A Modern Instance eBook

The demons, whatever they were, of anger, remorse, pride, shame, were at work in Bartley’s heart too, and he returned the blow as instantly as if Bird’s touch had set the mechanism of his arm in motion.  In contempt of the other’s weakness he struck with the flat of his hand; but the blow was enough.  Bird fell headlong, and the concussion of his head upon the floor did the rest.  He lay senseless.

VII.

Bartley hung over the boy with such a terror in his soul as he had never had before.  He believed that he had killed him, and in this conviction came with the simultaneity of events in dreams the sense of all his blame, of which the blow given for a blow seemed the least part.  He was not so wrong in that as he was wrong in what led to it.  He did not abhor in himself so much the wretch who had struck his brother down as the light and empty fool who had trifled with that silly hoyden.  The follies that seemed so amusing and resultless in their time had ripened to this bitter effect, and he knew that he, and not she, was mainly culpable.  Her self-betrayal, however it came about, was proof that they were more serious with her than with him, and he could not plead to himself even the poor excuse that his fancy had been caught.  Amidst the anguish of his self-condemnation the need to conceal what he had done occurred to him.  He had been holding Bird’s head in his arms, and imploring him, “Henry!  Henry! wake up!” in a low, husky voice; but now he turned to the door and locked it, and the lie by which he should escape sprang to his tongue.  “He died in a fit.”  He almost believed it as it murmured itself from his lips.  There was no mark, no bruise, nothing to show that he had touched the boy.  Suddenly he felt the lie choke him.  He pulled down the window to let in the fresh air, and this pure breath of heaven blew into his darkened spirit and lifted there a little the vapors which were thickening in it.  The horror of having to tell that lie, even if he should escape by it, all his life long, till he was a gray old man, and to keep the truth forever from his lips, presented itself to him as intolerable slavery.  “Oh, my God!” he spoke aloud, “how can I bear that?” And it was in self-pity that he revolted from it.  Few men love the truth for its own sake, and Bartley was not one of these; but he practised it because his experience had been that lies were difficult to manage, and that they were a burden on the mind.  He was not candid; he did not shun concealments and evasions; but positive lies he had kept from, and now he could not trust one to save his life.  He unlocked the door and ran out to find help; he must do that at last; he must do it at any risk; no matter what he said afterward.  When our deeds and motives come to be balanced at the last day, let us hope that mercy, and not justice, may prevail.

It must have been mercy that sent the doctor at that moment to the apothecary’s, on the other side of the street, and enabled Bartley to get him up into his office, without publicity or explanation other than that Henry Bird seemed to be in a fit.  The doctor lifted the boy’s head, and explored his bosom with his hand.