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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Greater Love Hath No Man," Frank L. Packard presents a poignant exploration of love and sacrifice set against the backdrop of World War I. The narrative delves into the lives of characters grappling with the duality of hope and despair, capturing the essence of human emotion in tumultuous times. Packard's literary style is marked by a rich use of imagery and a deep psychological insight into his characters, reflecting the influences of early 20th-century romanticism and realism. The novel's title, resonating with biblical overtones, signifies the profound bonds forged through adversities while examining the moral complexities of love in the context of war. Frank L. Packard was a Canadian author whose diverse experiences, including work as a journalist and a scriptwriter, significantly shaped his storytelling. His firsthand encounters with the lives of soldiers and civilians during the Great War informed his understanding of the human condition and its interplay with love and duty. This deep empathy for those affected by conflict permeates his writing, giving it both authenticity and emotional resonance. "Greater Love Hath No Man" is essential reading for those interested in literary depictions of love amid tragedy. Packard's unique ability to evoke emotional depth while confronting broader societal themes makes this work a compelling addition to the canon of World War I literature, guaranteed to resonate with contemporary audiences. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Greater Love Hath No Man
Table of Contents
Introduction
At its heart, this novel probes how far love and conscience can compel a person to go when loyalty, danger, and the demand for sacrifice converge.
Greater Love Hath No Man is a novel by Frank L. Packard, a prolific writer of early twentieth-century popular fiction known for suspenseful, morally charged narratives. Published during that era’s appetite for brisk, plot-driven storytelling, the book belongs to the tradition of dramatic adventure with a strong emotional core. Its world reflects the pressures and expectations of its time, where public duty and private feeling often collide. Rather than relying on grand historical panorama, the story grounds its tension in personal stakes, inviting readers to consider how character is tested under strain and what, precisely, honor requires.
Without revealing its turns, the premise centers on individuals drawn into peril through commitments that cannot be easily set aside—promises made, debts of gratitude, and ties of affection that complicate every choice. Readers can expect a narrative that marries suspense with intimate moral drama, emphasizing the psychology of decision as much as outward action. The style favors momentum and clarity, moving from one charged situation to the next while keeping the emotional through-line in view. The mood is earnest and urgent, with danger functioning less as spectacle than as a crucible that reveals what truly matters.
The title’s biblical allusion signals the book’s abiding concern with self-sacrifice—what it costs, whom it benefits, and when it becomes morally necessary. Alongside sacrifice, themes of loyalty, courage, and responsibility emerge, often in tension with self-preservation and fear. The narrative examines how principles are upheld or compromised when the safe option is to turn away. It also explores the interplay between outward respectability and inner conviction, asking whether reputation can bear the same weight as integrity. By keeping the focus on difficult choices rather than tidy answers, the novel invites reflection on the gray spaces where duty and desire meet.
Packard’s storytelling is accessible and direct, shaped by the conventions of popular fiction from the period that prized velocity, incident, and clear stakes. Yet beneath the pace lies a steady interest in moral consequence. Scenes are crafted to highlight moments of decision, not just the mechanics of action, and secondary figures often mirror or complicate the protagonist’s dilemmas. Dialogue and description work in tandem to sustain suspense without sacrificing legibility. Readers familiar with early twentieth-century adventure and crime narratives will recognize the efficient plotting and crisp momentum, but they may also appreciate the earnestness with which the book treats questions of motive and character.
For contemporary readers, the novel matters because the dilemmas it stages are perennial: how to balance personal safety with obligation to others, when to stand firm, and what one owes to love, community, or cause. It prompts questions about the boundaries of altruism—when sacrifice is noble, when it is naïve, and when it is demanded unfairly. It also invites consideration of how public roles can constrain private conscience, a tension that resonates in debates over loyalty, service, and accountability today. The story’s emotional appeal rests in recognizing recognizable fears and hopes, and in watching people push beyond their perceived limits.
Approached as both a suspenseful tale and a moral inquiry, Greater Love Hath No Man offers a reading experience that is brisk yet thoughtful, grounded in human stakes rather than ornament. It rewards attention to character as much as plot, and it invites readers to read between the lines, noticing how small gestures reveal larger commitments. While it honors the conventions of its era, it remains approachable for modern audiences, who may find in its dilemmas a mirror of contemporary concerns. Enter with patience for quiet revelations and steady escalation, and you will find a story that lingers for the questions it leaves you to weigh.
Synopsis
Frank L. Packard’s Greater Love Hath No Man opens with a capable, self-contained protagonist whose orderly life is disrupted by a sudden encounter with danger. In a bustling metropolis where privilege and poverty coexist, he is drawn from familiar routines into a shadowed world of whispered motives and hidden debts. The incident forces a choice between personal safety and a duty he never asked for, setting a tone of urgency and quiet resolve. Packard establishes an atmosphere of overlapping spheres—polite society and the criminal underworld—where reputations are fragile and loyalties are tested, hinting that courage will be measured more by sacrifice than by triumph.
An act of impulsive kindness becomes the turning point, binding the hero to a secret that is not his to tell. He finds himself responsible for the well-being of someone vulnerable and for information that, if misused, could ruin lives. The obligations deepen as he realizes that passive sympathy is not enough; active intervention is necessary. Early chapters emphasize quick decisions, narrow escapes, and the weight of keeping silent when truth could harm as much as help. The narrative frames his commitment as a deliberate, ethical stance, not a mere accident of circumstance, and it underlines how small choices can trigger far-reaching consequences.
As the circle tightens, the protagonist navigates both polished drawing rooms and dim backstreets, learning the language of each. He forms a cautious alliance with a steadfast friend and crosses paths with a resourceful woman whose loyalties seem to straddle both worlds. Masked identities, discreet meetings, and guarded exchanges define this phase, while hints of a larger design emerge through intercepted messages and overheard conversations. Packard uses these sequences to establish patterns of pursuit and evasion, emphasizing the hero’s adaptability. The plot advances through incremental revelations, with each clue bringing proximity to a concealed adversary and sharpening the stakes for everyone involved.
The opposition takes shape as an organized, calculating force with long reach and careful methods. The protagonist becomes a target—watched, misrepresented, and forced to defend himself without exposing those he protects. A public misapprehension threatens to stain his name, and official channels offer little relief, bound by procedure and appearances. He responds by turning to quiet ingenuity rather than bluster, using observation and restraint to counter traps set for him. This escalation introduces a motif of silence as strength: he must accept suspicion and risk isolation to keep others safe. The web of pressure intensifies, pushing him toward more decisive, covert action.
Midway, a reversal reframes prior events and exposes a fragile fault line within his alliance. What appeared trustworthy becomes uncertain, and a short path to exoneration proves ethically unacceptable. The hero faces a choice: clear himself and jeopardize someone else, or preserve another’s safety while bearing the burden of doubt. He chooses the harder road, tightening operational discipline and limiting confidences to the few who have earned them. The plot pivots from reactive survival to purposeful strategy. In doing so, it reaffirms the story’s moral axis: character is tested not by what one gains, but by what one is willing to forgo.
Preparation for a decisive move follows. The protagonist lays out a plan that relies on timing, discretion, and a careful reading of his adversary’s habits. Safe routes are charted, signals agreed upon, and contingencies set to cover failure without multiplying harm. Packard heightens tension through practical constraints—limited resources, unreliable intermediaries, and the risk that a single misstep will collapse hard-won advantages. The hero refines his objectives to essentials: protect a life, neutralize a threat, and leave as little trace as possible. The emphasis is not on bravado but on discipline, suggesting that the most effective courage often appears quiet and methodical.
The operation unfolds in a sequence of measured maneuvers that test resolve and ingenuity. Encounters are swift, communications spare, and decisions made in the space of a heartbeat. The protagonist confronts his opponent in circumstances that favor neither side, turning environment and timing into his allies. When the plan meets the unexpected, he adapts, placing the mission’s success and others’ safety ahead of personal gain. The result preserves what most needed saving while withholding public recognition. Packard keeps the climax tight and purposeful, emphasizing consequence over spectacle and showing how the calculus of risk narrows to a single, fateful choice.
In the aftermath, official narratives only partially capture what occurred. Authorities tie off evident threads, while the most consequential acts remain unrecorded to protect the innocent and forestall reprisals. Relationships adjust to new realities: gratitude expressed in careful gestures, misunderstandings left in place where truth would harm, and futures reshaped by debts that cannot be repaid in kind. The antagonist’s influence wanes, though not every wrong finds a public accounting. The protagonist resumes a quieter life, altered by what he has chosen to carry. Resolution arrives without fanfare, fitting a story where dignity is measured by restraint and remembered in confidence.
Greater Love Hath No Man ultimately affirms that love, in Packard’s telling, is an act of will aligned with duty. The narrative traces a path from chance involvement to deliberate self-giving, arguing that integrity persists even when unseen. By weaving society’s bright rooms with its darker edges, the book suggests that courage belongs to neither realm alone. Its key turns—accepting responsibility, choosing protection over vindication, and acting at cost—form a moral through-line that holds the story together. Without revealing particulars, the closing impression is clear: some victories are private, and their worth is measured by the lives they safeguard.
Historical Context
Set in the volatile 1910s, the narrative unfolds in a North American urban milieu that evokes Montreal and New York, places Frank L. Packard knew through work and travel. The texture of the book reflects a city of street-level commerce, tenements, and glittering offices tied together by rail terminals and telegraph lines. Industrial noise, immigrant neighborhoods, and the edge of the harbor or freight yards create a geography of movement and concealment. The period’s atmosphere—prewar unease turning to wartime vigilance—shapes social relations and law enforcement. This is a world where mobility is swift, identities are fluid, and duty and self-interest collide in public and private spaces.
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 transformed Canada and the United States, and its rhetoric of sacrifice saturates the culture from which the novel draws. Austria-Hungary’s declaration against Serbia (28 July 1914) cascaded into Britain’s entry on 4 August, bringing Canada to war. Canada raised the Canadian Expeditionary Force at Valcartier, Quebec, in August–September 1914; the first contingent—about 31,000—sailed from Quebec City in October. By 1918, roughly 620,000 Canadians had served, with more than 61,000 dead. The book’s very title, echoing John 15:13, channels the era’s moral register: duty, comradeship, and the cost of laying down one’s life for others.
Decisive battles shaped public memory and the language of heroism that the novel engages. At the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April–25 May 1915), Germany’s first large-scale chlorine gas attack struck the Canadian 1st Division; over 6,000 Canadian casualties forged a reputation for resilience. The Somme (July–November 1916) exacted staggering losses; Newfoundland’s Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel suffered catastrophic casualties on 1 July 1916. Vimy Ridge (9–12 April 1917), commanded by Lieutenant-General Julian Byng with Major-General Arthur Currie, saw all four Canadian divisions attack together—an often-cited moment in Canadian nationhood. Passchendaele (October–November 1917) compounded mud and attrition. The novel mirrors the ethos born of these ordeals: steadfastness under pressure, secrecy as survival, and sacrifice recast as moral currency.
Wartime governance intensified state power and social fracture. The War Measures Act (22 August 1914) enabled censorship, arrests, and internments; approximately 8,500 people—many Ukrainians then classified as Austro-Hungarians—were interned in 24 camps (1914–1920). Conscription under the Military Service Act (29 August 1917) fractured politics and regions, culminating in the Unionist victory in December 1917 and the Easter riots in Quebec City (28 March–1 April 1918), where troops fired on civilians, killing four. The book’s tensions—between civic duty and personal conscience, public safety and civil liberty—echo these conflicts, dramatizing how loyalty could be demanded, policed, and contested in everyday life.
Espionage anxieties, stoked by real incidents, pervaded North America. The Black Tom explosion (30 July 1916) in Jersey City, linked to German agents, shattered windows in Manhattan and damaged the Statue of Liberty. The Kingsland munitions plant fire (11 January 1917) in New Jersey, widely believed to be sabotage, intensified fears just before U.S. entry into the war (6 April 1917). British Naval Intelligence’s Room 40 exposed the Zimmermann Telegram in January 1917, validating suspicions of covert warfare. The novel’s clandestine networks, coded messages, and ambiguous allegiances reflect this atmosphere, positioning city streets, docks, and rail yards as theaters where hidden combat reshaped ordinary lives.
The continental web of rail and telegraph created the novel’s plausibility of rapid action and pursuit. The Canadian Pacific Railway, chartered in 1881 and completed with the “last spike” at Craigellachie, British Columbia, on 7 November 1885, bound Montreal and the Atlantic to the Pacific. Telegraph lines paralleled the tracks, enabling near-instant communication. Frank L. Packard, trained at McGill and employed as a civil engineer on railway projects, mined this world for detail—moving men, money, and secrets at speed. The book exploits stations, sleepers, and sidings as liminal spaces where class boundaries blur, authority is provisional, and the modern state’s reach becomes visible.
Urbanization and Progressive Era reform (c. 1890–1920) furnish the novel’s social fabric. New York’s Tenement House Act (1901) symbolized efforts to regulate overcrowding, while Montreal’s industrial corridors—from Griffintown to Saint-Henri—drew migrants into low-wage labor and precarious housing. Policing professionalized amid corruption scandals; the Royal Northwest Mounted Police (founded 1873) embodied an expanding Canadian state, later consolidated as the RCMP in 1920. Settlement houses and philanthropic campaigns confronted vice and poverty with moral fervor. The book’s contrasts—philanthropy and profiteering, reformers and racketeers—mirror this landscape, using crime and charity as prisms for class tensions, ethnic prejudice, and contested definitions of public good.
As a social and political critique, the book scrutinizes the era’s exaltation of sacrifice alongside the coercive apparatus that enforced it. By tracing how surveillance, emergency powers, and patriotic rhetoric penetrated workplaces, neighborhoods, and private choices, it exposes the costs borne by immigrants, the poor, and dissenters. Its urban and railway settings reveal how modern systems—credit, transport, communications—both empower and entrap. The narrative questions who can afford to be heroic, who is compelled to be loyal, and who profits from vigilance, thereby challenging class privilege, wartime opportunism, and the moral absolutism that often masked inequality and curtailed civil liberty.
Greater Love Hath No Man
Chapter 1 The Darkest Hour Of Night
UTTER stillness. Utter blackness. And then a faint, indeterminate, far-away sound. The sleeper’s eyes opened, and, as calmly, as naturally as he had lain asleep, he lay now alert. There was neither alarm nor shock in the transition. There had been a sound foreign to the serene silence of the peaceful, sleeping household; a sound too low to rouse a slumberer from repose by its mere volume, too low almost to be heard; a sound so low as to obtrude itself only upon the most super-sensitive sub-consciousness—Varge lay awake.
And now it came again. Then a long pause—then again—and again. It came from the east end of the house, at the rear—from the back stairs. Some one was mounting them with extreme caution—a prolonged wait between each step, one foot following the other only after the body’s weight had been gradually, very gradually, thrown upon the first, lest the bare wood stairs should creak—creak out the secret confided to them in this small, silent hour of morning.
It was black—dense black. Once the step stumbled slightly and there was a soft rubbing sound, barely audible, as of a hand thrown out to feel the way against the wall.
The minutes passed, perhaps three of them. The footsteps now had reached the landing and had begun to come along the hall—nearer and nearer, with the same ominous stealth, to the door of the room in which Varge lay.
Still relaxed, still in repose, not a muscle of Varge’s body had flexed by so much as a ripple as he listened; the beat of his pulse was the same calm, strong, even beat as in sleep. And yet every faculty was atune, stimulated to its highest efficiency. What brought Harold Merton, the son of the house, at two o’clock in the morning to the little chamber over the kitchen, that was apart, shut off, from the rest of the dwelling; and brought him stealing there, where none could hear or mark his movements, like some guilty, evil prowler with cautious, frightened tread?
A hand fumbled for the doorknob outside with a curious sound, as though the knuckles were beating a tremulous, involuntary tattoo upon the door as they came into contact with it. The knob turned, the door was pushed slowly inwards, slowly closed again, there was a faint click from the released catch—and against the door, without form or outline in the darkness, was an added opaqueness.
“I am awake”—there was an almost imperceptible pause between Varge’s words as he spoke, comparable somewhat to one building the phrase of a strange language one word upon the other, but comparable only in that regard—the pronunciation held no trace of foreign accent. “I am awake”—his tones were quiet, composed. “Why have you come to me in my room in this way, Harold?”
A low gasp, the sharp-drawn intake of a breath, came from the door.
“You—you know that it is I,”—the words were a hoarse, shaken whisper.
“I heard your first step on the stairs,” Varge answered simply. “I heard you come up each stair. I heard you stumble once and feel along the wall. I heard you come down the hall on tiptoe. I know your step. I heard your hand shake like a frightened man’s against the door.”
“Sometimes”—the other seemed to shiver as he spoke—“you seem more than human.”
“Why have you come to me in my room at this hour?” asked Varge again, rising now to a sitting posture in the bed. “What has happened? I will light a candle and you will tell me.”
“No! In God’s name no light”—Merton’s words, low-breathed, came with frenzied quickness, quavering, dominant with terror. “No light; and, for mercy’s sake, speak low. Speak very low. Wait! I am coming close to you where I can whisper.”
Varge made no answer. His eyes were on that darker spot that, once by the door, now was moving across the room toward him. And then a hand, thrust out, groping, touched his shoulder—it was wet with cold moisture and shook as with the ague.
“Varge, you must help me,” Merton burst out hysterically. “I am in danger, Varge—in awful danger, do you hear? You can save me. You are the only man, the only man, who can. For God’s sake say you will! It can’t mean anything to you—-there’s nothing you can lose—you don’t even know who you are—you haven’t even so much as a name, except what we’ve always called you—Varge. You’ll help me, Varge—say you will! We’ve brought you up all these years and treated you like—like one of us, and all you’ve had and all you’ve got you owe to us. You’ll—you’ll repay it now, Varge, won’t you?”
The blackness of the room was gone, transformed into quick, shifting scenes and pictures that staged themselves in the little chamber before Varge’s mind—colourful, vivid, real—pictures of childhood, memory-dimmed; pictures of boyhood, standing out more sharply, in clearer focus; pictures of later years; pictures of yesterday. The years passed in lightning sequence before him. A foundling[1], nameless, a child of five, adopted from an orphan asylum, here he had been given a home; here he and this man beside him had been brought up together in the little country town, until the other had gone out to college and he, his own common school education finished, had begun to work for Doctor Merton, his benefactor; here he had grown to manhood, he was twenty-five now; here he had spent his life, knowing almost a father’s consideration, almost a mother’s care, which in turn had kindled a love and gratitude in his own heart that had grown almost to worship with the years, a gratitude and loyalty that had caused him to crush back longings for a wider sphere—contenting himself meanwhile by constant study, acquiring in a hard school the knowledge of medicine that one day, when these two should be gone, he meant to make his profession—for Harold Merton, ten years his senior, was little at home now, and they, growing old, had come to lean intimately upon him, to depend on him, to need him. And so he had lived on there—as Varge, the doctor’s man.
“It is true,” he said slowly. “You had no need to tell me so. It is true. I owe everything to your father, to your mother, and through them to you. I will do anything for your sakes.”
“Yes, yes; I told myself you would,” Merton babbled wildly. “I knew you would. You promise, Varge? Give me your promise. You’ve never broken one.”
“I will do anything for your sakes,” Varge repeated quietly. “I could not do anything else.”
“Then, get up,” urged Merton feverishly. “Get up quickly and dress. I have brought money enough to take you anywhere—you can get away where they will never find you. Hurry, Varge, hurry! Why don’t you hurry? You have promised, Varge.”
Varge’s hands went out and rested in reassuring pressure on Merton’s two shoulders.
“I have promised, Harold,” he said gravely; “and I will do this thing whatever it may be, I will go anywhere if it is necessary—but you are talking wildly, you are not calm. You imagine something that is worse than the thing is. What is this danger that my going will save you from, and how could my leaving here save you from anything?”
“I have been seen,” Merton muttered hoarsely. “I have been seen,” he repeated, with a shudder. “They will know that I did it unless suspicion is directed somewhere else. Don’t you see? Are you blind? If you fly in the night, if you disappear, they will think it was you. But they’ll never catch you, you are too clever, and you’ve nothing to lose, no family, no name even—you see, I thought of that. I’ll give you plenty of money. Hurry, Varge! Get up and get your clothes on! Don’t make a noise, not a sound!”
“What is this thing that you have done that I must take upon myself?” Varge’s hands tightened imperatively on the other’s shoulders. “What is this thing that you are afraid of?”
“Father,” Merton mumbled. “Father. Father—and he is dead.”
“Your father—dead!” Varge pulled the shaking form toward him, as though to search and read the other’s features even in the darkness. “When did he die?”
“A—a few minutes—great God, a year ago”—the words were a chattering, fearsome whisper. “In the library. We had a quarrel. I—I struck him with the fender bar. I have killed my father.”
Chapter 2 “I Am Varge”
CLOSE, Varge had drawn the other to him, and the breath of one was upon the other’s cheek. For a moment, that seemed to span eternity in that little chamber, the two forms on the bed held rigid, motionless—and again there had fallen an utter stillness, a silence as of death, a silence in grim harmony now with the black shadow, blacker than the shadow of the night, that lay upon the house.
As a sudden knife gash shocks veins and arteries into inertia for a brief moment before the blood spurts madly from the wound; so, for that moment, Varge’s faculties were shocked to numbness at the other’s words. Then his fingers on Merton’s shoulders shut vise-like. Horror, loathing of the awful deed revolted him; the inhuman selfishness that had tricked and played upon his gratitude, demanding that he should take this hideous crime upon himself, swept him with seething passion—and only the mighty will power, the self-centred grip of the man upon himself, kept back his fingers from flying at the other’s throat to wring the breath from the shaking thing that shivered now in his grasp.
No words passed his lips—tighter his fingers closed. Straight out before him he held Merton—and the blackness between them, cloaking their faces, grew tenser charged as the seconds passed, until it seemed to live, to palpitate, to move and throb and breathe out dread, soundless words.
“Varge! Varge!”—the words gurgled in choking terror from Merton’s lips. “Why are you holding me like this? Let me go; let me go, I tell you!”
“I said I would do this thing”—Varge spoke in a low, deadly monotone. “But I will not do it. For your father’s sake and your mother’s sake, I said I would do anything—”
Merton was battling now wildly, striking out frenzied, aimless blows; mad with a new fear, a physical fear, of Varge; struggling, squirming to free himself. Varge’s body swayed not by so much as the fraction of an inch. His arms, like great steel rods, were motionless. It was as though he held, without thought of effort or exertion, some inanimate, paltry object in his grasp.
“—I will not do this thing”—Varge still spoke on, still in the same dull monotone. “What right have you to ask it, you blood-guilty son[2]? What right have you to life that you ask my life for your life? I have no name, you say, to make a curse of—I have nothing to lose, you say, because I do not know who I am. I? I am Varge. You think that I have no soul, no conscience, that the foulest crime in God’s sight means nothing to me—because I am a nobody!”
A faint, purling sound came from Merton. He had ceased to struggle. No hurt nor blow had Varge given him; but the cold fury of the man who held him, the fearful power of the grip upon him, that all his own strength would not avail to shake by one iota, seemed to have sunk into his soul and left him swaying sick with terror.
“Save you!”—Varge, like an outraged judge, was summing up his terrible arraignment. “Save you from the punishment of a crime too awful to speak aloud! Save you because I owe gratitude to the one whose life an inhuman son has taken! It would be better to end it here myself than to let you escape. It would be better to end—”
Slowly, very slowly, Varge’s fingers relaxed—slowly, as though some unseen power, stronger than himself, plucked them one by one from the hold to which they clung, lingering, reluctant to let go. A limp thing dropped from his grasp and fell across the bed. And slowly, very slowly, Varge’s hands crept through the darkness and clasped themselves over his own temples.
It came shadowy at first, as though just beyond the range of mental vision, eluding it; it came then gradually more and more distinct, as if folds of some gauzy texture—each fold transparent in itself, the whole but a misty covering that no more than blurred the object that it veiled—were being drawn aside one after the other. And now he saw clearly. Breathing, living, pulsing life, a picture, hallowed, softened, from the brush of the Master Painter was lifted up to his gaze—the silvered hair, with its old-lace cap, smoothly parted across the fair, white brow; the tiny furrows in the skin, scarcely discernible, as though age, regretful of its part to touch at all, had touched with gentle, reverent hand; the grey eyes, soft and tender, looking into his, full of trust, pure, serene, calm; the lips, half-parted, smiling at him with the loving, happy smile he knew so well—the face, full of sweet dignity, was the face of her who had taken a mother’s place in his life, whom he had come to reverence and love, as he realised he would have reverenced and loved his own mother had he ever known her—the face of Mrs. Merton.
The fine-poised, agile brain of the man, full of simple majesty that obtruded neither thought of self nor doubt of consequence, leaped in a lightning flash from premise to conclusion. Grief and sorrow that would bow the grey head down, anguish that would break the tender heart, he could not save her from; he could not bring back to life the form, already cold, she loved so well. But from this other thing, this awful thing, that would strike at her very reason, shatter her faith in the existence of her God, outrage her mother love to hideous mockery and drag her gentle soul in shuddering torture to her grave, crush from her life all that in life was left to her, love, comfort, hope, trust—the great heart of Varge welled with the love he bore her—[1q]this thing she should never know, this thing should never touch her.
Merton lay across his feet. He pushed the other away, got out of bed and for a moment stood by the open window motionless. The still, cold air of the winter night was grateful, thin-clad though he was. Not a sound broke the silence from without. Everywhere the snow, under a black, starless sky, lay white-mantling the ground—whiter, it seemed somehow, than he had ever seen it before. Across the river, lower down in a hollow, lay the town, two miles away. Scarce more than pin-points, two or three lights, twinkling faintly, indicated its position. A moment he stood there, then feeling his way to the chair beside the little washstand over which his clothes, as usual, had been carefully folded, he began to dress in the darkness. A light to him now was abhorrent—he dared not even trust himself to look on the other’s face.
A rustle came from the bed. Merton, evidently judging that Varge’s actions were the result of some decision relative to himself, had started up in an accession of terrified apprehension.
“Varge,” he mumbled huskily. “Varge, what—what are you going to do?”
As though voicing his thoughts aloud unconsciously, rather than in answer to another, Varge spoke in a low, concentrated way.
“I will do it. It is I who have killed Doctor Merton.”
It was as if it crept upon Merton slowly. An instant he held silent, still. Then came reaction. A mad paroxysm of relief seemed to sweep the coward soul, he sat upright and struggled to the edge of the bed, babbling, whispering, incoherent almost in his craven transport.
“You will, eh?—yes, you’ll do it, Varge. I’ve money enough to begin with—and I can get more. You’ll do it after all, eh? Yes; I knew you would. I knew you’d stand by me. I knew you wouldn’t fail me, Varge; we’ve been good friends you and I, and—” The words froze on Merton’s lips. Varge had crossed to the bed, his hand had reached out through the darkness, closed on Merton’s leg just above the knee and tightened with the same crushing grip that before had stricken the man with terror.
“Can you not understand?”—Varge’s whisper came now hoarse and tense. “Do not speak, except to answer my questions—I am afraid of myself with the thought of saving you. You were seen, you said. How were you seen so that the crime would point to you and yet would be of no proof against you if suspicion were turned upon some one else?”
“Varge, let go!” Merton cried faintly. “For God’s sake, let go—you are breaking my leg!”
With a curious movement, as one suddenly releases his hold upon an object he has unwittingly, unconsciously grasped, which to the sense of touch is utterly repugnant, Varge drew away his hand.
“Answer my question,” he said. “If you have been seen at all, there cannot be much time to spare.”
“No, no; there is not much—there’s not a moment to lose”—this phase, not new, but for a while dormant through other terrors and now awakened again, brought the words in pitiful eagerness from Merton’s lips. “I’ll tell you everything—everything. Listen. I got into trouble in New York a little while ago—serious trouble. There was a woman in it. I thought it was all hushed up. The day after I came down here for a visit last week I received a letter—and the whole cursed business was in it. I lost the letter, Varge. Father found it, and without saying anything to me investigated the whole thing. To-night he called me into the library after mother had gone to bed—he said he hadn’t dared to tell her anything. He opened one of the little square cupboards in the wall at the side of the fireplace, you know the one, the one on the right hand side, where he keeps his books, papers and money, and took out the letter with a lot of others he had received about it and showed them to me. He was in a fearful rage. We quarrelled. But there was no noise—we were afraid of awakening mother. Then I don’t know just what happened. I was standing by the fire poking it with that long fender bar. I think he meant to snatch it from my hand, just with angry impetuosity. We struggled and—it wasn’t cold blood, Varge. We—we’d been quarrelling. I didn’t know what I did. I struck him on the side of the head with the bar and he—he fell.”
Merton paused, and in the silence came the sound as of hands hard-wrung together till the finger joints crackled.
Varge moved away from the bed, back to the little washstand and resumed his dressing.
“Go on,” he said.
“I tore up the letters and burned them in the grate”—Merton’s voice was a low moan now. “And then, I don’t know why, I went to the window and drew up the blind, and looked out onto the lawn. It was all snow, white, white, white, and not a mark in it. I was trying to think what to do, when I heard a sound back of me from where—where It lay. It startled me and turned my blood cold. I whirled around and jumped back across the room, and—and bent over father before I realised what had made the noise. It was only a piece of coal falling in the grate, only a piece—” Merton broke off jerkily, and a short, sobbing laugh of hysteria came from him.
“Go on,” said Varge again.
“I—I bent over father then. I—I was cool again. The thought came to me that he might be only stunned—but, but he was dead. I was perhaps three minutes, perhaps longer, I don’t know how long, bending over him, and then I looked up—there was a face pressed close against the window pane and the eyes were glaring in at me. Something held me still—I couldn’t move. I must have taken my eyes away instantly, so I am sure he didn’t know I saw him. When I looked again the face was gone. Then I got up, it seemed at once, though I suppose it must have been another minute, and went to the window. There was no one in sight, but there were footprints in the snow and the trees hid the road. I jerked down the blind, and then—and then—I thought of you. I turned off the light, crept out of the room and stole up here. I wanted to get you to run away—it was my only chance. I wanted to get you to run away, to make them think you did it, and I—I had a story all ready to tell that would account for my being seen in the room as I was. I would say that I had been reading late upstairs and heard your voice and father’s in the library; then silence. That I had kept on reading, and after a while, wondering why father hadn’t come up to bed, I went downstairs softly so as not to awaken mother and found him dead—and that then I went for you and you had disappeared. It was Mart Robson’s face at the window—he’s never liked me anyhow. I suppose the MacGregors must have sent him from the farm for a doctor, and he saw the light and instead of ringing the bell and waking up the house he went first to the window. I know what he’s done now—he’s gone on to the town to tell the sheriff what he’s seen. Varge, do you hear, he’s on his way there now!”
Varge’s mind was working quickly—mapping, planning out his course of action—weaving the finer threads of detail into the web that was to enmesh himself and free the other. His coat was on now, and he turned to face Merton through the darkness. It was all clear, all plain, even to that one thing that had troubled him—to lessen, to soften the shock to her.
“Listen,” he said. “I am dressed. I am going. You must make no mistake now. You should not have turned off the light nor drawn down the shade again—you did not do either—I will attend to them. You did not see any one at the window. For the rest, you can tell your story as you intended—but there are two things you must do. First, you must telephone the sheriff; if you cannot get him, do not waste time over it—you must have tried, that is the important thing. Then you must go at once for Mrs. MacLaughlin, your mother’s friend, and bring her back here before Mrs. Merton is awakened—that should not take you more than fifteen minutes, and you must not be longer. When you come back, go into that room again and fix each detail as you find it then in your mind, and be careful that your story agrees in every particular. Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes”—Merton struggled from the bed to his feet—“I will telephone at once, and then—”
“Wait,” said Varge sharply. “Two of us on the stairs at once may make a noise. Wait until I have gone down.” He moved across the room, felt for the door and opened it.
“Yes; but, Varge, money”—Merton was whispering wildly—“you can’t get away without money, and everything depends on your getting away, you’ve got to get away—here, take—”
“I shall have no need of money,” Varge answered, as he stepped out into the passage.
Chapter 3 In Which The Web Is Woven
SWIFTLY, with sure, light, noiseless tread, Varge made his way along the short passage and down the stairs. It was a fight now with and against time—with it, physically, to accomplish what must be done without the loss of a moment; and, still more important, against it mentally, to coordinate the discrepancy that already existed.
Robson, MacGregor’s farmhand, could have done but one of two things—gone on to town, or to the nearest neighbour. Varge’s mind had already weighed the alternatives—and, discarding one, agreed with Harold Merton[3]. He had known Robson all his life—Robson was of that type, illiterate, sensational, full of cheap bluster, to whom notoriety would be as the breath of life—he would lose none of the importance attaching to the discovery of a crime, none of the opportunity of being the central figure in the affair by sharing his discovery with any one, who, later on, participating in the furor and excitement, would detract from his own prominence—Robson would tell his tale to the authorities and to no one else. Any feeling Robson might have against Harold Merton; the fact that in all probability he was seeking medical assistance and the other doctors lived in the town itself, which would have an added tendency to take him there; the fact that no one had as yet come, as might have been the case had Robson stopped at the next house, though there was still time for that yet—all these were extraneous considerations to Varge. It was on the man’s temperament, an intimate appraisal of the man himself, as Varge appraised all men with whom he came in contact, that his conclusion was based.
The roads were heavy. There had been a fall of snow during the previous afternoon and evening. Robson could not cover the two miles to the town at best under twenty minutes. It would take him some time to arouse the sheriff, for the sheriff to dress, hear the story, secure a deputy perhaps, and start back—just how long it was i[2q]mpossible to judge specifically; it might be half an hour, or twice that. Then there was the return trip. In all, at the closest calculation, not less than an hour. Debited against this was the time that had elapsed since Robson had looked in at the window; say, five minutes for Merton to creep upstairs, and then the scene in the little chamber—how long had that been? What was the difference between the seemingly limitless time that it had occupied and reality? Varge’s mind, eliminating impression, with lightning rapidity rehearsed every act that had taken place, every word that had been spoken—fifteen minutes, it could not have been more. And fifteen and five were twenty. It would be another half-hour, then, before the sheriff would start back.
Varge had reached the bottom of the stairs now and crossed the kitchen. Between the kitchen and the front hall was a small crockery pantry from which swinging doors led, one to the dining room directly in the rear of the library, and one to the hall itself. As he entered the pantry, Varge took his knife from his pocket and felt along the wall with his hand. An instant’s groping and his fingers touched the telephone receiver, followed it down to the base of the instrument, and then, stooping, he slipped his knifeblade in between the wires and the wall and severed the connection.
