VI

Father Honore got home from the lecture a little before nine. He renewed

the fire, drew up a chair to the hearth, took his violin from its case

and, seating himself before the springing blaze, made ready to play for

a while in the firelight. This was always his refreshment after a

successful evening with the men. He drew his thumb along the bow--

There was a knock at the door. He rose and flung it wide with a human

enough gesture of impatience; his well-earned rest was disturbed too

soon. He failed to recognize the man who was standing bareheaded on the

step.

"Father Honore, I've come home--don't you know me, Champney?"

There was no word in response, but his hands were grasped hard--he was

drawn into the room--the door was shut on the chill wind of that March

night. Then the two men stood silent, gazing into each other's eyes,

while the firelight leaped and showed to each the other's face--the

priest's working with a powerful emotion he was struggling to control;

Champney Googe's apparently calm, but in reality tense with anxiety. He

spoke first:

"I want to know about my mother--is she well?"

Father Honore found his voice, an uncertain one but emphatic; it left no

room for further anxiety in the questioner's mind.

"Yes, well, thank God, and looking forward to this--but it's so soon! I

don't understand--when did you come?"

He kept one hand on Champney's as if fearing to lose him, with the other

he pulled forward a chair from the wall and placed it near his own; he

sat down and drew Champney into the other beside him.

"I came up on the afternoon train; I got out yesterday."

"It's so unexpected. The chaplain wrote me last month that there was a

prospect of this within the next six months, but I had no idea it would

be so soon--neither, I am sure, had he."

"Nor I--I don't know that I feel sure of it yet. Has my mother any idea

of this?"

"I wasn't at liberty to tell her--the communication was confidential.

Still she knows that it is customary to shorten the--" he caught up his

words.

"--Term for exemplary conduct?" Champney finished for him.

"Yes. I can't realize this, Champney; it's six years and four months--"

"Years--months! You might say six eternities. Do you know, I can't get

used to it--the freedom, I mean. At times during these last twenty-four

hours, I have actually felt lost without the work, the routine--the

solitude." He sighed heavily and spoke further, but as if to himself:

"Last Thanksgiving Day we were all together--eight hundred of us in the

assembly room for the exercises. Two men get pardoned out on that day,

and the two who were set free were in for manslaughter--one for twenty

years, the other for life. They had been in eighteen years. I watched

their faces when their numbers were called; they stepped forward to the

platform and were told of their pardon. There wasn't a sign of

comprehension, not a movement of a muscle, the twitch of an

eyelid--simply a dead stolid stare. The truth is, they were benumbed as

to feeling, incapable of comprehending anything, of initiating anything,

as I was till--till this afternoon; then I began to live, to feel

again."

"That's only natural. I've heard other men say the same thing. You'll

recover tone here among your own--your friends and other men."

"Have I any?--I mean outside of you and my mother?" he asked in a low

voice, but subdued eagerness was audible in it.

"Have you any? Why, man, a friend is a friend for life--and beyond. Who

was it put it thus: 'Said one: I would go up to the gates of hell with a

friend.--Said the other: I would go in.' That last is the kind you have

here in Flamsted, Champney."

The other turned away his face that the firelight might not betray him.

"It's too much--it's too much; I don't deserve it."

"Champney, when you decided of your own accord to expiate in the manner

you have through these six years, do you think your friends--and

others--didn't recognize your manhood? And didn't you resolve at that

time to 'put aside' those things that were behind you once and

forever?--clear your life of the clogging part?"

"Yes,--but others won't--"

"Never mind others--you are working out your own salvation."

"But it's going to be harder than I thought--I find I am beginning to

dread to meet people--everything is so changed. It's going to be harder

than I realized to carry out that resolution. The Past won't

down--everything is so changed--everything--"

Father Honore rose to turn on the electric lights. He did not take his

seat again, but stood on the hearth, back to the fire, his hands clasped

behind him. The clear light from the shaded bulbs shone full upon the

face of the man before him, and the priest, searching that face to read

its record, saw set upon it, and his heart contracted at the sight, the

indelible seal of six years of penal servitude. The close-cut hair was

gray; the brow was marked by two horizontal furrows; the cheeks were

deeply lined; and the broad shoulders--they were bent. Formerly he stood

before the priest with level eyes, now he was shorter by an inch of the

six feet that were once his. He noticed the hands--the hands of the

day-laborer.

He managed to reply to Champney's last remark without betraying the

emotion that threatened to master him.

"Outwardly, yes; things have changed and will continue to change. The

town is making vast strides towards citizenship. But you will find those

you know the same--only grown in grace, I hope, with the years; even Mr.

Wiggins is convinced by this time that the foreigners are not

barbarians."