Not knowing what else to do, Lord Arleigh resolved to go to Scotland for
the shooting; there was a sort of savage satisfaction in the idea of
living so many weeks alone, without on-lookers, where he could be dull
if he liked without comment--where he could lie for hours together on
the heather looking up at the blue skies, and puzzling over the problem
of his life--where, when the fit of despair seized him, he could indulge
in it, and no one wonder at him. He hired a shooting-lodge called
Glaburn. In his present state of mind it seemed to him to be a relief to
live where he could not even see a woman's face. Glaburn was kept in
order by two men, who mismanaged it after the fashion of men, but Lord
Arleigh was happier there than he had been since his fatal marriage-day,
simply because he was quite alone. If he spent more time in lying on the
heather and thinking of Madaline than he did in shooting, that was his
own concern--there was no one to interfere.
One day, when he was in one of his most despairing moods, he went out
quite early in the morning, determined to wander the day through, to
exhaust himself pitilessly with fatigue, and then see if he could not
rest without dreaming of Madaline. But as he wandered east and west,
knowing little and caring less, whither he went, a violent storm, such
as breaks at times over the Scottish moors, overtook him. The sky grew
dark as night, the rain fell in a torrent--blinding, thick, heavy--he
could hardly see his hand before him. He wandered on for hours, wet
through, weary, cold, yet rather rejoicing than otherwise in his
fatigue. Presently hunger was added to fatigue; and then the matter
became more serious--he had no hope of being able to find his way home,
for he had no idea in what direction he had strayed.
At last he grew alarmed; life did not hold much for him, it was true,
but he had no desire to die on those lonely wilds, without a human being
near him. Then it became painful for him to walk; his fatigue was so
great that his limbs ached at every step. He began to think his life was
drawing near its close. Once or twice he had cried "Madaline" aloud and
the name seemed to die away on the sobbing wind.
He grew exhausted at last; for some hours he had struggled on in the
face of the tempest.
"I shall have to lie down like a dog by the road-side and die," he
thought to himself.
No other fate seemed to be before him but that, and he told himself that
after all he had sold his life cheaply. "Found dead on the Scotch
moors," would be the verdict about him.
What would the world say? What would his golden-haired darling say when
she heard that he was dead?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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