Sin and hedgehogs are born without spikes, but how they wound and
prick after their birth we all know. The most unhappy being is he
who feels remorse before the deed, and brings forth a sin already
furnished with teeth in its birth, the bite of which is soon
prolonged into an incurable wound of conscience.
—RICHTER.
On the steps of the rostrum, as he descended them, John Gregory was met
by a man of singular aspect, a man who has been encountered by us
before, in the house of Senator Ingraham,—his son, Oliver.
As the two clergymen whom he had then addressed had been disturbed, and
even dismayed, by this strange face and figure, the smooth, egglike face
with its enormous forehead, narrow eyes, and wide, thin-lipped mouth, so
now Gregory drew back instinctively, finding the singular apparition
thus suddenly before him.
Mr. Oliver Ingraham did not appear to notice the movement, but, smiling
his peculiarly complacent smile, held out one long, sinuous hand, and as
Gregory took it, not over eagerly, he remarked in his high, feminine
voice:—
“I liked your line very much, Mr. Gregory. Nothing would suit me better
than to see these rich men brought to book. They’ll get their
come-uppance in the next world, anyway; but I sometimes get tired of
waiting. It would be a satisfaction to see Dives, Esquire, taking his
torments here once in a while, don’t you think so?” and the malevolent
leer with which the question was accompanied gave Gregory a chill of
disgust.
Oliver held in his left hand a handsomely bound note-book and silver
pencil-case which it was his custom to carry everywhere. Gregory, now
about to pass on, and greet the crowds who were waiting to speak with
him just below, was again stopped.
“Just a moment, Mr. Gregory,” said the other, slipping off the elastic,
and opening the note-book with the dexterity of constant habit; “I want
you to help me a little in gathering some very valuable statistics. It’s
rather in your line, I take it. I have been engaged in this work for
several years, and find it extremely interesting.”
Gregory noted the long, white, flexible fingers of the man, and the
look, half of deficient intellect and half of cunning, in his face.
“Please make haste, Mr. Ingraham,” he said shortly, “there are others
waiting.”
“I am making a computation,” Oliver continued imperturbably, “in fact, a
carefully tabulated record, according to nations, of the probable number
of souls from each nation now in Sheol—it is considered polite now to
call it Sheol, I believe. We used to say hell when we were boys, didn’t
we, Mr. Gregory?” and Oliver laughed his low, cruel laugh.
“Excuse me,” exclaimed Gregory, impatiently; “I could not give you any
information on that subject. I have never been there. Allow me to pass
on, if you please.”
Oliver closed his book as if not unaccustomed to rebuffs; but, as
Gregory’s forward movement obliged him to retreat down the steps, he
remarked slyly:—
“I had a message to you from the senator, if you only weren’t in such a
hurry. He is one of the fellows that will have to go to now, weep and
howl. He has the shekels, I can tell you! What he wants of you is more
than I can figure out. I should suppose Ahab would as soon have sent for
Elijah.”
“Did your father send for me?” asked Gregory, surprised. They were now
at the foot of the steps, and the crowd was gathering about them.
“Yes; he would like to see you in his office on this same block, next
building, as soon as you can get away from here. You work him right, and
you can get something out of him for your Utopia.” The last words were
called back aloud with a series of confidential nods, as Oliver turned
and plunged into the crowd, who seemed to make a way for him with
especial facility. Gregory saw him go with a keen sense of heat and
discomfort.
Half an hour later, Gregory found himself in the office of Senator
Ingraham, seated in a substantial office-chair by the well-appointed
desk, while Mr. Ingraham, himself in evident and most unusual mental
disturbance, walked up and down the room. Suddenly he wheeled, and
confronted Gregory, as if with sudden, though difficult, resolution.
“Mr. Gregory,” he said, low, and with the stern, terse brevity of a man
who finds himself forced to speak what he would rather leave unsaid,
“for over thirty years I have carried certain facts in my personal
history shut up in my own memory. Not one other being, to the best of my
belief, has shared my knowledge. To-night, I cannot tell how, I do not
know why, I feel that I must break silence, and before you—stranger as
you are—unload my burden. A strange compulsion seems upon me to disclose
the things I have hitherto lived to conceal. What there is in you or in
what I have heard you say, to bring me to this point, I cannot
understand; but I feel in you something which makes you alone, of all
men I have ever met, the one to whom I can speaks—and must. Are you
willing to hear me?”
John Gregory noted the set, hard lines in the lawyer’s face, the knotted
cords in his hands, and the tone, half of defiance, half of
self-abasement, with which he threw out this abrupt question. Accustomed
to encounters with men in their innermost spiritual struggles, Gregory
was in no way astonished or excited by this surprising beginning of
their interview, and simply nodded gravely in token that Ingraham should
proceed.
“I will not affront you by demanding secrecy on your part,” the latter
began haughtily; “if it were possible for you to betray my confidence,
it would have been impossible for me to give it to you. I understand
men.”
He paused. Gregory made no remark in confirmation of this assertion, but
the direct, unflinching look with which he met the appeal in the eyes of
the speaker was full guarantee of good faith. There was promise of
profound and sympathetic attention in Gregory’s look, there was also
judicial calmness and reserve; in fine, the characteristics of the
priest and the judge were singularly united in him, and it was to the
perception of this fact that he owed the present interview.
“I do not know whether I am a respectable citizen or a murderer,”
Ingraham now began, turning again to walk the floor, while an
uncontrollable groan as of physical anguish accompanied this unexpected
declaration. “Imagine, if you will, what thirty years have been inwardly
with this uncertainty as food for thought, served to me by conscience,
or some fiend, morning and night. If I could have forgotten for one
blessed day, it has been ingeniously rendered impossible, for sin in
bodily form is ever before me. You have seen my son.”
With this sentence, harsh and curt, Ingraham paused, glanced aside at
Gregory, who assented, and then continued to walk and speak. His voice
and manner alike showed that he was holding himself in control by the
effort of all his will. Strange distorting lines appeared in his face,
and there was heavy sweat on his forehead.
“I was twenty-five years old when I was married, and was alone in the
world save for one brother,—Jim, we always called him,—two years younger
than I. We had inherited a good name, strong physique, and some little
property from our parents, and started in life shoulder to shoulder. In
Burlington, where we first began business life together, we became
intimately acquainted with a family in which there were two daughters.
The elder, Cornelia, was very pretty and singularly attractive. Men
always fell in love with her. I did, desperately. The younger sister was
a commonplace, uninteresting girl, rather sentimental perhaps, not
otherwise remarkable.
“I shall make this story as short as possible. I offered myself to
Cornelia after long wooing, and was refused. I was bitterly wounded,
angry, defiant. While I was in that state of mind, it became apparent to
me that I was secretly an object of peculiar interest to the younger
sister. Like many another fool, half in spite and half in
heart-sickness, I sought her hand, and was at once accepted, and our
marriage followed quickly. Within the year Cornelia and Jim became
engaged. There was a hard, silent grudge against Jim in my heart from
the day I first suspected that it was he who had stood between Cornelia
and me, and their engagement increased the grudge to hate.
“We had, before this, put the whole of our inheritance into mining
fields in what was then the far West, buying up a large tract of land,
divided equally between us. The year after my marriage we moved West for
a time, and I started out on a prospecting tour of our land; Jim to
follow me when he had finished establishing a kind of business office in
pioneer quarters, in a small town as near the base of our operations as
was feasible. My wife remained in this town.
“On horseback, with two engineers and a copper expert and an Indian
guide, I rode through our possessions. Miners were already at work, and
had pursued the lead far enough to prove pretty distinctly that, while
Jim’s part of the tract was likely to be fairly productive, the vein
stopped short of mine, which was thus practically worthless.
“I rode back to our camp in a black mood. Jim, it seemed, was to succeed
in everything; all that he sought was his, and for me there was nothing
but failure and defeat. All the way back I brooded bitterly on the
contrast between us, until I was in a still frenzy of jealousy when I
reached the camp. The contrast between Cornelia, for whom I still had a
wild, hopeless passion, and my wife, sickly, dull, indeed disagreeable
to me already, was maddening, and had been sufficiently so before. But
now, when I thought of Jim, with Cornelia for his wife and the certain
prospect of large wealth to add to his elation, while I was without a
penny or a prospect of any sort, the rage and fury in my mind became
almost intoxicating.
“We had encountered hostile Indians on the trail as we returned, but our
bold, dare-devil dash through this danger made slight impression on me.
I think death would have been welcome to me that night. God knows I wish
I had met it then. My heart was evil enough, but at least it had not the
guilt that came later.
“I suppose, Mr. Gregory, that I am answerable for my brother’s death—not
in the eye of the law, but before God. And yet—if you could tell me that
I am mistaken, that I exaggerate, that other men would have done the
same and held themselves guiltless—if that could be—” Ingraham broke off
and fixed his eyes on Gregory’s face once more, as if in appeal for his
life.
“Please go on,” was Gregory’s response, but the words were gently
spoken, as the words of a physician when he is diagnosing a manifestly
mortal disease.
“Very well,” said Ingraham, harshly. “Jim was at the camp, and was boy
enough to parade a letter from Cornelia before me. We quarrelled
fiercely, about what I cannot remember, but I could not restrain the
storm of rage and jealousy in me. It had to break loose somewhere. I
refused to tell Jim what I had discovered regarding the lead, and he
declared he would go and find out for himself. I said he would be a fool
if he did, but gave him no hint of the fact that there were hostile
Indians on the way. He knew nothing of the conditions, nor the character
of the people about us, having never been in the country before. It was
early in the morning. We had ridden all night, and the men had gone to
their tents and were sleeping off the effects of our struggle. I told
Jim he could not get a guide. He merely whistled in a light-hearted,
careless way he had, and started off to a neighbouring camp, in search,
as I inferred, of some escort. I saw him no more, and made no attempt to
govern his actions, and did not even know whether he had started. Who
and what the guide was whom he obtained, I learned later.
“I slept most of that day, after Jim disappeared, exhausted in body and
mind, and continued to sleep far into the night, keeping my tent door
securely closed, as I wished to see and speak to no one. It was,
perhaps, three o’clock of the morning following when I was roused by a
strange noise at my tent door. Starting up from my bed on the ground, I
saw that some one had cut open the fastenings, and that the flap was
drawn back. In the opening thus formed stood the shape of an Indian
rider on horseback, perfectly motionless. The moonlight, which was
unusually brilliant, fell full upon the face of this man, and I
recognized him at once, with a horrible chill of foreboding, as a
half-witted Indian who sometimes acted as guide, but only to those who
knew no better than to accept his services, which were worthless and
treacherous. He was a half-breed, an odious, repulsive being, with only
wit enough to be malicious, and of abnormal treachery and cruelty even
for his kind. Never can I forget that face of his in the moonlight. He
spoke not one word, but simply sat his horse and looked at me with his
narrow, gleaming eyes, a malignant grin making his ugliness fairly
fiendish. If you want to get a faint idea of his look, recall the face
of Oliver—my son;” Ingraham’s voice sunk to a whisper, and he added, “I
can never escape it.”
Gregory’s brows knit heavily, and his face reflected something of the
tortured misery of the man before him.
“It was not,” said Ingraham, “until I had staggered to my feet that I
saw that across his saddle-bow this creature carried a dead body—Jim.
There was an Indian arrow in his side.”
“No matter, no matter for the rest; I understand,” said Gregory,
hastily.
There was silence for a moment, and then Ingraham, with a strong effort,
rallied himself to conclude his story.
“I was Jim’s heir.” These words were spoken with hard and scornful
emphasis. “That was a feature of the case which presents complications
to a man in forming a judgment. Perhaps you will believe me when I say
that this issue had not entered my mind in letting the boy go to his
death. Indeed, the whole series of events was without deliberation, but
under the influence of blind, sullen anger.”
“I believe you,” said Gregory.
“All the same, I profited by his death. The mines proved immensely
valuable, and are even to-day. They have made me rich—and incomparably
wretched. A word or two more, and you will know the whole story. Jim was
brought home, here, for burial, my wife and I returning with his body.
All through that journey, and continually, for many months, I saw before
me, waking or sleeping, that face of cruelty incarnate, the half-witted
Indian guide, as I had seen him on that awful night. That face was my
Nemesis. It is still.
“Within the year my wife gave birth to a son, Oliver,—a strange
perversion, made up of moral obliquity, mental distortion, and physical
deformity, like an embodiment of sin. On his face was stamped by some
strange trick of nature the image which had haunted me—as if the Fates,
or the Fiends, or God himself, had feared I might forget, and know a day
of respite.
“My wife died when Oliver was a few months old,—died of cold, I believe,
the chill of our loveless marriage. Two years later Cornelia and I were
married. I believe she has been happy. I have been prospered, and have
risen to a position of some influence, and we have all that could be
desired in our home, in our three daughters. But when, to-night, I heard
you pronounce the judgments of God on men who had built up prosperity
upon a lie, I was like a man struck in his very heart. I felt that I
could no longer endure my hidden load, and must confess to one human
being my past, and make restitution, if by any means it is yet possible.
The Romish Church is merciful, when it provides the possibility of
confession to sinful men.
“What have you to say to me? Have you healing for such a sore as mine?”
With these abrupt words Ingraham threw himself into a leather-covered
arm-chair with the action of complete exhaustion. His aspect was changed
from that of the alert, confident man of the world and of affairs, to
that of a broken down and shattered age.