it behooves me now to pass over a period of two years during which so little happened that bore directly upon the fortunes of any concerned in this lamentable history that to touch upon them would be to specify merely the matter-of-fact occurrences of ordinary daily life. to me they were an experience of peace and rest such as i had never yet known. i think—a long sleep on the broad sands of forgetfulness, whitherward the storm had cast me, and from which it was to tear me by and by with redoubled fury and mangle and devour my heart in gluttonous ferocity.
as yet, however, the moment had not come, and i lived and went my way in peace and resignation.
the first forewarning came one september afternoon of that second year of rest.
i had been butterfly-hunting about the meadows that lay to the west of the city, when a particularly fine specimen of the second brood of brimstone tempted me over some railings that hedged in the ridge of a railway cutting that here bisected the chalky slopes of pasture land. i was cautiously approaching my settled quarry, net in hand, when i started with an exclamation that lost me my prize.
on the metals, some distance below, a man whose attitude seemed somehow familiar to me was standing.
i shaded my eyes with my hand and looked down, with bewilderment and a little fear constricting my heart.
he stood very still, staring up the line, and a thickness came in my throat, so that i could not for the moment call to him as i wanted to. for there was an ominous suggestion in his posture that sent a wave of sickness through me—a suggestion of rigid expectation, like that one might fancy a victim of the old reign of terror would have shown as he waited his turn on the guillotine.
and as i paused in indecision—at that moment came a surging rumble and a puff of steam from a dip in the hills a hundred yards away, and the figure threw itself down, with its neck stretched over the shining vein of iron that ran in front of it. and i cried “jason!” in a nightmare voice, and had hardly strength to turn my head away from the sight that i knew was coming. yet through all my sick panic the shadow of a thought flashed—blame me for it who will—“let me bear it and not give way, for he is taking the sure way to end his terror.”
the thunder of the monster death came with the thought—shook the air of the hills—broke into a piercing scream of triumph as it rushed down on its victim—passed and clanged away among the hollows, as if the crushed mass in its jaws were choking it to silence. then i brushed the blind horror from my eyes and looked down.
he was lying on the chalk of the embankment below me; he was stirring; he sat up and looked about him with a bewildered stare. the tragedy had ended in bathos after all. at the last moment courage had failed the poor wretch and he had leaped from the hurtling doom.
shaking all over, i scrambled, slipping and rolling, down the slope, and landed on my feet before him.
“up!” i cried; “up! don’t wait to speak or explain! they’ll telegraph from the next stopping-place, and you’ll be laid by the heels for attempted suicide.”
he rose staggering and half-fell against me.
“renny,” he whimpered in a thick voice and clutched at my shoulders to steady himself. “my god! i nearly did it—didn’t i?”
“come away, i tell you. it’ll be too late in another half-hour.”
i ran him, shambling and stumbling, down the cutting till we had made a half-circuit of the town and were able to enter it at a point due east to that we had left. then at last, on the slope of that quiet road we had crossed when escaping from duke, i paused to gather breath and regard this returned brother of mine.
it was a sorry spectacle that met my vision, a personality pitiably fallen and degraded during those thirty months or so of absence. it was not only that the mere animal beauty of it was coarsened and debauched into a parody of itself, but that its informing spirit was so blunted by indulgence as to have lost forever that pathetic dignity of despair, with which a hounding persecution had once inspired it.
as i looked at him, at his dull, bloodshot eyes and loose pendulous lower lip, my heart hardened despite myself and i had difficulty in addressing him with any show of civility.
“now,” i said, “what next?”
he stared at me quite expressionless and swayed where he stood. he was stupid and sodden with drink, it was evident.
“let’s go home,” he said. “i’m heavy for sleep as a hedgehog in the sun.”
i set my lips and pushed him onward. it was hopeless entirely to think of questioning him as to the reason of his sudden reappearance, and under such circumstances, in his present state. the most i could do was to get him within the mill as quietly as possible and settle him somewhere to sleep off his debauch.
in this i was successful beyond my expectations, and not even my father, who lay resting in his room—as he often did now in the hot afternoons—knew of his return till late in the evening.
in the fresh gloom of the evening he stirred and woke. his brain was still clouded, but he was in, i supposed, such right senses as he ever enjoyed now. at the sound of his moving i came and stood over him. he stared at me for a long time in silence, as he lay.
“do you know where you are?” i said at last.
“renny—by the saints!” he spoke in a dry, parched whisper. “it’s the mill, isn’t it?”
“yes; it’s the mill. i brought you here filthy with drink, after you’d tried to throw yourself under a train and thought better of it.”
he struggled wildly into a sitting posture and his eyelids blinked with horror.
“i thought of it all the way in the train—coming up—from london,” he said in a shrill undervoice. “when i got out at the station i had some more—the last straw, i suppose—for i wandered, and found myself above the place—and the devil drove me down to do it.”
“well, you repented, it seems.”
“i couldn’t—when i heard it. and the very wind of it seemed to tear at me as it passed.”
“what brings you to london? i thought you were still abroad.”
“what drove me? what always drives me? that cruel, persecuting demon!”
“he found you out over there, then?”
“i can’t hide from him. i’ve never had a week of rest and peace after that first year. it was all right then. i threw upon the green cloth the miserable surplus of the stuff you lent me and won. for six months we lived like fighting cocks. we dressed the young ’un in the color that brought us luck. my soul, she’s a promising chick, renny. you’re her uncle, you know; you can’t go back from that.”
“where did he come across you?”
“in a kursaal at homburg. we were down in the mouth then. six weeks of lentils and sour bread. i saw him looking at me across the petits chevaux table—curse his brute’s face! we never got rid of him after that. give me some drink. my heart’s dancing like a pea on a drum.”
“there’s water on the wash-hand stand.”
“don’t talk like that. there’s a fire here no water can reach.”
“i see there is. you’ve added another strand to the rope that’s dragging you down.”
he fell back on the bed, writhing and moaning.
“what’s the good of moralizing with a poor fool condemned to perdition? it’s my only means of escaping out of hell for a moment. sometimes, with that in me, i’m a man again.”
“a man!”
“there—get it for me, like a dear old chap, and don’t talk. it’s so easy for a saint to point a moral.”
he was so obviously on the verge of utter collapse that i felt the lesser responsibility would be to humor him. i fetched what he begged for and he gulped down a wineglassful of the raw stuff.
“now,” i said, “are you better?”
“a little drop more and i’m a peacock with my tail up.” he tossed off a second dose of almost like proportion.
“now,” he said, dangling his legs over the bedside, and giving a foolish reckless laugh, “question, mon frère, and i will answer.”
though his manner disgusted and repelled me, i must needs get to the root of things.
“you fled from him to england again?”
“to london, of all places. it’s the safest in the world, they say; where a man may leave his wife and live in the next street for twenty-five years without her knowing it.”
“you haven’t left yours?”
“no—we stick together. zyp’s trumps, she is, you long-faced moralizer; not that she holds one by her looks any longer. and that’s to my credit for sticking to her. you missed something in my being beforehand with you there, i can tell you.”
was this pitiful creature worth one thrill of passion or resentment? i let him go on.
“for months that devil followed us,” he said. “at last he forced a quarrel upon me in some vile drinking-place and brought me a challenge from the man he was seconding. you should have seen his face as he handed it to me! it took all the fighting nerve out of me. i swear i would have stood up to his fellow if he had found another backer.”
“and you ran away?”
“what else could i do?”
“and he pursued you again?”
“there isn’t any doubt of it—though his dreadful face hasn’t appeared to me as yet.”
“you had the nerve, it seems, to travel down here all alone?”
“i borrowed it. sometimes now, when the stuff runs warm in me, i feel almost as if i could turn upon him and defy him. i’m in the mood at this moment. why doesn’t he come when i’m ready for him? oh, the brute! the miserable, cowardly brute!”
he jumped to his feet, gnashing his teeth and shaking his fists convulsively in the air.
as he stood thus, the door of the room opened, and i turned to see my father fall forward upon his face, with a bitter cry.
