Chance had now fed these
characteristics, and they grew gigantic in an hour. But the religious habit
made him turn to his Maker in this pass, and the merely primitive passions,
which were now breaking loose within him, he regarded as the direct voices
of God. They proclaimed that solitary duty the world still held for him;
they marked out his road to the lurid end of it.
Thus Noy's own furious lust for revenge was easily and naturally elevated
into a mandate from the Highest--into a message echoed and reiterated upon
his ear by the multitudinous voices of that wild night. The rain whispered
it on the roof-trees, the wind and sea thundered it; out of elemental chaos
the awful command came, as from primal lips which had spoken since creation
to find at last the ultimate destination of their message within a human
ear. To Noy, his purpose, not yet an hour old, seemed ancient as eternity,
a fixed and deliberate impression which had been stamped upon his mind at a
period far earlier than his life in time. For one end had he been created;
that by some sudden short cut he should hurry to its close a vile life,
fill up God's bitter curse upon this man, destroy the destroyer, and speed
a black soul into the torment awaiting it.
Irresolute and deep in thought as to his future actions, Joe Noy walked
unconsciously forward. He felt unequal to returning to his home in
Mousehole after what he had learned at Newlyn; and he wandered back,
therefore, toward Penzance.
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