Ah, there came times to every man, he thought, whatever his success, when he looked on his success with a dull dislike. He remembered one day in Nevada, when he had sat unnoticed hours on water-dribbled rocks on the edge of his claim--which was paying at that time--and felt the same mental nausea. Another time was at Allen's prison door in St. Louis. Disillusion was no more rational than illusion. Sometimes the morning stars sang discordantly, and knew not why, any more than they knew why at other times their voices were effortless and sweet. On that day of the water-dribbled rocks of Nevada, it was the loss of Allen which had caused the mood, and the thought that the loss was final, and that the yellow fleck ore in the pit paid back no minutest percentage of the loss. Then the discovery that he could speak and move men had come, and brought with it the longing to move them to certain ends, and he had thought: “All men are brothers. But some are lost and some are seeking. One is afraid and is condemned; one is not afraid and is called righteous; but neither of them can save himself alone; he can only do it because of the other. He can't do it without the other, for salvation is not the solitary issue they say it is. Salvation is a commonwealth. This is my message.” Then he had lifted himself from the rocks and the ore pit, and had faith. Now, if faith in his ends should fail, and the springs dry up! Faith and doubt were three-fourths irrational. Someone would be proving them bacteria. They passed from man to man--they floated in the air--one caught them from events and objects as one caught the cholera--they were apt to be epidemic. And yet faith in ends and purposes was health, and doubt of them disease. The one we must have, the other we must be rid of. So ran Aidee's thoughts while he stood at the window and looked out gloomily at Seton Avenue, at its block pavement, and the shadows thrown by the pale young maple leaves. He saw nothing coming but a street car, a headlong rattling mechanism. He thought how all over Port Argent people were talking of the Wood murder--some gabbling about it like Mrs. Tillotson's guests, others saying, decently enough: “Wood always treated me right,” or, “Well, the old scamp's gone!” The Wood murder seemed an abrupt and challenging event thrust across his life--harsh, discordant, repellent, like that clanging mechanism in the street, which stopped, however, almost before Mrs. Tillotson's door, and Camilla Champney stepped down from it. Aidee watched her enter the house, and then fell to pacing the floor restlessly. After half an hour he took his hat and went across the street to the Tillotson drawing-room. CHAPTER VII--THE THIRD LAMP |WHILE Aidee was looking gloomily from his study window on Seton Avenue, the Tillotson coterie were discussing the Wood murder.