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.
G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 Inst.i.tut 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 subst.i.tute 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.ser-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 n.o.ble, 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 repet.i.tion 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 gla.s.s. 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.sy 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 b.u.t.terfly 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.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV