Part 23

When the door closed upon him, Father Honoré drew a long breath that was half a suppressed groan; then he turned to the passive form on the cot. There was much to be done.

He administered a little stimulant; heated some water over a small gas stove; laid out clean sheets, a shirt, some bandages and a few surgical instruments from a "handy closet," that was kept filled with simple hospital emergency requirements, and set to work. He cut the shoes from the stockingless feet; cut away the stiffened clothing, what there was of it; laid bare the bandaged arm; it was badly swollen, stiff and inflamed. He soaked from a clotted knife-wound above the elbow the piece of cloth with which it had first been bound. He looked at the discolored rag as it lay in his hand, startled at what he saw: a handkerchief--a small one, a woman's! With sickening dread he searched in the corners; he found them: A. A., wreathed around with forget-me-nots, all in delicate French embroidery.

"My God, my God!" he groaned. He recalled having seen Aileen embroidering these very handkerchiefs last summer up under the pines. One of the sisterhood, Sister Ste. Croix, was with her giving instruction, while she herself wrought on a convent-made garment.

What did it mean? With multiplied thoughts that grasped helplessly hither and thither for some point of attachment, he went on with his work. Two hours later, he had the satisfaction of knowing the man before him was physically cared for as well as it was possible for him to be until he should regain consciousness. His practised eye recognized this to be a case of collapse from exhaustion, physical and mental. Now Nature must work to replenish the depleted vitality. He could trust her up to a certain point.

He sat by the cot, his elbows on his knees, his head dropped into his hands, pondering the mystery of this life before him--of all life, of death, of the Beyond; marvelling at the strange warp and woof of circumstance, his heart wrung for the anguish of that mother far away in the quarries of The Gore, his soul filled with thankfulness that she was spared the sight of _this_.

The gray November dawn began to dim the electric light in the room. He went to a window, opened the inner blinds and looked out. The storm was not over, but the wind had lessened and the flakes fell sparsely. He looked across over the neighboring roofs weighted with snow; the wires were down. A muffled sound of street traffic heralded the beginning day. As he turned back to the cot he saw that Champney's eyes were open; but the look in them was dazed. They closed directly. When they opened again, the full light of day was in the room; semi-consciousness had returned. He spoke feebly:

"Where am I?"

"Here, safe with me, Champney." He leaned over him, but saw that he was not recognized.

"Who are you?"

"Your friend, Father Honoré."

"Father Honoré--" he murmured, "I don't know you." He gave a convulsive start--"Where are the Eyes gone?" he whispered, a look of horror creeping into his own.

"There are none here, none but mine, Champney. Listen; you are safe with me, safe, do you understand?"

He gave no answer, but the dazed look returned. He moistened his parched lips with his tongue and swallowed hard. Father Honoré held a glass of water to his mouth, slipping an arm and hand beneath his head to raise him. He drank with avidity; tried to sit up, but fell back exhausted. The priest busied himself with preparing some hot beef extract on the little stove. When it was ready he sat down by the cot and fed it to him spoonful by spoonful.

"Thank you," Champney said quietly when the priest had finished his ministration. He turned a little on his side and fell asleep.

The sleep was that which follows exhaustion; it was profound and beneficial. Evidently no distress of mind or body marred it, and for every sixty minutes of the blessed oblivion, there was renewed activity in nature's ever busy laboratory to replenish the strength that had been sacrificed in this man's protracted struggle to escape his doom, and, by means of it, to restore the mental balance, fortunately not too long lost....

When he awoke, it was to full consciousness. The sun was setting. Behind the Highlands of the Navesink it sank in royal state: purple, scarlet, and gold. Upon the crisping blue waters of Harbor, Sound, and River, the reflection of its transient glory lay in quivering windrows of gorgeous color. It crimsoned faintly the snow that lay thick on the multitude of city roofs; it blazoned scarlet the myriad windows in the towers and skyscrapers; it filled the keen air with wonderful fleeting lights that bewildered and charmed the unaccustomed eyes of the metropolitan millions.

Champney waited for it to fade; then he turned to the man beside him.

"Father Honoré--" he half rose from the cot. The priest bent over him. Champney laid one arm around his neck, drew him down to him and, for a moment only, the two men remained cheek to cheek.

"Champney--my son," was all he could say.

"Yes; now tell me all--the worst; I can bear it."

* * * * *

"I can't see my way, yet." These were the first words he spoke after Father Honoré had finished telling him of his prospective relief from sentence and the means taken to obtain it. He had listened intently, without interruption, sitting up on the cot, his look fixed unwaveringly on the narrator. He put his hand to his face as he spoke, covering his eyes for a moment; then he passed it over the three weeks' stubble on his cheeks and chin.

"Is it possible for me to shave here? I must get up--out of this. I can't think straight unless I get on my feet."

"Do you feel strong enough, Champney?"

"I shall get strength quicker when I'm up. Thank you," he said, as Father Honoré helped him to his feet. He swayed as if dizzy on crossing the room to a small mirror above a stand. Father Honoré placed the hot water and shaving utensils before him. He declined his further assistance.

"Are there--are there any clothes I could put on?" He asked hesitatingly, as he proceeded to shave himself awkwardly with his one free hand.

"Such as they are, a plenty." Father Honoré produced a common tweed suit and fresh underwear from the "handy closet." These together with some other necessaries from a drawer in the stand supplied a full equipment.

"Can I tub anywhere?" was his next question after he had finished shaving.

"Yes; this bath closet here is at your disposal." He opened a door into a small adjoining hall-room. Champney took the clothes and went in. While he was bathing, Father Honoré used the room telephone to order in a substantial evening meal. After the noise of the splashing ceased, he heard a half-suppressed groan. He listened intently, but there was no further sound, not even of the details of dressing.

A half-hour passed. He had taken in the tray, and was becoming anxious, when the door opened and Champney came in, clean, clothed, but with a look in his eyes that gave the priest all the greater cause for anxiety because, up to that time, the man had volunteered no information concerning himself; he had received what the priest said passively, without demonstration of any kind. There had been as yet no spiritual vent for the over-strained mind, the over-charged soul. The priest knew this danger and what it portended.

He ate the food that was placed before him listlessly. Suddenly he pushed the plate away from him across the table at which he was sitting. "I can't eat; it nauseates me," he said; then, leaning his folded arms on the edge, he dropped his head upon them groaning heavily in an agony of despair, shame, remorse: "God! What's the use--what's the use! There's nothing left--nothing left."

Father Honoré knew that the crucial hour was striking, and his prayer for help was the wordless outreaching of every atom of his consciousness for that One more powerful than weak humanity, to guide, to aid him.

"Your manhood is left." He spoke sternly, with authority. This was no time for pleading, for sympathy, for persuasion.

"My manhood!" The bitterest self-contempt was voiced in those two words. He raised his head, and the look he gave to the man opposite bordered on the inimical.

"Yes, your manhood. Do you, in your supreme egotism, suppose that you, Champney Googe, are the only man in this world who has sinned, suffered, gone under for a time? Are you going to lie down in the ditch like a craven, simply because you have failed to withstand the first assaults of the devil that is in you? Do you think, because you have sinned, there is no longer a place for you and your work in this world where all men are sinners at some time in their lives? I tell you, Champney Googe,--and mark well what I say,--your sin, as sin, is not so despicable as your attitude towards your own life. Why, man, you're alive--"

"Yes, alive--thanks to you; but knocked out after the first round," he muttered. The priest noted, however, that he still held his head erect. He took fresh courage.

"And what would you say of a man who, because he has been knocked out in the first round, does not dare to enter the ring again? So far as I've seen anything of life, it is a man's duty to get on his feet as quickly as he can--square away and at it again."

"There's nothing left to fight--it's all gone--my honor--"

"True, your honor's gone; you can't get that back; but you can put yourself in the running to obtain a standard for your future honor. Champney, listen;" he drew his chair nearer to him that the table might not separate them; "hear me, a man like yourself, erring, because human, who has sinned, suffered--let me speak out of my own experience. Put aside regret; it clogs. Regret nothing; what's done is done past recall. Live out your life, no matter what the struggle. Count this life as yours to make the best of. Live, I say; live, work, make good; it is in any man's power who has received a reprieve like yours. I know whereof I am speaking. I'll go further: it would be in your power even if you had been judged and committed."

The man, to whom he was appealing, shuddered as he heard the word "committed."

"_That_ would be death," he said under his breath; "last night was nothing, nothing to that--but you can't understand--"

"Better, perhaps, than you think. But what I want you to see is that there is something left to live for; Champney--your mother." He had hesitated to speak of her, not knowing what the effect might be.

Champney started to his feet, his hand clenched on the table edge. He breathed short, hard. "O God, O God! Why didn't you let me go? How can I face her and live!" He began to pace the room with rapid jerky steps. Father Honoré rose.

"Champney Googe,"--he spoke calmly, but with a concentrated energy of tone that made its impression on the man addressed,--"when you lay there last night," he motioned towards the cot, "I thanked my God that she was not here to see you. I have telegraphed her that you are alive. In the hope that you yourself might send some word, either directly or through me, I have withheld all detail of your condition, all further news; but, for her sake, I dare not keep her longer in suspense. Give me some word for her--some assurance from yourself that you will live for her sake, if not for your own. Reparation must begin here and _now_, and no time be lost; it's already late." He looked at his watch.

Champney turned upon him fiercely. "Don't force me to anything. I can't see my way, I tell you. You have said I was a man. Let me take my stand on that assurance, and act as one who must first settle a long-standing account with himself before he can yield to any impulse of emotion. Go to bed--do; you're worn out with watching with me. I'll sit here by the window; _I promise you_. There's no sleep in me or for me--I want to be alone--alone."

It was an appeal, and the priest recognized in it the cry of the individual soul when the full meaning of its isolation from humankind is first revealed to it. He let him alone. Without another word he drew off his boots, turned out the electric light, opened the inner blinds, and laid himself down on the cot, worn, weary, but undaunted in spirit. At times he lost himself for a few minutes; for the rest he feigned the sleep he so sorely needed. The excitation of his nerves, however, kept him for the greater part of the night conscious of all that went on in the room.

Champney sat by the window. During that night he never left his seat. Father Honoré could see his form silhouetted against the blank of the panes; his head was bowed into his hands. From time to time he drew deep, deep, shuddering breaths. The struggle going on in that human breast beside the window, the priest knew to be a terrible one--a spiritual and a mental hand-to-hand combat, against almost over-powering odds, in the arena of the soul.

The sun was reddening the east when Champney turned from the window, rose quietly, and stepped to the side of the cot. He stood there a few minutes looking down on the strong, marked face that, in the morning light, showed yellow from watching and fatigue. Father Honoré knew he was there; but he waited those few minutes before opening his eyes. He looked up then, not knowing what he was to expect, and met Champney's blue ones looking down into his. That one look was sufficient to assure him that the man who stood there so quietly beside him was the Champney Googe of a new birth. The "old man" had been put away; he was ready for the race, "_forgetting those things that are behind_."

"I've won out," he said with a smile.

The two men clasped hands and were silent for a few minutes. Then Champney drew a chair to the cot.

"I'd like to talk with you, if you don't mind," he said.

IV

In the priest's soul there was rejoicing. He was anticipating the victorious outcome of the struggle to which, in part, he had been witness. But he acknowledged afterwards that he had had not the faintest conception, not the remotest intimation of the actual truth. It remained for Champney Googe to enlighten him.

"I've been digging for the root of the whole matter," he began simply. His hand was clenched and pressed hard on his knee, otherwise he showed no sign of the effort that speech cost him. "I've been clearing away all obstructions, trying to look at myself outside of myself; and I find that, ever since I can remember, I've had the ambition to be rich--and rich for the power it apparently gives over other men, for the amplitude of one kind of living it affords, for the extension of the lines of personal indulgence and pleasure seemingly indefinitely, for the position it guarantees. There has been but one goal always: the making of money.

"I rebelled at first at the prospect of the five years' apprenticeship in Europe. I can see now that those six years, as they proved to be, fostered my ambition by placing me in direct and almost daily contact with those to whom great wealth is a natural, not an acquired thing." (Father Honoré noted that throughout his confession he avoided the mention of any name, and he respected him for it.) "On my return, as you know, I was placed in a position of great responsibility, as well as one affording every opportunity to further my object in life. I began to make use of these opportunities at once; the twenty thousand received from the quarry lands I invested, and in a short time doubled the sum. I was in a position to gain the inside knowledge needed to manipulate money with almost a certainty of increment; this knowledge, I was given to understand, I might use for any personal investment of funds; I took advantage of the privilege.

"I soon found that to operate successfully and largely, as I needed to in order to gain my end and gain it quickly, I must have a larger amount of cash. For this reason, I re-invested the forty thousand on the strength of my knowledge of a rise that was to be brought about in certain stocks within two months. This rise was guaranteed, you understand; guaranteed by three influential financiers. It would double my investment. They let it be known in a quiet way and in certain quarters, that this rise would occur at about such a date, and then forced the market up till they themselves had a good surplus. All this I know for a fact, because I was on the inside. Just at this time the syndicate intrusted to me three hundred thousand as a workable margin for certain future investments. My orders were to invest in this prepared stock only _after_ October fifteenth. Meanwhile the manipulation of this amount was in my hands for eight weeks.

"I knew the forty thousand I had purposely invested in these stocks would double itself by the fifteenth of October; this was the date set. I knew this because I had the guaranty of the three men behind me; and, knowing this, I took a hundred thousand of the sum intrusted to me, in order to make a deal with a Wall Street firm which would net me twenty thousand within two weeks.

"I knew perfectly well what I was doing--but there was never any intention on my part of robbery or embezzlement. I knew the sum eighty thousand, from my personal investment of forty thousand, was due on October fifteenth; this, plus the twenty thousand due from the Wall Street deal, would insure the syndicate from any loss. In fact, they would never know that the money had been used by me to antedate the investment of the three hundred thousand--a part of the net yearly working profits from the quarries--intrusted to me."

He paused for a moment to pass his hand over his forehead; his eyebrows contracted suddenly as if he were in pain.

"The temptation to take this money, although knowing well enough it was not mine to take, was too great for me. It was the resultant of every force of, I might say, my special business propulsion. This temptation lay along the lines on which I had built up my life: the pursuance of a line of action by which I might get rich quick.--Then came the crash. That special guaranteed stock broke--never to rally in time to save me--sixty-five points. The syndicate sent out warning signals to me that I was just in time to save any part of the three hundred thousand from investment in those stocks. Of course, I got no return from the forty thousand of my personal investment, and the hundred thousand I had used for the deal went down too. So much for the guaranty of the multi-millionaires.--Just then, when everything was chaotic and a big panic threatened, came a call from the manager of the quarries for immediate funds; the men were getting uneasy because pay was two weeks overdue. The syndicate told me to apply the working margin of three hundred thousand at once for this purpose. Of course there was a shortage; it was bound to be discovered. I tried to procrastinate--tried to put off the payment of the men; then came the threatened strike on account of non-payment of wages. I knew it was all up with me. When I saw I must be found out, I fled--

"I never meant to rob them--to rob any one, never--never--" His voice broke slightly on those words.

"I believe you." Father Honoré spoke for the first time. "Not one man in ten thousand begins by meaning to steal."

"I know it; that's what makes the bitterer cud-chewing."

"I know--I know." The priest spoke under his breath. He was sitting on the side of the cot, and leaned forward suddenly, his elbows on his knees, his chin resting in his palms, his eyes gazing beyond Champney to something intangible, some inner vision that was at that moment projecting itself from the sensitive plate of consciousness upon the blank of reality.

Champney looked at him keenly. He was aware that, for the moment, Father Honoré was present with him only in the body. He waited, before speaking, until the priest's eyes turned slowly to his; his position remained the same. Champney went on:

"All that you have done to obtain this reprieve, has been done for me--for mine--"; his voice trembled. "A man comes to know the measure of such sacrifice after an experience like mine--I have no words--"

"Don't, Champney--don't--"

"No, I won't, because I can't--because nothing is adequate. I thought it all out last night. There is but one way to show you, to prove anything to you; I am going to do as you said: make good my manhood--"

Father Honoré's hand closed upon Champney's.

"--And there is but one way in which I can make it good. I can take only a step at a time now, but it's this first step that will start me right."

He paused a moment as if to gather strength to voice his decision.

"I should disown my manhood if I shirked now. The horror of prospective years of imprisonment has been more to me than death--I welcomed _that_ as the alternative. But now, the manhood that is left in me demands that if I am willing to live as a man, I must take my punishment like a man. I am going to let things take their usual course; accept no relief from the money guaranteed to reimburse the syndicate; plead guilty, and let the sentence be what it may: seven, fifteen, or twenty years--it's all one."

He drew a long breath as of deliverance. The mere formulating of his decision in the presence of another man gave him strength, almost assurance to act for himself in furthering his own commitment. But the priest bowed his head into his hands and a groan burst from his lips, so laden with wretchedness, with mental and spiritual suffering, that even Champney Googe was startled from his hard-won calm.

"Father Honoré, what is it? Don't take it so hard." He laid his hand on his shoulder. "I can't ask you if I've done right, because no man can decide that for me; but wouldn't you do the same if you were in my place?"

"Oh, would to God I had!--would to God I had!" he groaned rather than spoke.

Champney was startled. He realized, for the first time, perhaps, in his self-centred life, that he was but a unit among suffering millions. He was realizing, moreover, that, with the utterance of his decision, he had, as it were, retired from the stage for many years to come; the curtain had fallen on his particular act in the life-drama; that others now occupied his place, and among them was this man before him who,