Gordon argued that it should not. He was driven to it
by years of fruitless struggling against this monstrous creation in the
shape of man. He had seen such suffering because of him; his whole life
had been so turned and twisted this way and that way because of him,
that he himself had in the end become abnormal, and mentally askew, with
the system of things. He was conscious of it himself. He had been
naturally a good, simple, broad-visioned man, full of charity, with
almost no subtlety. He had been forced to lead a life which strained and
diverted all these good traits. Where he would have been open, he had
been secret.
Where he would have had no suspicion of any one, his first
sight now seemed to be for ulterior motives. He weighed and measured
where he naturally would have scattered broadcast. He had been obliged
to compress his broad vision into a narrow window of detection. He was
not the man he had been. Where he had gazed out of wide doors and
windows at life, he now gazed through keyholes, and despised himself for
so doing. In order to evade the trouble which had fallen to his lot, he
took refuge in another personality. Thomas Gordon was a man whom a
happy and untroubled life would have kept from all worldly blemish. Now
the gold was tarnished, and he himself always saw the tarnish, as one
sees a blur before the eye. Twenty years before, if any one had told him
that he would at any period of his life become capable of standing and
arguing with himself as to the right or wrong of what was now in his
mind, he would have been incredulous. He had in reality become another
man. Circumstances had evolved him, during the course of twenty years,
into something different, as persistent winds evolve a pliant tree into
another than its typical shape. Gordon had lost his type.
As he stood at the window the room grew cold. The hearth fire had died
down. He knew that the furnace needed attention, but he dared not quit
his post and his argument. He became sure that the maid would not return
that night. He knew that Aaron was sitting with his human obstinacy
behind the obstinate brute, somewhere on the road. He knew that James
and Clemency might at any moment drive in, and he might rush out too
late to prevent murder and the kidnapping of the girl. He knew what the
man was there for. And he knew the one way to thwart him, but it was so
horrible a way that it needed all this argument, all this delay and
nearing of danger, before he adopted it.
The increasing cold of the room seemed to act as a sort of physical goad
toward action. "By God, it is right!" he muttered. Then he looked at
the dog crouching still with that wiry intentness before the door. The
dog came of a good breed of fighters. He was in himself both weapon and
wielder of weapon. He was a concentrated force. His white body was
knotted with nerves and muscles. The chances were good if--Gordon
pictured it to himself--and again the horror and doubt were over him. He
himself had acquired a certain stiffness and lassitude from years, and
long drives in one position. He would stand no chance unarmed against a
bullet. But the dog--that was another matter. The dog would make a
spring like the spring of death itself, and that white leap of attack
might easily cause the aim to go wrong. It would be like aiming at
lightning.