Love stories; New York (N.Y.) -- History -- 1775-1865 -- Fiction
But Rem's sleep was the sleep of pure matter; his soul never knew the
expansion and enlightenment and discipline of the oracles that speak in
darkness. The winged dreams had no message or comfort for him, and he
took no counsel from his pillow. His sleep was the sleep of tired flesh
and blood, and heavy as lead. But the waking from such sleep--if there
is trouble to meet--is like being awakened with a blow. He leaped to
his feet, and the thought of his loss and the shame of it, and the
horror of the dishonourable thing he had done, assailed him with a
brutal force and swiftness. He was stunned by the suddenness and the
inexorable character of his trouble. And he told himself it was "best
to run away from what he could not fight." He had no fear of Hyde's
interference so early in the morning, and once in Boston all attacks
would lose much of their hostile virulence, by the mere influence of
distance. He knew these were cowardly thoughts, but when a man knows he
is in the wrong, he does not challenge his thoughts, he excuses them.
And as soon as he was well on the road to Boston, he even began to
assume that Hyde, full of the glory of his new position, would
doubtless be well disposed to let all old affairs drop quietly "and if
so," he mused, "Cornelia will not be so dainty, and I may get 'Yes'
where I got 'No.'"
He was of course arguing from altogether wrong premises, for Hyde at
that hour was unconscious of his new dignity, and if he had been aware
of it, would have been indifferent to its small honour. He had spent a
miserable night, and a sense of almost intolerable desertion and injury
awoke with him. His soul had been in desolate places, wandering in
immense woods, vaguely apprehended as stretches of time before this
life. He had called the lost Cornelia through all their loneliness, and
answers faint as the faintest echo, had come back to that sense of
spiritual hearing attuned in other worlds than this. But sad as such
experience was, the sole effort had strengthened him. He was indeed in
better case mentally than physically.
"I must get into the fresh air," he said. "I am faint and weak. I must
have movement. I must see my mother. I will tell her everything." Then
he went to his mirror, and looked with a grim smile at its reflection.
"I have the face of a lover kicked out of doors," he continued
scornfully. He took but small pains with his toilet, and calling for
some breakfast sat down to eat it. Then for the first time in his life,
he was conscious of that soul sickness which turns from all physical
comfort; and of that singular obstruction in the throat which is the
heart's sob, and which would not suffer him to swallow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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