“I am not anxious to make him suffer, Dalton. I have got over that a bit. He will get all he deserves, but not from me,” said Paul.
“Paul, you are a long way better man than I am,” said Dalton. “When I see what you have lost through that old devil’s crime, I tell you I see red. And I can’t understand how you take it as you do.”
Paul sat silently smoking for some minutes, looking into the fire.
“It is because of what all this brings back to me, Dalton, that I am able to keep my hands off him and perhaps one day—to forgive him—not yet, not yet—but perhaps some day. That’s my mother’s chair you are sitting in——No! No! Sit down; I want you to sit there,” he added as Dalton sprang up from the chair. He rose and took from a side table a Bible. “This was her Bible, Dalton,” he said, his voice vibrating with emotion. “I am going to read her last lesson to me.” Dalton laid his pipe down while Paul read to him the immortal words which have set for men whose hearts are hot with the passion for vengeance the ideal of the Master of mankind. “I say not unto you until seven times, but until seventy times seven.” Then, turning the pages to the story of His Passion, he read again, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
“I have not arrived yet, Dalton, at the mountain peak, God knows. For seven years I have been funking it, as utterly beyond me. But tonight I glimpse it far up in the clouds. Here my mother learned to forgive, here my father found forgiveness, and here I begin to feel how much I need forgiveness. There’s a lot of humbug in me, Dalton.”
“Oh, darn it all, Paul, cut that out, unless you want to condemn me to hell straightway.”
“I’m not thinking of you. Every man must work this out for himself and in his own relations. There is that man near me here I have long wanted to kill. As God is above, Dalton, I have waked up at night in that far North country, wet with sweat, my hands clutched in the bed clothes, my heart pounding with the joy of choking to death the man who brought about my father’s death. Tonight in this room I feel myself in the presence of my mother and in His presence Who was more to her than all in the world, and that’s saying something, for she loved greatly. I feel mean and contemptible. Her last words were, ‘Tell Daddy till seventy times seven.’ Dalton, I have been saying the Lord’s Prayer night and morning for seven years, and every time dodging the issue under a pretence that in seeking vengeance I was only seeking justice. Justice is not hatred, bitter, hot, heart-racking hatred. Justice is a holy thing, with its foundation in the heart of the Eternal God, and lies next to mercy. I have been a self-deceiving hypocrite. Never in these seven years could I have gone to Sleeman and said, ‘Sleeman, I only seek justice upon you.’ I knew I wanted more than that. God help me! I wanted to feel my fingers in his throat and see his eyes turn back in his head. That is the test of religion. I believe in God, I hold the thought of Him close to that of my mother, I know Him, He has stayed by me all these years—and yet—and yet—” he paused abruptly. “That will do for just now, Dalton. I have been a wicked fool. I am seeing things a bit differently tonight.”
Dalton was standing aghast all this time. This was a new Paul to him, not the cool, controlled, self-contained man he had known and esteemed, but a man shaken with passions deeper than he had ever seen in any human being. His face was white, his eyes ablaze with a light that goes only with madness, his sinewy hands were opening and shutting in convulsive clutchings. It was easy to believe that those fingers could tear life from any man’s throat.
“Good God, Gaspard! I never dreamed you had this thing in you. Look here, old chap, I suggest you let me settle this thing tomorrow with this man. I mean—I think—well, what’s the use going through all this thing as you must when you see him? Besides, I can handle this without you.”
Paul threw himself down in his chair and with shaking fingers began filling his pipe.