Chapter XIII: Another Effigy

From the pandemonium of the mock burial Daniel Brendon took himself unseen. The advice of Jarratt Weekes appeared to be reasonable, and he decided to follow it. He was told to ask Prout, and he determined to do so. He roamed through darkness, and the past turned back like a scroll, and he read into the recent years far more than Prout could tell him. It was not possible to reach Dawlish until the following day, and long before the summer dawn returned Brendon had passed beyond thought of Prout to that of his master.

Under deep and silent woods, by waste places and along lonely roads he went. The voices of night whispered round him, and sleeping trees sighed, shivered, and slept again as he passed them by. Nocturnal creatures were his companions; the solitary hare limped along before him; the owl and the night-jar cried from the wood; once he passed a colony of glow-worms, where they twinkled in the dewy grass, like a tiny constellation.

His mind suffered the gigantic convulsion proper to this blow. Within one hour of leaving Lydford, he believed. His inherent instincts, smothered through five years by kindness, hushed by gentle words, lulled by immense generosity, tore their way through these artifices and saw all that had been hidden, and far more. The goodness of Woodrow rotted as Daniel thought of it; and even his conversion stank. Brendon saw himself hoodwinked, laughed at, deceived--seduced, like a child, with sugar-plums, rendered harmless with gifts, muzzled and deluded with fields and beasts and great possessions. He had worshipped and obeyed his God for this; he had sung praises to the Almighty, and toiled in the ways of righteousness for this. The Everlasting had watched it all, had listened to his prayers, had marked his mighty efforts, had waited until the cup was full before striking it from the lip of His servant. Brendon turned from God to man, thought upon his enemy, and considered the plot that had robbed him of his honour. Not until the light of dawn awoke upon a world of young green and silver dew, did Sarah Jane enter into his mind; and then he determined with himself that she must stand beside her paramour. He could not remotely guess at the truth of the past five years; it was natural that he should conceive a web of heartless and cruel deception woven from their united cunning and daily wrapped closer about himself. They knew him so well: his weak spots were so familiar to them, that the rest was easy. They had laughed at his complacent and devout trust in God a thousand times; doubtless they had grown accustomed to their sin and finally become careless. It was natural that all the world should know before it fell upon his ears. He read the whole story; he saw Woodrow handing over the farm in exchange for what he wanted more; he imagined Sarah Jane making the bargain. Anon Woodrow pretended to Christianity and Sarah Jane also affected an attitude of increased prayer and devotion. All was dust--dust flung by cruel hands and hard hearts to blind him.

His life crashed down, like a tree thrown in March. So had he seen a great elm fall. One moment it stood in full and glorious dignity of adult growth, the sun upon its crown and rosy inflorescence of flowers meshed within a grey mist of the young twigs; then the saw gnawed to its heart, the axe rang, the mallet drove the wedge, and the whole mighty edifice, falling in thunder, lay crushed fiat by its own weight, maimed, wrecked, shattered, and utterly destroyed. Only a raw disc in the hedge marked the place whence it had sprung upward, to be a theatre for the loveliness of spring and autumn, a home for the storm-thrush, a harp for the winter wind.

Now the fabric of his fortunes similarly collapsed, and he found all that had looked so healthy was flourishing upon foundations of putrescence and decay. No canker had eaten into his life and ruined it; no sudden misfortune had grown and turned what was fair to what was foul; but, in ignorance, with immense labour, he had built upon stark fraud and filth and his own dishonour; he had founded his life on falsehoods and sins; he had worshipped his God in unconsciousness of the truth; he had been drawn to closer and deeper intercourse with Christ through the cold-blooded villainy of a man. His ambitions, aims and future schemes were all rooted and flourishing in his own betrayal; and his God had suffered this appalling thing to come to pass, and denied him one dim hint or whisper of the truth. At the crucial moment, when Woodrow made him his heir, the Almighty had blinded Daniel's native instinct and not permitted even a suspicion of reality to be associated with the gift. All had combined against him; all had cozened his understanding: his wife, his master, his God. Man and Heaven had united to deceive him; and man, knowing the truth, had watched his sustained devotion and faith; and Heaven, knowing the truth, had accepted his worship and thanksgiving, had suffered his delusion to continue, had planned the horror of the end.

Every wind of the night came to him with a new grief; every scent of the night brought a new agony; every voice of the night drove home the truth with an added torment. He looked up at the stars and asked them what he should do. From force of habit he knelt and called upon God. But he remembered that, in this matter, God was on the side of the enemy. Therefore he rose and went forward without prayer.

By morning he had walked many miles along the foothills of the Moor; and then, after five o'clock, he went down to a railway station, waited for the first train, and travelled to Plymouth. He suffered himself to rest there for a time; and he washed and ate. Henceforth he was concerned with Hilary Woodrow and not with John Prout. He perceived clearly that the old man, who would have sacrificed his soul for Hilary, had helped his wife and Woodrow against him. He retraced events of many journeys. He thought of the days that he had been from home, and of the time spent by his wife at Dawlish. He forged a long and dreadful chain of horrible deceits that had never existed. He began to imagine an evil story which occupied a place in time long after the actual treachery was over and done. Upon the fact of his betrayal he built a mighty monument; yet this memorial had itself scarcely any existence in fact. That, however, mattered little. The truth without addition had been enough for Brendon.

Day was turned to night in his mind, and he longed for the real night, that he might accomplish his purpose. About noon he took train to Dawlish, and reached it before three o'clock.

He bought bread and ate it to support himself; then he went into the woods above the town and lurked there until the dark. His decision was come to, and he intended to destroy both Woodrow and Sarah Jane. They should perish; and at that moment he would have killed his God too if he had known how. For a short time, indeed, his fetich was dead enough; because to find what he had believed a Creator's sustained and benignant attention proved instead one cruel, long-drawn trick and jest, shook the man to the roots of his faith. Such action seemed not compatible with any conception of a loving, a just, and an all-powerful father.

For an hour he cursed God like a fallen Titan; but only for an hour. Then lifelong trust and faith conquered, and even at this crisis atrophied reason proved too weak to grasp its opportunity. Faith re-took the citadel. He reflected upon his Bible, and presently perceived that nothing had happened to him which was contrary to the common way of God with man. The Jehovah he adored; He who once drowned every little child in the whole world; the Being who led Israel into the desert of Sinai; who slew Uzzah for steadying His ark; who killed seventy thousand innocent men because David numbered his people; who commanded whole nations to be slaughtered and their virgins only saved for the conquerors; who prescribed rules for slavery; who destroyed the firstborn of all Egypt, and tore ten thousand mothers' hearts; who loved the stench and smear of blood upon His altars, and pursued His foes with the tenacity, cruelty and craft of a Red Indian--this Everlasting Spirit might most reasonably be expected to play the faithless savage and torture even the least of those who worshipped His omnipotent name. But it was not for his creature to question Him; it was not for a thinking being to spurn this almighty pest with scorn and with loathing; it was not for a smitten man to ask how any Prince of Devils could worse confound his own creation.

Brendon offered the other cheek; and before he stole out from his hiding-place in the forest and went down where Woodrow dwelt, he was safe in the grip of his God once more. The fact, however, did not alter his determination, because this revelation of his own ordained ruin and destruction brought others in its train. Subsequent actions were clearly indicated to him by the Being he still obeyed; for Daniel was not wholly sane now. Streaks and flashes of madness touched the tissue of his thoughts, as sparks fly in smoke. Barriers fell, old orderly opinions perished, strangled by the horde of ferocious ideas that hurtled through his mind. From the broken links of dead principles a new thing was welded, and method and purpose were restored. He believed in predestination, and through that hypothesis he came back humbly to the footstool of his idol. He perceived that the World-maker had chosen him to drive the knife into these evil hearts. For that purpose, the infinitely wise, infinitely just, infinitely loving God of his fathers had called him from the womb; had suffered him to live and thrive; had ordered his life prosperously; had taught him from his youth up to worship Heaven, and walk uprightly before men. To this end his faith had been founded upon adamant, and tempered to move mountains; to this end the Sun of Righteousness had warmed his spirit; and now the fruit of his spirit was about to ripen in murder.

For a time the natural rage that consumed him cooled a little before these high mandates. The inversion of his intellect was complete; and though there came to him a fear that he was about to do this thing that he might gratify a personal lust and hunger for revenge, he put that temptation away as of the Devil. He believed that the powers of darkness urged him to spare his wife and his master; while Jehovah ordered their instant death. To let them live now would be to frustrate their Maker's plan--a thing unthinkable. He longed for a Bible that he might wallow in the atrocities of the Pentateuch and find wherewithal to strengthen his arm there.

He was very nearly insane at this crisis--madder than it happens to most to be at any time. Yet few there are, capable of intense feeling, who have not stood at the veil, looked behind it in dreams or calentures, and seen the red-eyed spirit glare like a gorgon out. She peers forth by night, and the dreaming brain knows her well; at times of terrific joy or grief she is near; after physical excesses she comes close; surfeit or starvation alike summon her; she is the firstling of superstition, the familiar of the fanatic.

This man walked with madness that night for a little time, and not until he had returned to the lamp-lit streets did the unholy thing depart from him. Then he affirmed his spirit, prayed fervent prayers, and tramped by the sea a while, before going upon his business. He meant to kill Woodrow with his naked hands.

Before the row of dwellings wherein the sick man lay, Daniel became puzzled, for he had forgotten the house. It was only by chance that he rang at the right one.

Some time elapsed before any answer came; then the door opened upon darkness, and Brendon did not know that it was Prout who stood before him.

"Who bides here?" he asked, and his voice startled him, for the tone was strange.

"Death, my son," answered the other.

Brendon pushed the old man aside, strode in, and then found that John told the truth.

Hilary Woodrow lay in his bed. The room was lighted by a gas chandelier, but only one jet burnt there. Brendon's mind leapt over the abysses of the last four-and-twenty hours.

"This is not him," he said. "You've dragged that doll back again to deceive me!"

"He died afore noon to-day, and yours was the last name on his lips in this world. Maybe the first in the next."

"Let him scream it in hell--the blasted, faithless villain! Dead--he's not dead--he knows what I'm here for--he's foxing now, as he has foxed me all his life--foul, heartless, godless monster that he was!"

"Daniel--Daniel--for God's sake--a dead man, Daniel!"

"Out on his death and out on you, you go-between! To hold my hand and swear friends, and help them into each other's arms behind my back--God of light and reason! why be such rank poison as you allowed to----?"

He broke off and stared where the colourless clay of his master gazed blankly up--just as the doll had gazed. Insolence seemed to sit on the dust--the insolence of a mean spirit that had narrowly escaped harm and now, in safety, turned to jeer. Brendon roared and cursed the corpse, while Prout implored him to be sane.

"This happened five years ago and more," cried the old man; "'twas all over then for ever."

"All over--for them it might have been. What of me? ... All over but the payment.... What of me, I say? ... Blight his dim, damned eyes--blight him lying there and telling the truth with his dumb lips now he's safe from me.... What of me? 'All ended'! It's only begun for me. The reaping's mine--the reaping of this devil's crop. Mine to put in God's sickle now!"

"Nought but the whirlwind will you reap, poor man. Turn to your God, and don't blaspheme Him. Call on Him, afore you do what can't be undone. For pity, Daniel--for pity. He's gone to answer for what he did. Leave her to God too."

The man grew calmer and reflected before answering.

"Mine's a difficult God, you must know," he said. "He's come between again. Only vengeance be God's, but justice belongs to us seemingly. This wasn't justice--to let that lying adulterer slip away in peace like he has! I comed to strangle him, and God's stepped between again--robbed me again. 'Tis almost more than a faithful soldier and servant can endure, John Prout. Job's self wasn't called to face a thing like this. I've been deserted, look you, for no fault of my own. Robbed--robbed of all my earnings, and my honour, and my hopes."

He was silent a moment, then rage broke bounds again.

"Let Him take care--let Him that's reigning above Heaven take care, else one more soul will be damned. He can steal everything from me but hell; but that's in all men's reach. We can rob Him of our immortal souls! That's in my power, and why not? What's Heaven to me now? I'd rather follow this devil down--down--if 'tis only to hunt and harry him through raging fire for evermore! ... Even that I'll do ... when she's gone. Evil for evil will I pay my God, and choose my portion with them that ruined me!"

"Man, man--I implore you by my grey hairs, Daniel!"

"Curse your grey hairs! who are you to squeak? You helped this man to hell--you know it! Cold he be now--but he'll roast for it for ever; and may it be mine to trample him into the hot eye of the fire, till he's red through, and the marrow runs out of his damned bones! Why is he dead--why is he dead now? I was his death--fashioned by the Almighty's plan to be his death--born to be his death. Bring him back! Bring him back! Be the God of Ages a fool to let all His planning and plotting fall to nought? Who is Death to stand grinning between me and this filthy clay? Be he stronger than the God that conquered him? Curse him, and curse heaven and hell that's caught this man away from me in his last hour."

Now he seemed to realize the other's absolute escape; and he lifted his voice, howled horribly, turned upon the dead, and struck Woodrow's forehead.

Thereupon Prout flung himself at Brendon with all his weak might, and cried shame, and called upon him to be a man and not a beast. But Daniel swept him off and went out.