The Helpers. Lynde Francis
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Название: The Helpers
Автор: Lynde Francis
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
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"When you were trying to help me this afternoon, I was trying to keep from saying that which I could never have a right to say. You pressed me very hard in your sweet innocence and loving sympathy, – you see, I am quite frank, – and when you finally gave me a chance to make the impossible thing that I longed to say still more impossible, I took it in sheer desperation. Nay, more; I purposed in my heart to so desecrate your gift as to make the thought of my love for you an unhallowed memory.
"That is all, I think, save, when it came to the brink, I found that there was still a deeper depth which was yet unplumbed, and which I trust I shall have the courage to leave unexplored."
When it was finished he wrapped the gold piece in a bit of paper, and, putting it in the envelope with the note, set out to find the house in Colfax Avenue. Having seen it but once, and that in daylight, it was not singular that it eluded him in the night; but it was surely the very irony of chance which led him to slip the envelope under the front door of a house two squares beyond that occupied by the Elliotts, and which kept him from noticing the placard "For Rent" nailed upon the very door under which he thrust his message to Constance.
This single preliminary set in order, he faced once more toward the Highlands, lagging a little from sheer weariness as he went, but finding comfort in the thought that there would be infinite surcease from hunger and exhaustion at the end of this last pilgrimage.
There was time for reflection on the way, and he marvelled that his thoughts dwelt so persistently upon the trivial details of the thing he was about to do. He was a practiced swimmer; would the weight of a single brick be sufficient to overcome the instinct of self-preservation which might assert itself at the last moment? Probably, since he was weak from fasting, and would be encumbered with his clothing. Then another suggestion came to torment him: If he should tie the brick to his feet, as he had thought to, the water might not be deep enough, after all. Consequently, he must fasten it about his neck. And thereupon he had a fit of creeping horror at the thought of drowning with his face dragged down into the ooze and slime of the bottom.
Oddly enough, when he came to the brink of the pool these things ceased to trouble him; though even there it was impossible to turn the current of thought into a reflective channel. He made the effort for decency's sake. It was not meet that a thinking being should go out of life like the brutes that perish; without a thought for the past with its lacks and havings, or the future with its untried possibilities. But the effort returned to him void, and presently he stumbled upon the reason: the premeditated fact of self-murder shut him off alike from repentance for what had gone before, and from hope in what should come after.
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