Patricia at the inn

by J. C. Snaith

He had lost all. Events had been too great for his second-rate character. They had called for a strong man—a man of courage, of indomitable spirit and tenacity of purpose—to grapple with them. For such a one there had been a fortune. The landlord, self-deceived because all his life he had never been put to the test, had attempted to bend them to his own purposes. But they had proved too great and unwieldy; he had not had the physical strength to overcome them. Instead they had overcome him.

The landlord did not give himself up to despair. He was too far gone for that. He was bitterly afraid of death. A death by violence would still have the power to revolt him; but the thing uppermost in his mind was his humiliation. It was so fierce and overpowering, that it became an anodyne to lull and allay all the passions of his soul. It took the sting out of death itself. He had been tried and found wanting. At the age of sixty the supreme moment of a laborious and fairly successful life had come. He had failed; let him perish.

“Finis” was about to be written to his history. He had no longer to fear that awful suspense which had the power to overthrow the firmest intelligence. As plainly as he could hear the roar of the sea, he saw his doom. He sat still and thought upon it, almost calmly. Right at the very last he had emerged from the furnace, and had come out strong.

He would bare his neck, and they should do their worst. He would welcome it. He had no desire to live now; he had ceased to be swayed by his animal passions. All his life, when he could escape a moment from his greed and his sensuality, he had been a philosopher. He had warmed both hands at the fire of his own egotism. He had flattered himself that he had known his own strength and his own weakness. He knew nothing of the sort. Just as in one direction he had overestimated his resolution, he was now to prove that he had underestimated it in another.

A day ago he would probably have writhed on the ground in a fit had he been confronted by a death by violence. By now, however, he had got beyond all that. There were things a man occasionally had to submit to, which made such a thing almost a luxury. He had spent that day upon the rack. The sharp rending asunder of his body and his soul would be a merciful release. His eyeballs would no longer start from their sockets; his limbs would no longer crack; nor would his blood burst through the walls of his arteries. His shuddering frame would be at peace.

The clock struck twelve. The landlord clenched his hands as he sat in his chair; a smile crept stealthily upon the dead white of his cheeks. It was the last touch of irony that he, Gamaliel Hooker, should be sitting there so calmly looking a death by violence full in the face. To think that his old pampered flesh, cossetted and cushioned for sixty winters, should accept it without a murmur! The wind is tempered to the shorn lamb: Nature has her marvellous compensations; she takes the grossness from the animal spirit, that it may be insensible to the throes of death.

About one o’clock of the wintry morning the landlord rose from his chair, and had recourse to paper, a pen, and ink. He solemnly made his will. For the keeper of a sea tavern on a lonely coast, the home of the pirate and the smuggler, he had done excellently well in trade. He had added thrift to a natural aptitude. His money had not all been come by honestly, as the world interpreted that word. But that did not irk the landlord. All his life he had never pretended to a conscience. To him it was the hallmark of a superficial mind. And now in his last extremity he would not pretend to one. It was to be the great triumph of his life, that in his last hour he should prove to be stronger than he had ever judged himself to be. He would yield up his life calmly, without a snuffle, a whine, or a prayer.

About two o’clock he had signed his name with controlled fingers to this document. He sanded it carefully and put it by. He had hardly done so, when he jumped up suddenly from his chair. An old stab returned upon him; he felt a twinge of the old agony. After all, there was a chance of life. Suppose the pursuing soldiers retook the King! They would be then in a mood to overlook all, and they might permit him to live! The landlord cursed himself for the thought. God! was he going to be tortured again before he was allowed to perish? No, it was only the last twinge of an expiring nerve. The pain passed almost in an instant. He need not be afraid.

Towards three, the old man grew very cold. He had forgotten to replenish the fire. It had gone out hours ago, leaving the ashes grey. He was getting tired; the soldiers were a long time coming; he would try to go to sleep. Soon a pleasant lassitude stole upon his weariness. He had never been so exquisitely tired in his life before. It had been a heavy day; he had taken a lot out of himself; he deserved a rest. He fell asleep.

A little after four o’clock he awoke suddenly out of a dreamless slumber, as one startled. He lifted up his ears and listened. Horses! He rubbed his eyes in bewilderment. Why should he be sleeping there, and why should these signs invade the middle of the night? Ah yes, to be sure, he remembered! The soldiers were coming back.