Godfrey stumbled past Mrs Palmer as he met her on the stairs, and threw the paper towards her. “Telegraph—settle it,” he said, and pushing blindly on to the old unused library, shut himself into it.
A young man, with a strong physique, sufficient talent, and a good wholesome record, is unaccustomed to emotional agonies, Godfrey woke from the simple take-it-for-granted life of healthy, prosperous youth, to the dreadful consciousness of having committed a disgraceful action, from which he reaped advantage at his brother’s expense.
The cruel wound of a slighted and rejected passion had sapped his powers of endurance. He went a little mad for the time under the awful pressure. At whatever cost, it must be lightened.
He stood in the window leaning his head against the black oak panel behind him, and staring out with haggard eyes at the fair fields and gardens, which were, it seemed, his own; the hateful inheritance which he had gained for himself.
He could not bear the days as they passed, he could not look into a human face, much less into that of his brother, unless he could find some means of lightening his passionate self-disgust. He took his way slowly through the darkened house up to the chamber of death.
Margaret Waynflete was still lying in the octagon-room where her end had come upon her. The place had all been made scrupulously tidy, and the little bedstead was standing in the middle of the polished floor. There was no attempt at softening the chill, bare fact of death, by flowers or lights. “Aunt Waynflete wouldn’t have liked it,” Mrs Palmer said, in answer to Jeanie’s faint suggestion; nor was there any emblem of hope and faith.
The white, cold daylight came in through the half-closed shutters, and fell upon the grand and awful outlines of the tall old woman whose vigour in life emphasised the contrasting stillness of death. The long, strong hands that had worked so hard, the strong will that had known no paralysing doubts, were idle and inoperative now.
Godfrey had never seen death before, and he saw it with a grim and unsoftened aspect; but he was so set on his own purpose that his natural grief and awe were in abeyance.
He stood by the prostrate figure looking down at it, while the picture over his head looked at them both.
Then he knelt down, and laid his hand on that of the dead woman, starting a little at the unaccustomed chillness of the touch, and before her face, and in the sight of God, he vowed that he would never profit by the results of his wicked action, never enjoy the fortune from which he had ousted Guy, never be master of Waynflete.