Five minutes later John Baird stood upon the platform, looking after the carriages as they rolled out noisily behind trailing puffs of smoke and steam.
He had asked no questions, and, so far as his own knowledge was concerned, this was the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story. But he knew that there had been a story, and there might have been a tragedy. It seemed that the intensity of his own cry for justice and mercy had arrested at least one of the actors in it before the curtain fell.
A few nights later, as they sat together, Baird and Latimer spoke of this incident and of the lecture it had followed upon.
“Repentance! Repentance!” Latimer said. “What led you to dwell upon repentance?”
“Thirty years of life,” was Baird’s answer. “Forty of them.” He was leaning forward gazing into the red-hot coals. “And after our talk,” he added, deliberately. “Margery.”
Latimer turned and gazed at him.
Baird nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Her picture. Her innocent face and the soft, helpless youth of it. Such young ignorance is helpless—helpless! If in any hour of ruthlessness—or madness—a man had done such tenderness a wrong, what repentance—what repentance could undo?”
“None,” said Latimer, and the words were a groan. “None—through all eternity.”
It was not a long silence which followed, but it seemed long to both of them. A dead stillness fell upon the room. Baird felt as if he were waiting for something. He knew he was waiting for something, though he could not have explained to himself the sensation. Latimer seemed waiting too—awaiting the power and steadiness to reach some resolve. But at length he reached it. He sat upright and clutched the arms of his chair. It was for support.