Constance obeyed and sat down upon the stile.
“When we came here before,” he began, with a serious voice and grave eyes, “I was fresh from the shame and the discovery of the family misfortunes. And we talked of the sins of the fathers, and the eating of sour grapes, and the consolation of the Prophet——”
“I remember every word.”
“Very well. I think you will understand me, Constance, when I say that I am rejoiced that I made the discovery of this fatal family history with all that it entailed—the train of evils and shames—yes, even though it has led to these weeks of a kind of obsession or possession, during which I have been unable to think of anything else.”
“What do you think now? Are the sins of the fathers visited upon the children, or was the Prophet right?”
“I see, with you, that it is impossible to avoid the consequences of the father’s life and actions. The words ‘Third or Fourth Generation’ must not be taken literally. They mean that from father to son there is a continual chain of events linked together and inseparable, and always moulding and causing the events which follow, and this though we know not the past and cannot see the connecting links that form the chain. In a higher stage humanity will refrain from some things and will be attracted by other things entirely through the consideration of their effect upon those who follow after. It will be a punishment self-imposed by those who fall that they must, in pity and in mercy, have no children to inherit their shame.”
“You put my own thoughts into words. But about the children I am not so sure; their very shames may be made a ladder such as Augustine made his sins.”
“There is nothing so true as the inheritance of consequences, except that one does not inherit the guilt. Even with the guilt there is sometimes the tendency to certain lines of action. ‘Nothing so hereditary as the drink craving,’ says the physician. So I suppose there may be a hereditary tendency in other directions. Some men—I have known some—cannot sit down to steady work; they must lie about in the sun; they must loaf; they have a vitium, an incurable disease, as incurable as a humpback, of indolence, mind and body. Some seem unable to remain honest—we all know examples of such men; some cannot possibly tell the truth. What I mean”—Leonard went on, clearing his own mind by putting his wandering thoughts into argumentative array—“is that the liability to temptation—the tendency—is inherited, but the necessity which forces a man to act is not inherited; that is due to himself. What says the Prophet again? ‘As I live, saith the Lord God’—saith the Lord God. It is magnificent; it is terrible in its depth of earnestness. He declares an inspiration; through him the Lord strengthens His own word—veritably strengthens His own word—by an oath, ‘As I live, saith the Lord God.’ Can you imagine anything stronger, more audacious, but for the eternal Verity that follows?”
The speaker’s voice trembled; his cheek, touched by the setting sun, glowed; the light of the western sky filled his eyes. Constance, woman-like, trembled at the sight of the man who stood revealed to her—the new man—transformed by the experience of shames and sorrows.
“As the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is Mine; but if a man doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, saith the Lord God.”