A few years ago the future had seemed a region of wonderful and mysterious possibilities of good, but to-night the thought brought no such illusions, for he knew that the story of the future was to be much the same as the story of the past. He would continue to work, and they would all three have to go without most of the necessaries of life. When there was no work they would starve.
For himself he did not care much, because he knew that, at the best—or worst—it would be only a very few years. Even if he were able to have proper food and clothing, and take reasonable care of himself, he could not live much longer; but, when that time came, what was to become of them?
There would be some hope for the boy if he were more robust and if his character were less gentle and more selfish. In order to succeed in the world it was necessary to be brutal, selfish, and unfeeling; to push others aside and to take advantage of their misfortunes.
Owen stood up and began walking about the room, oppressed with a kind of terror. Presently he returned to the fire and began rearranging his clothes that were drying. He found that the boots, having been placed too near the fire, had dried too quickly, and, consequently the sole of one of them had begun to split away from the upper. He remedied this as well as he was able, and, while turning the wetter parts of the clothing to the fire, he noticed the newspaper in the coat pocket. He drew it out with an exclamation of pleasure. Here was something to distract his thoughts. But, as soon as he opened the paper, his attention was riveted by the staring headlines of one of the principal columns: TERRIBLE DOMESTIC TRAGEDY. Wife and Two Children Killed. Suicide of the Murderer.
It was one of the ordinary crimes of poverty. The man had been without employment for many weeks and they had pawned or sold their furniture and other possessions. But even this resource must have failed at last, and one day the neighbors noticed that the blinds remained down and that there was a strange silence about the house. When the police entered they found, in one of the upper rooms, the dead bodies of the woman and the two children, with their throats cut, laid out side by side upon the bed, which was saturated with their blood.
There was no bedstead, and no furniture in the room except the straw mattress and the ragged clothes and blankets upon the floor.
The man’s body was found in the kitchen, lying with outstretched arms face downward on the floor, surrounded by the blood from the terrible wound in his throat, which had evidently been inflicted by the razor that was grasped in his right hand.
No particle of food was found, but, attached to a nail in the kitchen wall, was a piece of blood-smeared paper, on which was written in pencil:
“This is not my crime, but Society’s.”