He dreamed terrible dreams, and thought fearful thoughts, as he lay looking without seeing it at the picture of Love Locked Out. Sometimes he wept, though tears were a shameful thing in a boy of his age. But what was he to make of this terrible house where the pious refinement of Aunt was under the same roof as the animal lust of the Looner, and the sweet music that Aunt played in the drawing-room was set against Zadok’s singing in the attic, singing which was so vigorous, so full of gusto, that there seemed to be a hint of danger—something Dr. Upper would not have approved—about it. This house where there was so much deep concern for his welfare, but nothing of the love he needed except for the two servants, who did not precisely love him so much as accept him as a fellow-being. This house where he, the cherished Francis, was aware that in a sort of hospital-prison there was another Francis whom nobody ever mentioned, and, so far as he could find out, nobody ever visited, except the Presbyterian cook-nurse, whose opinions on the matter he sometimes heard, when she reluctantly spoke of the matter.

“We’re not to judge, Frank, but something like what’s upstairs doesn’t happen just by chance. Nothing comes by chance. Everything’s written down somewhere, you know, and we have to live the lives that are foreseen for us long before the world began. So you mustn’t look on your brother as a judgement on anyone. But I won’t say he isn’t a warning—a rebuke to pride, maybe.

My grandmother worked that into a sampler when she was a girl, and we’ve still got it on the wall.”

“All sinners, Victoria?”

“All sinners, Frank, however your aunt throws scent over it with her religious pictures and fancy prayers. That’s just the R.C. way of deceiving yourself, as if life was a fancy-dress party, with purple socks, and all. Life isn’t just for fun, you know.”

“But aren’t we ever to be happy?”

“Show me the place in the Bible where it says we are to be happy in this world. Happiness for sinners means sin. You can’t get away from it.”

“Are you a sinner, Victoria?”

“Maybe the worst of sinners. How can I tell?”

“Then why are you so good to the fellow upstairs?”

“We sinners have to stick together, Frank, and do the best we can in our fallen state. That’s what religion is. I don’t make the judgements. For all the silver and thick carpets and hand-painted pictures—your pictures too, clever though they are—this is a House of Sin.”

“But Victoria, that’s awful. And it isn’t an answer. If you’re a sinner, why don’t you sin?”

“Too proud, Frank. God made me a sinner, and I can’t change that. But I don’t have to give in, even to Him, and I won’t. I won’t give it to Him to say. Though He slay me, yet will I worship Him. But I won’t throw in the towel, even if He’s damned me.”

Thus, in addition to a little lukewarm Anglicanism, and much hot, sweet Catholicism, Frank imbibed a stern and unyielding Calvinism. It was no help with his personal difficulties. But he loved Victoria and he believed her, just as he believed Aunt. The only person who didn’t seem to have a God who was out for his scalp was Zadok.

Zadok’s religion, if it may be so called, was summed up briefly. “Life’s a rum start, me little dear. I’ve good cause to know!”

The House of Sin was, in its way, splendid, and Frank took satisfaction in its richness without having a clear idea of its ugliness. The drawing-room, so silvery blue, so crammed with uncomfortable “Louis” furniture, relieved only by the fierce mahogany gloss of the Phonoliszt, and the portly Victrola, repository of great music, including several records by the man-god Caruso. The dining-room, battleground of two great indigestions—Aunt’s manifesting itself in sternly repressed gas, and Grand’mère’s in a recurrent biliousness. Neither lady ever thought of moderating her diet. “I can take cream,” Aunt would say, as if many other luxuries were denied her; she took cream at every meal. “Oh, I shouldn’t, but I’ll venture,” was what Grand’mère would say, as she helped herself to another slice of Victoria’s superb pastry, usually manifesting itself as the casing of a sweet fruit pie. The dining-room, with its red velvety paper and its pictures of cardinals, seemed an outward enlargement of two outraged, overloaded stomachs. And then, Grand-pére’s study, so complex and tormented in its panelling, where much the most interesting books were his many albums of sun-pictures. A House of Sin? Certainly a house of vexations and disappointments, quite apart from those that plagued Francis.

Late on the night of Good Friday, when in deference to Mary-Ben and Marie-Louise the Senator had taken no wine at the salmon dinner (a day of abstention and fasting, you see), the Senator sat in the hideous study, refreshing himself with a little of his excellent bootleg whisky. A Cap at the door, which opened just wide enough for Dr. Joseph Ambrosius Jerome to slip in, smiling widely but not mirthfully, as was usual with him.

“Come in, Joe; I was hoping you’d look in. Will you take any spirits?”

“In spite of the day, Hamish, I will. And I’d like a word with you about the fellow upstairs.”

“No change?”

“Just growing older, like the rest of us. You well know, Hamish, that I didn’t give him long, years ago, when we moved him up there. He’s proved me wrong.”

“That was a bad decision, Joe.”

“Don’t I know it! But you remember we went into all that, and decided for Mary-Jim’s sake, and the sake of the baby that was coming, it was the best we could do.”

“Yes, but to pretend he had died! To pretend even to Mary-Jim! That awful pretended funeral—if Mick Devlin had known there was nothing in the coffin but some gravel he’d have had the hide off us both!”

“We had the support of Marie-Louise and Mary-Ben; they were sure we were doing the best thing. Do they ever speak of it now?”

“Not a word from either of them in years. Nobody goes up there but Victoria Cameron, and I believe Zadok, sometimes. I never go up. Can’t stand the sight of him. My grandson! Now why, Joe, why?”

“Reasons better not gone into, Hamish.”

“That’s not an answer. Have you any notion, yourself? What’s science got to say about it?”

“Did you read the book I lent you?”

“By that fellow Krafft-Ebing? I read some of it. When I read about the fellow who liked to eat his mistress’s earwax, b’God I thought I’d spew. You can take it away with you when you go. What’s all that got to do with Mary-Jacobine McRory, a beautiful, sweet-souled girl who got into a mess that might have happened to any girl, under the circumstances.”

“Ah, but what were the circumstances? I told you at the time: go whoring after the English and a life of fashion, I said, and you’ll be a sorry man. And what are you today, and what have you been ever since? A sorry man.”

“Oh, of course, Joe, we know you’re always right. And what has your rightness got you? You’re a cranky, half-crazy old bachelor, and my sister is a cranky, religious-crazy old maid, and however much you looked at her torn-off scalp you’d have been better together than the way you are now—which is together but tortured apart. So don’t preach to me.”

“There, there, Hamish. Don’t let’s have any of your Hielan’man’s hysterics. It hasn’t been all bad. When last I saw Mary-Jim she look happy enough.”

“Happy enough isn’t as happy as can be. Perhaps I was wrong. But I was trying to do the best for my child.”

“God, Hamish, nobody can do the best for anyone. People can only rarely do the best for themselves. Mary-Jim’s not over-bright, but God knows she’s beautiful, and that entirely robbed you of good sense. Good intentions can make terrible mischief, but so long as love lasts, they’ll last, and there you are. You didn’t do too badly. You landed your Englishman.”