Peregrine mused, his eyes on the glowing turf. “Methinks I find your simile not over apt. An’ a child of our flesh die, we may see God’s Hand in the death. An’ a hope of our heart die, mayhap we are the murderers.”
Simon turned on him half savagely. “Is a mother a murderer that her babe dies in her arms for lack of the milk in her breasts, an’ she’d give her life’s blood for it would it avail? Methinks you must look somewhat further.”
Peregrine was silent. Here he found no answer to give.
“Sixty year and more I’ve lived here in this hovel,” went on Simon, “and never a kindly word spoken to me. I might be the plague itself for the way men eye me. From boyhood ’twas the same. Mayhap ’tis something bred in me they shun. Yet, for all that, I nurtured hope for twenty year; dreamed, as you dream now. At last I had naught left on which to nourish it. It shrivelled and died. I saw it twist in agony, for ’twas no easy death. When it was dead I laughed that it had ever lived. Hope, I tell you, dying in a man’s soul rots there, turns his soul foul. Better strangle it before it comes to birth. Then you can rid yourself of it. Later you cannot; and dying it lies there to canker and decay.” He stopped, and again Peregrine could find no answer. The wind sighed through the trees without; all else was silence.
“Did you speak?” asked Simon suddenly.
“No,” said Peregrine startled, “yet methought——”
“Fancy,” said Simon shortly.
“Nay,” said Peregrine listening. “It was as a voice from far off places. Ego sum resurrectio et vita, it said.”
“The wind sighing in the trees brings voices to a man’s fancy,” returned Simon crossly.
“And yet—” said Peregrine wondering.