Yet he was a Norman, and the Norman thinks before he acts. He is the soul of caution; he wants to get the best he can out of his bargain. He will throw nothing away that is to his advantage. There should be other ways than the gun with which to take a man’s life—ways which might give a Norman a chance to sacrifice only one life; to secure punishment where it was due, but also escape from punishment for doing the obvious thing.
Poison? That was too stupid even to think of once. A pitch-fork and a dung-heap? That had its merits; but again there was the risk of more than one life.
All the way to his house, Jean Jacques, with something of the rage of passion and the glaze of horror gone from his eyes, and his face not now so ghastly, still brooded over how, after he had had his say, he was to put George Masson out of the world. But it did not come at once. All makers of life-stories find their difficulty at times. Tirelessly they grope along a wall, day in, day out, and then suddenly a great gate swings open, as though to the touch of a spring, and the whole way is clear to the goal.
Jean Jacques went on thinking in a strange, new, intense abstraction. His restless eyes were steadier than they had ever been; his wife noticed that as he entered the house after the Revelation. She noticed also his paleness and his abstraction. For an instant she was frightened; but no, Jean Jacques could not know anything. Yet—yet he had come from the direction of the river!
“What is it, Jean Jacques?” she asked. “Aren’t you well?”
He put his hand to his head, but did not look her in the eyes. His gesture helped him to avoid that. “I have a head—la, such a head! I have been thinking, thinking-it is my hobby. I have been planning the cheese-factory, and all at once it comes on-the ache in my head. I will go to bed. Yes, I will go at once.” Suddenly he turned at the door leading to the bedroom. “The little Zoe—is she well?”
“Of course. Why should she not be well? She has gone to the top of the hill. Of course, she’s well, Jean Jacques.”
“Good-good!” he remarked. Somehow it seemed strange to him that Zoe should be well. Was there not a terrible sickness in his house, and had not that woman, his wife, her mother, brought the infection? Was he himself not stricken by it?
Carmen was calm enough again. “Go to bed, Jean Jacques,” she said, “and I’ll bring you a sleeping posset. I know those headaches. You had one when the ash-factory was burned.”
He nodded without looking at her, and closed the door behind him.