There was silence for a moment, and then Ingraham, with a strong effort, rallied himself to conclude his story.
“I was Jim’s heir.” These words were spoken with hard and scornful emphasis. “That was a feature of the case which presents complications to a man in forming a judgment. Perhaps you will believe me when I say that this issue had not entered my mind in letting the boy go to his death. Indeed, the whole series of events was without deliberation, but under the influence of blind, sullen anger.”
“I believe you,” said Gregory.
“All the same, I profited by his death. The mines proved immensely valuable, and are even to-day. They have made me rich—and incomparably wretched. A word or two more, and you will know the whole story. Jim was brought home, here, for burial, my wife and I returning with his body. All through that journey, and continually, for many months, I saw before me, waking or sleeping, that face of cruelty incarnate, the half-witted Indian guide, as I had seen him on that awful night. That face was my Nemesis. It is still.
“Within the year my wife gave birth to a son, Oliver,—a strange perversion, made up of moral obliquity, mental distortion, and physical deformity, like an embodiment of sin. On his face was stamped by some strange trick of nature the image which had haunted me—as if the Fates, or the Fiends, or God himself, had feared I might forget, and know a day of respite.
“My wife died when Oliver was a few months old,—died of cold, I believe, the chill of our loveless marriage. Two years later Cornelia and I were married. I believe she has been happy. I have been prospered, and have risen to a position of some influence, and we have all that could be desired in our home, in our three daughters. But when, to-night, I heard you pronounce the judgments of God on men who had built up prosperity upon a lie, I was like a man struck in his very heart. I felt that I could no longer endure my hidden load, and must confess to one human being my past, and make restitution, if by any means it is yet possible. The Romish Church is merciful, when it provides the possibility of confession to sinful men.
“What have you to say to me? Have you healing for such a sore as mine?”
With these abrupt words Ingraham threw himself into a leather-covered arm-chair with the action of complete exhaustion. His aspect was changed from that of the alert, confident man of the world and of affairs, to that of a broken down and shattered age.
CHAPTER XXVI
Sin is not a monster to be mused on, but an impotence to be got rid of.