He was sure now of nothing.It seemed as though all the spirits of the other world now were taunting him, but he felt that this was the work of the Devil, who wished to destroy his faith before the Great Day arrived.He thought now that the Devil was closely pursuing him, and he seemed to hear first his taunting whisper and then the voice of God encouraging him: "Well done, my good and faithful servant."He had lost now almost all consciousness of what he really expected to happen when the Day arrived, but he was dimly aware that if nothing happened at all his whole influence with his people would be gone.Nevertheless this did not trouble him very greatly; the congregation of the Chapel seemed now dimly remote.The only human being who was not remote was Martin; his love for his son had not been touched by his other struggles, it had been even intensified.
But the love had grown a terror, ever increasing, lest Martin should leave him.He seemed to hear dimly, beyond the wall of the mysterious world into whose regions he was ever more deeply passing, sentences, vague, without human agency, accusing Martin of sins and infidelities and riotous living.Sometimes he was tempted to go further into this and challenge Martin's accusers, but fear held him back.Martin had been a good son since his return to England, yes, he had, and he had forsaken his evil ways and was going to be with his father now until the end, his last refuge against loneliness.
Every one else had left him or was leaving him, but Martin was there.Martin hadn't deceived him, Martin was a good boy...a good boy...and then, as it seemed to him, with Martin's hand in his own he would pass off into his world of strange dreams and desperate prayer and hours of waiting, listening, straining for a voice...
During that last night before New Year's Eve an hour came to him when he seemed to be left utterly alone.Exhausted, faint, dizzy with want of sleep and food, he knelt before his bed; his room seemed to be filled with devils, taunting him, tempting him, bewildering and blinding him.He rose suddenly in a frenzy, striking out, rushing about his room, crying...then at last, exhausted, creeping back to his bed, falling down upon it and sinking into a long dreamless sleep.
They found him sleeping when they came to call him and they left him.He did not wake until the early afternoon; his brain seemed clear and his body so weak that it was with the greatest difficulty that he washed and put on some clothes.
The room was dark with the fog; lamps in the street below glimmered uncertainly, and voices and the traffic of the street were muffled.
He opened his door and, looking out, heard in the room below Martin's voice raised excitedly.Slowly he went down to meet him.
Martin also had reached, on that last day of the year, the very end of his tether.During the last ten days he had been fighting against every weakness to which his character was susceptible.With the New Year he felt that everything would be well; he could draw a new breath then, find work somewhere away from London, have Maggie perhaps with him, and drive a way out of all the tangle of his perplexities.But even then he did not dare to face the future thoroughly.Would his father let him go? Was he, after all his struggles, to give way and ruin Maggie's position and future? Could he be sure, if he look her away with him, that then he would keep straight, and that his old temptations of women and drink and general restlessness would be conquered? Perhaps.There had never been a surer proof that his love for Maggie was a real and unselfish love than his hesitation on that wretched day when he seemed utterly deserted by mankind, when Maggie seemed the only friend he had in the world.
Everything was just out of reach, and some perverse destiny prevented him from realising any desire that had a spark of honesty and decency in it.It was not wonderful that in the midst of his loneliness and unhappiness he should have been tempted back to the old paths again, men, women, places that for more than three months now he had been struggling to abandon.
All that day he struggled with temptation.He had not seen Maggie for a week, and during the last three days he had not heard from her, the adventurous Jane having defied the aunts and left.
At luncheon he asked about his father, whom he had not seen for two days.
"Father had a very bad night.He's asleep now.""There's something on to-night, isn't there?" he asked.
"There's a service," Amy answered shortly.
"Father oughtn't to go," he went on."I suppose your friend Thurston can manage."Amy looked at him."Father's got to go.It's very important.""Oh, of course, if you want to kill father with all your beastly services--" he broke in furiously.
"It won't be--" Amy began, and then, as though she did not trust herself to continue, got up and left the room.
"Mother," he said, "why on earth don't you do something?""I, dear?" she looked at him placidly."In what way?""They're killing father between them with all these services and the rest of the nonsense.""Your father doesn't listen to anything I say, dear.""He ought to go away for a long rest."
"Well, dear, perhaps he will soon.You know I have nothing to do with the Chapel.That was settled years ago.I wouldn't interfere for a great deal."Martin turned fiercely upon her saying:
"Mother, don't you care?"
"Care, dear?"