XV THE HARVEST
I suppose the law of retributive punishment is, strictly speaking, a just one, but I feel sure there is such a thing as carrying it too far, especially when it is applied without regard to the mitigating circumstances that sometimes prompt a usually tractable man to kick over the traces. I think, in a case of this kind, a deeper moral effect may be obtained by the application of the beautiful theory that crime, like virtue, has its own inevitable reward, apart from any extraneous punishment that the human intellect can devise. Years before, when the latter philosophy was expounded to me by Marion during a discussion on the subject, it seemed a mere abstract proposition that verged on absurdity, but in the painful moments that elapsed between the departure of the minister and my hesitating entrance to the dining-room its true significance burst upon me like a ray of sunshine. I would remind Marion of her convictions; I would tell her I had adopted her view; she would refrain, in deference to her own unswerving opinions, to add to the mental anguish that had already led me to see how unwise it was to give way to evil impulses.
Therefore, encouraged by this thought, I faced my wife as if nothing had happened since I left the kitchen to answer the summons of the door-bell. I was prepared to find her indignant, wrathful, in tears, but I did not expect to see her sitting in an attitude of apathetic despair, dry-eyed and speechless.
"Good heavens, Marion!" I cried. "What's the matter?"
It was some time before I could get her to answer; then it was a positive relief to see her lips move and hear her say faintly, "You've—done it—now."
I had difficulty in finding out what I had done. A gleam of hope thrilled me when at last she revived enough to attack in the open.
Then, and not till then, did I develop my strategic lines of defence. First, I pleaded justification; second, that my vivid imagination, like Paul's, had led me to believe for the time that I was Peter; third, that I had tried in vain to make the minister understand that I was not Peter; fourth, that my desire for sympathy and companionship had warped my judgment and caused me to innocently yield to temptation; fifth, that I could not see that I had done wrong; sixth, that the burden of poignant grief for my conduct was more than I could bear; seventh, that any attempt to rub it in would harden my heart and stifle the reproaches of my own conscience; eighth,—well, to the final argument upon which I based my futile hopes Marion replied that her own attitude, born of the humiliating discovery of the kind of man I really was, might well be considered part of the inevitable consequences of my misdeeds, and that if she had ever given me cause to believe that she thought differently she took it all back.
It was then, with my guns spiked, that I surrendered unconditionally. I only pleaded that for Paul's sake—dear little Paul, who, in his plays, so innocently invented fictions that rivalled Munchausen's—we should gather up the little fragments of our shattered happiness and piece them together with calm resignation. I was about to suggest that we should seek consolation in a life of self-abnegation by trying to do good to others, but, seeing that Marion was obviously moved, I desisted. I am proud to say I know how far to go; I am prouder that I know when to stop and keep a good thing for another occasion.