The note of mockery that was in it served to sting Ballingall into an assertion of such manhood as was in him. He clenched his fists, drew himself straighter, and, throwing back his head, faced towards where the laughter seemed to stand.
"Tom," he said, "I've used you ill. We've both of us used you ill, both she and I--she's been as false a wife to you as I've been friend. Our sins have been many--black as ink, bitter as gall. We know it, both of us. We've had reason to know it well. But, Tom, consider what our punishment has been. Look at us--at her, at me. Think of what we were, and what we are. Remember what it means to have come to this from that. Every form of suffering I do believe we've known--of mind and of body too--she in her way, and I in mine. We've been sinking lower and lower and lower, through every form of degradation, privation, misery, until at last we're in the ditch--amidst the slime of the outer ditch. We've lost all that there is worth having, so far as life's concerned, for ever. The only hope that is left us is the hour in which it is appointed that we shall die. For my part, my hope is that for me that hour is not far off. And, as I'm a living man, I believe that for her it has already come; that the scythe is raised to reap; that she's dying where she stands. Have you no bowels of compassion, Tom--none? You used to have. Are they all dried and withered? There's forgiveness for sinners, Tom, with God; is there none with you? You used to be of those who forgive till seventy times seven; are you now so unforgiving? You may spurn me, you may trample on me, you may press my head down into the very slime of the ditch; you know that these many months you've torn and racked me with all the engines of the torture chambers: but she's your wife, Tom--she was your wife! you loved her once! She bore to you a little child--a little baby, Tom, a little baby! It's dead--with God, Tom, with God! She's going to it now--now, now! While she's passing into the very presence chamber, where her baby is, don't abase her, Tom. Don't, Tom, don't!"
He threw out his arms with a gesture of such frenzied entreaty, and his whole figure was so transformed by the earnestness, and passion, and pathos, and even anguish with which he pressed his theme, that at least the spectators were cut to the heart.
"I know not," he cried, "whether you are dead or living, or whether I myself am mad or sane--for, indeed, to me of late the world has seemed all upside down. But this I know, that I see you and that you see me, and if, as I suppose, you come from communion with the Eternal, you must know that, in that Presence, there is mercy for the lowest--for the chief of sinners! There is mercy, Tom, I know that there is mercy! Therefore I entreat you to consider, Tom, the case of this woman--of she who was your wife, the mother of your child. She has paid dearly for her offence against you--paid for it every moment of every hour of every day of every year since she offended. Since then she has been continually paying. Is not a quittance nearly due--from you, Tom? If blood is needed to wash out her guilt, she has wept tears of blood. If suffering--look at her and see how she has suffered. And now, even as I stand and speak to you, she dies. She bears her burden to the grave. Is she to add to it, still, the weight of your resentment? That will be the heaviest weight of all. Beneath it, how shall she stagger to the footstool of her God? All these years she has lived in hell. Don't--with your hand, Tom!--now she's dying, thrust her into hell, for ever. But put her hand in yours, and bear her up, and stay her, Tom, and lead her to the throne of God. If she can say that you've forgiven her, God will forgive her too. And then she'll find her baby, Tom."
It was a strange farrago of words which Ballingall had strung together, but the occasion was a strange one too. His earnestness, in which all was forgotten save his desire to effect his purpose, seemed to cast about them a halo as of sanctity. It was almost as if he stood there, pleading for a sinner, in the very Name of Christ--the great Pleader for all great sinners.
The woman, this latest Magdalene, did as that first Magdalene had done, she fell on her knees and wept--tears of bitterness.
"Tom! Tom!" she cried, "Tom! Tom!"
But he to whom she cried did not do as the Christ, the Impersonation of Divine Mercy, did. Christ wept with the sinners. He to whom she pleaded laughed at her. And, beneath his laughter, she crouched lower and lower, till she lay almost prostrate on the floor; and her body quivered as if he struck her with a whip.
Ballingall, as if he could scarcely credit the evidence of his own senses, started back and stared, as though divided between amazement and dismay. Under his breath, he put a singular inquiry--the words seeming to be wrung from him against his will.
"Tom!--Are you a devil?"