THE VALUE OF A LIFE
Rufus settled himself down to his work with as much outward cheerfulness
as he could command. It was a great comfort to him to know that Captain
Tom believed in him, and that the past would never be flung into his
teeth by his employer. The work was not exacting and the pay was
proportionate. There was no scope for enterprise or ambition, which
exactly suited his mood. He had no ambition left. He was only marking
time at best. Before the autumn leaves had carpeted the ground he would
be at rest.
He faced the issue, most days, grimly and determinedly. There was no
other alternative open to him. It seemed a greater wrong to defraud a
friend than to take a few hundreds out of the coffers of a great and
wealthy company. The company would not be perceptibly the poorer if it
lost ten times the amount. It had accumulated funds for all
contingencies. It lived by and for the purpose of taking risks. But to
defraud Muller might be to ruin him. The money was not his own. The loss
to him might mean bankruptcy and worse. Hence, as he was bound to commit
a fraud whether he lived or died, it seemed the better part to commit
the fraud that would give least pain and trouble, and dying, escape all
consequences. It was a terrible alternative, and it filled him with
self-loathing and contempt. He felt that he was a living falsehood,
practising a daily hypocrisy. And yet what could he do?
The dry east winds of March had given place to April's genial showers.
Spring was greening the landscape in all directions. The throstles sang
in the elm-trees as though glad to be alive, and in the uplands the
young lambs sported in the sunshine. Every morning, as Rufus walked over
the hills to the mine, he felt the joy of life throbbing in his veins.
It was good to live when the world was becoming so fair; good to smell
the pungent odours of the earth, and feel the warmth of the ascending
sun. There were moments when he forgot the sword that was hanging over
his head, and he would revel in the yellow of the gorse and in the
changing colours of the sea. Then he would come to himself with a gasp,
and a look of horror would creep into his eyes.
In spite of himself the strain began to tell upon his health. The burden
was becoming heavier than he could bear. In the company of others he
simulated a cheerfulness that he never felt. If he spoke of the future,
it was with a tone of well-feigned hopefulness in his voice. He
pretended to have plans reaching into the next year and the year after
that. He loathed himself for being so consummate a hypocrite. But for
Muller's sake he would have to avoid waking the smallest suspicion.
It is not surprising, perhaps, that the further he got away from the
first shock of disappointment, and the nearer he got to the redemption
of his pledge, the stronger his passion for life became. It might be the
beauty of the springtime that made him so eager to live. It might be the
growing sense of the sacredness of life. It might be the increasing
moral revulsion from the act itself. It might be the slow lifting of the
veil from his spiritual vision, or it might be all these things
combined. Certain it is that as the spring advanced and the earth
became more and more beautiful, the thought of dying became more and
more repugnant.
"There is no wealth but life," a great writer has said, and Rufus began
to feel more and more the truth of that statement. He was an asset of
his age and generation. He belonged to his own time. The treasure of a
country was not its dollars but its life. To the individual himself life
is his one real possession. Wealth and fame and distinction are nothing
to the dead. Moreover, life without wealth, without recognition, without
honour, is still worth possessing. It is a gladness merely to live and
see the beauty of the earth and feel the warmth of the sun.
Rufus began to count the days till the end of August, which he reckoned
would mark the limit of his pilgrimage. The time passed all too quickly.
He gave himself as little sleep as possible, for sleep seemed to rob him
of what little of life was left, and he was anxious to make the most of
it.
Never a spring seemed so beautiful as that one. Never did the gorse
flame so yellow on the moors, never did he see such sapphire in the
deep. As the evenings grew longer he sat on the cliffs and watched the
sunsets and ticked them off in his calendar as the day faded into night.
His eyes grew large and pathetic and his voice took a softer tone.
Sometimes he found his thoughts shaping themselves into supplication.
The universal instinct asserted itself unconsciously. He wanted guidance
and he wanted forgiveness for what he proposed to do.
Marshall Brook came across to see him once or twice, and they had long
walks and talks together, but he got no help out of their conversation
and discussions. On the contrary, every talk seemed to make his task
more and more difficult.
By slow and almost imperceptible steps he was coming back to the faith
he had cast aside. He read the gospels with new interest, and saw in the
books Madeline Grover lent him, and which he still kept, new and deeper
meanings. But all this only put fresh thorns in his path. He wished
sometimes that his philosophy of negations had never been disturbed,
that he could still believe what he believed honestly enough when he
entered into this fatal compact.
It seemed as though everything conspired to put difficulties in his
path. He might be the victim of a malicious fate. He had told Muller
that if he failed he should not want to live--that there would be
nothing left worth living for. How little he knew! How little he guessed
that that very day he would see a face that would change the world for
him; that from that day a train of circumstances would be set in motion
that would alter his entire outlook!
He was a different man to-day from what he was nine months ago. He
looked at life and the world through different eyes. He had loved, and
love had greatened him in spite of the fact that he had loved in vain.
He had reasoned about temperance, and righteousness, and a judgment to
come, and out of the chaos of his own thinking had appeared the faint
glimmerings of an eternal order. He had suffered, and suffering had
developed in him the grace of patience, and toughened the fibres of his
moral nature. He had come under influences which had quickened his
drooping moral sense and made him look with steadier eyes at the meaning
and mystery of life.
He never more ardently desired to do the right thing, was never so
absolutely compelled to do the wrong. He wished sometimes that he could
take some one into his confidence, Captain Tom Hendy, for instance. With
his clear vision and strong common sense he might see a way out of the
difficulty. But to take anyone into his confidence would be to give the
whole case away. For Muller's sake he would have to preserve an
inviolable silence, and yet the very silence was becoming more and more
intolerable.
Toward the end of April he paid what he deemed would be his last visit
to Muller. It would be a relief to put some of his thoughts into speech.
That, however, was not the main purpose of his visit. He had succeeded
in putting all his affairs in order, in turning into cash everything
that was saleable, and in discharging all outstanding obligations, and
he was pleased to discover that he had still three hundred pounds left.
"I suppose this belongs to me," he said to himself, "to do what I like
with," and he smiled sadly. Some men, under the circumstances, might
have spent it in having what they would call a good time, but he was in
no mood for feasting or mirth.
"I will take it back to Muller," he went on, "and lessen my obligation
by that amount." So one Saturday afternoon, when they left off early at
the mine, he donned his holiday suit, and trudged off into Redbourne to
see his friend.
He found Muller in his office as he expected. Muller had no domestic
ties, and he preferred his office, as a rule, to any other place in the
world.
Muller looked up with a little start of surprise when Rufus entered. In
the first place, he was not expecting him, and in the second place, he
was shocked at his appearance.
"Hello, Sterne," he said, "what brings you into Redbourne to-day? Not to
see a doctor, I hope," and a curious smile played round the corners of
his mouth.
"I came to see you," Rufus answered, with a smile. "Doctors are of no
use to me."
"Well, no," Muller replied, reflectively. "I presume you are right in
that. But you look ill all the same--painfully ill."
"Do I? I was not aware. I feel about as usual."
"Not over cheerful, I presume. Well, I don't wonder. It's beastly hard
luck. I think if I were in your place I should get the business over as
quickly as possible."
"I have to consider your interests as well as my own feelings," Rufus
answered, going to the window and looking down into the street.
"Well, yes, of course. If people suspected anything there might be old
Harry to pay."
"Exactly. Then, you know, I have had a good many things to square up,
and, on the whole, I have come out fairly well."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that out of the thousand pounds I borrowed of you, I have three
hundred left."
"So much?"
"Three pounds, seventeen and ninepence over, to be exact. But what I
propose to do is to hand over the three hundred pounds to you, and so
lessen my obligation by that amount."
Muller started, and a puzzled expression came into his eyes.
"The burden will seem a little lighter," Rufus went on, looking down
into the street again.
"I confess I do not quite understand," Muller said, adjusting his
pince-nez. "You don't mean t--t----" Then he stopped, and waited for
Rufus further to explain himself.
"I mean," Rufus answered, walking across the room, and dropping into a
chair, "that if there is any profit arising out of the transaction you
shall have the full benefit of it."
"Oh, thanks, old man; that is good of you," and Muller's face brightened
instantly.
"There are always expenses, of course?"
"A great many expenses, I am sorry to say. But you have been very
thoughtful. Extremely considerate, if I may say so, without flattery."
"Oh, you can flatter as much as you like," Rufus answered, with a
mirthless laugh. "It would be much more to the purpose, however, if you
could see some other way out of the difficulty."
Muller's countenance changed again in a moment.
"You like not the prospect?" he said, cynically.
"To be honest, I don't. As a matter of fact, I despise myself for not
seeing at the beginning all the issues involved."
"What issues do you refer to?"
"Moral issues in the main. The repayment of this loan is with us both a
question of honour."
"That is so. As an honourable man you cannot escape it."
"I see that clearly enough. What I failed to see at the first--either
because I refused to entertain the idea of failure, or else because my
moral sense had become dull--was that I was proposing to pay a debt by
fraud."
Muller laughed uneasily. "I think I pointed that out to you quite
clearly on the day we settled the matter."
"I have no recollection of it."
"I did so most distinctly. I said if the company scented suicide they
would dispute the claim, or words to that effect."
"And seeing this clearly you were willing to become a party to the
fraud?"
Muller's eyes blazed in a moment. "Look here, Sterne," he said, angrily,
"this is above a joke. You know very well that the proposal was not
mine. You badgered and bullied and persuaded and gave me no peace. I
yielded at length, much against my will, to oblige you. I made you angry
when I pointed out in the frankest and most explicit way the
consequences of failure, and now, confound it, when you have failed you
come and blame me."
"No, no; you misunderstand me," Rufus said, mildly. "I have no wish to
blame you. The proposal was my own, I frankly admit, and you yielded
very reluctantly. But the thing that puzzles me is that while we talked
about honour we neither of us seemed to realise that the proposal
involved a glaring act of dishonour."
"Do you refer to the insurance company?"
"I do."
"My dear fellow, would you consider it a dishonourable act to
appropriate a pin from your neighbour's dressing-table?"
"Well, no. There is no value in a pin."
"Yes, there is. All values are relative. To the company concerned the
amount involved is scarcely more than the value of a pin to your
landlady."
"If I took a penny from her dressing-table it would be theft."
"You think that because the disc of copper represents a fixed amount of
money. Call it theft if you like. So then taking a pin would be theft."
"Perhaps so."
"But a theft so small that in any moral or legal reckoning it would not
count. It would not count because your landlady would not feel it. So
the paltry amount under discussion would not be felt by the company."
"You call it a paltry amount, and yet it represents the value of a
life."
"My dear fellow, human life is not of much account in this world.
Governments--especially Christian Governments--sacrifice men by
thousands for bits of barren territory that are not worth sixpence."
"The Creator, perhaps, sets more value on them."
"Use the word Nature and you talk sense. Only your suggestion is
absolutely beside the mark. Nature puts no value on human life at all,
no more than you do on the creeping things you trample to death at every
step you take."
"Nature does not destroy. She only changes the form. Nothing is lost."
"Except life. That vanishes like the flame of a candle in a gust of
wind."
"Vanishes! But do you know what the word means?"
"I think I do. But what is all this talk leading to? What have you got
at the back of your brain? If you are going to funk the business, say
so, and let me know the worst."
"I don't think I have suggested anything of the kind," Rufus replied,
uneasily. "I frankly admit that I do not like the alternative, and wish
that some other way of escape could be found."
"But if there is no other way?"
"Then I must meet my doom, and go into darkness disgraced and
dishonoured."
"In a hundred years from now nothing will matter."
"You are not even sure of that. But, candidly, I am as ready to face
death as most other men. I am not aware that I have ever proved myself
a coward, but I do abhor the thought of shrinking meanly out of life by
a back door in order to cheat an insurance company."
"You should have thought of all this earlier."
"I know I should. I am simply amazed at myself. But I was so certain of
success that I refused to look at failure, or the possible consequences
of failure."
"Exactly. But that is not my fault. I am sorry for you. More sorry than
I can express. But I am powerless to help you."
"And you are not concerned at my cheating the insurance company?"
"Not in the least. I am only concerned that you do not cheat me."
"But suppose I paid you interest on the seven hundred pounds for a year
or two?"
"It is not the interest I want, but the principal, which I must have by
the first of January next, or I'm up a tree."
"But could you not borrow the amount from some other client for awhile?"
"Where am I to get security? Why don't you ask me to make you a free
gift of the amount in question?"
"I don't want any free gift. At the same time, I don't want to sacrifice
my life if there is any chance of saving it."
"You seem to set great store by it."
"It is all I have. And of late I have not been able to shake off the
conviction that I am responsible to God for it."
"I thought as much," Muller said, with a sneer.
Rufus raised his eyes questioningly.
"Turning Christian again with Christian results," he went on. "I caught
an echo of the jargon the last time I called on you, and feared you
would turn coward, as all these religious people do."
"Don't let us quarrel, Muller," Rufus said, mildly. "I confess I had not
much hope that you would be able to help me, so I shall return not
greatly disappointed."
"I would help you a thousand times if I could," Muller replied, with a
great burst of simulated friendliness, "but, alas! I cannot do
impossibilities."
"Very good, I will not trouble you again."
"And you will not burst the thing up by awaking suspicion?"
"Not if I can help it."
"And take a word of advice. Get rid of those silly notions about
accountability and all that rubbish. They don't become a man of your
intellectual calibre."
"Thank you: we must follow the light that is in us. Good afternoon and
good-bye."
"Good-bye," Muller said, lugubriously, grasping his outstretched hand.
"I'm sorry, but I'm helpless."
Rufus did not reply nor did he look back, and a moment later Muller
heard his footsteps slowly descending the stairs.