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.
Before noon on the day after Hilary Woodrow's death two men advanced towards Ruddyford farm. One went slowly on foot; the other rode as hard as his horse could carry him. While Brendon climbed White Hill and stopped for several minutes beside the cairns upon its summit, Jarratt Weekes leapt off his horse at the farmyard gate and hurried into the house.
He had learnt that Brendon was returning home from Lydford station, and he had instantly set out to go before him and give Sarah Jane warning. Not, however, until his arrival at Ruddyford did he realize the whole truth or appreciate the effects of his recent action.
It was Sarah Jane herself who told him, and his terror at the recital contrasted forcibly with her calmness.
"Agg broke all to me yesterday," she said. "My husband went to Dawlish to kill Woodrow. I want no words with you, nor any other man now. You can't alter what's got to be."
"For God's sake let me save you!" he implored. "'Tis murder on my soul for ever if he does you any hurt."
"See you to that," she said; then she turned to Tabitha Prout. "I know my way clear enough. The man's on the road. When he comes, you can tell him that I be gone up-along to the peat works, and have taken the boy with me. He'll understand."
She left them and went to her own cottage. There she took a pencil and wrote a few words on a piece of paper. The brief letter she folded up, put into an envelope, and addressed to Daniel. Next she called her child.
"Us be going up to the peat works, Gregory. Come along quick, my pretty."
"Hurrah!" said he; and as soon as Sarah Jane had put on her sun-bonnet, they started over the Moor for Great Links. Her letter was in her pocket. She knew that her husband must presently appear on the summit of White Hill; and from that point he could not fail to see her. She understood why he had come, and what he would do. No shadow of fear for herself clouded her understanding now. She perceived very fully what this terrific discovery must mean to Brendon, and unutterable grief for him was at her heart. Hilary had escaped, and she was thankful, both for Daniel and the dead. Now she went up through the unspeakable glories of a cloudless June day; and sometimes her hand tightened on the hand of her child.
Below, Agg, Weekes, and Lethbridge held earnest converse. The terror of Jarratt made the others contemptuous. "Give over shouting out to your God, you dirty cur," said Walter Agg. "Well may you shake in your shoes. If yonder man, as be coming now, was sane and not mad, 'tis you that he'd put out of the way, and I could hope that he will do so yet. To betray her—you blasted rogue! You'll be damned afore any of us for it—that's one comfort."
"'Twas never meant to turn to this—God's my judge, I didn't foresee any such thing."
"Get out of honest men's eyes and hang yourself, like the Judas you be. I would break your head this moment and rejoice in it, if I hadn't to keep my strength for yonder man."
"I can do no more," said Weekes. "I call you to witness that I comed here afore him to warn her. She might have escaped him if she chose to do it."
"Where be she now?" asked Lethbridge, and Tabitha Prout spoke.
"She went to her own house, so soon as she heard Daniel was on the way."
Weekes returned into the yard, where his horse stood. Then he pointed to the hill.
"He cometh!"
On the cairn, motionless, stood Brendon. They watched him, and presently he began to descend. Jarratt Weekes rode away. Agg took off his coat and tightened his belt.
"Be you going to help me withstand that man, Peter?" he asked calmly; but Lethbridge refused.
"No, I ban't," he answered. "I'll die in my bed a few years hence for choice. This be none of my business. You know him. The man of common strength that stands between him and her now will be broken for it. She might have been saved, but she wouldn't be, an' there's an end."
The great moment in Walter Agg's life had come.
"Broken, or not broken, I'll do what I can," he said.
They looked up the hill again to see that Daniel Brendon no longer approached them. He had caught sight of Sarah Jane far away, and already near the summit of Great Links. Instantly he changed his course, and proceeded directly over the Moor toward her.
Seeking the reason of his action, Agg and Lethbridge also marked Sarah Jane, now above a mile away on the heights.
"God Almighty, she's run for it—too late!" cried Lethbridge; but Agg had already left him. He knew that he could cut off Brendon, and started to do so. They met far below Great Links, and by the time that they did so Sarah Jane had already reached the summit. She sat there for a space, took her farewell of the world, drank her last draught of the glory of the summer sun and the splendour of the summer earth.
Like a dream picture painted in milk and gold, rich with magic light even in the pearly shadows, overflowing with the lustre and fervour of June, Devon spread before her feet and rolled in sunlit leagues to the horizons of the sea. There lacked no gracious beauty proper to that scene. It rose beyond perfection to sublimity, lifted her watching spirit higher than any praise; begot the serene, still sadness that reigns above all joy.
The mundane matter of Brendon's meeting with Agg interested her but little. Like the struggle of two ants it seemed in the midst of that huge loneliness. She saw the figures run together and turn and twist a moment. Then the lesser was shot violently away and fell sprawling. The prone atom writhed for a second and was still; the other came on.
"Poor Walter!" thought Sarah Jane.
Her heart throbbed farewell to the only world she had known; and, gazing upward, she was glad that the sky shone blue over her death.
As Daniel Brendon stood and gazed upon Ruddyford from the barrows of White Hill, he had suddenly recollected two former occasions when the distant farm spread before him with special significance. His first vision of it in storm came to his mind, and he remembered how that he had descended, and entered into the life of the place, and toiled mightily to advance the welfare of the farm and its master. Then came the moment when, fresh from reading Hilary Woodrow's will, he had gazed upon the land of promise and, by slow stages, grasped the tremendous truth that all he saw within these boundaries would presently be his own. Vividly he remembered that occasion, and how, lifted by the actual spectacle of Ruddyford, he had turned back again to the giver and renewed his gratitude. And now he looked upon his own, and called on his God to shatter it with lightning, to burn it with fire, to bury it and blot it out, like the cities of the plain. He hungered to be at the work, to tear its foundations from their granite roots, to blast the bed it lay on, to leave no trace upon earth by which man might remember it.
He moved a little way onward; then suddenly saw the woman and child. He stopped, shielded his eyes from the light and recognized them. The man felt glad that she understood why he had come. It was better to make an end up aloft on the lonely altars, than within the cursed confines of the farm. He knew that she was going to the peat-works; that she understood his coming. His mind was calm now and steadfastly settled to destroy her. He changed his course and proceeded leisurely towards Great Links. Already he said to himself that Sarah Jane should sleep beside her father and die where he died.
Then ran Walter Agg and stood against him and tried to stay him. The battle between them was not of long duration, and to the weaker man happened what Lethbridge foretold. He was flung down with terrific violence; he fell upon a rock and his leg was broken. Brendon left him there without any word and went on to the great hill. Presently he stopped, looked upward to the grey forehead of the tor, and he noted that his wife was sitting quietly there, watching him. Only then his soul sickened, and he found it in his heart to call upon God to spare her. For she sat very near the spot where first they had loved and worshipped each other. He hesitated, but strode on again; and presently she rose and disappeared.
A track over the heavy fens between the tor and the peat-works was known to Sarah Jane, and now she followed it, while her child ran on before.
Soon they entered the familiar ruin and took their way to the great drum. There, in dead heath and fern, little Gregory rested awhile; then he called for his favourite toy.
"Not yet, my dicky-bird," she said. "You've got something to do for mother first. Look over there—down to the end of the path—who be that coming after us?"
The child uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure.
"Daddy! Daddy back home again!" he said.
"So it is, then. And I've got a letter here that you must take to him. Such a man you be now! Here 'tis—you run down along with it and tell him mother's sent it. Quick! How fast he's walking!"
She gave her child the letter and a long kiss. After that he trotted off to meet his father.
Sarah Jane watched him; then turned and took his toy from its hiding-place. It was the famous old knife which she had seen so often in her father's hand. The blade was blunt, but that mattered not, for her Roman spirit turned to the point.
"'Tis my heart did wrong," she said; "'tis my heart——"
The child ran to Brendon and jumped into his arms, as he was wont to do.
"A letter from mother, daddy," he cried; "I've carried it safe for 'e."
Deep soul movements had swept Daniel as he climbed to the crowns of the land. He began to ask himself questions; his heart shook and bled within him; he prayed to his God; he humbly implored his God; but no answer came. Therefore he went onward—since the Almighty's mind was unshaken. Then came the child, and he took the letter and doubted not that the Father of Mercy had, even at this last hour, dictated it to her who sent it. Now he was to learn what he must do. While he opened it he walked on, until he had reached within fifty yards of the ruin.
After he had read it, he stood still a moment and considered. He doubted not that his wife's eyes were upon him.
The letter was very short:—
"My dear, they say you have come. I know. I'll spare you that.—Your true love."
The man lifted his voice at last.
"I can't do it—God forgive me, I can't—I can't. Make your peace with Him, as I shall. Live out your life on your knees for ever, as I shall. I'm going. You shall never see me no more."
Then he spoke to the child.
"Get to your mother," he said.
Gregory, frightened at his face and voice, ran back as fast as he could go, and Brendon departed. But a moment later, when shrill shriek upon shriek cut his ears, he stopped, turned again, and went to his child; because he knew that the little thing was alone.
On a night at mid-December, in a darkened room, Daniel Brendon sat writing laboriously. The candle beside him was shielded so that the light should fall only on his papers, on a copy of the "War Cry," and on his Bible. In a corner were two beds, side by side, and his boy occupied the smaller one and slept peacefully there. Upon a chair by the little bed Gregory's clean clothes were placed for the morrow. A small scarlet jersey hung close by, and beside it a very large one, that Daniel would wear.
Brendon had joined the Salvation Army and was captain of the Lydford Branch. Indeed, he had founded this branch, and worked like a giant by night and day to increase its strength. Twenty-five persons were already numbered.
He rose up and stretched his arms; then sat down and read through the notes that he had made. To-morrow the man would preach from the twelfth chapter of Job and the twenty-second verse.
"He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death."
The child laughed in his sleep and then was still again. A clock struck four.
Brendon appeared to be much aged; he did not spare himself in his unceasing struggles for his God. Only at such moments as this, in the waste of night, when life's pulses burned low; when his own agony surged high; when human powerlessness to stem the tide of the world's grief was most borne in upon his spirit, did he waver and look forward hungrily to the end. For a moment now he put his great hands over his face and longed for the time when the dust of the workshop should be still, the dust of the workman at rest.
John Prout and his sister received all Woodrow's money—a sum sufficient for their needs until life's end. Brendon had sold Ruddyford; and the payment, in shape of notes, he burnt. Now he fought under the banner of the new sect that already foreshadowed its coming power.
He rose presently, gazed upon the night and started at what he saw.
"Blood and Fire in heaven too!" he thought.
Behind the mass of Lydford castle a moon, just short of fall, was sinking amid vast clouds. Some were very dark and some were luminous; some, while circled with flame, yet moved in masses unutterably black. The firmament seemed troubled by this conflagration. The setting moon, surrendering her silver, took upon her bosom the tinctures of earth; and the stormy clouds burnt with her stained radiance. Above them the light exhaled and shot upward into heaven, where stars shone through the vaporous floor of the sky. Orion wheeled his far-flung glories westward and followed the red moon.
The wonder of this silent and nocturnal pageant endured awhile; then it slowly died away. The planet flashed a farewell ruby above the edge of the world, and dreamless darkness brooded upon earth for a little space before the dawn.
THE END
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., ANDBUNGAY, SUFFOLK.