Chapter 26

And the second and third hymns were just as bad, shaking him to pieces, tumbling him headlong into the terror he had felt when his crime was no more than a week old. The rest of the service entranced and delighted him, made him think: "These people are in touch with God, and their God is full of love and mercy. If He would accept me, I should feel safe." At the end of the service he knelt, praying for this to happen. Then he went home and doubted.

The fear was on him again in the beginning of his interview with Mr. Osborn the pastor. He thought: "This man has seen through me. He knows. Perhaps his past experiences have taught him to be quick in spotting criminals. He may have been a prison chaplain some time or other. Anyhow, he knows; and he'll try to get a confession out of me, as sure as I sit here." But the beauty of the conception of God as unfolded by Mr. Osborn banished the fear. He thought: "If I had been told these things before, I should have never ceased to believe. I feel it through and through me. This is God; and if I am not too late, if He will still accept me, I shall be saved. Christ, the friend, the brother of man--same as described by Mr. Osborn two minutes ago--can do it for me if He will. He can take me home to Father." A verse of one of those hymns echoed in his ears:

"None less than God's Almighty Son Can move such loads of sin; The water from His side must run, To wash this dungeon clean."

And once more he prayed to the God of the Baptists; and then once more doubted.

While he was walking home, he thought: "It is too good to be true. Perhaps I'm fullish to pin my trust to it. Do I believe in it all, or do I not?" He wanted a sign; and when the storm of thunder and lightning burst like the most tremendous sign one could ask for, he seized this opportunity of risking his life, and said: "Now I stand here for God to take me or leave me."

He was left, not taken. The fear vanished, the doubt passed, and he made his way into the Baptist Church exactly as if, as Mr. Osborn had said, there was an irresistible pressure behind him, and he could not make his way anywhere else.

It was all right after his baptism. He knew then that he would never doubt again. The faith was permanent now: it would last as long as he himself lasted. He had no more evil dreams. He slept soundly, as a man sleeps when he has got home late after a tiring journey. And in the morning and the evening of each day he thanked God for having accepted him.

Then came the years of tranquillity, the respite from pain, his golden time. He was prosperous, respected; he had a loved and loving wife, and lovely lovable children; he had grain in his barns, money in his bank, peace in his mind. He felt too all the better part in him growing bigger and bigger; religion, in simplifying his ideas, had increased their value; his intellectual power seemed wider and more comprehensive when exercised with regard to all things that can be learned, now that he had entirely ceased to exercise it with regard to things that must not be questioned.

And then there had happened something that was like the knocking down of a house of cards, the blowing out of a paper lantern, or the obliteration of a picture scratched on sand when the inrushing tide sweeps over it.

His soul turned sick at the thought that God had not accepted, but rejected him. God refused his offer of humble homage, had seen the latent wickedness in him, had kept him alive until he also could see and loathe himself for what he really was--a wretch who in wishes and cravings, if not in accomplished facts, was as vile as the man he had slain.

XXXII

Dale's meditations had carried him backward and forward through the past years, and left him against the blank wall of the present.

He was sitting on the fallen beech tree in the woodland glade. The sun had set, and the night promised to be darker than recent nights; when he looked at the grand gold watch given to him by his admirers, he could only just see its hands. Nearly nine o'clock. He had been here a long while. It was hours and hours since Norah went away. He sighed wearily, got up, and walked back to his empty home.

Quite empty--that was the impression it made upon his mind both to-night and all next day. He looked at it in the bright morning sunshine, across the meadows, while the scythes laid down the first long swathes of fragrant grass, and it seemed merely the shell of a house. He looked at it in the midday glare, as he came up the field to his dinner, and it seemed cold and black and cheerless. He looked at it in the softer, kinder light of late afternoon, and it seemed to him tragically sad--a monument of woe rather than a house, a fantastic tomb built in the shape of a house in order to symbolize the homely joy that had perished on this spot.

Yet smoke was rising from its chimneys, sound issuing from its windows. All day long it had been full of active cheerful life. It and the fields were happy in the animating harvest toil. Men with harvesters' hats, women with sunbonnets, cracked their rustic jokes, laughed, and sang at their labor; Mavis cooked food, filled the big white bobs with beer, sent out bannocks and tin bottles of tea; Dale's children had rakes and played at hay-making. Only the master, the husband, the father, was unhappy.

No one knew it, of course. To other people he appeared to be just the same as usual, naturally preoccupied with thoughts about the weather as one always is at grass-cutting time, giving his orders firmly, and seeing that they were obeyed promptly, smiling and nodding when you showed yourself handy, frowning and looking rather black if you did anything "okkard or feckless." Who could have guessed, as he looked at his watch and then at the sky, that he was thinking: "It wants five minutes of noon, and she is prob'ly out on what they term an esplanade. There is a nice breeze down there, comin' to her over the waater, blowin' her hair a bit loose, flappin' her skirts, sendin' out her neck ribbon like a little flag behind her. It's all jolly, wi' the mil'tary band, an' the smell o' the waves, an' crowds an' crowds o' people--an' she won't have occasion to think o' me. P'raps they've bid her wear her best--the white frock Mavis gave her, with the stockings to match, and the new buckle-shoes--and likely young lads'll eye her all over as they pass. Yes, she's seeing now the young uns--the mates for her age--the proper article to make a photograph of a suitable pair; and she'll soon stop thinking anything about me, if she hasn't done it a'ready."

He was in his office still thinking of her, after the busy day, when the postman brought the last delivery of letters.

"Good evening, sir. Only three to-night."

"Thank you. Good night, George," and Dale had a friendly smile for this old acquaintance.

Postman George was growing fat and heavy, betraying signs of age. He had been a sprightly telegraph boy when Dale was postmaster of Rodchurch.

"Good night, sir. Fine weather for the hay."

"Yes, capital."

When the postman had gone Dale stood trembling. One of the letters was from her. He felt unnerved by the mere sight of her handwriting on the envelope--the hand that was so like his own, the hand that she had taught herself by laborious study and imitation of his official copper-plate; and he thought, "If I was wise I shouldn't open it. If I was strong enough, I should just burn it, without reading. For, whatever's inside, it's going to make me one bit more desp'rate than I am now."

He snatched up his hat, went out of the house, and walked along the road holding her letter pressed tight against his heart. There was a gentle air that floated pleasantly over the fields, and in spite of all the heavy rain that had fallen such a little while ago, the white dust rose in high clouds when a motor-car came whizzing by. After the car two timber wagons crept slowly, and then there were children trailing a broken perambulator; but directly the road became vacant again, he leaned against a gate and opened the envelope. He had felt that he must be quite alone when he read what she said to him, and had intended to go farther, but he could not wait any more.

"Sir, I beg to say"--That was how he had taught her to begin all letters: she knew no other mode of address. "I beg to say this is a very large place and you can see the sea from the bedrooms."

He read on; and his pleasure was so exquisite and his pain so laceratingly sharp that the sky and the acids swam round and round.

... "There's nice girls here, one or two. Nellie Evans do all she can to make me not so miserable She has a sweetheart at Rodchurch. They all have their boys if you believe their talk.

"And all the marks at the end are the sweet kisses I give my boy. For you are my boy now--my own secret one, and I am your loving girl

"Norah."

She was thinking only of him; she wanted no one younger and handsomer; in her eyes and thoughts he was not old: he was her boy. Those words had a terrible effect upon him. They entered his blood as if they had been an injection of some sweetly narcotic drug; thy lanced deep into his bowels as if they had been a surgeon's knife; they made him like a half-anesthetized patient who at the same time dreams of paradise and feels that he is bleeding to death.

"You are my boy ... and I am your loving girl."

He moved from the gate, hurried along the dusty road, and entered Hadleigh Wood at the first footpath. As he got over the stile he was saying to himself, "This letter finishes me. I can't go on with it after this. I'm done for."

Then, as he walked in the cool silence beneath the dark firs, he held her letter to his lips--kissed the inked crosses that she had set as marks to represent her kisses--counted and kissed them and counted them until his hot tears blinded him.

She wanted him; she longed for him; he was her boy.

He could get to her to-night. She was only twenty or twenty-two miles away, as the crow flies--say half an hour's journey if one had the wings of a heron. He could rush home, jump into his gig, and send the horse at a gallop; he could get there by road or rail, somehow; he could telegraph, telling her not to go to bed, telling her to go to the station and wait for him there.

Then he would walk with her in the moonlight by the sea, on the wet sand, close to the breaking waves. When they came back to the Institution no light would be showing from any of the windows, and she might say, "I'm shut out. When they come down to let me in, won't they make a fuss?" But he would say, "You are not going in there again." "What," she would say, "are you taking me back to Vine-Pits after only two days? Don't you think Mrs. Dale will be angry?"

Then he would say, "I'm not taking you back. I'm going to take you half across the world with me. I've tried hard, Norah, but I can't do without you. I own up, I'm beat, I take the consequences. I'm not good, I'm bad. I've done wicked things, and now I'm ripe for the crowning wickedness. I'm going to break my wife's heart, dishonor my children's name, and take you down to hell with me."

Or if he could not say and do all that, he might at least do this. He could pick her up in his arms and wade out to sea with her; he could whisper and kiss and wade until the ribbed sand went from under his feet; and then he would swim, go on whispering, kissing, and swimming until his strength failed him--yes, he could drown himself and her, so that they died locked fast in each other's arms, taking in death the embraces that had been denied them in life.

He was crying now as a child cries, abandoning himself to his tears, not troubling to wipe them away, temporarily overcome by self-pity. But soon he shook off this particular form of weakness, and thought, "What nonsense comes into a man's head, when he's once off his right balance--such wild nonsense, such mad nonsense. Drown _her_, poor innocent. Make her pay _my_ bill. Think of it even--when I'd swim the Atlantic to save her life, if it was in danger."

And then the thought that had been the impetus or origin of these fantastic imaginations presented itself again, and more strongly than before. He said to himself, "This letter is my death-warrant. I can't go on. It is my death-warrant."

He had made straight for the main ride, and he walked straight along it in the direction of Kibworth Rocks. As he drew toward them it was as if the spirit of the dead man called him, seeming to say: "Come and keep me company. Our old quarrel is over. You and I understand each other _now_. We are two of a kind, just as like as two hogs from one litter--you the sanctimonious psalm-singer and I the conscienceless profligate--we are brothers at last in our beastliness."

Dale walked with his hands clasped behind his back, thoughtfully looking at the trees, and trying to suppress his wild imaginations. But he could not suppress them. The dead man seemed to say, "Don't be a humbug, don't pretend. You know we are alike. Why, when you looked in the glass the other day, you _saw_ the resemblance. You saw my puffy eye-orbits and my pendulous lip in your own face."

Dale shrugged his shoulders, held his head high, and grunted fiercely. But when he was abreast of the rocks, this imagined voice seemed to speak to him again.

"You and I have drawn so near together that there's only one difference now--that you are alive and I am dead. But even that difference will be gone soon."

And Dale, walking on rather slower than before, made an odd gesture of his left hand, a wave of hand and arm together, as of a dignified well-to-do citizen waving off some impudent mendicant: seeming to say, "Be damned to you. Just you lie quiet where I put you, and don't worry. I decline to have anything to do with you, or to allow the slightest communication between us. I simply don't recognize you--nor will I ever admit again that I see the faintest resemblance. If I wished, I could explain why. Only I shan't condescend to do so--certainly not to _you_."

Out of the big ride he went into one of the narrower cuts, and followed it until he came to the woodside boundary of the Barradine Orphanage. This was where Mavis had stood looking at it years ago, when the building was in course of construction. The wooden fence that she had thought so stiff and ugly then was all weak and old, green and moss-covered, completely broken down in many places. Inside, the privet hedge had grown broad and thick; and this barrier, although any one could easily thrust himself through it, was evidently considered sufficient, since no trouble had been taken to repair the outer fence. Indeed, what protective barriers could be needed for such an enclosure? It contained no money or other kind of treasure; and who, however base, would attack or in any way threaten a lot of children?

Dale looked at the top of the belfry tower and the roof of the central block, and thought of it as a temple of youth, a sacred place dedicated to the worship of tender and innocent life. He moved through the trees and found a point where, on higher ground, he could look across into the garden and see a part of the terrace and verandas. None of the girls was visible. They had been gathered into those hospitable walls for the night.

Presently he thought he heard them singing. Yes, that was an evening hymn. The girls were thanking God for the long daylight of a summer's day, before they lay down to rest, to sleep, to forget they were alive till God's sun rose again.

And Dale began once more to think of God. To-night he would not fly from the sound of the girls' voices. All that reluctance and distaste was over and done with; it belonged to the time when he was still struggling against the inevitable drift of his inclinations. Now he had passed to a state of mind that nothing external could really affect.

"The finger of God"--Yes, those were unforgivable words. He stretched himself at full length upon the ground, leaned his head on his elbow, and lay musing.

He taxed his imagination in order to give himself a concept of what such a tremendous figure of speech should in truth convey. One said finger, of course, because one wished to imply that no effort was used, scarcely any of the divine force drawn upon--just as one says of a man, he did so-and-so with a turn of the wrist, that is, quite easily, without putting his back into it. Yes, he thought, that's about right. Then to make up something for an instance, just to spread the idea as big as it ought properly to be, one might say that once upon a time God gave our sun and all the other suns the slightest push with His finger, _and they haven't done moving yet_.

And it seemed to him that, look where one pleased, one could see the real work of the finger of God. It had been giving him, William Dale, faint imperceptible pushes for fifteen years, and see now at the end where it had pushed him. First it had pushed him upward, higher and higher, to a position of conspicuous pride, to the topmost summit of a fair mountain, where he could look round and say, "I have all that I pined for. This is the world's castle, and I am the king of the castle." Then it had begun to push him down the other side of this mountain, the dark side, the side that was always in shadow, downward and still downward to the miasmic unhealthy plain where all was rankness, downward to the level of corruption and death. Yes, it had brought him, the bold, proud law-maker, down and down till he stood no higher than the victim of his law.

He remembered the common phrase--so often employed by himself--comparing mice with men. Am I a man or a mouse? And it seemed that no cat had ever played with a mouse as the Infinite Ruling Power of the universe had been playing with the man William Dale. He had been allowed to break loose, to frisk and jump, to fancy he was free to run right round the earth if he wished to do so; and all the while he had truly been a prisoner, the helpless prey of his captor, held close to the place of ultimate doom.

If he had been promptly convicted and hanged, it would have been no punishment at all compared with what was happening now. The long delay was the essential part of the punishment, and of the lesson. The fact that no one suspected his crime had given him the period of agonized suspense, with all those dream-torments, the fear of death which was worse than death itself.

He thought of all the things that had appeared to be blind chances but were really stern decrees. The true function of the money that came from the dead man's hand was to keep him always on the rack of memory. And with the aid of the money he had been made to move a little nearer to the site of his crime. He had been made to buy Bates' business so that he might dwell right up against Hadleigh Wood, see it every day from his windows, hear it whispering to him every night when he was not asleep and dreaming of it. But for that apparently lucky chance of Mr. Bates' retirement, he would have gone to some splendid new country, and severing ties of locality, would have shattered associations of ideas, and been _able to forget_. He had made up his mind to go to one of the Australian colonies and make a fresh start there. But that didn't match with God's intentions by any manner of means.

His thoughts returned to Norah, and here again--here more plainly than anywhere else--he saw the work of God. It was wonderful and awe-inspiring how God had selected the instrument that should destroy him. He felt that he could have resisted the charms of any other girl in the world except this one. In mysterious ways Norah's fascination was potent over him, while it might have been quite feeble in its effects with regard to other men. But for Dale she represented the solid embodiment of imagined seductiveness, allurement, supreme feminine charm; that flicker of wild blood in her was to him an essential attraction, and it linked itself inexplicably with the amorous reveries of far-off days when, young and free and wild himself, he loved the woodland glades instead of hating them.

The selected instrument--Yes, she was the one girl on earth who could have been safely employed to achieve God's double purpose of overwhelming him with base passion and bringing his lesson home to him simultaneously. No other girl that ever was born could have aroused such desire in him, and yet have slipped unscathed out of his arms at the very moment when the consummation of his sin seemed unavoidable. Any other girl must herself have been sacrificed in destroying him; only the child who had frightened him in the wood could instantaneously, by a few unconsidered words, have taken all the fire out of him and changed his heart to a lump of ice. That was a stroke of the Master: most Godlike in its care for the innocent and its confusion of the guilty.

He remembered how grievously he had dreaded this child--the little black-haired elf that had seen him hiding. It had made him shiver to think of her--the small woodland demon, the devil's spy whose lisping treble might be distinct and loud enough to utter his death sentence. A thousand times he had wondered about her--thinking: "She is growing up. She belongs here;" looking in the faces of cottagers' children and asking himself: "Are you she? Or you? Or you?" Then he had left off thinking about her.

She had come into his life again, into his very home, and he had never once asked himself: "Is Norah she?" No, because God would not allow him to do so; it had suited God's purpose to paralyze the outlet of all natural thought in that direction. So she grew tall and strong under his eyes--the dreaded imp of the wood eating his food, squatting at his own fireside; changing into the imagined nymph of the wood that he had seen only in dreams; becoming the very spirit of the wood--yes, the wood's avenging spirit.

He moved from his recumbent position, sat up, and drew out Norah's letter from the breast pocket of his jacket. He read her letter again, and his sadness and despair deepened. There was no revolt now; he felt nothing but black misery. He thought: "I used to fear that she would be the means of my death, and now death is coming from her. This letter is my death-warrant."

There was no other way out of his troubles. Life had become unendurable; he could not go on with it. And this thought became now a fixed determination. He must copy the example of other and better men; he must do for himself, as old Bates and many others had done for themselves when they found their lives too hard for them.

If he didn't--oh, the whole thing was hopeless. Suppose that he rebelled against this cruel necessity. No, he saw too plainly the torment that would lie before him--disgrace, grief of wife and children, soon all the world wishing him dead. And no joy. The girl would be taken from him. The world--or God--would never allow him to hide and be happy with her.

Suppose he were to carry her off to the Colonies, and attempt to begin the new life that he had planned fifteen years ago. Impossible--he was too old; nearly all his strength had gone from him; the mere idea of fighting his way uphill again filled him with a sick fatigue. And the girl, when she saw him failing, physically and mentally, would desert him. _Her_ love could not last--it was too unnatural; and when, contrasting him with other men, she saw that he was feeble, exhausted, utterly worn out, she would shake off the bondage of his companionship. No, there was no possible hope for the future of such a union.