So Harry Venniker ran on, making talk a duty, not without tears. It may be that no better comforter could have been found—so artless as he was and generous and sympathetic. Yet the comfort was vain. It is thought that Nature contains in herself a remedy for every physical ill to which humanity is heir, though the remedies so often lie hid; but there are spiritual ills for which no remedy exists.
Harry Venniker did not quit Gerald’s bedroom until he had persuaded him to lie down and rest. He lay like one in a swoon. He moved not at all. Hour succeeded hour. The great clock in the courtyard told the hours. The shadows had long since stolen across the room in which he lay. It was night. Who can enter into the pathos of his thoughts? He had been lonely in his life and misunderstood. He had yearned for sympathy and had not found it. He had gone down into that dark spiritual valley into which all deep human souls descend and from which they do not all emerge. He had looked upon the earth, and had found no consoler there. He had lifted his eyes to heaven and had seen no God. Life had been terrible in his eyes, and it had been his all. In the anguish of his soul he had cried for help—for any help, however faint—in heaven or earth, and no help had come to him—none! Then from this misery, of which no man may fathom the depth, he had been delivered by a passion so intense, so delightful, that it absorbed and enthralled his whole being. He had contemplated an ideal goodness. He had been permitted to call it his own. The measure of his misery had been the measure of his deliverance. Having won back faith in a human soul, he had won it in God. Once more the heaven above him had become bright. Beautiful with a sacred beauty had life seemed to him. He was as a man restored from the grave. And now she who had brought this change in him—the idol of his soul—lay dead; in a moment, without a word of farewell, without a loving glance, she had been cut off from him. He was alone again. Was there then a God in heaven? Did He live only to mock and cajole the children of men? What right had He, if He were good and gracious, to hold the cup of blessing to human lips, thirsting for His love, and then to tear it ruthlessly away? Gerald Eversley cursed God in his heart.
The clock in the courtyard struck midnight. He heard what seemed to him like a howling far off in the dark.
Another hour he waited—more. Sleep was not for him that night. He rose from his bed. The embers were still aglow in his fireplace. He sat down and leaned his head upon the writing-table. There stood a Bible upon it, but he threw the Bible away.
He took a sheet of notepaper out of one of the drawers. His hand shook palsiedly as he wrote on it these words: ‘I can bear it no more. Life is hateful to me. I follow her to death. My body will be found by the willow at the south end of the lake. Tell my father. When you read this, I shall be a corpse. Forgive me, Harry. Beg your mother’s forgiveness. Ask her to pray for me. If there is a God, he will hear her prayer. Gerald.’
He put the paper in an envelope, addressed it ‘For Harry,’ and placed it in the centre of the writing-table.
Then he read over the verses which Harry had given him, kissed them, and put them in his pocket. They seemed to make him hesitate for a moment.
Then he opened the door stealthily and listened. Not a sound in the house. He stole down the stairs. The key of the garden door was in the lock. He turned it and went out. The night was dark. The wind was sighing in the trees. A bitter rain blew in his teeth. There were still a few patches of snow upon the ground.
Silently, looking back at times to see if he were followed, he made his way to the lake. It is nearly half a mile from the Hall. At the south end of it a large willow hangs down to the water’s edge. There beneath it Gerald stood for a few minutes, gazing at the cold surface of the water. Then he took off his coat, wrapped it round a large stone, and flung it into the lake. It sank, and the wavelets caused by its falling came rippling to the margin.
He sat down until the last wavelet had spent itself. The wind drove them fast to the shore. Then he rose, clasped his hands, peered down into the deep black water, and——