Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [79]
He looked at Pitt. “Poor Pascoe has done all he can to dissuade him, and then to prevent him by public opinion, and even the law; but he is puny against the tide of inquisitiveness and disobedience in mankind and the passion for novelty—always novelty.” His body was clenched under his clothes, aching with tension. “Novelty at any price! New sciences, a new social order, new art—we are insatiable. The minute we have seen a thing, we want to cast it aside and find something else. We worship freedom as if it were some infinite good. But you cannot escape morality—freedom from the consequence of your acts is the great delusion at the core of all this”—he flung his hand out—“this frenzy for newness—and for irresponsibility. We have been from the first a race that hungers for forbidden knowledge and would eat the fruit of sin and death. God commanded our first parents to abstain, and they would not. What chance has poor Quinton Pascoe?”
His face tightened and a look of defeat washed his whole countenance with pain. “And Stephen in his arrogance upheld Dalgetty and made mock of Pascoe and his attempts to protect the weak and the sensitive from the cruder expressions of ideas that could only injure and frighten at bestand at worst deprave. Mockery of the truth, of all man’s past aspirations to higher good, is one of the Evil One’s most fearsome weapons, and God help him, Stephen has been more than willing to use it.”
“Josiah—I think you speak too harshly,” Prudence protested. “I know Stephen speaks foolishly at times, but there is no cruelty in him—”
He turned around to her, his face grim, his eyes burning. “You know him very little, my dear. You see only the best. That is to your credit—and it is what I intend shall continue, but be counseled by me: I have heard him say much that I shall never repeat to you, which has been both cruel and degraded. He has a contempt for the virtues which you most admire.”
“Oh, Josiah, are you sure? Could you not perhaps have misunderstood him? He has an unfortunate sense of humor at times—and—”
“I could not!” He was absolute. “I am perfectly capable of telling when he is attempting to be amusing and when he means what he says, however superficially he covers it with lightness. The essence of mockery, Prudence, is that it should make good people laugh at what they would otherwise have taken seriously and loved—to make moral purity, labor, hope, and belief in people, seem ridiculous to them—things of jest to be derided.”
Prudence opened her mouth to refute what he was saying; then recalling some other knowledge, some fact until then secondary, she colored with embarrassment and looked down at the floor. Pitt was aware of her misery as if she had touched him, but he had no idea what caused it. She wanted to defend Shaw, but why? Affection, simple compassion because she believed his suffering to be genuine, or some other reason unguessed by him yet? And what held her back?
“I regret we cannot help you,” Hatch said civilly, but he could not mask the exhaustion in his voice, nor the shock in his eyes. He was on the point of collapse, and it was nearly four in the morning.
Pitt gave up. “Thank you for your time now, and your courtesy. We will not keep you up longer. Good night, sir—Mrs. Hatch.”
Outside the night was black and the wind whined in the darkness, glaring red over towards the ruins of Amos Lindsay’s house. The street was still full of fire engines, and firemen were walking the horses up and down to keep them from chilling.
“Go home,” Pitt said to Murdo, stamping his feet on the ice around the pavement. “Get a few hours’ sleep and I’ll see you at the station at ten.”
“Yes sir. Do you think Shaw did it himself, sir? To cover the murder of his wife?”
Pitt looked at Murdo’s scorched and miserable face.