“ ‘As I live, saith the Lord.’ It is a solemn assurance—a form of words, perhaps—only a form of words—yet, if so, the audacity of it! ‘As I live’—the Lord Himself takes the oath—‘if a man be just, he shall surely live.’ ”
“A man may be kept down by poverty and shut out from the world by his father’s shame. Yet he may still be just. It is the distinction that the Prophet would draw. What misfortune has fallen upon your House which affects the soul of a man? Death? Poverty? The wrong-doing of certain members?”
Leonard shook his head. “Yes, I understand what you mean. I confess that I had been shaken by the revelations of that old lady. They seemed to explain so much.”
“Perhaps they explained the whole—yet not as she meant them to explain.”
“Now I understand so many things that were dark—my mother’s sadness and the melancholy eyes which rested upon me from childhood. She was looking for the hand of Fate: she expected disaster: she kept me in ignorance: yet she was haunted by the thought that for the third and fourth generation the sins—the unknown sins—of the fathers would be visited upon the children. When I learned these things”—he repeated himself, because his mind was so full of the thought—“I felt the same expectation, the same terror, the same sense of helplessness, as if wherever I turned, whatever I attempted, the Hand which struck down my father, my grandfather, and that old man would fall upon me.”
“It was natural.”
“So that these words came to me like a direct message from the old Hebrew Prophet. Our ancestors went for consolation and instruction to those pages. They held that every doubt and every difficulty were met and solved by these writers. Perhaps we shall go back to the ancient faith. And yet——” He looked round; it was a new world that he saw, with new ideas. “Not in my time,” he said. “We are a scientific age. When the reign of Science is ended, we may begin again the reign of Faith.” He spoke as one in doubt and uncertainty.
“Receive the words, Leonard, as a direct message.”
“At least, I interpreted the words into an order to look at events from another point of view. And I have taken all the misfortunes in turn. They have nothing whatever to do with heredity. Your illustration about a man losing his money, and so bringing poverty upon his children, does not apply. My great-grandfather has his head turned by a great trouble. His son commits suicide. Why? Nobody knows. The young sailor is drowned. Why? Because he is a sailor. The daughter marries beneath her station. Why? Because she was motherless and fatherless and neglected. My own father died young. Why? Because fever carried him off.”
“Leonard”—Constance laid her hand upon his arm—“do not argue the case any more. Leave it. A thing like this may easily become morbid. It may occupy your thoughts too much.”