Chapter VI: The Ancient Sin

I

George Tarylon and I were engaged to stay the week-end with Aubrey Carlyle at Malmanor Hall, which is four hours by car from Hyde Park Corner, though that, of course, rather depends on the kind of car. George Tarlyon’s--as that Armenian fellow had noticed--was a good car, long and low, a chap’s car, and we had run four-fifths of our distance very well: we had flashed through a town, whose name is of no interest, and had plunged into the peculiar wood of Carmion, which shrouds the southern border of the domain of Malmanor. We were therefore on the last lap, and the fact that this lay through Carmion Wood lent a certain interest to it; for although Tarlyon and I had very often stayed with Aubrey Carlyle at Malmanor, we had never, somehow, really penetrated into Carmion. I don’t know why, but it just hadn’t happened; and George Tarlyon was now running his car along the broad sweep of its central and only road because of a vague idea that it was a short cut as compared to the main road. It was a rotten idea, that of George Tarlyon’s.

One of the many silly legends about Carmion Wood is that only foreigners may hear the singing of the birds therein, while for Englishmen there is no sound but the rustling of the leaves and the sighing of the boughs. How that sort of nonsense ever gets hold of a countryside, I don’t know. And the fact that, as George Tarlyon rushed the car along the twilight road--for although it was a bright summer’s day, the leaves are very thick on Carmion trees--we could hear no birds singing was, without a doubt, simply because they were singing somewhere else that afternoon. “Obviously,” I said to Tarlyon, who had suggested that had I had a Spanish mother I could now be enjoying the sweet trilling of rooks and the back-chat of blackbirds, “obviously they can’t always be singing in one place.”

“Listen,” said George Tarlyon, and when you listened it really was rather curious, the silence of Carmion Wood. “Quiet we call silence, the merest word of all,” some one has written, Poe, I think; but that word applied very fully to Carmion, it was so silent! If only there had been a wind, just to give the leaves a little fun! But there wasn’t a breath; it was a close day in August, and the wood was a crypt, that’s what it was. I said so to Tarlyon, but all he said was that he was hungry. Later on he grunted: “You and your crypts!”

“It’s a pity,” I said reasonably, “that the sun doesn’t get a bit further into this place....”

“Dolorous is the word for it,” murmured Tarlyon; and he was quite right, amazingly right. “Dolorous” was certainly the word for it.

“Open your cut-out, man!” I said at last, for that car was really too well-bred. And with a twist of his foot he opened the cut-out. What a cut-out! But it did make things seem more homely.

II

The car rushed on.... The straight road under the thick tapestry of leaves would take us directly to the parkland of Malmanor; through the opening at the end, for Carmion Wood ends sharply, we could see in the far distance, lying in the hollow of the county like an ancient pink jewel in a green bowl, the vast Elizabethan pile of Malmanor Hall.

The car rushed on....

“Bang!” said the car, but Tarlyon said worse than that as he pulled up.

“This,” I said, as we looked at the flattened back tyre, “this comes of taking short cuts.”

The matter with Tarlyon was that he had had no luncheon and was hungry. Now George Tarlyon is my greatest friend, but this I had against him, that he swore too much. Like many other men, decent men, he swore too much and too often. I can say “damn” with any man, I have said “bloody,” and will again when it is organic to the occasion, but what humorous writers in the magazines call scientific swearing does not amuse me. I do not wish to seem superior, but it just does not amuse me. In the Middle Ages men swore mightily on the names of the Trinity and the Saints, but then they believed mightily in the Trinity and the Saints. Now men swear and curse on the names of everything and believe in nothing. It is the habit of the modern world; it is the habit of being in a hurry; it is the habit of unholiness. And it had grown on my friend, George Almeric St. George Tarlyon, who was otherwise a reasonable sort of man.

To put on the spare tyre was only the work of a few minutes; and again the car rushed on ... and from behind us came a cry. I looked back, and there, twenty yards behind us, stood and screamed a woman by the roadway.

Tarlyon was really remarkably fluent as he reversed. He was hungry, you see.

“We must have dropped something,” I suggested.

We drew abreast of the gesticulating woman on the coarse grass by the road. She was just a slip of an aged woman, and her hair was made of bits of grey string, and her eyes leapt hysterically out of a little, lined face. “Come, come!” she was screaming. “Come, come quick!” She smelt old, that woman.

The car had scarcely stopped abreast of her when she turned and scampered away along a little lane between the tall, still trees. It was extraordinary, the way she ran, that little old woman! “Come, come quick!”

Well, there was nothing to do but to follow.

“The girl’s mad,” snarled Tarlyon, as he strode after the little old woman. But striding was no use, it was a running job, and it was a hot day.

It was an untidy, tangled path up which she was leading us--and how quickly she ran, that little old woman, stumbling over her uncertain feet and frantic gestures, while we ploughed on behind her through the lush of the wood in August. It was an amazingly hot day; the Press for the last week or so had been full of surprise and congratulation as to the amazingly hot days we were having, and we had now an unrivalled opportunity of testing the veracity of the Press, but we would much rather have forgone it. At that moment, following that little old woman up that tangled path in Carmion Wood, George Tarlyon and I were probably the wettest men in England outside of a swimming-bath.

“What the devil is it all about?” muttered Tarlyon, and was not soothed by my suggesting that I thought it was all part of his idea of a short cut to Malmanor--while the little old woman still screamed at us to come quick, quick.

“Quick, quick....” And at her heels we burst out on to a clearing in the wood. The sun lay on that clearing like a carpet of gold.

III

Tarlyon and I stopped dead, and stared. We stared hard. But the little old woman, still screaming to us to follow, ran on ahead to the house. Yes, there was a house in that clearing, a little farmhouse. And the sun lay on it like a carpet of gold: that is how I saw it....

“Not our business,” muttered Tarlyon, and I heartily agreed that it wasn’t. We stood where we were, with our eyes glued on what we saw; and George Tarlyon dug his hands deep in his pockets. George Tarlyon always dug his hands deep in his pockets when he wanted frightfully to take them out.

A man was thrashing his son. I cannot explain why, but we were somehow quite certain that the thing the man was thrashing was flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood. He was a huge man, with a mane of grey hair and a long grey beard, and he had on a bright red shirt. If I close my eyes now I can see the blood-red of that huge bearded man’s shirt, I can see the curve of his great shoulders and the muscles that stood out like lumps of rubber on his half-bare arm as he beat his son with a stout stick. And I can see his little old wife trying to stay his hand, begging, praying, moaning. We heard her moaning, like an old, old bird in pain. And at that Tarlyon started forward a step....

“Steady there!” cried Tarlyon sharply. “Steady, Beaver!” The cry cut across the sunlit place, the clear cry that has lit for England the darkest corners of the world, and the huge man in the red shirt stayed his cudgel and looked at us. But the little old woman still moaned, and it was quite dreadful to hear that in the summer silence. Ten yards separated us from that domestic scene, but they were yards of bright sunlight, and we could see every line on that patriarch’s face. For he was a patriarch. He was the most magnificent man I have ever seen; and Tarlyon and I, not small men, felt withered under his straight look. We stood rooted.

“Friends,” said the old man, and his was the voice of authority, “you must leave me in peace to drive the sin out of this my son. His mother is a woman, and will pardon everything in those she loves, but you are men and know the one sin that is unpardonable by all men. Go your ways in peace, and fear not to put your own houses in order....”

And still he looked at us, that remarkable old lecturer, his cudgel stayed in the air, his son at his feet; and his voice was the voice of a man who has drunk the vinegar of life, and his eyes were the eyes of a man who has seen Christ crucified. That is why we knew for certain, Tarlyon and I, that whatever that ancient man said was true and whatever he did was right. “Come away,” I whispered.

“You are right. It is your business,” cried Tarlyon across the sunlight--and, dear God, it was! For the thing happened then. We hadn’t noticed that the son had crawled from his father’s feet. And what we saw was a spade raised high in the sunlight, a spade crashing down and cleaving the patriarch’s head like an axe, so that the blood came out of it like the sap of a tight orange. Without a cry the old man fell, and red as his shirt were the stones of the yard beneath his head. The little old woman screamed. The son and his spade lay where Tarlyon’s right hand felled him, and Tarlyon knelt by the slaughtered old man. I couldn’t move. I took up the gored spade and held it, a silly gesture. My heart beat like a bell in my ears, and I remember there rose to my lips prayers that I thought I had forgotten.

“Quiet, for one moment,” I heard Tarlyon’s voice to the screaming old woman. I stared and wondered at my friend, kneeling there on the dyed stones and listening to the heart under the red shirt. I could not have done that. I hate a lot of blood.

Then he rose and came towards me. I hated the dark damp patches on his trouser-knees.

“Quite dead,” he said. “We must fetch the police.”

Of course, I thought. And together we looked down at the son on the ground. He was gibbering. He had gone mad. “Drat the boy!” said Tarlyon thoughtfully.

“I wonder,” I heard myself whisper, “what was the one sin the old man said was unpardonable?”

Tarlyon looked from the prostrate thing to me, and I saw that those slightly frozen blue eyes of his were as miserable as the eyes of a hurt girl. You see, that old man was a very remarkable old man, and he was dead....

“I don’t know,” he whispered back. “You and I, Ralph, and our friends, have become so civilised that we don’t know what the unpardonable sins are. We simply don’t _know_, old man! We are the world’s soft people, Ralph. We are so civilised that we pardon too much--both in ourselves and other people; and we call that being broad-minded, but it’s really being flabby. But that old man, I’m sure, was not “broad-minded,” he was as little “broad-minded” as Jehovah, and there was one sin he simply would not pardon. And we, who are civilised people, do not even know what it was....”

We stared silently at the poor gibbering thing at our feet.

“Better tie him up before leaving,” I suggested.

“Don’t you think,” said Tarlyon, “that one of us should stay here while----”

“I won’t stay here alone,” I said abruptly--and I meant it. Nothing would have induced me to stay alone in that ghastly sunlit spot, alone with that lunatic boy and the little old woman and the butchered patriarch. How she moaned, that little old woman kneeling on the blooded stones....

With a silk handkerchief for his ankles and one for his wrists, we trussed the poor boy against the kitchen door. He could not have been more than seventeen or so, and his young face was hideous with fear.

We left the place quickly; but I looked back just once at the scene, for it seemed to me very strange of the sun still to lie on it all like a carpet of gold. That is how I felt about it.

IV

Swiftly Tarlyon put the bonnet of his car to the direction from which we had come, where lay the town whose name is of no interest.

“How far is it, d’you think, Ralph?”

“About four miles,” I ventured; and Tarlyon proceeded to eat up those four miles as a conjuror eats up yards of ribbon. It perished beneath us, that road, and the roaring cut-out tore the silence of Carmion Wood into a million bits, and may it never have found them again! Neither of us spoke. I was feeling sick.

We reached the outskirts of the town, and a piece of luck saved us from inquiring for the police station; for, approaching us on a bicycle, we saw a blue, helmeted figure, and by the stripes on his arm we knew him for a sergeant of police. Tarlyon pulled up.

“Better leave the bicycle and come with us to Carmion Wood,” he said. “Explain as we go. Urgent.”

The sergeant looked closely into Tarlyon’s face.

“Right, sir,” said he, and quickly gave the custody of his bicycle to a gnarled-looking woman in the open doorway of a labourer’s dwelling.

“What’s oop over ut Carmion?” asked she.

“You may well ask,” said Tarlyon.

No laggard was that sergeant of police. A grizzled man, with a reticent face. I sat behind and heard Tarlyon explain. The sergeant said nothing, listening intently, until the end.

“Where did you say the house was, sir?” he asked then.

“I’ve just been telling you, man! In a little clearing in the wood.”

“Very good, sir,” said the sergeant of police.

Silently we sped into Carmion Wood.

“You see, sir,” said the sergeant, “it’s a powerful long time since I’ve been here. Folk roundabout mislike the wood.”

“Don’t feel very attached to it myself,” grunted Tarlyon. “Ah, here we are!”

But it was not going to be as easy as that. For when we left the car, at the identical spot where, we were certain, the little old woman had stopped us, we somehow lost our way. We wandered about for some time, up little twisting lanes, down tangled untidy lanes, up no lanes at all: we ploughed through the growth and lush of the wood, like angry flies beating about a crypt to which the sun filtered in tortured patches of light. We perspired enormously--and Tarlyon lost his temper. He had had no luncheon, you understand, and it was now past five; and so he was fluent in the forbidden language. But the sergeant of police was a tough and silent man, he neither sweated nor spoke.

“Where did you say the house was, sir?” asked the sergeant at last: and very amiably, I thought, considering....

“Oh,” says Tarlyon. “So you’ve heard me mention a house, have you!”

We stood very still, the three of us, and Tarlyon glared.

“Look here, sergeant,” he snarled, “if you ask me again where that house is I shall get cross.... I’ve told you, man! Body of God, if----”

“_Please_, sir!” said the sergeant quickly.

“What d’you mean by ‘Please, sir?’” Tarlyon was well away. It was a very warm day, you understand.

“I mean, sir,” said the sergeant of police, “please don’t swear on the name or the body of God.”

V

Well, we went on ... and, at last, unmistakably hit the path up which we had followed the little old woman. We followed the path, Tarlyon first, then me, then the sergeant. And then we came upon the clearing, and the sun lay on it like a carpet of gold. We stared. Like idiots, we stared. For, except the sun, there was nothing in that clearing but the rust and bones of a long-ruined house.

You had, of course, suspected as much. You had known that all along. You know all about those silent woods and slaughtered men. You have been let in before, by better men. But it was curious, all the same....

“Is this where you said the house was, sir?” the sergeant’s voice came gently.

We turned and looked at him.

“Because,” he went on, “there’s been no house here for more than thirty year....”

“Ah!” said Tarlyon; that was about as much as any one _could_ say. And our eyes wandered over the clearing, and we saw, bright against the mouldy stones of the ruin, two silk handkerchiefs....

Even the law was at last affected by the heat, for he raised his helmet and passed a hand over his almost bald head.

“Yes,” said the sergeant of police. “There was a house here thirty year ago, but it was burnt down by the men of the neighbourhood because of a great crime that was done there. Parricide it was, but the boy was pardoned, being judged mad, and mad he must have been to kill the best and most God-fearing man in the county. Good-day, sirs. I’ll walk my way back. Yours was just an illusion, I make no doubt. The sun, maybe. But it’s always had a bad name, has Carmion.... Good-day, sirs.” And the sergeant of police went his way.

“Did you see him, did you see his face?” I gasped frantically. For the face of the sergeant of police was the grown face of the lunatic boy we had trussed up an hour before with our two silk handkerchiefs, and they lying where we must have dropped them, drooping over the ruins....

“And he has learnt his lesson,” said Tarlyon, and his face was as still as the grey water of a rock-pool. “He has learnt his lesson, Ralph--and has taught me one. For the one sin that the old man said was unpardonable by all men is blasphemy....”