... No! Anything would be better than to see this dreadful cleaning up....
The big rawbone mare which he was riding was fresh and playful. Johnnie was a consummate horseman, and he was glad of the distraction of keeping the beast under control. She had a hard mouth, and needed all his skill.
For four or five miles, followed by his attendants at a distance of two or three hundred yards, he rode at a fast canter, now and then letting the mare stretch her legs upon the turf which bordered the rough country road. After this, when the horse began to settle down to steady work, he went on at a fast trot, but more mechanically, and thought began to be born within him again.
Until now he had seemed to be walking and moving in a dream. Even the horrors he had seen had been hardly real. Inexperienced as he was in many aspects of life, he yet knew well that the man with an imagination and sensitive nerves suffers far more in the memory of a dreadful thing than he does at the actual witnessing of it. The very violence of what he had seen done that day had deadened all the nerves, forbidding full sensation—as a man wounded in battle, or with a limb lopped off by sword or shot, is often seen looking with an amazed incredulity at himself, feeling no pain whatever for the moment.
It was now that John Commendone began to suffer. Every detail of Dr. Taylor's death etched themselves in upon his brain in a succession of pictures which burnt like fire.
As this or that detail—in colour, movement, and sound—came back to him so vividly, his heart began to drum, his eyes to fill with tears, or grow dry with horror, the palms of his hands to become wet. He lived the whole thing over again. And once more his present surroundings became dream-like, as he cantered through the lanes, and what was past became hideously, dreadfully real.
Yet, as the gallant mare bore him swiftly onwards, he realised that the horror and disgust he felt were in reality subservient to something else within him. His whole being seemed quickened, infinitely more alert, ready for action, than it had ever been before. He was like a man who had all his life been looking out upon the world through smoked or tinted glasses—very pleased and delighted with all he saw, unable to realise that there could be anything more true, more vivid.
Then, suddenly, the glass is removed. The neutral greyness which he has taken for the natural, commendable view of things, changes and falls away. The whole world is seen in an infinity of light and colour undreamed of, unexpected, wonderfully, passionately new.
It was thus with Johnnie, and the fact for some time was stunning and paralysing.
Then, as the brain adjusted itself slowly to fresh and marvellous conditions, he began to question himself.