There should be another and a less selfish prayer that all shall be in the world as if the iniquity had never been committed: that the consequences of the iniquity shall be stayed, miraculously stayed—because, but for a miracle, they must take their course according to the great law of Nature, that nothing can happen save under conditions imposed by the record of the past. The dream of the sinner is that he shall be forgiven and shall go straight to the land of white clothing and hearts at peace for ever, while down below the children and the grandchildren are in the misery of the consequences—the inevitable consequences of his follies and his crimes. So every soul stands or falls by itself, yet in its standing or in its falling it supports or it drags down the children and the grandchildren.
These thoughts, and other thoughts like unto these, crowded into the brain of the young man when he sat alone—the dossier of the crime locked up in the drawer—the disgraces of his cousins pushed aside—and the crime which caused so much little more than a memory and an abiding pity. Everything had come to Leonard which Constance, not knowing what the words might mean, desired for him. How great the change it made in him, as yet he hardly suspected.
CHAPTER XX
HE SPEAKS AT LAST
WAS it really the last day of Visitation? Punishment or Consequence, would there be no more?
Punishment or Consequence, it matters little which. One thing more happened on this eventful day. It came in a telegram from the ancestral housekeeper.
“Please come down as soon as you can. There is a change.”
A change! When a man is ninety-five what change do his friends expect? Leonard carried the telegram to Constance.
“I think,” he said, “it must be the end.”
“It is assuredly the end. You will go at once—to-day. Let me go with you, Leonard.”
“You? But it would only distress you.”