Dimly, out of the cloud of misery that fell upon him when his son perished, Baskerville began to perceive and to feel these facts. He had consoled himself by thinking that the only two beings he loved in the whole world were gone out of it, and now waited together in eternity for his own arrival thither.
Their battle was ended; and since they were at rest, nothing further remained for him to trouble about. But the anticipated peace did not appear; no anodyne poured into his soul; and he discovered, that for his nature, the isolated mental standpoint did not exist.
There could arise no healing epiphany of mental indifference for him. He might be estranged, but to exile himself was impossible. He must always actively hate what he conceived to be evil; he must always suspect human motives; he must always feel the flow and ebb of the human tide. Though his own rocky heart might be lifted above them, the waves of that sea would tune its substance to throb in sympathy, or fret it to beat with antagonism, so long as it pulsed at all.
This discovery surprised the man; for he had believed that a radical neutrality to human affairs belonged to him.
He attributed the sustained restlessness of his spirit to recent griefs and supposed that the storm would presently disappear; and meantime he plunged into a minor whirlwind by falling into the bitterest quarrel with his elder brother.
Nathan indeed he had suffered to depart in peace; but as soon as the bereaved father learned that Vivian's son, Ned, was engaged to Cora, and perceived how it was this fact that had finally killed hope in Mark and induced the unhappy weakling to destroy himself, his rage burst forth against the master of Cadworthy; and when Vivian called upon the evening of the funeral to condole with Humphrey, an enduring strife sprang up between them.
"I'm come as the head of the family, Humphrey," began the veteran, "and it ban't seemly that this here terrible day should pass over your head without any of your kith and kin speaking to you and comforting you. We laid the poor young man along with his mother in the second row of the Baskerville stones. My word! as Gollop said after the funeral, 'even in death the Baskervilles be a pushing family!' Our slates stretch pretty near from the church to the churchyard wall now."
"Thank you for being there," answered his brother. "I couldn't have gone, because of the people. There was no maiming of the rite—eh?"
"Not a word left out—all as it should be. Eight young men carried him, including a farmer or two, and my son Ned, and Heathman Lintern, and also my son Rupert—though where he came from and where he went to after 'twas ended, I don't know, and don't care. He's left me—to better himself—so he thinks, poor fool! A nice way to treat a good father."
"You've lost a son, too, then—lost him to find him again, doing man's work. You'll live to know that he was right and you were wrong. But my son—my mind is turned rather rotten of late. After dark I can't get his dead face out of my eyes. Nought terrible, neither—just, in a word, 'dead.' He broke his neck—he didn't strangle himself. He knew what he was about. But there, I see it. Gone—and none knows what he was to me. He never knew himself; and for that matter I never knew myself, neither—till he was gone."