To prolong the pleasure, he began by sorting the papers chronologically, and as he found and spread out the earliest number, the date at the top of the page entered into his consciousness like a key slipping into a lock. It was the seventeenth of December: the date of the day after his arrival at Northridge. He glanced at the first page and read in blazing characters: "Reported Failure of Opal Cement Company. Lavington's Name Involved. Gigantic Exposure of Corruption Shakes Wall Street to Its Foundations."
He read on, and when he had finished the first paper he turned to the next. There was a gap of three days, but the Opal Cement "Investigation" still held the centre of the stage. From its complex revelations of greed and ruin his eye wandered to the death notices, and he read: "Rainer. Suddenly, at Northridge, New Hampshire, Francis John, only son of the late. …"
His eyes clouded, and he dropped the newspaper and sat for a long time with his face in his hands. When he looked up again he noticed that his gesture had pushed the other papers from the table and scattered them on the floor at his feet. The uppermost lay spread out before him, and heavily his eyes began their search again. "John Lavington comes forward with plan for reconstructing Company. Offers to put in ten millions of his own—The proposal under consideration by the District Attorney."
Ten millions … ten millions of his own. But if John Lavington was ruined? … Faxon stood up with a cry. That was it, then—that was what the warning meant! And if he had not fled from it, dashed wildly away from it into the night, he might have broken the spell of iniquity, the powers of darkness might not have prevailed! He caught up the pile of newspapers and began to glance through each in turn for the headline: "Wills Admitted to Probate". In the last of all he found the paragraph he sought, and it stared up at him as if with Rainer's dying eyes.
That—THAT was what he had done! The powers of pity had singled him out to warn and save, and he had closed his ears to their call, had washed his hands of it, and fled. Washed his hands of it! That was the word. It caught him back to the dreadful moment in the lodge when, raising himself up from Rainer's side, he had looked at his hands and seen that they were red. …
A MESSENGER
BY
MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS
The Berserker of the North, because he believed in the directing power of the gods, knew no fear. Death or life—it was meted out by a destiny that could not err. In song and story he has been one of the most attractive figures of the past; far more attractive in his savage virtues than the more sensuous heroes of Greece and Rome. In this story he lives again in the American boy who has his ancestor's inexplicable uplift of spirit in the presence of danger and his implicit faith in "the God of battles and the beauty of holiness." The ideal of Miles Morgan is such a man as Chinese Gordon, who, not only in youth but all through life, had eyes for "the vision splendid."
The ethical value of "A Messenger" may be summed up in the words of the General: "There is nothing in Americanism to prevent either inspiration or heroism."