The Sin That Was His

by Frank L. Packard

“Go on—fool!”—with a snarl, vicious as the cut of a whip-lash, came that inner voice. “You may have time—but you have none to throw away!”

“Be still!” answered Raymond's soul. “This is my hour. Be still!”

Valerie! That shadow on the window he knew was Valerie—and within was that other shadow, the shadow of death. This was his good-bye to old Mother Blondin, who had drunk of the common cup with him, and knelt with him in the moonlit church, her hand in his, outcasts, sealing a most strange bond—and this was his good-bye to Valérie. Valérie—a shadow there on the window shade. That was all—a shadow—all that she could ever be, nothing more tangible in his life through the years to come, if there were years, than a shadow that did not smile, that did not speak to him, that did not touch his hand, or lift brave eyes to look into his. A shadow—that was all—a shadow. It was brutal, cruel, remorseless, yet immeasurably true in its significance, this good-bye—this good-bye to Valérie—a shadow.

The shadow moved, and was gone; from miles away, borne for a great distance on the clear night air, came faintly the whistle of a train—and Raymond, springing suddenly erect, his teeth clenched together, snatched at the whip and laid it across the horse's back.

The wagon lurched forward, and he staggered with the plunge and jerk—and his whip fell again. And he laughed now—no longer calm—and lashed the horse. It was not time that he was racing, there was ample time, the train was still far away; it was his thoughts—to outrun them, to distance them, to leave them behind him, to know no other thing than that impulse for life that alone until now so far this night had swayed him.

And he laughed—and horse and wagon tore frantically along the road, and the woods were about him now, and it was black, black as the mouth of Satan's pit and the roadway to it were black. He was flung back into his seat—and he laughed at that. Life—and he had doddled along the road, preening himself on his magnificent apathy! Life—and the battle and the fight for it was the blood afire, reckless of fear and of odds, the laugh of defiance, the joy of combat, the clenched fist shaken in the face of hell itself! Life—in the mad rush for it was appeal! On! The wagon reeled like a drunken thing, and the wheels twisted in the ruts; a patch of starlight seeping through the branches overhead made a patch of gloom in the inky blackness underneath, and in this patch of gloom wavering tree trunks, like uncouth monsters as they flitted by, snatched at the wheel-hubs to wreck and overturn the wagon, but he was too quick for them, too quick—they always missed. On! Away from memory, away from those good-byes, away from every thought save that of life—life, and the right to live—life, and the fight to hurl that gibbet with its dangling rope a smashed and battered and splintered thing against the jail wall where they would strangle him to death and bury him in their cursed lime!

On! Why did not the beast go faster! Were those white spots that danced before his eyes a lather of foam on the animal's flanks? On—along the road to life! Faster! Faster! It was not fast enough—for thoughts were swift, and they were racing behind him now in their pursuit, and coming closer, and they would overtake him unless he could go faster—faster! Faster, or they would be upon him, and—a big and brave and loyal man.

A low cry, a cry of sudden, overmastering hurt, was drowned in the furious pound of the horse's hoofs, in the rattle and the creaking of the wagon, and in the screech and grinding of the wagon's jolt and swing. And, unconscious that he held the reins, unconscious that he tightened them, his hands, clenched, went upward to his face. There was no black road, no plunging horse, no mad, insensate rush, ungoverned and unguided, no wagon rocking demoniacally through the night—there was a woman who knelt in the aisle of a church, and in her arms she held a man, and across the shattered chancel rail there lay a mighty cross, and the shadow of the cross fell upon them both, and the woman's eyes were filled with tears, and she spoke: “A big and brave and loyal man.”

Tighter against his face he pressed his clenched hands, unconscious that the horse responded to the check and gradually slowed its pace. Valérie! The woman was Valerie—and he was the man! God, the hurt of it—the hurt of those words ringing now in his ears! She had given him her all—her love, her faith, her trust. And in return, he——

The reins dropped from his hands, and his head bowed forward. Life! Yes, there was life this way for him—and for Valerie the bitterest of legacies. He would bequeath to her the belief that she had given her love not only to a felon but to a coward. A coward! And no man, he had boasted, had ever called him a coward. Pitiful boast! Life for himself—for Valerie the fuller measure of misery! Yes, he loved Valérie—he loved her with a traitor's and a coward's love!