The Devil's Garden

by W. B. Maxwell

Then he would settle himself to sleep again, thinking, "It is all no use. I love my wife; I bless her for the generous way in which she has risked all that money to give me a fresh start; I enjoy the work; I believe I may succeed with the business—but I shall never know real peace of mind. And sooner or later my crime will be brought home to me. It is always so. I've read it in the papers a dozen times. Murderers never get off altogether. Years and years pass; but at last justice overtakes them."

Already, although he did not recognize it, had come remorse for the wickedness of his deed. He had no regret for the fact itself, and not the slightest pity for the victim. Mr. Barradine had got no more than he deserved, the only proper adequate punishment for his offenses; but Dale knew that, according to the tenets of all religions, God does not allow private individuals to mete out punishment, however well deserved—especially not the death penalty.

He resolutely revived his idea of the dead man as a thing unfit to live—just a brute, without a man's healthy instincts—a foul debauchee, ruining sweet and comely innocence whenever he could get at it. Such a wretch would be executed by any sensible community. In new countries they would lynch him as soon as they caught him—"A lot of chaps like myself would ride off their farms, heft him up on the nearest tree, and empty their revolvers into him. And it wouldn't be a murder: it would be a rough and ready execution. Well, I did the job by myself, without sharing the responsibility with my pals; and I consider myself an executioner, not a murderer."

He could now always make the hate and horror return and be as strong as they had ever been, and thus solidify the argument whereby he found his justification; no mercy is possible for such brutes. Subconsciously he was always striving to reinforce it; as if the voice of that logical faculty which he admired as his highest attribute were always whispering advice, reminding him: "This is your strong point. It is the only firm ground you stand on. You can't possibly hope to justify yourself to other people; but if you don't justify yourself to yourself, then you are truly done for."

And he used to think: "I have justified myself to myself all along. I was never one who considered human life so sacred as some try to make out. Why should it be? Aren't we proved to be animals—along with the rest? The parsons own it nowadays themselves, allowing a man's soul to be what God counts most important, but not going so far as to say any animal's soul isn't immortal too. Then where's the sacredness? If it's right to kill a vicious dog or a poisonous snake, how is it so wrong to out a man that won't behave himself?"

Insensibly this consideration had the greatest possible effect on his conduct. Without advancing step by step in a reasoned progress, he understood that any one holding his views on human life generally should not attach an excessive value to his own individual life. He must carry his life lightly, and be ready to lay it down without a lot of fuss. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. He acted on the maxim, risking his life freely, courting dangers that he would have avoided in the days before the day on which he executed Mr. Barradine.

Executed—yes. But God would not have authorized him, although Judge Lynch would. God would say: "It must be left to Me. I will attend to it in My own good time. From My point of view perhaps, keeping the man alive is in truth his punishment, and to kill him is to let him off. You have come blundering with your finite intelligence into the department of omniscient wisdom. Instead of interpreting My laws, you have set up a law of your own invention."

And Dale sometimes thought: "But there isn't any God. All that is my eye and my elbow. I believed it once, but I shall never believe it again."

His thoughts about God's laws were curious, and baffling to himself. They had been always there, always active, but in a manner secondary and faint when compared with his thoughts about his infringement of men's laws. Faith in God had seemed to be quite gone. It used to permeate his entire mind; and yet it dropped out as though it had been only in one corner of his mind, and a hole had been made under that corner for it to fall through. Now he sometimes had the notion that it went out through many holes, as if it had been forcibly ejected, and that his whole mind was left in a shattered and unstable condition.

Then it began to seem that the faith had not truly been altogether got rid of. Fragments of it remained.