‘Not a bit of it, Mabel. I only looked in to say I wasn’t having any tea. I’ll come with you.’
‘Why, where are you going, Hector?’ cried Elizabeth.
‘To the Club,’ said Hector, without looking at her. ‘So long, Aunt Janet,’ he went on. ‘See you another time. Sorry I can’t stop. Come along, Mabel.’
The door shut upon them. Elizabeth found herself filling a cup with hot water instead of tea.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said in a flat voice.
Then she suddenly burst into tears.
‘Go away!’ she sobbed. ‘Go away! Both of you.’
With another sob she rose and rushed out of the room.
To his own amazement the minister’s first impulse was to rush out after her. He was literally upset; everything within him felt topsy-turvy. Little enough had been said, but Elizabeth’s agitation seemed to him natural and his own not less so. Something evil had struck into the very heart of the room like an invisible thunderbolt and had scattered the peace of all the people in it. Yet he was amazed to find himself involuntarily springing to the door.
Janet Shand caught him by the sleeve. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but her voice was harsh and angry. ‘Let her go!’ she said. ‘You can’t do anything with her. Nobody can do anything with her. She’ll be the ruin of him yet.’
William shook his arm free but stood irresolutely shifting his feet while Janet Shand sank into a chair crying: ‘My poor boy! My poor, poor boy!’
William Murray could not bear to see anyone in tears; and it was not only because he was a minister that he felt obliged to comfort those in disress. On this occasion, however, his own distress was so immediate and unexpected that his instinctive attempt to comfort the old woman was awkward and perfunctory.
He found himself outside on the pavement with some confused idea in his head that Miss Shand had sent him out to find Hector and bring him back. He started off mechanically with long strides, but the street was so thickly crowded with Saturday-nighters that his impatience drove him into the roadway. He ejaculated irrelevant words as he walked. ‘No, no,’ he said, and ‘Evil, evil.’ The rain had stopped, but the storm was not yet spent; high above the blue arc-lamps of the High Street a wild scud of clouds was flying over the waning moon, and, as if driven by the same force, the minister flew along the street below.
Blindly he turned out of the High Street. He wanted to get hold of the man. Had Janet Shand asked him to catch Hector Shand, or had she not? Anything might happen, she had said, with Hector in that mood. His fists clenched and unclenched as they swung. His heart was pounding; little pulses hammered in his eyes. ‘Evil, evil.’
In the side-street where he now was, a dark street indifferently lit by gas-lamps that flung yellow rings upon the wet pavement, the minister suddenly came to himself, and leaned against a wall. He was possessed by evil, his body was shaking with anger, his fists were thinking of hitting Hector Shand, of hitting him and hitting him until he crumpled up. The last time he had been so invaded by anger was as a boy of fourteen when he had seized a bully at the school and pounded his head against a window until the window smashed in. His remorse afterwards, and his terror of the murderous fury that had thrilled him, had converted him to that contemplation of the eternal love of God in which he had found serenity. Not until this day had the devil entered into him again.
He walked to and fro between the two gas-lamps, filled with an anguish of shame. He a minister of the Gospel, a servant of Christ! He stood on the edge of the pavement and stared at the wall, a high, well-built wall enclosing a garden. Its regularly cut stones were so smoothly fitted together that there was neither handhold nor foothold all the way up to the top, although the stones were greenish with age. The minister stared at it as if obsessed.
Smooth, blank, and yet frowning, the wall stared back at him. The minister shut his eyes as if the sight of the wall had become intolerable. ‘O God,’ he prayed, and again, and again: ‘O God,’ the simple incantation with which the soul seeks to recover a communion it has lost.
When he began to walk again it was at a more sober pace. He had sinned. He had met evil with evil. One should overcome evil with good. One should be sorry for a man like Hector Shand, not murderously angry with him. At any rate, he was in no fit state to pursue the man; he could do nothing spiritually effective; he felt spent.
But young Mrs Hector was sobbing her heart out. He shivered a little as the remembrance of her tears called up the scene again. It was dreadful to live with evil in one’s own household. She had in her husband the same kind of problem that he had in Ned. They needed all their strength, both of them…. They must help each other…. And for her sake something ought to be done at once. Something had to be done if only to relieve the oppression round his own heart…. The minister decided to ask John Shand to go himself and fetch his brother home.
‘Is Mr Shand in?’ he asked the maid, wearily supporting himself by the iron railing. ‘Can I see him privately for a few moments?’
The girl hesitated.
‘Is it Mr John Shand or Mr Hector?’ she said.
‘Are they both here?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The minister swayed a little.
‘Oh, then it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t matter,’ he mumbled, and turned down the steps again.
The sound of a gramophone followed him, as the astonished maid peered after him.
‘Losh keep’s a’!’ she said to herself as she shut the door.
Sarah Murray observed her brother’s dejection when he came into the sitting-room, where she was knitting by the fire.
‘What’s the matter, William? Didn’t you see Mrs Hector?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she going to take a stall, then?’
‘I think so; yes, I believe she will.’
Sarah knitted on in silence. If William wouldn’t tell her she wasn’t going to ask.
‘Supper’s nearly ready,’ she said finally.
‘Was Ned all right at tea-time?’ asked William, without lifting his head from his hand.
‘Not so bad. That’s to say, he never said a word.’
‘He is better, Sarah, don’t you think?’
Sarah scratched her head with a knitting-needle.
‘You can’t call it a way of living to lie in bed every day till dinner-time and sit up every night till two in the morning and never set a foot across the outside door,’ she said sharply. ‘The only difference I see. is that I’ve got the upper hand of him now.’
‘What makes you think that, Sarah?’
‘I’ve daured him,’ said Sarah. ‘Ever since one night I went into his room and stood up to him. He knows now that I can stand up to him, and we’ve had less trouble ever since. There’s no more word of Teenie giving notice, nor there won’t be as long as I’m in the house, and Ned knows it. So I just let him lie in bed in the mornings; it keeps him out of the way. I believe, William, that it’s yon breakdown of his he fashes himself about: I think he can’t account for it. So I rub that into him between times…. It’s just pure daftness to put up with him,’ she added angrily. ‘What kind of a life is it for a laddie of his age? He’s just been pampered in this house. But you won’t find strangers willing to do that. It might do him good to be living away from us. Except that I don’t see what kind of a job he could possibly be any good at.’
‘You’re wrong there, Sarah; he’s a very able fellow, Ned.’
‘He is,