No reference was made by his stepmother or himself to the scene with Mrs. Willoughby in the afternoon, but it was not hard for him to perceive that in some strange way it was stirring the victim of it to newness of life. It was not that she admitted the application of Bessie's charges to herself; they only startled her to the knowledge that there were heights and depths in human existence such as her imagination had never plumbed. Her nature was making a feeble effort to expand, as the petals of a bud that has been kept hard and compact by a backward spring may unfold to the heat of summer.
When he had finished his hasty meal, Thor rose and kissed her, saying, "Thank you, mumphy," using the pet name that had not been on his lips since childhood. She drew his face downward with a sudden sob, a sob quite inexplicable except on the ground that her poor, withered, strangled little soul was at last trying to live.
Having gone up-stairs to his room, Thor shut the door and bolted it in his desire for solitude. He changed his coat and kicked off his boots. When he had lighted a pipe he threw himself on the old sofa which had done duty as couch at the foot of his bed ever since he was a boy. It was the attitude in which he had always been best able to "think things out."
Now that he had eaten a sufficient dinner, he felt physically less bruised, though mentally there was more to torture him. He regretted having seen Uncle Sim. He hated the alternative of letting things alone. There was a sense in which action would have been an anodyne to suffering, and had it not been for Uncle Sim he would have had no scruple in making use of it.
It was all very well to talk of letting people settle their own affairs; but how could they settle them, in these particular cases, without his intervention? As far as power went he was like a fairy prince who had only to wave a wand to see the whole scene transfigured. If he hadn't asked Uncle Sim's advice he would be already waving it, instead of lolling on his back, with his right foot poised over his left knee and dangling a heelless slipper in the air. He felt shame at the very attitude of idleness.
True, there were the two distinct lines of action—that of making a number of people happy now, and that of holding back that they might fight their own battles. By fighting their own battles they might emerge from the conflict the stronger—after forty or fifty years! Those who were unlikely to live so long—Len and Bessie Willoughby, for example—would probably go down rebelling and protesting to their graves. But Claude and Rosie and Lois might all grow morally the stronger. There was that possibility. It was plain. Claude and Rosie might marry on the former's fifteen hundred dollars a year, have children, and bring them up in poverty as model citizens; but whatever the high triumph of their middle age, Thor shrank from the thought of the interval for both. And Lois, too, might live down grief, disappointment, small means, and loneliness; might become hardened and toughened and beaten to endurance, and grow to be the best and bravest and kindest old maid in the world. Uncle Sim would probably consider that in these noble achievements the game would be worth the candle; but he, Thor Masterman, didn't. The more he developed the possibilities of this future for every one concerned, himself included, the more he loathed it.
It was past eleven before he reached the point of loathing at which he was convinced that action should begin; but once he reached it, he bounded to his feet. He felt wonderfully free and vigorous. If certain details could be settled there and then—he couldn't wait till the morrow—he thought that, in spite of everything, he should sleep.
He had heard Claude go to his room, which was on the same floor as his own, an hour earlier. Claude was probably by this time in bed and asleep, but the elder brother couldn't hesitate for that. Within less than a minute he had crossed the passage, entered Claude's bedroom, and turned on the electric light.
Claude's profile sunk into the middle of the pillow might have been carved in ivory. His dark wavy hair fell back picturesquely from temple and brow. Under the coverings his slim form made a light, graceful line.