‘It needn’t anyhow. I only want to leave the small real property I have
to Miss Osborne, and the still smaller-personal property to yourself.’
He laughed.
‘All right, old boy! I haven’t the slightest objection to your willing
your traps to me, but every objection in the world to your _leaving_
them. To be sure, every man, with anything to leave, ought to make his
will betimes;--so fire away.’
In a little while the draught was finished.
‘I shall have it ready for your signature by to-morrow,’ he said.
I insisted it should be done at once. I was going home, I said. He
yielded. The will was engrossed, signed, and witnessed that same
morning; and in the afternoon I set out, the first part of the journey
by rail, for the Moat.
CHAPTER LVII.
ANOTHER DREAM.
The excitement of having something to do had helped me over the
morning, and the pleasure of thinking of what I had done helped me
through half the journey; but before I reached home I was utterly
exhausted. Then I had to drive round by the farm, and knock up Mrs
Herbert and Styles.
I could not bear the thought of my own room, and ordered a fire in my
grandmother’s, where they soon got me into bed. All I remember of that
night is the following dream.
I found myself at the entrance of the ice-cave. A burning sun beat on
my head, and at my feet flowed the brook which gathered its life from
the decay of the ice. I stooped to drink; but, cool to the eye and hand
and lips, it yet burned me within like fire. I would seek shelter from
the sun inside the cave. I entered, and knew that the cold was all
around me; I even felt it; but somehow it did not enter into me. My
brain, my very bones, burned with fire. I went in and in. The blue
atmosphere closed around me, and the colour entered into my soul till
it seemed dyed with the potent blue. My very being swam and floated in
a blue atmosphere of its own. My intention--I can recall it
perfectly--was but to walk to the end, a few yards, then turn and again
brave the sun; for I had a dim feeling of forsaking my work, of playing
truant, or of being cowardly in thus avoiding the heat. Something else
too was wrong, but I could not clearly tell what. As I went on, I began
to wonder that I had not come to the end. The gray walls yet rose about
me, and ever the film of dissolution flowed along their glassy faces to
the runnel below; still before me opened the depth of blue atmosphere,
deepening as I went. After many windings, the path began to branch, and
soon I was lost in a labyrinth of passages, of which I knew not why I
should choose one rather than another. It was useless now to think of
returning. Arbitrarily I chose the narrowest way, and still went on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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