Monotonous as is my existence, I hardly note how time flies. March winds rush by me, and I scarcely heed them. But for the hurtful racking cough they leave me as a legacy, ere taking their final departure, I would not have known they had been among us. This cough grows and increases steadily, rendering more pallid my already colorless cheeks, while the little flesh that still cleaves to my bones becomes less and less as the hours go on. It tears my slight frame with a cruel force, and leaves me sleepless when all the rest of the world is wrapped in slumber.
Oh, the weary days; the more than weary nights, when oblivion never comes to drown my thoughts, or, coming, only wraps me in dreams from which I wake, damply cold, or sobbing with a horror too deep for words!
There are times when I fight with Fate, with all that has brought me to this pass; when I cry aloud and wring my hands and call on death to rescue me, in the privacy of my own room, from the misery that weighs me down and keeps me languishing in the dust. But these times are rare, and come to me but seldom—at such weak moments as when a feeling of deadly sickness or overpowering regret gains mastery over me.
In very truth, my life is a sad one—a mistake—a blot, there is no proper place for me in the universe that seems so great. There is no happiness within me, no spring of hope. I appear to myself a thing apart—innocent, yet marked with a disgraceful brand. With an old writer—whom I now forget—I can truly say:—-
"For the world, I count it not an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in."
At last I wake to the fact that I am ill—dreadfully ill. There can be no doubt of it; and yet my malady has no name. I have lost all appetite; my strength has deserted me; great hollows have grown in my cheeks, above which my eyes gleam large and feverish. When I sit down I feel no desire to rise again.
Towards the middle of April I rally a little, and an intense craving for air is ever on me. Down by the sea I wander daily, getting as close to it as my strength will allow, the mile that separates me from it being now looked upon as a journey by my impoverished strength. Somewhat nearer to me than the shore is a high, level plain of sand and earth and grass, that runs back inland from a precipice that overlooks the ocean. On this I sit, and drawing sometimes up to the edge, peer over, and amuse myself counting the waves as they dash on to the beach far, far below.
This plain, forming part of the grounds belonging to Hazelton, possesses the double charm of being easier of access than the strand, and of being strictly private.
It is the 17th of April—a cold day, but fresh, with little sunshine anywhere. I am sauntering along my usual path to my sandy plain, thoughtless of anything in the present, innocent of presentiments, when suddenly before me, as though arisen out of the earth, stands Sir Mark Gore.
How long is it since last I saw him?—not months surely?—it seems more like yesterday. Why do I feel no surprise, no emotion? Is the mind within me indeed dead? I am more puzzled by my own unnatural calmness at this moment than even by an event so unexpected as his presence here.