He owed this act to Immy. He had brought her into the world. He loved her. He must save her from being enveloped in the curse of this world’s hell. Let the next hell wait.
If God wanted to punish him for it forever—why, what of that? He had committed one murder already and was already damned, no doubt. And even God could not increase infinite torment or multiply eternity.
He laughed at the infernal mathematics of that conceit. He felt as haughty as Lucifer challenging Jehovah. Yes, he would force his way into that birth chamber and do his terrible duty.
The onset of this madness set him in motion. He had not realized how long he had stood still before that open window and that bleak white desert, where it was too cold to snow, too cold for a wind—a grim cold like a lockjaw.
When he turned to pace the floor, his legs were mere crutches; his feet stump-ends. It hurt to walk. He stood still and thought again.
Yes, yes! All he had to do was to close his hand upon that tiny windpipe. It would be no more than laying hold of a pen and signing a warrant of arrest, a warrant of death. The same muscles, the same gesture. It would not be murder, simply an eviction—dispossess proceedings against an undesirable tenant, a neighbor that would not keep the peace.
He would cheat the newspapers of what they called their rights; but God knew they had enough scandal to print without advertising his family name. The gossips would lose one sweetmeat; but they never stopped yapping. He would not let the men in the clubs call his grandchild a bastard and his daughter a—the word was vomit to his throat.
With one delicate act of his good right hand he could rescue Immy from a lifetime of skulking; save at the same time this poor little, innocent, doomed petitioner from slinking crying down the years. He could save Patty from a lifetime of obloquy and humiliation. He could save his own name, his ancestors, his posterity, and the integrity of this old house—all by one brief contraction of his fingers.
With a groan of joy in the magnificence of this supernal opportunity to be a man, a father, a god, he rehearsed the gesture, put his hand to the imaginary baby’s throat.
He drove his will into his fingers. But they could not bend. His hand was frozen.