A full moon was shining, and his acres lay below him—a wonderful picture in black and silver. He came to the first gap in the battlements, mounted the parapet, and stood there with a hand resting on each side.
The wash of the sea came murmurously through the September silence. His restless eyes flashed hither and thither over the quiet scene, taking in every detail, lingering nowhere. The pine trees stirred in the distance below him, seeming to whisper together, and an owl hooted with a weird persistence down by the lake. It was like the calling of a human voice—almost like a cry of distress. Then it ceased, and the trees were still again.
The spell of the silence fell like the falling of a curtain. The loneliness crept about his heart.
He took the cigar from his mouth and spoke, ironically, grimly.
"There is your kingdom, Charles Rex!" he said.
He turned with the words and leaped down upon the narrow walk between the battlements. The owl began to call again, but the desolation remained. He paced forward with his hands behind him, his head bent. No one could see him here. The garment of mockery could be flung aside. He was like a prisoner tramping the stone walls from which he could never escape.
He paused once to toss away his cigar, but he did not look out again over the fair prospect of his lands. He was looking at other things, seeing the vast emptiness of a life that had never been worth while stretching behind and before him. Like a solitary traveller pausing in the heart of the desert, he stood to view the barrenness around him.
He had travelled far, had pursued many a quest with ardour; but the ardour had all gone out of him now. Only the empty solitude remained. He had lived a life of fevered variety, he had drunk deep of many waters; but he had never been satisfied. And now it seemed to him that all he had ever looked upon, all he had ever achieved, was mirage. Nothing of all that he had ever striven for was left. The fruit had turned to ashes in his mouth, and no spring remained whereat to quench his thirst.
Perhaps few men have ever realized the utter waste of wickedness as Charles Rex realized it that night. He met it whichever way he turned. To gratify the moment's whim had ever been his easy habit. If a generous impulse had moved him, he had gratified that also. But it had never been his way to sacrifice himself—until a certain night when a child had come to him, wide-eyed and palpitating like a driven bird, and had sought shelter and protection at his hands.
That, very curiously, had been the beginning of a new era in his life. It had appealed to him as nothing had ever appealed before. He had never tasted—or even desired—the Dead Sea fruit again. Something had entered his being on that night which he had never been able to cast out, and all other things had been dwarfed to insignificance.