III
Tarlyon and I stopped dead, and stared. We stared hard. But the little old woman, still screaming to us to follow, ran on ahead to the house. Yes, there was a house in that clearing, a little farmhouse. And the sun lay on it like a carpet of gold: that is how I saw it....
“Not our business,” muttered Tarlyon, and I heartily agreed that it wasn’t. We stood where we were, with our eyes glued on what we saw; and George Tarlyon dug his hands deep in his pockets. George Tarlyon always dug his hands deep in his pockets when he wanted frightfully to take them out.
A man was thrashing his son. I cannot explain why, but we were somehow quite certain that the thing the man was thrashing was flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood. He was a huge man, with a mane of grey hair and a long grey beard, and he had on a bright red shirt. If I close my eyes now I can see the blood-red of that huge bearded man’s shirt, I can see the curve of his great shoulders and the muscles that stood out like lumps of rubber on his half-bare arm as he beat his son with a stout stick. And I can see his little old wife trying to stay his hand, begging, praying, moaning. We heard her moaning, like an old, old bird in pain. And at that Tarlyon started forward a step....
“Steady there!” cried Tarlyon sharply. “Steady, Beaver!” The cry cut across the sunlit place, the clear cry that has lit for England the darkest corners of the world, and the huge man in the red shirt stayed his cudgel and looked at us. But the little old woman still moaned, and it was quite dreadful to hear that in the summer silence. Ten yards separated us from that domestic scene, but they were yards of bright sunlight, and we could see every line on that patriarch’s face. For he was a patriarch. He was the most magnificent man I have ever seen; and Tarlyon and I, not small men, felt withered under his straight look. We stood rooted.
“Friends,” said the old man, and his was the voice of authority, “you must leave me in peace to drive the sin out of this my son. His mother is a woman, and will pardon everything in those she loves, but you are men and know the one sin that is unpardonable by all men. Go your ways in peace, and fear not to put your own houses in order....”
And still he looked at us, that remarkable old lecturer, his cudgel stayed in the air, his son at his feet; and his voice was the voice of a man who has drunk the vinegar of life, and his eyes were the eyes of a man who has seen Christ crucified. That is why we knew for certain, Tarlyon and I, that whatever that ancient man said was true and whatever he did was right. “Come away,” I whispered.
“You are right. It is your business,” cried Tarlyon across the sunlight—and, dear God, it was! For the thing happened then. We hadn’t noticed that the son had crawled from his father’s feet. And what we saw was a spade raised high in the sunlight, a spade crashing down and cleaving the patriarch’s head like an axe, so that the blood came out of it like the sap of a tight orange. Without a cry the old man fell, and red as his shirt were the stones of the yard beneath his head. The little old woman screamed. The son and his spade lay where Tarlyon’s right hand felled him, and Tarlyon knelt by the slaughtered old man. I couldn’t move. I took up the gored spade and held it, a silly gesture. My heart beat like a bell in my ears, and I remember there rose to my lips prayers that I thought I had forgotten.
“Quiet, for one moment,” I heard Tarlyon’s voice to the screaming old woman. I stared and wondered at my friend, kneeling there on the dyed stones and listening to the heart under the red shirt. I could not have done that. I hate a lot of blood.
Then he rose and came towards me. I hated the dark damp patches on his trouser-knees.
“Quite dead,” he said. “We must fetch the police.”
Of course, I thought. And together we looked down at the son on the ground. He was gibbering. He had gone mad. “Drat the boy!” said Tarlyon thoughtfully.
“I wonder,” I heard myself whisper, “what was the one sin the old man said was unpardonable?”
Tarlyon looked from the prostrate thing to me, and I saw that those slightly frozen blue eyes of his were as miserable as the eyes of a hurt girl. You see, that old man was a very remarkable old man, and he was dead....
“I don’t know,” he whispered back. “You and I, Ralph, and our friends, have become so civilised that we don’t know what the unpardonable sins are. We simply don’t know, old man! We are the world’s soft people, Ralph. We are so civilised that we pardon too much—both in ourselves and other people; and we call that being broad-minded, but it’s really being flabby. But that old man, I’m sure, was not “broad-minded,” he was as little “broad-minded” as Jehovah, and there was one sin he simply would not pardon. And we, who are civilised people, do not even know what it was....”
We stared silently at the poor gibbering thing at our feet.
“Better tie him up before leaving,” I suggested.
“Don’t you think,” said Tarlyon, “that one of us should stay here while——”
“I won’t stay here alone,” I said abruptly—and I meant it. Nothing would have induced me to stay alone in that ghastly sunlit spot, alone with that lunatic boy and the little old woman and the butchered patriarch. How she moaned, that little old woman kneeling on the blooded stones....
With a silk handkerchief for his ankles and one for his wrists, we trussed the poor boy against the kitchen door. He could not have been more than seventeen or so, and his young face was hideous with fear.
We left the place quickly; but I looked back just once at the scene, for it seemed to me very strange of the sun still to lie on it all like a carpet of gold. That is how I felt about it.