Hylda placed her arm round Faith, and led her out under the trees and into the wood. As they went, Faith looked back.
“Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Davy,” she said softly.
Three lights burned in Hamley: one in the Red Mansion, one in the Cloistered House, and one in Soolsby’s hut upon the hill. In the Red Mansion old Luke Claridge, his face pale with feeling, his white hair tumbling about, his head thrust forward, his eyes shining, sat listening, as Faith read aloud letters which Benn Claridge had written from the East many years before. One letter, written from Bagdad, he made her read twice. The faded sheet had in it the glow and glamour of the East; it was like a heart beating with life; emotion rose and fell in it like the waves of the sea. Once the old man interrupted Faith.
“Davy—it is as though Davy spoke. It is like Davy—both Claridge, both Claridge,” he said. “But is it not like Davy? Davy is doing what it was in Benn’s heart to do. Benn showed the way; Benn called, and Davy came.”
He laid both hands upon his knees and raised his eyes. “O Lord, I have sought to do according to Thy will,” he whispered. He was thinking of a thing he had long hidden. Through many years he had no doubt, no qualm; but, since David had gone to Egypt, some spirit of unquiet had worked in him. He had acted against the prayer of his own wife, lying in her grave—a quiet-faced woman, who had never crossed him, who had never shown a note of passion in all her life, save in one thing concerning David. Upon it, like some prophetess, she had flamed out. With the insight which only women have where children are concerned, she had told him that he would live to repent of what he had done. She had died soon after, and was laid beside the deserted young mother, whose days had budded and blossomed, and fallen like petals to the ground, while yet it was the spring.
Luke Claridge had understood neither, not his wife when she had said: “Thee should let the Lord do His own work, Luke,” nor his dying daughter Mercy, whose last words had been: “With love and sorrow I have sowed; he shall reap rejoicing—my babe. Thee will set him in the garden in the sun, where God may find him—God will not pass him by. He will take him by the hand and lead him home.” The old man had thought her touched by delirium then, though her words were but the parable of a mind fed by the poetry of life, by a shy spirit, to which meditation gave fancy and farseeing. David had come by his idealism honestly. The half-mystical spirit of his Uncle Benn had flowed on to another generation through the filter of a woman’s sad soul. It had come to David a pure force, a constructive and practical idealism.
Now, as Faith read, there were ringing in the old man’s ears the words which David’s mother had said before she closed her eyes and passed away: “Set him in the garden in the sun, where God may find him—God will not pass him by.” They seemed to weave themselves into the symbolism of Benn Claridge’s letter, written from the hills of Bagdad.
“But,” the letter continued, “the Governor passed by with his suite, the buckles of the harness of his horses all silver, his carriage shining with inlay of gold, his turban full of precious stones. When he had passed, I said to a shepherd standing by, ‘If thou hadst all his wealth, shepherd, what wouldst thou do?’ and he answered, ‘If I had his wealth, I would sit on the south side of my house in the sun all day and every day.’ To a messenger of the Palace, who must ever be ready night and day to run at his master’s order, I asked the same. He replied, ‘If I had all the Effendina’s wealth, I would sleep till I died.’ To a blind beggar, shaking the copper in his cup in the highways, pleading dumbly to those who passed, I made similar inquisition, and he replied ‘If the wealth of the exalted one were mine, I would sit on the mastaba by the bake-house, and eat three times a day, save at Ramadan, when I would bless Allah the compassionate and merciful, and breakfast at sunset with the flesh of a kid and a dish of dates.’ To a woman at the door of a tomb hung with relics of hundreds of poor souls in misery, who besought the buried saint to intercede for her with Allah, I made the same catechism, and she answered, ‘Oh, effendi, if his wealth were mine, I would give my son what he has lost.’ ‘What has he lost, woman?’ said I; and she answered: ‘A little house with a garden, and a flock of ten goats, a cow and a dovecote, his inheritance of which he has been despoiled by one who carried a false debt ‘gainst his dead father.’ And I said to her: ‘But if thy wealth were as that of the ruler of the city, thy son would have no need of the little house and garden and the flock of goats, and a cow and a dovecote.’ Whereupon she turned upon me in bitterness, and said: ‘Were they not his own as the seed of his father? Shall not one cherish that which is his own, which cometh from seed to seed? Is it not the law?’ ‘But,’ said I, ‘if his wealth were thine, there would be herds of cattle, and flocks of sheep, and carpets spread, and the banquet-tables, and great orchards.’ But she stubbornly shook her head. ‘Where the eagle built shall not the young eagle nest? How should God meet me in the way and bless him who stood not by his birth right? The plot of ground was the lad’s, and all that is thereon. I pray thee, mock me not.’ God knows I did not mock her, for her words were wisdom. So did it work upon me that, after many days, I got for the lad his own again, and there he is happier, and his mother happier, than the Governor in his palace. Later I did learn some truths from the shepherd, the messenger, and the beggar, and the woman with the child; but chiefly from the woman and the child. The material value has no relation to the value each sets upon that which is his own. Behind this feeling lies the strength of the world. Here on this hill of Bagdad I am thinking these things. And, Luke, I would have thee also think on my story of the woman and the child. There is in it a lesson for thee.”
When Luke Claridge first read this letter years before, he had put it from him sternly. Now he heard it with a soft emotion. He took the letter from Faith at last and put it in his pocket. With no apparent relevancy, and laying his hand on Faith’s shoulder, he said:
“We have done according to our conscience by Davy—God is our witness, so!”