“Thank you very much. I have no doubt it will be extremely interesting. And when do you leave?”
“The day after to-morrow. I shall spend a day or two in London, and possibly a week or a fortnight in Paris. Indeed, I have some notion of paying a flying visit to Berlin.”
That afternoon, as the vicar returned home, he paused by a pool in one of the fields that skirted the high-road, and flung his revolver into it.
“Can it be possible,” he asked himself, “that man has no volition, no independence of action; that his choice of life or death even is not a choice, but a predetermined issue of mechanical forces?” He watched the ripples die away on the water, and then resumed his way.
“Are we mere automata, accomplishing not our own wills, but the secret purpose of a subtle agency, of whose control we are unconscious?”
Gradually the problem which perplexed him gave place to another wave of thought. His step became firmer and more elastic, and his face brightened.
The thought which effected this change in his demeanour was Mr. Haldane’s departure. What might not happen in those few days of absence? Was not Mr. Haldane also accomplishing an unknown, destiny? Might not this journey be providential? Or say, rather an unanticipated road to the great end? Suppose Mr. Haldane should never return!
The possibilities involved in that reflection!
Then he thought of Mrs. Haldane. For a week, perhaps for a fortnight, she would be alone at the Manor. For a fortnight? Who could foretell—perhaps for ever!