“Your mother will be awful mad,” he growled.
“I don’t care,” said Peg serenely. Already she was revelling in the thrills which would follow her tale. “Oh, Paul, you were awful mad, weren’t you?” said Peg with a delighted shiver at the memory of Paul’s terrible outburst. Never had he used such dreadful words in all his life, no matter what the provocation. Indeed, she had often heard him gloatingly predict Asa’s post mortem state because of his indulgence in that very same sort of language.
“Oh, shut up!” said Paul rudely. “It was all your fault.”
“I know it was, Paul,” replied Peg sweetly. She understood quite well what Paul meant, and she was not a little pleased that she had been the occasion of Paul’s moral downfall, the depth of which was but the measure of his regard for her. She was never quite sure of her standing with Paul when Adelina was about. Adelina was so much stronger and braver and could do so many more things that boys could do. Too often had she endured silent agonies of jealousy and humiliation over Paul’s evident admiration of Adelina’s many masculine virtues. Today she was quite sure that Paul would never have flung himself headlong from his pinnacle of moral rectitude for Adelina’s sake. Her mother might be “mad at her,” might indeed punish her. In her present mood of exaltation she felt she would enjoy punishment. Paul glanced at her face, puzzled not a little at her pleased serenity, and all the more deeply enraged because of that serenity.
“It was your fault,” he repeated, “and I just know I’ll have to repent—or go to hell. And I don’t want to repent. I just hate to.”
“Oh, never mind, Paul,” comforted Peg. “I don’t think God will care about Asa. He’s just a horrid boy, and he’s going to hell anyway, you know.”
But this view of the matter brought Paul little cheer. Not but that he was quite clear in his mind as to Asa’s destiny, but he was equally clear that he could not keep up his feeling of righteous indignation against him, that in very truth before he went to sleep that night he would have to repent, a thought most distasteful to him. He turned wrathfully upon his companion.
“Much you know about it,” he said scornfully, and, disdaining further conversation with her, he set off again at a gallop, lest he should fail of keeping his “point of honour” engagement.
The meeting with Aunt Augusta, if a matter of no great concern to Peg, was fraught to Paul with a certain amount of anxiety. It was an accepted if tacit understanding that on these excursions Peg was under his charge and for her he must assume responsibility, by no means an insignificant burden, as he had discovered on more occasions than one. He had no notion of seeking to escape trouble. There was no escaping Aunt Augusta’s penetration, and to do him justice it never occurred to Paul to attempt to do so. He was fully prepared to accept the full consequences of the escapade. A greater burden, however, weighed down his spirits, the burden of his moral delinquency. For the ordinary sins of his daily life, the way to forgiveness and to consequent restoration of his peace and of his self-respect was quite plain. The removal of this sin, however, by the simple method of repentance and forgiveness was complicated by new and perplexing elements. It was a grave complication, for instance, that repentance was an antecedent condition to forgiveness. He was at present conscious of no regret for his language. Back in the shadows of his mind he knew there lurked a secret and distinctly pleasurable satisfaction in recalling the phrase in which he had described the boy who had undoubtedly acted in a thoroughly beastly fashion. The phrase he had used continued, even while violating his sense of rectitude, to give him a thrill of unholy joy. How could he repent of that phrase which he felt to be at once true and wholly adequate? Then, too, the pathway to pardon was hedged by the condition of his forgiving Asa. In his mood that was hopelessly impossible.
Before he had reached a solution of these moral and theological problems, they had arrived at Peg’s home. At the door they were welcomed by Peg’s mother.