace beyond anything she had ever expected. On the winter afternoon, when Jasper Faye was acquitted, she could look back over the preceding seven or eight months and see how relatively easy all had been. She said relatively easy, for the reason that much had of necessity been hard. The distinction she made was that what had been hard would have been overwhelming, had she not taken the principle of immediate salvation where it could be brought about as law. By meeting each minute's lead with the utmost of her strength, she found the next minute's need less terrible. By allowing no one to suffer a shade more or an instant longer than she could help, she perceived a lessening of the strain all round. With the lessening of the strain it was easier to calm passions and disarm antipathies. If she could say nothing else for her substitute for love, she was obliged to admit that it worked. She was thinking so with a great thankfulness when Thor came to tell her of the rendering of the verdict. Though he had telephoned the fact, he was eager to give her the details face to face. He did this while they stood in the tapestrid square hall, avoiding each other's eyes. It had not been picturesque, he explained to her, but it had been satisfactory. Though an hour had sufficed the jury to reach their decision, the farmers and market-gardners who formed the mass of the spectators had forestalled it and scattered to their homes. The dramatic interest was over. It was generally felt that no more than a formality remained. When for the last time Jasper Faye was led in to confront his peers, it was before a comparatively empty court. Because he had suddenly become self-conscious, Thor went on with his account stammeringly and with curious hesitations. Still wearing his fur motoring-coat, he held his cap in his hand like a man in a hurry to get away. I couldn't see even then, at the very end, that the old fellow knew what it was all about. He looked round him with the same glassy stare that he's had ever since. Ever since that morning when we gave him the coffee. Mind all gone, poor old chap. Perhaps it's just as well. He smiled a bit when it was all over, and they pushed him from one group to another to shake his hand, but he didn't realise what he had escaped. Lois, too, was self-conscious. In this lifting of the burden from Thor's mind something had changed in their mutual relation. It was as if a faculty arrested on the night Claude died had suddenly resumed its function, taking them by surprise. Not in this way had she expected the thing that seemed dead to come to life again, so that she was unprepared for the signs of its rebirth. Absorbed as she would otherwise have been in Thor's narration, she could now follow him but absently. How did they get home from Colcord? She asked the question to keep him going, lest he should say the things she was so strangely afraid to hear. He answered like a man who talks about what is not his mind in order to conceal what is. I drove them in. The old fellow sat in the tonneau with Rosie and Jim Breen. Matt Fay refused the lift and took the train to Marchfield. A little crowd of the courthouse door, he recounted further, had called three cheers for Dr. Thor. Another little crowd had greeted them with a similar welcome on their arrival in Susan Street. A third had gathered in the grounds of Thor's father's house, shouting three cheers for Mr. Masterman, till the object of this goodwill responded by coming out to the porch and making a brief, kindly speech. He was delivering it as Thor drove up, just as the winter twilight necessitated the turning on of the electric lights. His slender, well-dressed figure distinct in the illuminated doorway. Thor could hear the strains of, for he's a jolly good fellow, as to avoid further demonstration he backed his machine from the avenue and turned toward the other house. She seized the opportunity to say something she had at heart, which would also help to tide over a minute she found so embarrassing. Oh, Thor, I hope you'll not have to suffer any more. He's paid his penalty by this time. You mean, I mean that I hope you'll never have to be any more definite with himself than he's been already. You can easily see how it is with him. It is as if he was two men, one accusing and the other defending. I don't want to have the defence break down altogether, or to see him driven to the wall. I couldn't bear it. He waited a long minute before speaking. If you're thinking of the real responsibility for Thor's death, she nodded. Yes, I am. Again he waited. He puts that on me. He puts it on you so as not to take it on himself. She said quickly, because to take it on himself would be beyond human nature to bear. Don't you see, Thor? We know, and he knows, that if Jasper Faye did it, it was not to avenge himself on Claude, but on someone else. But now that the law says that Faye didn't do it, he interrupted quietly. I've talked it out with Father, and we understand each other perfectly. You needn't be afraid on his account. I've taken everything on myself, as I ought to take it. Oh, Thor! The only thing that matters about the law is that it shouldn't condemn anyone but me. Now that that danger is out of the way, I can begin. She forgot her embarrassment in looking up at him with streaming eyes. Begin how, Thor? Begin doing what you told me from the first. Begin to start again, to get it under my feet, to stand on it, to be that much higher up, and not be— He fumbled with his cap, his head hung guiltily. Not be ridden by remorse any more than I can help. You'll do it, Thor. You'll do it nobly. What you had to say, however, got no further, for the front door was flung open to allow of Mrs. Willoughby's excited entrance, with Len puffing heavily behind her. Oh, so you're here, Thor? Betsy cried in the tone of a woman at the limit of her strength. Well, I'm glad you may as well know it first as last. Breathless, she dropped into one of the hall-chairs, endeavoring to get air by agitating an enormous pillow-muff. Len's been having—no, it's too extraordinary, I predicted it, didn't I? If you've kept my letters, you've got it down in black and white. Len's been having—just as I said, it's the shroud and the lighted candle. Len's been having the strangest, the very strangest talk with Archie. Len's crept near to her mother, bending down to water. But, dear mother, what about? Betsy answered wildly. Oh, I don't know what about. I wasn't there. I was in the drawing-room with Ena. I knew something was going on from Ena's manner. What's come over Ena? I can't imagine. I've heard a trial turning human beings into angels, but I never believed it, and I can hardly believe it now. Archie began it himself—I mean with your father. He beckoned him into the library in the solemnness way. That was after he'd finished his speech, and the crowd had stopped cheering. If it is the shroud and the taper, well, all I can say is that he carries them off just in the way you would expect. No one could do it better, as far as that goes. As far as what goes, mother, I wish you'd tell us. It's exactly what I said when I wrote you from London last year. If you kept my letters, you've got it all down in black and white. He wants us, and Ena wants us, all to come to dinner. I'm not a bit surprised—not a bit, but I never counted on it—never. Thor also bent over, standing before her, with his hand stretched out to the back of her chair. Is it about money, Mrs. Willoughby? But she was too far beyond coherence to explain. He says he wants to talk to us both after dinner—to Len and me. He's been going over the accounts again. He finds—he finds—but she beat with her high heels on the floor, and buried her face in her mouth. Oh, tell them, Len, for goodness sake, tell them that I'll never believe it, not any more than me. But her emotion was too much for the big man's shattered nerves. As he stood just within the doorway, looking with his snowy beard and bushy white hair, like some spectral Oriald apostle, he began to cry. End of Chapter 36 Chapter 37 of The Side of the Angels by Basil King This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Simon Evers Chapter 37 Four and Lois were glad of this interruption. They were glad of the new and exciting topic. They were glad of the family dinner at the other house, where they could be together and yet apart. Taking refuge from each other in any society they could find, they kept it close to Mrs. Masterman, when, after dinner, Thor's father retained his two old friends in the dining-room for the promised explanations. Later in the evening it was with an emotion like alarm that Lois heard that her parents had gone home without waiting to bear her company. Secretly she began to plan methods for stealing away alone. Her shyness of Thor was like nothing she had known in the days of courtship and marriage, or during the months in which they had been holding off from each other for scrutiny and reflection. It was a shyness which, when they were at last side by side in the avenue, drove her to effect an over-elaboration of ease. She talked, not merely because there were so many things to say, but also for the sake of talking. She talked because he did not, because he towered above her in the moonlight, dumb, mysterious, waiting. It was that sense of his waiting that thrilled and terrified her most. It was a large waiting, patient and deep, the waiting for something predestined and inevitable that could take its time. It was like the waiting of the ocean for the streams of sleep for the day's activities, or of death for all. It seemed to brood over her like the violent sky, and to quiver with radiance as the crisp air quivered with the moonlight. It was wide and restful and bracing. She was walking toward it, she was walking into it, as she walked over this virginal carpet of snow. She talked with a kind of desperation of Thor's father and mother, first of all, of how good they were, each with a special variety of goodness. It was wonderful what Sorrow had done for Mrs. Masterman. I never see her now, Thor, dear, without thinking of that look in Thor's face that seemed to us like dawn. I see it in her, don't you? Without waiting for an answer she hurried on. And your father thought, he is good. No one but a good man could have been so noble toward poor old Faye, when he knows, when everyone knows, no matter what was proved or wasn't proved in court, when he knows the truth. She seemed to be answering some unspoken argument on his side, as she continued. Oh yes, I remember what Mama wrote about it, about the hoodoo or the voodoo, Mama's so amusing, but you and I have nothing to do with that, have we Thor? We can only take what we see and judge by what is best. And so, with this wonderful new thing from Papa R and Mama, that they're to have some other money back, we can't go behind it, can we? If he says it was a mistake, we must accept it as that and never, never let any other thought come into our minds. I know that Papa and Mama, dear, are innocent things. They aren't, dear, innocent, you know, in spite of everything. I know they'll only be too glad to take it in the same way. Except for an occasional word, he'd hardly spoken by the time he'd reached the corner of Willoughby's Lane and County Street. Lois had a renewal of the terror from which her own conversation had distracted her. The crucial minute was at hand. The door was but a few yards away. He would either go in with her or he would go back. She hardly knew which would be the more exportable, the joy or the dismay. She caught the first possibility of postponing both. Oh, it's so lovely! Let us walk on a little farther. It isn't half past nine yet. I looked at the clock as we were coming out. Papa and Mama ran off so early. Don't you adore these windless winter nights when the air is as if it beans is stilled? She paused in the middle of the road and looked around. What's that starved store over there, the one like a great white diamond? He told her it was serious, adding that its light took eight years to travel to the earth, and going on to trace with this finger the constellation of the dog. The minutes returned to the old habits took some of the feverishness from her sense of tension as they continued their walk up the hill. Up the hill there were only two directions in which to go, along the prosaic road to Marchfield or into the quiet winter woods, where masses of shadow lay interspersed with patches of white moonlight, while on this soundless night there was not a murmur in the treetops. By instinct, rather than intention, they followed a faint familiar path running under pines. Lois was now speaking of the Faes. Mrs. Fae knows, the others don't, not certainly. Rosie has brought herself round to thinking him innocent, and Matt and Jim only suspect what happened. But Mrs. Fae knows. It must be a tragic thing to spend your life with a man who's done a thing like that. Poor soul! We must do what we can to help her, mustn't we? She pursued the theme not for its interest alone, but for the sake of the objective point to which she was leading her. By speaking freely, first of Matt and then of Jim Breen, she came at last to Rosie. She spoke freely of her, too, at the risk of opening up old wounds, at the risk of lacerating that which was probably still sensitive. Her main purpose was to speak, and if possible to make him speak, so that this name should no longer be kept as an inviolable symbol between them. Since the day when it had begun to have significances for them both, it had scarcely been pronounced by either otherwise than elusively or of necessity. She was resolute to make it as little to be shunned as his or her own. Not that she was successful, for the minute at any rate. His responses continued to be brief, so brief that they were hardly responsive at all. They were not grudged or ungracious. They were only like those first little flashes of lightning which hint that the heavens will soon be alive. As a frightened boy whistles from bravado, she talked to conceal her trembling at this coming of celestial wonders. Oh, Thor, there be so much now to do. It's really only beginning, isn't it? And it brings in so many elements of our life, I mean, of our whole national life. I like that. I like getting out of our own little groove, so futile and narrow as it generally is, and being in touch with what is stronger, even if it's terrific. That's what I feel about Matt Faye, that he's terrific. He represents a terrific movement, doesn't he, and one we can't ignore. When I say terrific, I don't mean that I'm afraid of it. I'm not. It seems to me too strengthening to be afraid of. With all you can say against it, it strikes me as a tonic in our rather flaccid life, like iron in the blood. I've sympathy with it, too, to some extent. I've sympathy with him. You know, I do belong to the people. I'm glad we know him, and that in a way we've a right to get near to him. It puts us in touch with our own national realities, as Pro-X otherwise we shouldn't be. Oh, Thor, there's so much to work out. Isn't it a splendid thing that we can help even to the slightest degree in doing it? To this, there was no response whatever. She was not sure that he'd listened. Beside her the tall form strode on, dumb and dark, crunching the frozen snow with a creaking sound, that roused the wind and furry things of the wood, and silenced her half-hysterical efforts to fight against that which awaited her like a glory or a doom. Growing subtly aware of the uselessness of speaking, she said no more. After an interval in which her mind seemed to stop working, that of which she became conscious next, was a world of extraordinary purity. Nothing was ever so white as this snow or this moonlight. Nothing was ever so like the ether beyond the atmosphere as this air. Nothing was ever so golden as the stars in this purple sky, or so mystically solemn as these pines. As they climbed upward, it was like mounting into some crystal sphere, where evil was not an element. They came out on that spot in which all the wood paths converged, that treeless ridge that rose like a great white altar. It was an end which neither had foreseen, when a half hour earlier they had prolonged their walk, otherwise they might have shrunk from it. As it was, the association of the past with the present startled them. Startled them into pausing long enough to become conscious, to seeing each in the eyes of the other such things as could not pass into words. Before renewing the ascent. As they continued the way upward, it was as if in fulfilment of some symbolic ceremonial. They had stood for some minutes silent on the summit, looking out over the wide white radiance of their feet, when Thor spoke. I'm not thinking about the things you've been talking of. I'm not primarily interested in them any more. You mean? I mean the helping of others in the way I've tried it. I see the mistake in that. She was faintly surprised. Indeed. Through the things that have been happening I've worked out, I may say I've stumbled out, to a great truth. There was not any surprise in her tone but curiosity. Yes, Thor dear, what is it? It's that a man's first occupation is not with others, but with himself. It's not to put them right, it's to be right on his own account. As for the moment she was too disconcerted to comment on this, he continued, If reaching this conclusion seems to you like discovering the obvious, I can only say that it hasn't been obvious to me. It's just beginning to come to me that I was so busy casting out other people's devils, that I've forgotten all about my own. You've been so generous in all you've thought about other people for. He interrupted with decision. The most effective way in which to be generous to other people is to be strict with oneself. But it never occurred to me till lately. I've been so eager that my neighbour's garden should be trim and productive that mine has been overrun with weeds. Against this self-condemnation she felt at her duty to protest. But Uncle Sim says you've always been on the side of the— Yes, I know, he broke in, with what was nearly a laugh. But it's just where the dear old fellow has been wrong about me. I've wanted everyone else to be there on the side of the good things, I admit that, but I was to have plenty of rope. Now I'm coming to understand, and it's taken all this trouble to drive it home to my stupidity, that if I wanted to see anyone else on the side of the angels, I must get there first. That's where the axe must go to the root of the tree. In the main other people will take care of themselves if I take care of myself. And I'm going to try. She was hurt on his behalf. Othor, please don't say such things when you're so—so noble. I'm only saying them, Lois, to show you that I see what's been wrong with me from the start. You've tried to say it yourself at times, only I couldn't take it in. Do you remember the day in my office when you came to tell me that— He nerved himself to approach the subject with the simple directness he knew she desired, that Rosie had— She hastened to come to his aid. Yes, but I didn't mean it in just that way. No, but I do. I mean it because I can look back and trace it as the cause of all our disasters from— Othor!—she pleaded. He went on steadily, from the way in which I asked you to marry me right up to what happened about Claude. He was obliged to draw a long hard breath before saying more. I was so determined that everyone else should be right that I didn't care how wrong I was, which is like handing out water from a poisoned well. She wished she could touch him or slip her hand into his by way of comfort, but the distance between them was still too great. She could only say, That's put it unjustly to yourself for. If you made mistakes, they'd been splendid ones. They'd been finer than the ways in which most of us have been right. She thought he smiled. Oh, I don't ask to be defended or explained. I only want to say that from tonight on that I shall be starting on a new plan of life. I shall be working from the inside and not from the outside. If I am to do anything in this world, something must first be accomplished in me, and I've got to begin. He turned from his contemplation of the dim white landscape to look down at her. Will you help me? Will you show me how? It seemed to her that without having moved, she was somehow nearer to his breast. She couldn't so much as glance up at him. She could hardly speak. The words only trembled out as she said, If I can, for dear. You can, he said simply, because you know. She barely lifted her eyes. Oh, do you think I do? You've got the secret of it. There is a secret. I see that now, a secret, just as there is to everything else that's worth learning. Oh, for you make me afraid. Through all these dreadful months, he pursued tranquilly, you've kept us straight and led us out and raised us higher. Not because you're especially strong, Lloyd, or especially wise, but because you've got some other quality. I want you to show me what it is so that I may have it, too. If I could get it, just a little of it. It would seem as if Claude hadn't died in vain. She was now so near his breast that he was obliged to bend his head in order to speak down to her. You wrote me last year that you were looking for a substitute for love. Couldn't you find it in that? She was so close to him that her cheek brushed the fur collar of his coat. Yet she managed to keep her mind clear and to control her voice so as to ask the things she most vitally needed to know. And if I did, Thor, if I could, what should you find it in? In adoration, for one thing, he said simply. It was such happiness that she tore herself away from it. Advancing swiftly over the light snow to a higher point of the summit, she stood for a minute, poised alone against the dark sky, crowned to his eyes with a diadem of stars. Very slowly he strode after her. But even when he reached her side it was only to slip his hand into hers and gaze outward with her into the far, dim, restful spaces. It was she who spoke at last timidly and against rising tears. Shall we go home, Thor? I'm at home, he said quietly. But the quietness gave way suddenly to fierceness as little lightning flashes yield in a few seconds to the violent magnificence of storm. Seizing her in his arms with a clasp would have been brutal if it had not been so sweet, he whispered, You're home to me, Lois. You're home to me. And you're the whole wide world to me, Thor, dear. She answered, drawing his face downward. End of Chapter Thirty-Seven. End of The Side of the Angels by Basil King.