Tarlyon and I stopped dead, and stared. We stared hard. But the little
old woman, still screaming to us to follow, ran on ahead to the house.
Yes, there was a house in that clearing, a little farmhouse. And the sun
lay on it like a carpet of gold: that is how I saw it....
“Not our business,” muttered Tarlyon, and I heartily agreed that it
wasn’t. We stood where we were, with our eyes glued on what we saw; and
George Tarlyon dug his hands deep in his pockets. George Tarlyon always
dug his hands deep in his pockets when he wanted frightfully to take
them out.
A man was thrashing his son. I cannot explain why, but we were somehow
quite certain that the thing the man was thrashing was flesh of his
flesh and blood of his blood. He was a huge man, with a mane of grey
hair and a long grey beard, and he had on a bright red shirt. If I close
my eyes now I can see the blood-red of that huge bearded man’s shirt, I
can see the curve of his great shoulders and the muscles that stood out
like lumps of rubber on his half-bare arm as he beat his son with a
stout stick. And I can see his little old wife trying to stay his hand,
begging, praying, moaning. We heard her moaning, like an old, old bird
in pain. And at that Tarlyon started forward a step....
“Steady there!” cried Tarlyon sharply. “Steady, Beaver!” The cry cut
across the sunlit place, the clear cry that has lit for England the
darkest corners of the world, and the huge man in the red shirt stayed
his cudgel and looked at us. But the little old woman still moaned, and
it was quite dreadful to hear that in the summer silence. Ten yards
separated us from that domestic scene, but they were yards of bright
sunlight, and we could see every line on that patriarch’s face. For he
was a patriarch. He was the most magnificent man I have ever seen; and
Tarlyon and I, not small men, felt withered under his straight look. We
stood rooted.
“Friends,” said the old man, and his was the voice of authority, “you
must leave me in peace to drive the sin out of this my son. His mother
is a woman, and will pardon everything in those she loves, but you are
men and know the one sin that is unpardonable by all men. Go your ways
in peace, and fear not to put your own houses in order....”
And still he looked at us, that remarkable old lecturer, his cudgel
stayed in the air, his son at his feet; and his voice was the voice of a
man who has drunk the vinegar of life, and his eyes were the eyes of a
man who has seen Christ crucified. That is why we knew for certain,
Tarlyon and I, that whatever that ancient man said was true and whatever
he did was right. “Come away,” I whispered.
“You are right. It is your business,” cried Tarlyon across the
sunlight--and, dear God, it was! For the thing happened then. We hadn’t
noticed that the son had crawled from his father’s feet. And what we saw
was a spade raised high in the sunlight, a spade crashing down and
cleaving the patriarch’s head like an axe, so that the blood came out of
it like the sap of a tight orange. Without a cry the old man fell, and
red as his shirt were the stones of the yard beneath his head. The
little old woman screamed. The son and his spade lay where Tarlyon’s
right hand felled him, and Tarlyon knelt by the slaughtered old man. I
couldn’t move. I took up the gored spade and held it, a silly gesture.
My heart beat like a bell in my ears, and I remember there rose to my
lips prayers that I thought I had forgotten.
“Quiet, for one moment,” I heard Tarlyon’s voice to the screaming old
woman. I stared and wondered at my friend, kneeling there on the dyed
stones and listening to the heart under the red shirt. I could not have
done that. I hate a lot of blood.
Then he rose and came towards me. I hated the dark damp patches on his
trouser-knees.
“Quite dead,” he said. “We must fetch the police.”
Of course, I thought. And together we looked down at the son on the
ground. He was gibbering. He had gone mad. “Drat the boy!” said Tarlyon
thoughtfully.
“I wonder,” I heard myself whisper, “what was the one sin the old man
said was unpardonable?”
Tarlyon looked from the prostrate thing to me, and I saw that those
slightly frozen blue eyes of his were as miserable as the eyes of a hurt
girl. You see, that old man was a very remarkable old man, and he was
dead....
“I don’t know,” he whispered back. “You and I, Ralph, and our friends,
have become so civilised that we don’t know what the unpardonable sins
are. We simply don’t _know_, old man! We are the world’s soft people,
Ralph. We are so civilised that we pardon too much--both in ourselves
and other people; and we call that being broad-minded, but it’s really
being flabby. But that old man, I’m sure, was not “broad-minded,” he
was as little “broad-minded” as Jehovah, and there was one sin he simply
would not pardon. And we, who are civilised people, do not even know
what it was....”
We stared silently at the poor gibbering thing at our feet.
“Better tie him up before leaving,” I suggested.
“Don’t you think,” said Tarlyon, “that one of us should stay here
while----”
“I won’t stay here alone,” I said abruptly--and I meant it. Nothing
would have induced me to stay alone in that ghastly sunlit spot, alone
with that lunatic boy and the little old woman and the butchered
patriarch. How she moaned, that little old woman kneeling on the blooded
stones....
With a silk handkerchief for his ankles and one for his wrists, we
trussed the poor boy against the kitchen door. He could not have been
more than seventeen or so, and his young face was hideous with fear.
We left the place quickly; but I looked back just once at the scene, for
it seemed to me very strange of the sun still to lie on it all like a
carpet of gold. That is how I felt about it.