Said Durgan, "If his mind is as lucid as the doctor thinks, his present experience must be pretty much like lying helpless in a lake of fire."
"Sir, what is there to trouble him? Two of the finest, most agreeable women who ever lived on this earth are his slaves. They wheel him hither and thither as he suggests a preference. They read; they sing; they show him nature in her glory; and his body suffers no pain. I do not understand your allusion."
"I thought it just possible that, being human, he might have a soul latent in him."
"'Soul'! He has, without excuse or provocation, committed the most brutal crime of the decade; he has passed his years since ministering to his own tastes and indolences in the society of a lady who pleased his fancy, while, with the most horrid cruelty and worm-like cowardice, he has left his tender daughter to suffer the consequences of his crime. He has within him, sir, a soul, humanly speaking, beyond hope of redemption."
"But Christian faith compels his daughter to set aside the human aspects of the case."
"Women, sir—women have no standard of manly virtue. Can you conceive that a son—a man who knew the world, could slur over such vice, such perfidy, in a parent?"
Alden's reiteration of "Sir," spoken between his teeth, had so very much the force of "Damn you," that Durgan forbore to suggest that the point of his remark had been evaded.
Alden, half conscious of his own angry inconsistency as a religious man in desiring the torment of the wicked, still resented Durgan's logic enough to bring forward at this point an unpalatable subject. "With regard to Mrs. Durgan, sir; from all the inquiries I have made, I understand that she probably was aware that Adolphus, who has been his valet all these years, had summoned Claxton here on threat of disclosure, and that Claxton had gone to New Orleans, there to assume his new incognito—which, knowing the negro's origin, was natural enough before he interfered on his behalf in your neighborhood. But I understand that Mrs. Durgan did not know that I or the ladies were here, and had no suspicion of the servant's intended treachery. In all probability she has not heard from Claxton, at any rate since he left New Orleans. You are aware that we have decided that the Miss Claxtons shall, till their father's death, retain the name they took upon entering this neighborhood. I wish to suggest to you that it would not be safe to trust Mrs. Durgan with the secret of their whereabouts. It is undesirable, in keeping a secret, to trust human nature any further than is absolutely necessary, and it appears to me, therefore, needful to request you to let Mrs. Durgan be left in entire ignorance of the fate of her late protégé."
Durgan could not but inwardly admit that there was a certain poetic justice in leaving his wife thus in a condition of suspense, and altho he resented the manner of the instruction, he expressed conditional acquiescence.
Durgan more than suspected that Alden was querulously wreaking upon the criminal, and upon all he met, the anger he felt against himself for not, at the first, discerning the simple mistake which had caused the mystery of the "Claxton case." As they drove on, mile after mile, through the wild harvests of the woodland, this supposition was confirmed. After talking of many things, Alden broke out in self-soothing comment: