There were lawbooks piled and outspread about his desk. He flung them off the table to the floor. Laws! Human laws!
On the shelves there were philosophies, histories, a Bible, a Koran, Confucius, the Talmud, Voltaire, a volume of Dr. Chirnside’s sermons. He tore them from their places and tossed them into the air to sprawl and scatter their leaves like snowflakes—and as full of wisdom. He flung a few of them into the fire, but they began to smother it. And somehow that made him laugh.
The abysmal vanity of his temper! He was more foolish and futile than the books he insulted. Poor Job, whose God gave him to the devil to torture on a bet, without explaining to his servant why. Poor Kung-fu-tse trying to be wise. Poor Voltaire, with a mighty cachinnation and a heart full of pity for the victims of persecution. Poor Dr. Chirnside, anxiously floundering through the bogs of terror on the stilts of dogma. Poor Jud Lasher, lying there in the walls!—or where?
This wrestling, Jacob-wise, with invisible angels or fiends, took his mind for a saving while from the unbearable spectacle of his own child’s immediate hell.
There was silence again about the lonely house. By and by Patty came into the room to say:
“She’s asleep. I gave her some drops. Too many, I’m afraid. And now—now what?”
They leaned against the mantelpiece, tall shadows against the swirling flames. Her head and his were lost in the dark as if they were giants reaching to the clouds. And they were, indeed, in the clouds; lost there.
They both thought of the same thing, of course: As usual with human kind, they were concerned about keeping something secret from somebody else. They wanted to make a decent concealment of their family shame.
RoBards’ eyes wandered and fell upon the hearthstone at his feet with the firelight shuttling about it in ripples. Jud Lasher was under there.
He must not hide the child in these same walls. There would be something burlesque about that. Strange, hideous, loathsome truth that the most sorrowful things have only to be repeated to become comic!