It was like some
frightening dream.
The paper and pencil waked him to reality. He looked towards his house,
he looked the way George Masson had gone, and he knew that what he had
seen was real life and not a dream. The paper fell from his hand. He
did not pick it up. Its fall represented the tumbling walls of life, was
the earthquake which shook his world into chaos. He ground the sheet
into the gravel with his heel. There would be no cheese-factory built at
St. Saviour's for many a year to come. The man of initiative, the man of
the hundred irons would not have the hundred and one, or keep the hundred
hot any more; because he would be so busy with the iron which had entered
into his soul.
When the paper had been made one with the earth, a problem buried for
ever, Jean Jacques pulled himself up to his full height, as though facing
a great thing which he must do.
"Well, of course!" he said firmly.
That was what his honour, Judge Carcasson, had said a few hours before,
when the little Clerk of the Court had remarked an obvious thing about
the case of Jean Jacques.
And Jean Jacques said only the obvious thing when he made up his mind to
do the obvious thing--to kill George Masson, the master-carpenter.
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