He suffered such misery as only men built in his great, futile pattern are called to suffer. The calculating and responsible find themselves in no such sea of troubles; for their flotillas hold inshore; their sapient eyes ever scan the weather of life, and their ready hands trim sail to it. But this faulty fool with his mad temper and sanguine trust in self, had listened to none, marked no sign, heeded no warning. He had played the greatest game that he knew, in hope that an unborn babe might some day bless his name and perpetuate it. He had staked all and lost all. His daughter was driven from him; his wife, in the agony of her bereavement, had shed bitter tears, and, for the first time in her life, lifted up her voice against his judgment. His plans had miscarried; his money was nearly all lost. He stood under the storm bankrupt of everything that he had worked for and hoped for. He felt naked when he thought of his life, now stripped so bare; for every interest was torn out of it, and, as a tree robbed of leaves, it threatened to perish. Present tribulations thundered on his heart as the storm upon his ears. His soul felt deafened and bewildered; therefore he ran for shelter into the past. Time rolled back for him and he saw the tortuous journey of his days stretching into childhood. The vernal, sweet delights of youth appeared again, and he remembered old forgotten springtimes—birds\' eggs—minnows—his first pony—the scent of the new-mown hay. Then his own disposition developed and darkened the hour. Puberty was past; freedom became his and he abused it. Manhood plunged him into gloomy and sombre avenues of years, lighted only by the flashing flame-points of his own temper. He marked how ungoverned wrath had at last grown ungovernable, and had risen, time out of mind, like a demon, between him and wisdom; how his own action had ceaselessly turned him out of the proper road, had clouded justice and threatened honour. He clung to honour as a drowning man to a straw. He fought the cruel white light of truth and strove to shut his eyes to it; for soaked in that blinding ray, honour stood no longer undefiled. A canker grew there; a blot dimmed it; and the spectacle, shattering self-respect, hurt him worse than loss of friends and fortune and his only child. Cowardice and high honour could not chime together; and light showed him that the canker-growth spelt cowardice. He had outraged the freedom of his daughter; he had used force against her liberty; he had denied her sacred rights in the disposal of her own life and body.
Before this thought he came to his better self through his worst. He called down a curse on the forces that played with his convictions; he damned the inner voice of reason that showed him what he had deemed duty was an interested crime. Standing beneath the storm he put bitter facts behind him for vain phantoms, and maligned the awful ray of truth. Then, moody and sick in spirit, he leapt suddenly to sweeter and cleaner thinking. Some phase of mind, some physical conjunction, or some psychic crisis pervious to the influence of Nature, lifted him, as often happened, into great longing for the better part. The dawn showed him what no dawn had ever yet revealed. He turned to the East and prayed to it.
"Before Heaven I mourn for what I am! I see myself cursed—self-cursed. Oh, God, give me back my child again, and I will be a wiser man! Only my child—only my Grace. I humble myself. Punish me, great God, but not by taking her—my only one. I repent; I will mend my life if I may but have my child again."
The sun, struggling above wild new-born day and dying tempest, answered his petition with shafts of flame, and wrapped that desolate wilderness in a mingled splendour of mist and fire. The pageant of the sky uttered a music proper to the man\'s sore spirit, and unrolled with solemn glory. Heaven glowed and burnt, or frowned and shuddered in black precipices of storm-cloud that sank upon the West. Into the deep senses of the watcher these things penetrated graciously. They touched the ragged wounds of his heart and helped to heal them, while a harmony, as of music, fell upon his helpless, hopeless soul. All the wonder of the sky filled Malherb\'s dark eyes as he lifted them; but a light greater than the sky or any inspiration born of day shone out. Upon the verge of apocalypse he stood; yet gulfs unseen separated him from it. His days were not accomplished; his darkest hour was not yet come.
Now, where a rock rose at a point not far distant, there appeared Lovey Lee. She stood like some night-spirit, surprised by dawn, blinking and disarmed in the unfamiliar sunshine. For a moment she hesitated at the sight of Malherb; then approached him, conscious of her complete power. This man, and perhaps only this man in the world, was impotent against her. Not a finger could he lift. Harm done to her must bring far worse upon himself. Her wits planned a cunning lie and she advanced to utter it.
"You\'m stirring early, Maurice Malherb. \'Tis strange that you an\' me should both choose to walk this here ill-wisht heath all rotten wi\' bog and water."
"I came to seek peace—not you. I ask you to quit my sight without more words. There is no anger in me now."
"\'Peace\'! Do \'e find peace in your own company? I\'ll swear you never have, nor never will. No peace for the likes of you till you be dead. Come, let\'s talk secrets—shall us? I\'ve got things you\'d dearly like to hear about."
"Leave me," he said. "I\'ve done with cursing and swearing. There is much upon my mind. I will not be angry with you. My daughter is lost."
"They say you drove her away with a whip."
"They lie! \'Twas her own damnable folly that drove her away."
"Maybe you lie too, to say it. You\'ve held me in such contempt and scorn—you\'ve treated me so vile—that it\'s good, even at a time like this, to make you bleed a bit. An\' I\'m going to now. You shall cringe yet, though I have got the gallows hanging over me; you shall grovel yet, though I do stand an outlawed, doomed woman for helping them at the Prison. I\'ll crack your heart first; then I\'ll ax you to save me from the soldiers. And yet I doubt if t\'other ban\'t a more solid man to trust—Norcot I mean. Anyway, he\'s a wiser one, and can pay better, too."
"Do you dare to mean that you know where Grace Malherb is hidden?"
"Ah! that wakes you up—you that have done wi\' cursing an\' swearing—you that stole my grazing rights and called me \'hag\' and \'miser\'! I\'ve got your fortune in my hand still, for all your bluster and great oaths. And I\'ve got your daughter, too! Now you can listen—eh? Now I don\'t worrit you no more? Yes, I\'ve got her hard an\' fast, wi\' cords biting at her wrists an\' ankles like poisonous snakes—she said it felt so. I told you I\'d wreck your stupid, brawling fool\'s life; an\' I have. You owe every pang you suffer to yourself—then to me; every curse you utter hops back to roost on your own head—so grey it grows with their droppings! My work—all mine! Now howl an\' roar—I want to hear you!"
The man preserved an astounding self-control before Lovey\'s confession.
"This is what her grandson tried to tell me yesterday, and I would not listen," he said aloud.
"Ah!—you was ever a poor listener. More poison for \'e! He was your nephew—Jack Lee—the son of your younger brother, an\' so like him as peas in a pod! He knowed, but you wouldn\'t heed him. But you always heed me, Malherb—doan\'t \'e?"
Still he spoke no angry word, though his great chest rose and his face grew dark.
"If you tell me the truth—that my daughter is alive and in your keeping—that is well. Much has happened since she went away. If she knew, she would be glad to come back to me. I—I am not faultless—I have erred. My eyes are opened. Give me back my daughter, woman—I will reward you."
"\'Give\' her back! When was I ever knowed to give aught to anybody? That\'s your own fool\'s way—give—give—give. I might sell her; but you\'ve not enough money to buy her. I\'d rather kill her by inches under your nose an\' see you wriggle an\' rave till them black veins on your brow burst!"
His passion began to beat up strong and tempestuous under her lash. The spiritual dawn-light was still-born. Storm awoke in his soul before this infernal provocation and the sea of his mind fell into its accustomed waves before the wind of wrath. He forgot the danger of passion now; he did not appreciate the importance of self-control. His voice rose to the familiar roar and he clutched his riding-stock.
"What a loathsome reptile can a woman be! No man would descend to such filthy degradation. To treat you like a fellow-creature is vain; you are a beast, and must feel like a beast, and understand like a beast. Force at least you recognise; then see force here figured in me! Disobey at your peril, for I\'ll not stand upon words with you again. Get before me to my daughter! Instantly lead the way. Deny me, and I\'ll destroy you and rid the world of a venomous fury who has lived too long."
She did not guess that he intended actual and instant violence, but supposed he threatened to give her up to the authorities.
"Lies—lies!" she answered, mocking him. "You kill me? I know better. You\'re not mad every way. Do your own errands—I spit at you! I wasn\'t born to obey a fool. The hills and rivers laugh to see you dance an\' blow, as if you\'d got poison in your vitals. Never—never again shall you see her; never, not for millions! To give me up! Bah! how\'s that going to help? An\' I\'d laugh to think of her starving alongside fifteen thousand pounds. How black you get! Why don\'t you use that great horn handle you\'re waving about like a lunatic? Come, there\'s only white hair on my head, an\' little of that. Smash my skull in! And then? Kill me. Ha, ha!——"
For the first time in her life, Lovey Lee mistook the nature of a man. That there was a sort of anger capable of rising high above its own interest her own cautious nature could not guess. She saw that the whole of Malherb\'s earthly desires were in her hand; and that he, who also realised this, would, with one mad stroke, rob himself of his last hope, she never imagined even as a possibility. Had he kept his reason, she had never succeeded in goading him to this murder pitch; but now he grew insane, and the woman paid forfeit.
She intended to show him the folly of threats. But the words were never uttered; her laugh was not finished. Beside himself, the master leapt forward; his whip shrieked across the air, and the massive handle dropped like a hammer on the miser\'s crown. To her knees she came, without a sound; next she fell prone before him. Her legs and arms shot forth convulsively twice; a patch of blood swelled on her sun-bonnet, then soaked through and ran. One groan came with it and only one. After that she was still, and Malherb knew she was dead.
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CHAPTER X A GOD OF GLASS
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CHAPTER XII THE VOICE
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