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
neighborhood of Colcord jail at dawn of the next morning, the verdict
was accepted with relief not only in the little court-house 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 mean while 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 9th 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'm 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, burly 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
and the grounds were not in view from the library windows. Maggs and his
wife were in the house, as well as Dearlove and Brightstone, getting it
ready for re-occupation, since it was but seemly that the dread guest
who had come under its roof should be decently lodged.
Thor, having spent some hours before the stupefied village authorities,
was surprised and obscurely disappointed not to be put under arrest.
Public disgrace would have appeased in a measure the clamor 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 home 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 he 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 demeanor 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. Hilary. The latter went
forward as Thor, tall, gaunt, red-eyed, the wound in his forehead
stanched with plaster, advanced into the room.
"You're face to face with a great moral test, me dear Thor," he said,
laying his hands on the young man's shoulders, "but you'll rise to it."
Thor started back, less in indignation than in horror. "Rise? Me?"
"Yes, you, me dear Thor. You'll climb up on 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 me 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 Quixote in his face than ever, had been
pacing up and down the room, threw over his shoulder, "Always said you
were on the side of the angels, 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. Now's 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--do what they're sorry for afterward."
Thor writhed. "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 some one, as you think, was lurking 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 no 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's 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 I'm 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 runs 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. 'Whether of them
twain,' the Master asks, 'did the will of his father?' I leave it to
yourself, Thor."
Unable to escape from this ingenious pardon that caught and blessed him
whether he would or no, Thor remained silent, while the uncle addressed
himself to the niece. "I'll be off now, Lois, but I'll come back before
long and bring Amy. We'll stay here. The house'll 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."
Thor turned and looked from the 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 _petit trou pas cher_ 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 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, won't you, Thor? It will be ready about
eight." As he began to demur on the ground that he couldn't eat, she
insisted. "Oh, 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 counsels having been given and received, she
led the way into the hall, only to pause again at the foot of the
stairs. "I shall go out now to send my cablegram to mamma. The sooner I
get it off the better it will be, so that they can cross from Havre to
Southampton to-night. I've got it all thought out and condensed, and I
shall write it in French so as to keep it from the people in our 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, Thor 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 should
like to tell Rosie myself. It will 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 as she stood with one hand on the knob
of the door beyond which Claude was lying. "Thor dear, I hope you get at
the truth of the things Uncle Sim and Dr. Hilary 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, while it
destroys the present and poisons the future."
He was almost indignant. "But when you've--?"
"When you've given way as you say you gave way last night? You brace
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 protestingly. "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 tenderest of tender hearts.
Do you know what you remind me of?--of a great St. Bernard dog that asks
nothing better than to love every one and save life, but which when it's
roused...! You see what I mean," she went on, with a kind of soothing,
serious cajolery. "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--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 when it came to the act--than I myself. Would you, now?"
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. Hilary--when they say that you're face
to face with a great moral test. They mean that after you've used
what--what's happened within 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? It may
be like climbing a Calvary, but all the same we shall 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 pajamas, 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, Lois 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 grounds purely physiological; but
since it 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 he 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 Hervieu of the Institut Pasteur: "_Ne niez jamais rien._"
But his need was emotional and not philosophical. Stooping, he kissed
once more the lips on which there was this quiver of a new life that
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 timid 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 down-stairs to carry out her intentions of ringing up Jim Breen
and sending her cablegram to France. Since the necessity for doing the
former 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
gray figure plodding along the Colcord road in the lonely interval
between midnight and morning. The dim gray 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, 'Lias?"
"Why, yes! Who be you? Darned if it ain't Jasper Fay! What under the
everlastin' canopy be you a-doin' this way so late at night?--so early
in the mornin', as you might say."
"My poor boy! To be let out at 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 salutations
had been on similar lines. No one but old Nathan Ridge had had the
curiosity to ask: "What you trampin' the eight mile for? Could have took
the train at Marchfield, and got out at the jail door."
"We-ell, the trains didn't just suit. Marchfield's three mile from my
place, and if it comes to trampin' three mile you might as well make it
eight."
"Guess you're pretty nigh tuckered out, ain't you?"
"We-ell, I'm some tired. Been takin' it easy, though. Left home about
eight o'clock last night and just strolled along. Fact is, Nathan, I had
to be out o' my little place last night root and branch, and it's kind
of eased my mind like to be footin' it through the dark."
"Guess you feel pretty bad, don't you?"
"Well, I did. 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: "Guess I'll be keepin' along.
Hope you'll get your price on them pease. Awful sight of them in the
market after this last dry spell."
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
if 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 ampelopsis had been allowed to clamber over the
red-brick 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
sward nor vine 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 Fay sat down on the bench as he had sat
down on it many a time before, hunched and weary.
For the three years, or 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 in patient 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 the 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 poplars and warders' cottages and prison walls loomed ghostly.
When, a few minutes after the clock in the pinnacle had 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 some one 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 paces, 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-mist blurring his outlines, the two
dim figures were face to face before the son perceived his father's
presence or approach. On doing so he started back.
"Why, father! What's the matter? You look"--his voice dropped to
faintness--"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, Matt!
How are you? Come to meet you."
He explained, however, the immediate program, which was to go by the
five-thirty train to Marchfield, whence by taking the short cut through
Willoughby's Lane and County Street they could 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 Thorley estate,
with a "back piazza" for yard and nothing at all in the way of garden. A
home without a garden to an old man who had lived in gardens all his
life was more of an irony than a home without a rooftree, but even this
evoked from the sufferer only a mild statement of the fact. Mildness,
resigned and apparently satisfied, marked all the turnings of the
narrative unfolded as they plodded to the station, while the son 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 had 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 in with some fellows there"--he jerked his head
backward in the direction from which they had come--"who've thought the
whole business out. Could always get together--us trusties.
Internationals them fellows were--the I. I. A--heard of 'em, haven't
you? No bread and treacle in _their_ program. Been handing that out 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,
vitreous and unintelligent. Jasper Fay, it seemed to his son, had passed
into some pitiful and premature stage of dotage.
To the released prisoner the 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 besides 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 sullenly 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 goldenrod, 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 jeweled rays from the
dewdrops, 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 ardor.