That night, hollow-eyed, and as if he had risen from a sick bed, Malcolm sat writing in his chambers by the light of his shaded lamp. The old panelled room looked weird and strange, and dark shadows lurked in the corners and were cast by the flickering flames of the fire on his left.
Since his return from the Jerrolds’ he had gone through a phase of agony and despair so terrible that his actions, hidden from all within that solitary room, had resembled those of the insane; but at last the calm had come, and after sitting for some time looking his position in the face, he had set to work writing two or three letters, and then commenced one full of instructions to Percy Guest, telling him how to act when he received that letter, asking his forgiveness, and ending by saying:
I cannot face it. You will call me a coward, perhaps, but you would not if you could grasp all. I am perfectly calm now, sensible of the awful responsibilities of my act, but after what I have gone through since I have been here alone to-day I know perfectly well that my reason is failing, and that in a few hours the paroxysm will return, finding me weaker than before. Better the end at once than after a few months’ or years’ living death, confined among other miserables like myself.
It was my all—my one aim, Guest, for which I toiled so hard, fighting for success. And the good fortune has come in company with a failure so great that the success is nothing.
Good-bye.
He read his letter over as calmly as if it contained memoranda to send to a friend prior to his departure on a short journey. Then, folding it, inclosing it in an envelope, he directed it, and laid it carefully beside the others on the table before sinking back in his chair.
“Is there anything else?” he said quietly.
At that moment the clock on a cabinet rung out the musical chimes of four quarters, and a deeper toned bell sounded the hour.
“Ten,” he said, smiling. “Two hours more and then the beginning of a longer day.”
He opened a drawer, took out a parchment label, and wrote upon it carefully:
To Edward Brettison, when time is no more for his obliged and grateful friend, Malcolm Stratton.
Rising from his chair he crossed to the cabinet, tied the label to one of the handles of the clock, then opened the door beneath, and laid bare a shelf of bottles, while a penetrating odour of camphor and other gums floated out into the room—a familiar odour to those who study natural history, and preserve specimens of insect or bird life.