XXXIV

Two or three days passed. The busy yet peaceful life of home and

fields was going on; the hay had been carried; the rick was made, and

the rick-sheet covered a handsome pile.

Dale worked hard, quite in his old untiring way, and seemed just his

natural self; but truly he was mentally detached from the surrounding

scene. For the second time in his life, and to a greater extent than

the first time, he was subjugated and controlled by one dominant idea.

Throughout each day all things around him were dreamlike and

unsubstantial, and he performed many actions as automatically as if he

had been a somnambulist. He walked and talked or rode on the shaft of

a wagon without in the least troubling to think what he was doing, and

every time his thought became active it seemed to spring into vigor

again merely to obey the prompting of the inner voice that now

governed him.

Thus while sitting on the wagon shaft he thought: "If I pitched myself

off and let the wheels go over me, that would be _likely_, just the

accident that fools are always making, but it wouldn't fulfil the

other conditions that have been laid on me. Also it might fail. I

might only mess myself up, and not quite kill myself."

Half an hour afterward, as he walked beside the empty wagon back to

his hay fields, he was still hammering away at the dominant idea.

A gun and a hedge--no accident can be more common than that. Say you

want to shoot some rats that have been showing their ugly whiskers in

the field ditches; take your gun, well charged, and blow your brains

out among the brambles of an untrimmed hedge.

Or these motor-cars! He thought of the way they came racing down the

highroad from Old Manninglea. How would it be to wait for one of these

buzzing, crashing, stinking road monsters over there on the edge of

the heath, and jump out just in front of it? If one stooped down and

took the full shock on one's forehead, it would mean a mess that there

would be no patching together again. But one could not attempt that in

daylight, because the driver would jam the breaks on, swerve round

one, do anything desperate rather than run into one. And if he could

not avoid one, he would tell everybody at the inquest that it was a

plain suicide and nothing else. There would be passengers in the car

too, who would also swear to its being a suicide. And at night these

traveling cars have such powerful head-lamps that the roadway is

lighted up for a hundred yards in front of them. Even at night, they

would recognize it as suicide.

Toward dusk every evening external things became more real, and his

hold on life tightening, he suffered more acutely in each hour that

passed. Night after night he went back to Hadleigh Wood. It was the

wood of despair, the focal point of all his pain, and he was drawn to

it irresistibly through the gathering darkness.

On the second evening he found it difficult to get away. Mavis

stopped him, asked him some domestic question, and then began to talk

about a new suit of clothes for their boy. He was alive again now,

emerged from his somnambulistic state, and he gave full attention to

this matter of Billy's new serge suit; nevertheless, all at once she

apologized for troubling him, and inquired if he had anything on his

mind.

"No, Mav, of course not."

"Are you sure, Will? Do tell me if you've something worrying you."

"What should I have to worry me?" and he put his arm round her ample

waist, and gave her an affectionate squeeze.

"The hay's all right, isn't it?"

"Yes, everything is all right.... You can't do better than you've

suggested about Billy. Take him with you to Manninglea--and, look

here, if Mr. Jones can't fit him properly out of stock, let him make

the suit to measure. Don't consider the extra expense. We can afford

it."

"Thank you, Will." Mavis was delighted. "You've told me to do the very

thing I wanted to do; but of course I'd never have done it without

your authority. I've been longing to see the little chap in clothes

regularly cut out and finished for him, and nobody else."

Going through the yard Dale was stopped by his men. The foreman wanted

directions for to-morrow's work; the carter asked for three new tires;

the stableman regretted to be compelled to report that one of the

horses had broken his manger rack.

As he finally came out on the road, Dale was thinking, "Soon now I

shall be gone, but everything here will be just the same. They will

all of them find that they can do very well without me: the men, the

children, Mavis--yes, even Norah. Mavis will be the one who will

grieve for me. Norah will suffer most, but it will be only for a

little while. She'll take another sweetheart--a real sweetheart this

time, and she'll marry, and give birth to babies; and it will be to

her as if I had died a hundred years ago, as if I had never lived at

all, as if I'd been somebody she'd read of in a story-book, or

somebody she'd dreamed about in one of those silly nasty sort of

dreams which young girls can't help having, but are ashamed to

remember and always try to forget."

Mavis, however, would wish to remember him, and be sorry when she

found his image fading. She would struggle to keep it bright and

fresh. She would grieve long and sincerely--and then she would be

quite happy. She wouldn't marry again; she wouldn't do anything

foolish. "No," he thought, "she'll just devote herself to the bairns,

working for them late and early, and managing the business as well as

I have managed it myself. She'll be cheated a bit here and there, as a

woman always is--but, all said and done, she'll do very well without

me. Customers will support her--the word will go round. 'Don't let's

turn our backs on the widow of that poor fellow Dale.'"

And he thought, with a bitterness of heart that almost made him sick,

that perhaps after his death many people might speak well of him; that

certainly in the little world of Vine-Pits Farm and the Cross Road

cottages there would be a natural inclination to exaggerate his few

good qualities and be gentle to his innumerable faults; so that a

sort of legend of virtue would weave itself about his memory, making

him a humble, insignificant, but local saint--to be placed at a

respectful distance and yet not too far from the shrine of that great

and illustrious saint the late Mr. Barradine. "Of course," people

might say, "one was a grand gentleman, and the other only a common

fellow who had raised himself a bit by hard work; but both of 'em were

good kind men, and both no doubt have met with the reward of their

goodness up there in Heaven."

As soon as he got into the wood he hurried as rapidly as he could

toward Kibworth Rocks; and then when he got near them he walked slowly

up and down the ride, with his head bowed and his hands clasped behind

his back. And each evening the same thing happened. Visions of Norah

assailed him; he passed again through the tortures of yearning desire

that he had felt when he first read her letter; and he said to

himself, "If proof was wanted, here's the proof. This would show me,

if I didn't know already, that I must do it."

In imagination he saw her sitting alone on a balk of timber by the

sea. Her hands lay loose in her lap; her neck was bent; her whole

attitude indicated dejection, loneliness, sadness. She was thinking

about him. She was thinking, "How cruel of him not to answer my sad

little letter. He can't be so busy but what he could have found time

to send me a few lines with his own hand. Just half a sheet of paper

would have been enough--with one or two ink crosses at the end, to

show me he prized the kisses that I put in my letter to him. It was

brutal, yes, and cowardly, to make Mrs. Dale write instead. If Mrs.

Dale hadn't written telling me he'd received my letter, I couldn't

have found it in my heart to believe that he'd treat me so abominably

cruel."

And, groaning, he spoke to this mental picture that he had evoked for

his renewed torment. "Norah, my sweet one, I can't help myself.

Commands have been laid upon me. I'm no longer free to do what I

please. Norah, don't look away from me. Turn to your boy--let him see

your dear eyes, though the sight of them makes him bleed." And the

thought-picture obeyed him. He saw the entrancing oval of the face

instead of its delicate profile, looked into the profound beauty of

her eyes, felt that her warm red lips were close in front of him, and

that he would go raving mad if they did not come closer still and let

him kiss them.

After such spasms of burning pain he was temporarily exhausted; he

felt completely emptied of emotional power, as if his nerves had

delivered so fierce a discharge that they must cease from working

until time and repose had allowed them to replenish themselves. Then,

so long as this state lasted, his love for the girl was deprived of

all material for passion; it was as though the highest thinking part

of him had been cut off from the sensational mass, and only the top of

his head served to keep alive his memory of the girl.

Then he thought of her with a fantastic longing that seemed to him

beautiful, immaterial, and innocent. He said to himself, "I don't

shirk my punishment. I'm going to take it. But fair's fair--There's no

occasion to make myself out worse than I really am. Norah has taken

hold of me a great deal more by my int'lect than by the low animal

kind of feelings that are the mark of the abject sinner. I can't live

without her; but if I might live with her, I feel I could be content

to let it all remain quite innocent between us. Yes, I feel I could be

happy with her just as a companion, provided she and I were alone

together, far away from everybody else--yes, I'd take my happiness on

those terms, that she was never to be anything else to me but just

that."

But soon those treacherous nerves restored themselves, the upper and

lower parts of him were all one again, and the diffuse yet darting

pain returned. Anger came too. It seemed that the dead man mocked him,

went on softly laughing at him.

"What a humbug you are"--he gave the dead man words--"what a colossal

humbug. You and your nice Sunday go-to-meeting thoughts. It's so easy,

isn't it? to dress up one's rottenness in pretty sentimental twaddle.

But you don't deceive anybody. You don't even deceive yourself, not

for three minutes at a stretch. You know that underneath all your

humbugging pretenses the black sin is unchanged. You are no better and

no worse than I was. You are exactly the same as me."

And Dale, breaking his own rule, or forgetting in his anger that he

had refused to discuss things with this imaginary voice, answered

wrathfully.

"This girl cares for me--that's the difference between us. She offers

me love. And that's something you never had."

"How do you know?" said the dead man. "Your Mavis was one of many.

And, besides, don't be so sure that Mavis wasn't fond of me. She never

ran away from me. She came when I whistled for her."

Dale brandished his arms wildly, turned round, and stared at the

pine-trees and the bracken. It seemed to him that some imperishable

essence of the man was really here, mingling with the shadows,

floating in the dusky air; and that possibly over there among the

rocks, if one went to look for it, one might see a simulacrum of the

man's bodily shape--perhaps only a gray shadowy outlined form, the

odious stranger of dreams, but more vague than in the dreams,

stretched on his back, holding up his blood-stained boots, and

grinning all over his battered face.

"Yes, perhaps so," said the voice. "But I notice that you don't come

in to look for me. You keep to the ride still. Now you've got so very

close to me, why do you turn shy of the last little bit? Is it that

you wish me to save you trouble by showing myself?"

And Dale made gestures of semi-insane fury, and spoke in a loud,

hoarse voice.

"Yes, show yourself if you want to. You 'aarve my leave. Come out an'

stan' here before me. I'm not afraid of you--now or hereafter."

"Hereafter--hereafter--hereafter." As Dale moved away slowly, the dead

man seemed to mock him, to laugh at him derisively. "Hereafter--yes,

that's a big word. Yes, go and talk that out with God."

He went up one of the narrow tracks that led toward the dead man's

Orphanage, intending to look at it and perhaps hear again the evening

hymn; but before he got to those broken fences he turned and began to

wander aimlessly through the trees. All his mind was now full of the

awful thought of God, and of the eternal punishment to which he

believed God had condemned him.

Christ had tried to save him; but the other two persons of the Holy

Blessed and Glorious Trinity had interposed, had prevented Christ from

holding any further communication with him, and together had issued

the fearful decree. That was it. Christ had not deserted him; he had

lost the right ever to approach Christ again. That accounted for

everything--the unutterable desolation, the dark despair, the

overwhelming necessity of death without one ray of hope.

All that lovely and comforting faith in the endless loving mercy of

God the Son, the Redeemer of mankind, the Friend and sometime Comrade

of man, was to prove useless to him; the gentle creed of the Baptists

could not be applied to so vile a case as his; he was at handygrips

with the dread Jehovah, the mighty Judge, the offended King of

creation.

Three Persons and one God--yes, but such different Persons; and

thinking of the triple mystery, he imagined that two of its component

parts had probably seen through him from the very beginning of his

religious fervor. Only the other part, the part that he wished was the

whole, had believed in him and gone on believing in him until it was

forbidden to do so any more.

The awe and reverence that he felt while he thought in this manner

made him bow his head and keep his eyes humbly downcast, as one not

daring to look upward to the heavenly throne; yet, profound and

sincere as was his reverential awe, he unhesitatingly translated all

the sublime mystery of the skies into the simple terms that alone

possess plain meaning to man's limited intelligence. Nothing in the

naturally courageous bent of his mind prevented him; everything in his

experiences of the Baptists, with their constant habit of homely

illustration, encouraged him to do so.

He imagined the First and the Third Persons of the Trinity seated

royally but vaguely amid the clouds, all about them a splendor of

light like that of sunset or dawn, melodious music faintly

perceptible, exquisitely beautiful forms of angels rising on white

wings, hovering obediently, fading obediently--but they themselves,

the Lords of Life and of Death, the Masters of Time and Space, were

two tangible concrete old men--two venerable wise old men--the

ultimate strained extended conception of two powerful, honored,

high-placed old men. And they talked as men would talk--not in the

human vocabulary, but conveying to each other, _somehow_, human

ideas--about the man William Dale.

It was at the period of his conversion or repentance or baptism, and

they were speaking to each other of Their Beloved Son and His newest

recruit. And God the Father seemed to say that He would hope for the

best--although, as they Both knew, Christ was too easily imposed on.

And God the Holy Ghost pursed His lips, and shook His head, and said,

"Take it from Me, this fellow Dale will turn out badly"--seeming to

add or explain that it was a mere pretense and no true repentance. "He

has _never_ repented of his crime. But of course he is anxious about

his future, and would try any trick to escape the punishment he has

richly deserved."

All this was terribly real to him, and he imagined the dread scene

more strongly every moment. Those Two went on debating his

case--becoming now so solidly presented to his imagination that he

could see Them, the purple color of Their robes, the halo of light as

in a painted window, Their forms, Their faces. God the Father was not

unlike old Mr. Bates, except that He had a long beard and that there

mingled with the candid dignity of His expression a consciousness of

sovereign power. The Holy Ghost was clean-shaven, very thin, with

sharp clearly-cut features as of somebody who does not enjoy robust

health, and with a slight but painful suggestion of a Roman Catholic

priest who habitually goes deep into private secrets and is never

really satisfied until he has extracted the fullest possible

confessions. He was the One that Dale had never so much cared

about--the _difficult_ member of the firm, the sleeping partner who

never really slept, who professed to keep himself in the background,

but who quietly asserted himself in important moments and proved

infinitely the hardest of the Three.

And so it had been in this case. Since time is nothing, and then and

now are all one, Dale imagined that while his Judges talked of him in

Heaven his whole earthly career had flashed onward to its end; so that

he and all that concerned him was disposed of at one continuous

sitting. Thus, without a pause, the Holy Ghost was already saying,

"You see I was right in my first view of the affair. Dale is

disgracing himself again. Now You and I must not allow any further

communication between Our dear Son and such an impostor."

Then Christ pleaded for him, prayed for mercy. Christ, although

invisible, was certainly there, imploring mercy for the man he had

trusted and loved; and, in spite of the fact that He remained unseen,

His mere presence glorified and magnified the heavenly scene. The

light grew softer and yet more supremely radiant; hosts of angels

soared and hovered in vast spaces between the rolling clouds; a

vibrating echo of the divine pity swept like music far and near.

But the Holy Ghost brought forward a large strongly-bound volume,

opened it, and said very quietly, "Let Me show You what We have

against him in the book." And at sight of the book Dale shivered and

grew cold to the core of his spine. He knew perfectly well what was

entered in the book, and he thought, "It stands to reason They could

never get over _that_. I might have known all along _that_ would do

for me, an' there was no getting round it."

"This is his record," the voice of the implacable Judge continued;

"not what I have attributed to him as secret thought, but words taken

down as spoken by his own mouth. Having committed his crime, he had

the calm audacity--_to lay the blame on US_.... Yes, here is the

entry. This is the statement verbatim: 'It is the finger of God'."

And Christ seemed to plead in an agony of grief still strove to

lighten the punishment of the pitiful worm that he had deigned to call

His brother man. "Oh, he didn't mean it."

"He _said_ it," replied the Holy Ghost, dryly.

"But he didn't think what he was saying--he has been sorry for it ever

since."

"Yet, frankly," said the Holy Ghost, "I can not see that he has made

a single effort to put things straight, by removing the blame to the

proper quarter--that is, to himself."

Nevertheless, Christ still pleaded, could not be silenced, must go on

struggling to save this one man--because He was the Savior of all men,

because He was Christ. He was there, certainly, infallibly, although

quite invisible--He was there, kneeling at the feet of the other Two,

praying, weeping:--He was there, filling Heaven with inconsolable woe

because, although His myriad suns shone bright as when He lighted them

and His universe swung steady and true in His measureless void, one

microscopic speck of dirt only just big enough to hold immortal life

was in danger of eternal death.

All these imaginations were absolutely real to Dale, an approximate

conception of the truth which he could not doubt; and he thought:

"Need I wonder if I have not had the slightest glimpse of His face? It

is my doom. Christ is cut off from me. So far as human time counts,

the communication was broken that afternoon when I was seeming to see

him as he rode into Jerusalem and my hankerings after Norah seemed to

snap the thread.

"I was judged at that moment. It was my doom--never more, here or

there, to look upon His face."