Ruy lay as he had fallen, and was stiffening in the moonbeams before the chestnut-tree. Two night-crows were busy upon him; his eyes were already gone.
The crows moved uneasily at the sound of footsteps in the narrow lane, but did not rise till a man emerged from the shadow and came towards the tree. Silently the crows flew away into the dark by the copse; there were dots of white, too, now moving among the thistles by the verge of the wood—these were the white tails of rabbits rushing away to their burrows.
Robert Godwin walked straight to the chestnut-tree, and, pausing on the spot where he had thrown Felise, drew from his pocket one of the old flintlock pistols he had so carefully cleaned. Without a moment’s delay, and in the most matter-of-fact manner, he placed the muzzle of the pistol against his breast and touched the trigger. There was a flash as the powder ignited in the pan, but the charge did not explode. At the flash a bird fluttered out from the tree into the night.
Godwin did not hesitate in his fatal purpose because of this accidental reprieve from his own violence. He opened the pan and poured fresh gunpowder into it from some which he carried in a screw of newspaper in his waistcoat-pocket. With a pin he cleaned the touch-hole, and then patiently thrust the grains of powder as well as he could into the aperture, in order that the flame might next time communicate with the charge.
Some time since he had purchased two ounces of loose gunpowder at an ironmonger’s in Maasbury—cheap powder, such as is sold for birdkeepers’ guns; he would not go to the expense of Curtis and Harvey’s diamond-grain. He did not quite know when he bought it whether it was to be used against himself or Martial, or against both.
When he thought he had primed the pistol he closed the pan, again put the muzzle to his breast, and pulled the trigger. The bullet entered his heart and he fell dead; his face struck a bunch of yellow fungi growing in the grass, and lay still there.
XXIX
He had not stayed to look at the stars, or to consider before his deed in the shadow of the chestnut tree. His purpose was death, and he had walked to it straight without looking to the right or to the left. The dim outline of the hills was nothing to him; he had seen in the hills nothing but mounds of chalk in life, why gaze at them on the eve of death? In the years of his life he had never lifted his eyes to the stars except to see if the sky was clear from cloud.
There was no meaning to him in the stars, or in the hills, or in the sea whose long low surge beat the beach beyond them. The idea of immortality had never been grasped, nor the idea of anything beyond the material and tangible. It is questionable whether he had ever grasped even the idea of a gas, as it is invisible—that which he could see and touch was all that Godwin knew.
There are many who repeat words of the like import freely, and have no conception of their meaning any more than veritable parrots.
Godwin was true to himself, and repeated no words the import of which he did not understand.
He had been insane when he attacked Felise; he had been insane when he struggled so violently in the room at Beechknoll; but he was not insane at the moment of his death.
The fit had passed from him, and he saw things clearly. As thunder dispels the heaviness of the atmosphere, so the sultry gloom of his brain had been dispelled by that vehement passage of hate and personal violence. His brooding burst out in uncontrollable action, and immediately afterwards his mind was relieved.
He knew then that the last nine years of his life had been in vain; that he might as well have been dead those nine years; that he might as well have been dead from the very moment he beheld her, and his unattainable love began.
How powerful, and yet how uncontrollable by ourselves, is the influence of our life upon the lives of others! To Robert Godwin the life—the mere existence of Felise had been a terrible fate. For aught you can tell, your existence may be a fate to another—another’s to you.
From that instant he might as well have been dead, for his existence since had merely been an increasing madness of desire for the unattainable.
If anyone could have argued with him and pointed out that however great his trouble now, in time—slow time—the trouble would wear away; in time—slow time—the memory itself would become dull and the vivid impressions fade; that he would come to live again, and to go about his duties as of old—then Robert Godwin would have laughed in derision.
He did not want his trouble to wear away, nor to return to his former self. So deep and so organic was the change produced by inalienable passion that his former condition before it commenced, even in his unhappiness, appeared to him worthless. He would not have returned to it if he could have done so.
The moment he came to himself and saw how hopeless his life had been these nine years past, he was dead. The act had not been committed, but he was dead of intent. He saw that, according to
