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Page 44
Again Gordon thought he heard the nearing trot of a horse, and again the
dog growled. Gordon was not quite sure that time that a horse had not
passed the house. He told himself in despair that he could not be sure
of knowing when James and Clemency came, and again the awful thought
seized him, and again he reflected upon the man outside. Suppose,
instead of wearing the semblance of humanity, he had worn the semblance
of a beast, then his course would have been clear enough. Suppose it
were a hungry wolf watching out there, instead of a man, and this man
was worse than any wolf. He was like the weir-wolf of the old
Scandinavian legend. He had all the cowardly cruelty of a wolf, he was a
means of evil, but he had the trained brain of a man.
Gordon thought he heard footsteps, and the man made a very slight
motion. Gordon thought joyfully that Aaron had left the balky mare, and
had returned, but it was not so. He had heard nothing except the
pulsations of the blood in his own overwrought brain.
He wondered if he were really going mad, although all the time his mind
was steadily at work upon the awful problem which had been forced upon
it. Should any power for evil be allowed to exist upon the earth if
mortal man had strength to stamp it out? Suppose that was a poisonous
snake out there, and not a man. What was out there was worse than any
snake. Gordon reasoned as the first man in Eden may have reasoned; and
he did not know whether his reasoning were right or wrong. Meantime, the
danger increased every moment. Of one thing he was perfectly sure: he
had no personal motive for what he might or might not do. He had reached
that pass when he was himself, as far as he himself was concerned,
beyond hate of that man outside. It was a principle for which he argued.
Should a monster, something abnormal in strength and subtlety and
wickedness, something which menaced all the good in the world, be
allowed to exist? Gordon argued that it should not. He was driven to it
by years of fruitless struggling against this monstrous creation in the
shape of man. He had seen such suffering because of him; his whole life
had been so turned and twisted this way and that way because of him,
that he himself had in the end become abnormal, and mentally askew, with
the system of things. He was conscious of it himself. He had been
naturally a good, simple, broad-visioned man, full of charity, with
almost no subtlety. He had been forced to lead a life which strained and
diverted all these good traits. Where he would have been open, he had
been secret. Where he would have had no suspicion of any one, his first
sight now seemed to be for ulterior motives. He weighed and measured
where he naturally would have scattered broadcast. He had been obliged
to compress his broad vision into a narrow window of detection. He was
not the man he had been. Where he had gazed out of wide doors and
windows at life, he now gazed through keyholes, and despised himself for
so doing. In order to evade the trouble which had fallen to his lot, he
took refuge in another personality. Thomas Gordon was a man whom a
happy and untroubled life would have kept from all worldly blemish. Now
the gold was tarnished, and he himself always saw the tarnish, as one
sees a blur before the eye. Twenty years before, if any one had told him
that he would at any period of his life become capable of standing and
arguing with himself as to the right or wrong of what was now in his
mind, he would have been incredulous. He had in reality become another
man. Circumstances had evolved him, during the course of twenty years,
into something different, as persistent winds evolve a pliant tree into
another than its typical shape. Gordon had lost his type.
As he stood at the window the room grew cold. The hearth fire had died
down. He knew that the furnace needed attention, but he dared not quit
his post and his argument. He became sure that the maid would not return
that night. He knew that Aaron was sitting with his human obstinacy
behind the obstinate brute, somewhere on the road. He knew that James
and Clemency might at any moment drive in, and he might rush out too
late to prevent murder and the kidnapping of the girl. He knew what the
man was there for. And he knew the one way to thwart him, but it was so
horrible a way that it needed all this argument, all this delay and
nearing of danger, before he adopted it.
The increasing cold of the room seemed to act as a sort of physical goad
toward action. "By God, it _is_ right!" he muttered. Then he looked at
the dog crouching still with that wiry intentness before the door. The
dog came of a good breed of fighters. He was in himself both weapon and
wielder of weapon. He was a concentrated force. His white body was
knotted with nerves and muscles. The chances were good if--Gordon
pictured it to himself--and again the horror and doubt were over him. He
himself had acquired a certain stiffness and lassitude from years, and
long drives in one position. He would stand no chance unarmed against a
bullet. But the dog--that was another matter. The dog would make a
spring like the spring of death itself, and that white leap of attack
might easily cause the aim to go wrong. It would be like aiming at
lightning. He knew how the dog would gather himself together, all ready
for that terrible leap, the second he opened the door. He knew that he
might be able to open the door for the leap without attracting the
man's attention, faced as he was the other way, if he could keep the dog
quiet. He knew how it would be. He could see that tall dark figure
rolled on the drive, struggling as one struggles with death, for breath,
under the vise-like grip on his throat. Gordon knew that the dog's
unerring spring would be for the throat; that was the instinct of his
race, a noble race in its way, to seize vice and danger by the throat,
and attack the very threshold of life.
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