The man balked as well as the horse. "The damned fool," he
muttered to himself in an agony. The dog growled in response. Then it
was that first the thought came to Gordon of what might be done to save
them all. He stood aghast with the horror of it. He was essentially a
man of peace himself, unless driven to the wall. He was a good fighter
at bay, but there was in his heart, along with strength, utter good-will
and gentleness toward all his kind. He only wished to go his way in
peace, and for those whom he loved to go in peace, but that had been
denied him. He began considering the nature of the man whose dark figure
remained motionless on the driveway. He knew him from the first. It
sounded sensational, his recapitulation of his knowledge, but it was
entirely true. It was that awful truth, which is past human belief,
which no man dares put into fiction. That man out there had been from
his birth a distinct power for evil upon the face of the earth. He had
menaced all creation, so far as one personality may menace it. He was a
force of ill, a moral and spiritual monster, and the more dangerous,
because of a subtlety and resource which had kept him immune from the
law. He outstripped the law, whose blood-hounds had no scent keen enough
for him. He had broken the law, but always in such a way that there was
not, and never could be, any proof. There had not been even suspicion.
There had been knowledge on Gordon's part, and Mrs. Swing's, but
knowledge without proof is more helpless than suspicion with it. The man
was unassailable, free to go his way, working evil.
Again Gordon thought he heard the nearing trot of a horse, and again the
dog growled. Gordon was not quite sure that time that a horse had not
passed the house. He told himself in despair that he could not be sure
of knowing when James and Clemency came, and again the awful thought
seized him, and again he reflected upon the man outside. Suppose,
instead of wearing the semblance of humanity, he had worn the semblance
of a beast, then his course would have been clear enough. Suppose it
were a hungry wolf watching out there, instead of a man, and this man
was worse than any wolf. He was like the weir-wolf of the old
Scandinavian legend. He had all the cowardly cruelty of a wolf, he was a
means of evil, but he had the trained brain of a man.
Gordon thought he heard footsteps, and the man made a very slight
motion. Gordon thought joyfully that Aaron had left the balky mare, and
had returned, but it was not so. He had heard nothing except the
pulsations of the blood in his own overwrought brain.
He wondered if he were really going mad, although all the time his mind
was steadily at work upon the awful problem which had been forced upon
it. Should any power for evil be allowed to exist upon the earth if
mortal man had strength to stamp it out? Suppose that was a poisonous
snake out there, and not a man. What was out there was worse than any
snake. Gordon reasoned as the first man in Eden may have reasoned; and
he did not know whether his reasoning were right or wrong. Meantime, the
danger increased every moment. Of one thing he was perfectly sure: he
had no personal motive for what he might or might not do. He had reached
that pass when he was himself, as far as he himself was concerned,
beyond hate of that man outside. It was a principle for which he argued.
Should a monster, something abnormal in strength and subtlety and
wickedness, something which menaced all the good in the world, be
allowed to exist?