Chapter 20: The Return

Through the soft summer seas the great ship moved into the mouth of the English Channel. The early dawn had revealed the faint mist-folded promontories of the Cornish coast well to westward. Red-sailed fishing-boats hung like a flight of birds upon the lucid floors of ocean; coasting steamers snorted past with an air of insular importance; here and there a white-sailed brig glimmered in the early sunlight; and, coming after the long loneliness of open seas, these signs of life impressed the mind like the stir and tumult of a city. Plymouth would be reached by noon.

Letters, telegrams, and papers had already come aboard with the pilot—the first friendly overtures of a land slowly rising out of the thinning morning bank. Men and women, with laughing eyes and gladdened faces, stood in little groups reading their correspondence, exchanging jests, commenting upon scraps of news which they had gathered from the papers. It seemed the tide of war had turned at last. It was to a madly joyous land the great ship made its slow approach. Suddenly upon the deck the band clashed with the animating music of the National Anthem. The English stood uncovered as the first familiar bar vibrated on the quiet air; the Americans watched them with a half-sympathetic amusement; even the steerage passengers, foreigners for the most part, without part or lot in British victories, smiled cheerfully. So joyous was the hour that private grief appeared a contradiction, an impertinence.

There was neither telegram nor letter for Arthur, and he had been unable to secure a paper. To him England extended no welcome.

During the long trans-continental journey, and the longer ocean voyage, he had beaten out all the conditions of his situation with an iteration that had finally exhausted the possibilities of vehement emotion. It is happily not within the power of the human organism to feel and suffer intensely except for short periods; agony begets lethargy. It is one of the mercies of pain that it thus dies of its own excess, that in its intensity it becomes coma. Arthur had reached the point of moral coma. The red-hot iron had ploughed through his soul, but it had also seared it into brief insensibility.

In his first extremity of consternation it had seemed a thing impossible to survive the horror that possessed him. The image of his father rose before him, sad-browed, accusing, spent with mortal struggle, pale with immortal defeat—it travelled with him like a face painted in the air. It evoked in him an anguish of commiseration, and even of remorse. He remembered every slighting thought that he had cherished, as men recollect wrongs done to the dead, magnifying errors into cruelties, faults into crimes. With a sudden burning of the blood he had realised how singular and strong is that bond of flesh which unites the parent to the child, how sacred and how incapable of all annulment. At the root of his own life lay a force stronger than justice, stronger than religion, a thing bare, irrational, primeval—the awful sanctity of kinship. And he knew in that moment that, for good or ill, his place was beside his father. There he must needs stand, even though it were at the gallows’ foot. Whatever burden crushed those strong shoulders he must share, even though the load were shameful. From that obligation there was no discharge.

From New York he had cabled both to his father and to Bundy, but no reply had come from either. He had had to wait two days for the sailing of a ship, the first of which was a day of infinite misery, aimless wandering, languid revisitation of familiar scenes. On the second day he met Horner. He found the little artist re-established in his studio, and from him received a boisterous welcome.

“Have you seen my book?” he cried.

“What book?”

“Well, I like that. Didn’t you write it for me? And don’t you recollect we were to share profits? Look at those”—and he pushed toward him an immense bundle of press-cuttings.

From these it appeared that the book had achieved notoriety, if not fame.

“You didn’t let me know where you went, and you’ve never written me, or I would have posted these things to you. Ripping, aren’t they?”

“They appear excellent.”

“And there’s something else that’s still better. Read that!”

It was a letter bearing the well-known office address of Mr. Wilbur M. Legion, and enclosing a substantial cheque.

“It only came yesterday. I guess we’ll cash it. Half of it is yours, you know, and if you’re going to England it may come in handy.”

Arthur looked up at that, fixing his eyes on Horner’s cheerful face with a long, searching gaze.

Did Horner know the miserable truth about his father? But of course he did. It was being shouted round the world. And this reference to the money being handy on a voyage to England was no doubt the little artist’s indirect, and indeed delicate, way of communicating his knowledge.

“O Horner!” he cried. “I am very miserable!” And he bowed his head upon his hands, and wept the first tears he had shed since the blow had fallen on him.

There was a kindly arm round his shoulders in a moment. “Why, look ‘ere, what’s the matter?” And before he knew it he was telling Horner everything.

“Well,” said Horner, when he finished. “I guess things aren’t as bad as you think. They never are, you know.”

“They couldn’t be much worse.”

“Oh yes, they could,” he went on philosophically. “The jury hasn’t convicted yet, and perhaps they won’t. But that’s neither here nor there. The thing you’ve got to do is to buck up. And look ‘ere, about this cheque—you take it all. I don’t want it. I’m in funds. And, besides, there’s more to come.”

“No, I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can, and you will. Call the half of it a loan, if you like, but you’ve got to take it. You know my motto, ‘Englishmen ought to help each other,’ and you’ve just got to let me help you.”