“And now,” he said, in a voice that steadily grew stronger and firmer, “I will tell you a story.” He was standing directly in front of her and looking down into her face. “One day, just after a great sorrow had fallen upon me, I was strolling along the water-front of San Francisco, and sat down upon some lumber at the end of a pier. I had not noticed a number of rough-looking young men sitting near me, until one of them said, in the course of the talk that they were having, ‘Yes, but I loved her! It was the way in which he said it that attracted my notice. I judged from his appearance that he was a laborer, perhaps a stevedore; but there was something in his voice that belongs to stricken men in all the walks of life. One of his companions said, ‘Nonsense, Frank; there’s just as good fish in the sea as ever was caught out of it.’ But Frank shook his head and said, ‘Not for me.’ The others said nothing, and after a little while Frank repeated, ‘Not for me.’ Did you ever hear a man say that?”
Wilder’s voice, which had been steadily growing louder, suddenly sank almost to a whisper as he asked his guest that question. The wrinkles were deepening in his face, and his glance had a sharpness of penetration that the young woman found it hard to meet without wincing.
“Then,” resumed Wilder, “another of his companions, seeking to show him the folly of his grief, made some remarks about the woman that I cannot repeat. Frank replied without anger: ‘Don’t say that, Joe: you mean well, but don’t say it. She was the woman I loved. Every night, now, when I put out the light to go to bed, I see her in the room; and when I go on streets that are dark, I think she’s walking with me. I loved that woman; and now I don’t know what to do. For she’s dead, boys, she’s dead; and by God! they killed her.’”
Wilder was still looking down into the face of his guest as he concluded, and she had been looking up into his; but when, with a trembling voice, he spoke the last sentence, her glance dropped to the floor. After a pause he spoke again, and his voice was full, round, and passionate.
“They killed her, madam, as they have killed many another. How it was that they killed the woman whose death had filled this rough man’s life with grief and despair, I do not know. But they killed her. Some murderous human hand shattered a scheme that the Almighty himself had laid. I wish you could have heard him say, ‘She’s dead, boys, she’s dead; and by God! they killed her.’ The sound of its agony would have found the heart that was intended to do more than keep you alive with its beating. Do you know what murder is? Do you know the difference between the gross, stupid, brutal murder that in satisfying its coarse lust for blood runs its thick neck into the halter, and the finer, daintier, infinitely more cruel murder that kills with torturing cruelty, and thus outwits the gallows? The blood-murderer is a poor fool, dwarfed in mind and crippled in soul. Perhaps he gets his full punishment when the law stretches his useless neck. But the murderer who outwits the law in his killing, who murders the innocent and unsuspecting and confiding, who makes friendship the cup from which the poison is drunk, who employs the most damnable lies and treachery, who calmly watches the increasing agonies of his victim as the poison slowly does its work,—what punishment do you think can reach such a murderer as that?”
The young man’s voice had become loud, harsh, and threatening. Violent emotions were stirring him. His whole slender frame seemed to have expanded. His face was flushed, his eyes were blazing, his fingers clutched at invisible things, his entire aspect was menacing. His guest, awed and terrified, raised her glance to his face.
“And by whom is such a murder done?” he cried. “It is done by one who, coming into the world with a soul fresh and complete from the hands of the Creator, deliberately turns aside from the way of nature and nature’s God, crushes the attributes that form our one link with heaven and our one hope of immortality, throttles all that might be useful in bringing light and strength into the lives of others, and in shameless defiance of the Almighty’s manifest will sets up false gods to worship, sacrifices self-respect for self-love, banishes the essence of life and clings to the dross, and wallows like swine in a mire of his own making. The blood-murderer is infinitely better than that. He has at least a human heart in all its savage majesty.
“And for what is such a murder done? It proceeds from a dwarfed, distorted soul, deliberately, consciously, intelligently made so by its possessor. Its purpose is to destroy the one touch of beauty, sweetness, and purity that makes us akin to the angels. It sees an exquisite flower; that flower must be plucked, else its beauty would flourish and its destiny be fulfilled. It finds love in its purest, noblest, most unselfish form between two whom God had made each for the other for the fulfilling of his own inscrutable design, and by lies and treachery proceeds to kill one and destroy the happiness of the other. What punishment, madam, is adequate for such a murder? The hands of the law would be polluted by strangling a murderer so base, so cowardly, so infinitely lower and meaner than the lowest beasts, so utterly unworthy of the honor of the gallows-tree. There can be but one adequate punishment, and only Omnipotence could devise a hell sufficient for it. And the sooner this punishment comes, the sooner will the vengeance of God be satisfied. What higher duty could rest upon a mortal standing in awe and reverence under his Maker’s law than to set the law in force?”
In the dismay and terror that now filled her soul the woman could not mistake the meaning of that threat, nor the madness that would give it force. A numbing fear, a feeling that she was sinking into a bottomless pit, put gyves upon all her faculties. In a hopeless stupor she sat, in speechless dread of the blow that she felt must fall. To her dazed attention the avenger himself stood before her in all the terror of infuriated justice free from its leash and plunging forward headlong and irresistible to satisfy its vengeance. Never had she dreamed that a mortal could face a thing so terrible as this man, who, having dragged her from death, and with infinite patience, gentleness, and unselfishness had been nursing her back to health and strength, now stood as the judge and executioner of her naked, trembling, convicted soul. Her eyes strained, her lips apart, she looked up, speechless and motionless, into his face; and to her his blazing eyes and tense frame filled all the world with vengeance, scorn, and death.
“Woman,” he cried, “whether it be murder or justice, your death would remove an infamous stain from the face of this fair world. If you can, make your peace with God, for I am going to send your damned black soul where it can do no further harm. It is with immeasurable hate, with infinite loathing, that I am going to kill you.”