By morning he had walked many miles along the foothills of the Moor; and then, after five o'clock, he went down to a railway station, waited for the first train, and travelled to Plymouth. He suffered himself to rest there for a time; and he washed and ate. Henceforth he was concerned with Hilary Woodrow and not with John Prout. He perceived clearly that the old man, who would have sacrificed his soul for Hilary, had helped his wife and Woodrow against him. He retraced events of many journeys. He thought of the days that he had been from home, and of the time spent by his wife at Dawlish. He forged a long and dreadful chain of horrible deceits that had never existed. He began to imagine an evil story which occupied a place in time long after the actual treachery was over and done. Upon the fact of his betrayal he built a mighty monument; yet this memorial had itself scarcely any existence in fact. That, however, mattered little. The truth without addition had been enough for Brendon.
Day was turned to night in his mind, and he longed for the real night, that he might accomplish his purpose. About noon he took train to Dawlish, and reached it before three o'clock.
He bought bread and ate it to support himself; then he went into the woods above the town and lurked there until the dark. His decision was come to, and he intended to destroy both Woodrow and Sarah Jane. They should perish; and at that moment he would have killed his God too if he had known how. For a short time, indeed, his fetich was dead enough; because to find what he had believed a Creator's sustained and benignant attention proved instead one cruel, long-drawn trick and jest, shook the man to the roots of his faith. Such action seemed not compatible with any conception of a loving, a just, and an all-powerful father.
For an hour he cursed God like a fallen Titan; but only for an hour. Then lifelong trust and faith conquered, and even at this crisis atrophied reason proved too weak to grasp its opportunity. Faith re-took the citadel. He reflected upon his Bible, and presently perceived that nothing had happened to him which was contrary to the common way of God with man. The Jehovah he adored; He who once drowned every little child in the whole world; the Being who led Israel into the desert of Sinai; who slew Uzzah for steadying His ark; who killed seventy thousand innocent men because David numbered his people; who commanded whole nations to be slaughtered and their virgins only saved for the conquerors; who prescribed rules for slavery; who destroyed the firstborn of all Egypt, and tore ten thousand mothers' hearts; who loved the stench and smear of blood upon His altars, and pursued His foes with the tenacity, cruelty and craft of a Red Indian—this Everlasting Spirit might most reasonably be expected to play the faithless savage and torture even the least of those who worshipped His omnipotent name. But it was not for his creature to question Him; it was not for a thinking being to spurn this almighty pest with scorn and with loathing; it was not for a smitten man to ask how any Prince of Devils could worse confound his own creation.
Brendon offered the other cheek; and before he stole out from his hiding-place in the forest and went down where Woodrow dwelt, he was safe in the grip of his God once more. The fact, however, did not alter his determination, because this revelation of his own ordained ruin and destruction brought others in its train. Subsequent actions were clearly indicated to him by the Being he still obeyed; for Daniel was not wholly sane now. Streaks and flashes of madness touched the tissue of his thoughts, as sparks fly in smoke. Barriers fell, old orderly opinions perished, strangled by the horde of ferocious ideas that hurtled through his mind. From the broken links of dead principles a new thing was welded, and method and purpose were restored. He believed in predestination, and through that hypothesis he came back humbly to the footstool of his idol. He perceived that the World-maker had chosen him to drive the knife into these evil hearts. For that purpose, the infinitely wise, infinitely just, infinitely loving God of his fathers had called him from the womb; had suffered him to live and thrive; had ordered his life prosperously; had taught him from his youth up to worship Heaven, and walk uprightly before men. To this end his faith had been founded upon adamant, and tempered to move mountains; to this end the Sun of Righteousness had warmed his spirit; and now the fruit of his spirit was about to ripen in murder.
For a time the natural rage that consumed him cooled a little before these high mandates. The inversion of his intellect was complete; and though there came to him a fear that he was about to do this thing that he might gratify a personal lust and hunger for revenge, he put that temptation away as of the Devil. He believed that the powers of darkness urged him to spare his wife and his master; while Jehovah ordered their instant death. To let them live now would be to frustrate their Maker's plan—a thing unthinkable. He longed for a Bible that he might wallow in the atrocities of the Pentateuch and find wherewithal to strengthen his arm there.
He was very nearly insane at this crisis—madder than it happens to most to be at any time. Yet few there are, capable of intense feeling, who have not stood at the veil, looked behind it in dreams or calentures, and seen the red-eyed spirit glare like a gorgon out. She peers forth by night, and the dreaming brain knows her well; at times of terrific joy or grief she is near; after physical excesses she comes close; surfeit or starvation alike summon her; she is the firstling of superstition, the familiar of the fanatic.
This man walked with madness that night for a little time, and not until he had returned to the lamp-lit streets did the unholy thing depart from him. Then he affirmed his spirit, prayed fervent prayers, and tramped by the sea a while, before going upon his business. He meant to kill Woodrow with his naked hands.
Before the row of dwellings wherein the sick man lay, Daniel became puzzled, for he had forgotten the house. It was only by chance that he rang at the right one.
Some time elapsed before any answer came; then the door opened upon darkness, and Brendon did not know that it was Prout who stood before him.