like one in a dream i heard the doctor’s footstep recede down the stairs and heard the yard door close dully on him as he left the house. in my suffering soul i felt one cruel shaft rankling, and for the rest only a vague sense of loss hung like a cloud over all my faculties.
i had no doubt of the truth of the evil creature’s words. not otherwise could his knowledge and possession of the tattered portrait be accounted for. now, too, peggy’s unaccountable terror at my discovery of her chaunting and gloating over her work on a certain afternoon recurred to me, and was confirmation irrefragable. the wretched old woman had had all the will and intention; but she was innocent of the deed.
i must look elsewhere, as he had said—begin all over again. true—but now less than ever in my father’s direction. had i needed in my heart convincing proof of the old man’s guiltlessness, his manner in accepting his acquittal would have afforded it. by this he had shown that with him, as with the hounds that had sought to pull him down, his guilt was purely conjectural—presumed merely on the circumstantial evidence of the braces found in his pocket. but i judged him in my heart and pronounced him acquitted.
now it was idle to moan over my impetuous rush to conclusions. i must only guard against permitting the disillusion to vex the few last days that remained to him. if i wronged the old dead housewife thereby, it was in degree only, for morally she was as guilty as if her charm had borne all the evil force she attributed to it.
well, i must see about getting some harpy in to minister to her final dumb necessities and then—
a low cry, coming from the other room, broke upon my ears. with beating heart i rushed from the death chamber only—merciful heaven—to enter another!
at the first glance i saw that the white spirit had entered during my absence and had written the sign of eternity on my father’s forehead. he was sitting up in bed and the expression on his face was that of a dreadful, eager waiting.
“renalt!”
he called to me in a clear, loud voice—the recovered note of an old stronger personality.
i hurried to him; fell on my knees; put my arm about his shoulders.
“renalt, i am dying—but not yet. the spirit won’t let me pass till i have spoken.”
he turned his head with a resolute effort and gazed upon me.
“what thing have i been—what thing have i been? send me my enemies that i may face and defy them! which of them worse than myself? oh, craven—craven!”
“father! i only am with you—no enemy, father!”
he struck his fist down upon the counterpane.
“by your love for me you shall know the truth! judge me then—judge me then as you will. hear me speak and make no answer till i have finished. judge me then, and let me pass to my doom weighted with your judgment.”
“father!”
“renalt, i killed your mother!”
i fell back appalled. an instant—then i leaned forward and again held him in my arms.
“ah!” his voice broke, swerved and recovered itself. “not with this hand—my god, no—but surely and pitilessly none the less. not a month after modred was born i found my name and trust dishonored and by her. listen! speak nothing. you must know all! she had been in service in london before i married her—where, to this day i have never learned. i shall know soon—i shall know. she was friendless—a weak, irresponsible, beautiful young woman. i threw aside all for her sake, and my love grew tenfold in the act of combating the misfortune it brought me. i could love, renalt—i could love. there was a passion in my fervor.”
he clasped his hands wildly and looked piercingly before him.
“how the old torment flames up in me at the last! i think i gave my soul to the wanton and i thought i had hers in exchange. what inspired fools love makes of us! my castle in cloudland stood firm till that month after modred’s birth. then all in a day—a minute—it dissolved and vanished. i came upon her secretly gloating over a portrait—the miniature of a man. i saw—suspected—wrenched half the truth from her. half the truth only, renalt. when i wedded with her she had a child living. she whose love i had looked upon as a precious possession was all base and hollow, behind her beautiful personality. more—she had borne me three children; yet what affection she was capable of clung about the memory of her first passion. true, this spark had wearied of her, had dismissed her from his service—his service, you understand? and from the face of her child. yet the long years of my passionate devotion weighed as nothing in the balance. i was the means ready to make of her an honest woman—that was all. an honest woman—my god!”
his teeth snapped together with a click; his dying eyes shone out, but their inspiration was demoniacal.
“in one thing only,” he went on in a low, hard voice, “the poor frail wretch was stable. that portrait—the miniature—she died refusing to reveal to me its identity. no threats, no cruelty availed. she kept her secret to the last.”
as he now continued his left hand clutched and tightened upon the bedclothes and a dark shadow seemed to grow out of his face.
“i shut her close in the room below. there, with only the voice of the wheel for company, i swore she should remain till she confessed. each day i brought her food and water, and each day i said, ‘give me his name,’ but she was always silent. she had been weak and ailing from caring for her baby modred, and she faded before my eyes. yet i was merciless. a little more, i thought, and so worthless, fragile a thing must needs yield and answer me. it was will against will, and hers conquered.”
he paused a moment, and i could see drops of sweat freckling his forehead.
“slowly, hour by hour, the stealth and darkness of her prison wrought madness in her. still i persisted and she refused. once she asked to see her children—the little baby i was rearing as best i might, with infinite toil and difficulty—and i laughed and shut her in again. the next morning, going to her, i was dumfounded to hear no booming voice greeting me from the basement. the wheel had stopped. i threw back the door and she was gone. but the cupboard was sprung open and the dammed water spurted and leaped from the motionless blades. a stump of timber was lying near. she had burst the lock with it, and—i rushed and dropped the sluice; hurried back and looked down. i saw her dress tangled in the floats below, and the water heaping into a little mound as it ran over something. then i raced to the room over above, wrenched up a board, and, fastening a rope to a beam, lowered the slack of it into the pit. it served me well in after days, as you know.
“i can hardly remember how i got her out. i know all my efforts were futile, till i thought of notching a paddle and fixing the rope in the hole. when at last i laid her down on the floor of the room i grew sick with horror. there was that in her staring eyes that made my soul die within me.
“i threw the place open to the authorities. i courted every inquiry. she had been in a delirious state, i said, since the coming of the child, and had thrown herself down in a fit of madness. only the evidence of the burst lock i suppressed.
“we had been reserved folk, making few friends or none. our manner of life was known only to ourselves; not a soul suspected the truth and many pitied me in my bereavement. i kept my own counsel. they brought in a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity, and she lies under an old nameless mound in the cemetery yonder.
“then i shut my heart and my door and made out life in the blackness.
“at first i was whelmed in the horror of the catastrophe, yet my pity was not touched and i soon came to believe in the justice of her fate. ‘i never put hand on her,’ i thought. ‘’twas god wrought the punishment.’ but soon a terrible hatred woke in my heart for the first author of my misery. one day i descended by the wheel again and nailed the miniature to its axle. ‘wait you there!’ i cried, ‘till the question is answered. so shall he follow in her footsteps.’ ah, i have heard talk of the fateful fascination of the wheel! why has it never drawn him to come and claim his portrait?”
the fevered torrent of speech broke suddenly in him, and silence reigned in the room. the dying heart leaped against my chest as i held him, and my own seemed to flutter with the contact. what could i think or say? i was dazed with the passion of my emotions.
presently he turned himself quickly and looked at me.
“your judgment!” he cried, hoarsely. “did i well or wickedly?”
through my mind there swiftly passed memory of the barren neglect of our younger lives; of all the evil and misery that had been the indirect result of so cowardly a nursing of an injury.
i bowed my head, and said in a low voice: “i forgive you. that is all you must ask of me.”
perhaps, in the light of his later gentleness, he understood me, for suddenly the tears were running down his cheeks and he cried falteringly: “out of the abyss of death a ghost rises and faces me! all this have i done for the son i love!”
with the words he fell back from my arm and lay gasping on his pillow. and, though my father was near spent, and i knew it, i could find in my heart no word of justification of his conduct, no comfort but the assurance of my forgiveness.
oh, it is an evil thing to arrogate to ourselves god’s prerogative of judgment; to assume that in any personal wrong we can so disassociate justice and resentment as ever to be capable of pronouncing an impartial sentence. to return a blow in kind is a natural and wholesome impulse; but deliberate cruelty, following however great a provocation, can never be anything but most base and unmanly.
and the sin had been sinned before she even knew my father! yet, maybe, to a nature like his, that was the reverse of a palliation. to feel that he had never had her true love or duty, while lavishing his all of both on her; to feel that in a manner the veins of his own children ran with contamination—i could conceive these operating more fiercely in his mind than the discovery that some later caprice of fancy had lured her from her faith.
it was all past and over and i would not condemn or even judge him. though i had been one victim of his quarrel with life, what was my grievance in face of the awful prospect so immediately before him? in a few hours—moments, maybe—the call would come and his soul would have to submit itself for analysis in the theater of the skies.
