He was wretched, entirely wretched, and even the soft warm tongue of Democritus against his hand was of no smallest comfort to him.
He looked at the bundle on the ground beside him. It contained his manuscript, fair, complete but for the title and signature and the dedication should he choose to give it one. It brought him no atom of pleasure; it appeared to him worthless, a thing of false sentiment, talking of high courage, of nobility of thought, which in reality vanished like a pricked air-bubble the moment the finger of fact was laid upon it.
How in the name of fortune had he kept his [Pg 266]spirits buoyed up all these years? And why in Heaven’s name had the buoyancy suddenly deserted him? Peter turned about in his mind for a solution of the problem. Presently he found it. It came with something like a shock. He was older, that was the reason. Close on six years had rolled over his head since the day he had surrendered all for an extravagant notion. It is the young, Peter reflected sagely, who take their all and throw it with both hands on the altar of sacrifice. They do not realize—how should they in their youthful optimism?—what they are giving up. They have never known monotony, the grey years that roll by with nothing in heaven or earth to break their dulness.
“Something will happen to make up to us,” they cry. But—so Peter reflected from the wisdom of his present vast age (he was two-and-thirty be it stated)—nothing does happen. We burn our all heroically, and then are surprised to find that there is no life in the grey ashes left to us. His optimism had gone, vanished, and nothing but a deep pessimism remained to him.
“It’s no use, Democritus,” he said, as with tongue and wagging tail the small creature tried [Pg 267]to cheer this terrible mood that had fallen upon his master, “it’s no use. I’ve made a mull of things, and perhaps it’s just as well to know when I am beaten. And yet if——”
Unpleasant little word, which so often prefaces all the joys that might have been and are not.
Bear with Peter in his present mood. The marvel is it had never fallen upon him before, and that it had not must be accounted for by the fact that youth, health, and what had appeared as indomitable good spirits were all in his favour.
It is useless, however, to dwell on his misery. Picture him, if you will, as wretched as man well could be. He was, after all, only human, and up till now he had fought his fight bravely.
He slept little throughout the night. About midnight the wind dropped suddenly, and by the light of a candle he saw snowflakes falling through the hole in the roof. He was trying to console himself with Conard’s life of Beethoven, which he had purchased; but with the remembrance of the woman who had recommended him to read it before his mind, the consolation was not overgreat.
Towards morning he fell into a fitful slumber which lasted till dawn. Then he awakened, roused himself, yawned and stretched. The memory of his mood of the previous night recurred to his mind. He felt suddenly ashamed, though there had been none but his own soul and Democritus to witness it. Courage, high-handed, sprang again within him. He flung last night’s mood behind him, and brave-eyed faced the future. And with what is to follow it is good to think that he did so.