The test of a man’s temperament is the way in which he manages himself under trouble. Legard had managed himself in solitude. A hundred times in those ten months he had been impelled to seek distraction in society, dissipation, excitement—to try and forget, for it was his nature to fly from pain; but something in him had always revolted at the last moment, and he had shrunk back. He had, deeply rooted, the feeling that if he even tried to rid himself of his suffering and his desolation, he would lose loyalty, the one thing which remained to him. If he gave that up, he felt that he must go under—irretrievably under. It was not choice so much as instinct that compelled him to hold on to his bitter, regretful longing; and with his grip fast on that plank, he felt his head still above water. Of the memory of his wife’s death he tried not to be mindful. At times a sudden spasm of self-loathing and of superstitious horror caught him, as it were, by the throat, but there was a certain gravity in his mind which helped him—the ballast of his own egotism, his matter-of-fact conviction of the futility of regret, and his feeling for what was of use in the future. That same feeling of loyalty, to which he clung so tenaciously, blunted, even at times negatived, the bite of remorse. It became a sort of painful pleasure to him to reason the thing out with a grim analysis. The evil did not seem to him to lie in the wrong he had done to the woman he loved, nor in the guilty inaction by which he had sought to repair that wrong, it lay further back, in the fibre of his own nature and the infirmity of his will—he felt that he had suffered for it, was always suffering. If repentance be suffering—he repented; if it be knowledge of self—he repented, for he was getting to know his own limitations as he had never known them before; but if it be that feeling which says, “Give me the past again, that I may act otherwise!” he did not repent, for he was not sure that he would act differently. The thing was over and done with, he had behaved like a coward and a scoundrel, but regret was of no use—he looked to the future, to the time, if it ever came, when he should see Jocelyn again; and in long reveries over smoky camp fires, on the decks of ships under starry skies, beneath the burning sun of the desert, and the unfallen snow-clouds of mountains, his face became gradually and indelibly stamped with that drawn expression of constraint. He had wandered about unceasingly, in the Austrian highlands, in Turkey, Algeria, Spain, anywhere, indeed, where he could get hard physical exertion, and be unlikely to meet people. He would have gone to the East, or to South Africa, but he would not put himself out of reach of his letters. Time would surely have done more for him, if he would have cut himself completely adrift, but he would not. Every month he received a letter from Jocelyn; it was never anything but a bare record of doings, smelling of violets, scanty and formal, and very precious to him. It began without any prefix, ended simply “Jocelyn”—it would be hard to say the amount of comfort he derived from that solitary and dumb confession of a link between them....
At this moment, as he strode across and across the jetty gnawing his moustache, the cigar, still unlit, between his fingers, he was waiting for Jacopo’s return from the post-office. It was nine weeks since he had received a letter, and even he had not realised how much they meant to him, till they had ceased to come. He had put off the day of his return to the coast, in sheer dread of not getting one, and now he had not had the courage to go and see for himself. He felt sick with suspense. He threw away his cigar unsmoked. Two seagulls swooped on it, shrieking discordantly. A faint, muffled sound of voices came down to him from a group of men and women at the far end of the jetty, and the salt wind fanned his cheek gently. He gazed towards the shore, where the world seemed to stand still in hot, hard lines.
A figure presently detached itself at the end of the jetty, and came towards him. He recognised Jacopo by his light clothes and wide-brimmed hat, and by the dog with him.
He forced himself to stand still and wait, his hands crossed behind his back, his limbs and every feature of his face quivering with the strain of repression. He was thinking: supposing there were no letter!—what then? There must be one!
Jacopo was walking fast. In the same breath he seemed to Giles to be years arriving, and to come with the swiftness of a wind. When he was within fifty yards the boy’s hand went to his pocket, and the dog, breaking from him, ran to his master and thrust his pointed nose up against his legs.
In spite of himself he turned away, grasped the jetty rail hard, and stood, looking, with eyes that saw nothing, at the horizon.
Jacopo came up to him, cool and silent.
“Well?” said Giles without turning.
“There are letters, Signore—three.”
Still leaning over the rail, Legard put out his hand, his fingers closed on the letters, and he said—