Kitabı oku: «Dorrien of Cranston», sayfa 19
Chapter Thirty Six.
The Sword
Although the neighbourhood had by this time got thoroughly accustomed to the new state of things at Cranston, and had voted it a great improvement on the old, yet the said vicinity was unanimous in its opinion that the General’s successor was decidedly queer.
True, a man in his position should be popular and not eccentric, but then, there were extenuating circumstances. If the county was not so much entertained at Cranston Hall as it deemed it had a right to expect, at any rate open house was kept periodically; and, as all things are relative, the contrast between even this and the inhospitality which characterised the late General’s tenure, told to tenfold advantage. Another claim had Roland Dorrien upon the indulgence of the neighbourhood. He had taken his wife from among the daughters of the land. No stranger to them and theirs had he brought into their midst, but one whom they had seen grow up among them, and right nobly did she grace her far from unimportant, and at first rather trying, position. So, taking all things into account, the neighbourhood was inclined to congratulate itself on the acquisition of a new lord for Cranston, and to look with indulgent eyes upon his moods and vagaries.
And these were multifold. Though not of a hilarious disposition, yet there were times when he would yield himself up to the excitement of the hour with an unthinking abandon which made even the youngest and liveliest of his guests stare, and then, while they were wondering with an agreeable surprise how it was that they had never suspected Dorrien of having so much in him, the mercury would fall with alarming suddenness, and he would relapse into a moody taciturnity, for which there was no accounting. Sometimes, too, those staying at Cranston never saw their host for days at a time, except at meals, and these he seemed to get through in a half-absent kind of way, answering in monosyllables if appealed to, but never originating a remark. In his normal frame of mind, however, Roland Dorrien struck his acquaintance as somewhat cold and uncomfortably reticent, but as a peculiarly keen-witted and observant man.
For a long time he had steadfastly refused to be placed on the Commission of the Peace, and his old friend, Colonel Neville, had waxed very sore and disappointed thereat. For Dorrien of Cranston not to have his place among the judicial luminaries adorning the Wandsborough Bench was, in the gallant veteran’s eyes, a thing simply unheard of in the annals of the county. Why, it was tantamount to a prediction of the family downfall. But Roland had stood firm, and the Colonel had taken the matter quite seriously to heart. Then all of a sudden, just as his friends had given up trying to persuade him, he had, of his own accord, expressed his willingness to serve, and the Colonel was overjoyed. But from the day of his appointment up till now he had only taken his seat on the bench three times, and then, either by accident or design, when there was a peculiarly light list of cases for adjudication. Moreover, his voice had been strenuously raised on the side of mercy, to the no small astonishment of those who had ever been wont to look upon his name as a convertible term for unbending severity. “A hard Dorrien” was how inferiors and dependents had been wont to speak of the heads of the family.
“I don’t think it exactly my line in life,” he observed to Mr Curtis, the vicar of Cranston, in reply to that worthy’s expostulation with him for his scant attendance at Petty Sessions, “to sit in judgment on a lot of poor devils who knock over a rabbit when they’re half-starving. It doesn’t seem a very ennobling kind of office to fill, does it?”
“That’s all very well, Mr Dorrien,” had replied the vicar, who was a zealous attendant at the Wandsborough Bench, and not a little proud of his connection therewith. “But birth and station have their duties, you must remember, and if those who by virtue of these advantages are appointed to ‘execute justice and maintain truth’ shrink from their responsibilities, why, it will soon be a bad thing for the country. For what is the country to do?”
“Pay some fellow – one of the Great Unbriefed, for instance – to perform these onerous duties,” was the reply, with a careless laugh, not wholly free from satire. “Plenty of sharp fellows in these hard times would jump at the billet, any one of whom would be quite as competent as we are collectively to fine Bill Gubbins ten shillings and costs for driving a horse and cart down the street when drunk and incapable, or to decide whether John Hodge or Tom Podge shall be adjudged to contribute towards the maintenance of Sarah Timms’ latest hopeful. At any rate it doesn’t strike me that the discharge of these elevating duties should be monopolised by ‘birth and station.’”
To which the vicar, a fine, hard-headed Tory of the old school, had replied severely, that he feared his friend had become imbued with some of the Radical tendencies of the day.
Roland’s eccentricities, too, had their religious side. For weeks he would never go near a church, then he would rise in the dark, three or four times a week, mount his horse and ride over to the morning office at Wandsborough church, and the little congregation assembled in the side chapel, whose gloom was hardly dispersed by the altar tapers’ soft glow, while the rain poured down upon the roof, would be astonished by a tall figure, gaitered and mud-besplashed, suddenly arriving in its midst, perhaps, just as Dr Ingelow and his acolyte were reciting the Nicene Creed. On the subject of these pilgrimages he let drop no word to anybody, not even to his wife, turning the conversation if she alluded to them; and this, with ready tact, after the first time, she never did, in having recorded which fact, by the way, we have testified volumes to Olive’s advantage. Nevertheless, she rejoiced with a great secret joy. But Wandsborough regarded these proceedings on the part of the Squire of Cranston with undivided curiosity, but diverse feelings, and the advanced Anglicans congratulated themselves mightily on the acquisition of so influential and important a convert.
Various theories, too, were advanced to account for Roland Dorrien’s eccentricities. Some went so far as darkly to whisper that there was madness in the family. There was the late General, for instance. Look how he shut himself up and never entertained, and was always gloomy and morose, and quarrelled with everybody, his own flesh and blood included. Then, to go further back, there was the General’s brother, the former Squire, an old bachelor and most queer in his ways. And now this one – at his age, and in his fortunate circumstances, a man ought not to look and act as if life was one great and protracted mistake. A few, more charitably disposed and more superstitious withal, scouted the mania theory, but declared that the present race of Dorriens must be under a curse. At any rate, it was not a little singular that two out of the three sons had met with an untimely and tragical death, and now, no doubt, the thought of it preyed upon the mind of the surviving one. But whatever it was, it must be a very serious thing, for there could be few more enviable positions and calculated to produce happiness, as the world understands it, than that of Dorrien of Cranston. On this point the neighbourhood was thoroughly agreed.
And the neighbourhood, looking at things from its own light, argued rightly. In the full health and vigour of his manhood, possessed of one of the most beautiful seats in England, its splendid domain absolutely unencumbered, a lovely wife, who adored him – if there is such a thing as happiness in the world, assuredly Roland Dorrien should have been a happy man. Yet he was not.
As we have seen, no compunction followed upon his crime – no remorse – no fear of detection and of the awful penalty which, in the event of detection, he would be called upon to pay. He was then so overwhelmed beneath the blows of Fate, that one more or less could make no difference in the wretched hopelessness of his lot. His conscience was seared past all feeling.
Then had come the change, and from a living death a single day had sufficed to restore him to the joys of life in more than all their fulness – their sweetness, beyond measure, enhanced by the black period which had gone before. He had stretched forth his hand and grasped them, he had hastened to pluck for his own this fair flower which had languished and grown beyond his reach, and in gathering it he had filled, as he thought, his cup of bliss to the very brim. Secure in the love of his beautiful wife, prosperous in his splendid possessions, what could this one crime of a troublous past avail against him?
But with prosperity his heart grew soft again, and with it the voice of compunction made itself heard – at first, but faintly, and only at long intervals. Then, little by little, the haunting vision of a face in its agony of death-terror stole across the unclouded brightness of his life, and Time, which in its course blurs over all recollections as it rolls on, only served to bring out this one more vividly. In the dead of night would that face be staring at him, in the golden hours of the bright and peaceful day, that awful, agonised gasp would sound in his ears as he heard it on the brink of the abyss; and as the horror of this ever-brooding cloud across his sunshine swept full upon him with a weird and supernatural, yet none the less real a consciousness, a dejection settled down upon his mind, which, if allowed to grow apace, might end in the most disastrous of results.
And Olive – did she ever regret the step which had linked her lot to his, burdened as it was with a secret grief in which she had no share? Never, for the fraction of a moment. Always brave, loving, and patient, she strove to lighten his load. Even when suffering from a temporary depression of spirits herself, she would brace herself with an effort and cast care away in order that she might cheer him. She studied his moods, and when in her clear-sightedness she saw the dark hour about to come upon him, any sacrifice of her own comfort and convenience did she deem of small account if only she could keep up his spirits and lift him out of himself. And she had her reward. Never was he so happy as when alone with her – and as amid the night horrors of the fatal cave, with the wild waters surging around them, he had found refuge in her slumbering innocence and purity from the supernatural terrors which came crowding in, thick and fast, upon his soul, so now, in his dark and conscience-stricken moods, hers was the image that caused the evil spirit to fly; her tones, the music that rendered his ears deaf to the accusing voice; hers the protecting presence, beneath the weight of the ever-threatening cloud which he felt would sooner or later descend upon him and overwhelm him in his doom.
Yet why should it? No human eye witnessed that moonlight tragedy. Already the circumstances had faded into past history; nor at the time had any suspicion of violence arisen to fix people’s memory. But for all that, Roland was as firmly convinced that sooner or later the reckoning would overtake him, as that he himself was a living man, and when it did, he had little enough doubt as to the issue. And now, as we see him once more after two years, that crisis seems to him within measurable distance.
Chapter Thirty Seven.
Eustace Outflanked
General Dorrien’s widow occupied a semi-detached villa in Maida Vale. She had, as we have seen, persistently and even fiercely refused her son’s repeated offers of a settlement, liberal and freely made as they were, preferring to live on her own not very ample means to accepting a penny from him whom, without a shred of evidence to justify her in the idea, she persisted in regarding as responsible for his brother’s death. The difference in her mode of living was a trifle, she declared. At Cranston, they had always lived very quietly, so it was in no sense a “come-down.” Poor Nellie, however, had felt the change acutely, and although she tried dutifully to make the best of it, the exclusive society of a gloomy parent told upon her spirits, and the smoke-defiled air of suburban London was a poor substitute for the strong ozone of the sea. Consequently, the girl became seriously ailing, and there was nothing for it but to send her away for a change.
It was some time, however, before the widow would allow her to accept Roland’s invitation, and it was not until he threatened to go in person and bring her away by force that her mother, whom misfortune had not rendered one whit less selfish and exacting, reluctantly gave way. So Nellie returned for a long stay at her old home, and was made much of by her brother and his wife, under which bright auspices her spirits came back like magic, and day after day she wondered the more how they could all find themselves so thoroughly happy where, before, gloom and restraint, jars and wrangles, had been the order of the day. Why, she could hardly believe it was Cranston, and Olive’s warning had weight – that she must not get well and strong too quickly, or her mother would be wanting her back again.
And this warning was very urgently seconded by a certain recently-gazetted subaltern, who seemed to divide the time of his leave exclusively between the Rectory and Cranston Hall, the latter receiving by far the lion’s share. In short, Eustace made the most of his opportunities, to the satisfaction of both parties. There was a third party to be reckoned with, though, and one into whose scheme satisfaction did not enter. This was Nellie’s mother.
The widow was furious when the subject was broached to her. Never as long as she lived would she listen to any such preposterous idea. The very name of Ingelow was repulsive to her; had not that detestable family wrought mischief – not to say crime – enough? Poor Nellie was ordered home at once; and, not content with giving Roland a most unambiguous bit of her mind, Mrs Dorrien, senior, extended the attention to Dr Ingelow, who for his part consigned the vituperative document to the flames, mostly unread. But Roland, chucking his jobation across the table to Olive, laughed sneeringly at the pious quotations, alternating line by line with vehement abuse.
“Ha-ha! Honour our parents, indeed! No, no. That string’s played through, Mrs General Dorrien.”
He was for keeping Nellie at Cranston altogether, but apart from the objections of the girl herself – who, in spite of everything, refused to leave her mother, now that the latter was all alone – the rector strongly objected to his son being a party to such desertion. They must wait and have patience. It was only a question of time, and both were young. A little self-denial and consideration, even for one bitterly hostile, would do them no harm – in fact, they could not but be the gainers by it in the long run. Thus the good old man. But his son-in-law was not of this way of thinking; however, he yielded the point.
Then Eustace, deserted by his supports, resolved upon a bold venture – nothing less than an advance upon the enemy’s camp under cover of a flag of truce. The widow received him, but to the end of his life the youthful warrior was sure he would retain a very lively recollection of the interview, though a confused idea of what was said in the course thereof. As he remarked to his sister, Sophie, when reporting progress – “Sweet relative – future mamma-in-law? Blackguarded a fellow without a break for twenty-five minutes by the clock, and then, before he could get in a word edgeways, turfed him out into the street. Take my word for it, Sophonisba, my jewel, I wouldn’t tackle that same ancient and formidable party again – no, not for all the V.C.s ever struck.”
Left to her retirement, the General’s widow did two things, neither of which tended to her own peace of mind nor to the happiness of her daughter. She went in strongly for the Gospel according to Calvin, and she cherished and fed her grief for the loss of her idolised son. Her crapes were as heavy as in the first month of her widowhood, and no little awe did the stern and gloomy countenance, and the tall figure swathed in deepest black, inspire among the elect of the flock shepherded by the noted evangelical luminary whom Mrs Dorrien had elected to “sit under.” She lived alone with her daughter, visiting, and being visited by, nobody, in order that she might more freely brood and indulge her grief. She suffered terrible anguish at times, yet looked upon her loss in the light of a judgment, and while admitting the justice of it as concerning herself, yet none the less luridly did her resentment burn against him whom, rightly or wrongly, she regarded as its instrument.
Chapter Thirty Eight.
“Give me your Confidence.”
It was Monday morning, and a bright and beautiful day. Three people sat at breakfast at Cranston Hall, the third being Frank Marsland, Roy’s quondam purchaser. The wintry sun shone brilliantly in a cloudless sky, though without power, for the hard frost lay in silvery patches, wholly unaffected by his searching beams.
“Do you feel like skating to-day, Marsland?” said Roland, breaking off from the discussion of a grand festival service they had attended at Wandsborough Church the night before, and as to the detail of which the guest had been seeking information from Olive.
“I should think so. Ice good, eh, Dorrien?”
“First-rate. I had it flooded last night, and it’ll be like glass.”
A sound of voices in the hall, then the door opened without ceremony, and there entered Eustace and his youngest sister, each armed with a pair of skates.
“Salve! All hail, Macbeth! Glorificamus, all round!” cried the former. “Roland, old chap, you don’t seem quite the thing. In the words of the poet, you look decidedly ‘chippy.’”
“Enough to make one, you ruffian, to have a cyclone like yourself bursting upon one’s quiet breakfast-room without any warning.”
“Haw! haw! Coffee, yes, decidedly. Breakfast? no – emphatically,” cried Eustace, running two replies into one. “And, Olive, I must say, it’s disgraceful of you, reared in the sweet seclusion of a virtuous rectory, only just sitting down to breakfast at ten o’clock. Disgraceful, I repeat.”
“Oh, Eusty, in the words of the poet – shut up!” laughed Olive. “Mr Marsland, I don’t think you’ve met my sister?” And she introduced them. Sophie had grown up a very pretty girl. Her vivacity, however, was dashed with a tinge of shyness in the company of strangers, which was rather “fetching.” Now she looked very engaging in her furry winter costume, her bright face sparkling with animation, and crowned by a becoming arrangement of golden hair. Marsland’s somewhat susceptible heart was impressed.
“No. But I think we should have broken the ice, anyhow, Mrs Dorrien,” he answered with a laugh.
“Break the ice? No you don’t,” cried the irrepressible Eustace. “At least not till this evening, when we flood it. And now, look sharp and finish the oats, good people, for we’ve come to pick you up, and Spelder Fields is over two miles off.”
“All right. I’ll send and order the waggonette,” said Roland, getting up.
“Waggonette be hanged!” was the ceremonious rejoinder. “We are going to ride Shanks His Mare. And I tell you what, Roland, you lazy dog, you had better do ditto. Some leg work, this gorgeous morning, will do you all the good in the world. Quite set you up again,” he grinned, with a wink at Marsland.
“Set me up, eh? But I turned in before you did!”
“Did he, Olive? No, I won’t bet. I’ll have no chance against your combined perjuries. But Roland, why didn’t you turn up at our place last night and feed, instead of sneaking off home. The dad was expecting you. He wanted to run you against that great gun, Hurrell, the padre who held forth. Wasn’t he lively, eh?”
“Eusty, you irreverent boy, don’t talk shop,” said Olive impatiently.
“All serene. We had a regular sacerdotal feed though, with the dad in the chair and Margaret in the vice-chair. Concerning whom, old Crustibore, the ex-archdeacon of Seringapatam, who’s stone deaf and takes snuff, remarked to his neighbour in a strident stage-whisper what a young-looking woman ‘Mrs Ingelow’ was, to be the mother of that dashing fellow opposite. I thought the dad would have choked. As for me I roared outright, but I took care to look in another direction, so it didn’t matter.”
“It wasn’t ‘dashing fellow’ at all, Olive,” struck in Sophie. “What Dr Crustibore really said was ‘that lanky rascal.’”
All shouted, except Eustace, who affected to regard the interruption as unworthy of notice.
“Yes,” he went on. “It’s a pity you weren’t there to keep Sophie in order. She behaved disgracefully, the more so that ‘great was the company of the preachers.’”
“Ah! I’ve been waiting for that quotation,” cried Sophie, sharp as a needle. “Olive, he made use of it about twenty times last night – went all round the room planting it everywhere. I heard it myself at least ten times, and knowing Eusty as we do, it’s safe to put the total figure at twenty. And now he’s transplanted it here. I knew he would. Dragged it in by the head and shoulders, too – literally.”
“Twenty times! Say a hundred while you’re about it.”
“It was twenty at least. Why, Margaret heard him three times, and scowled at him for a profane person.”
“Who hadn’t got any ‘birthright’ to sell,” cut in Eustace. “But you should have heard that child. She got in among a knot of those doleful chaps, all neck and spectacles, regular gargoyles, you know, and played the very mischief. You know that lank chap, Berriman, who brought out those asinine articles on celibacy. Well, she soon worked round to that topic, and made of it a peg whereon to hang such a jobation, that they stared at her in horrified amaze, and scattered as if a shell had dropped in among them. You see, she spoke feelingly. That sort of doctrine tends to spoil trade.”
“Pooh! None of your gargoyles for me,” laughed Sophie.
“No. Nothing less than a gay Hussar will suit her,” rejoined Eustace. “There are two in the regiment that’ll be just the thing – both much of a muchness. I’m going to bring them over next time I get leave, and then, O Sophonisba, my child, you can smile on the survivor.”
“No,” retorted the girl mischievously. “I don’t like soldiers – cavalrymen least of all. Civilians are much nicer. Look at Roland, for instance. He doesn’t tire one with a lot of third-hand chaff.”
“Oh, come! I say, Olive, do you allow that?” cried the irrepressible subaltern. “In view of the approximate passing of the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Bill, I call upon you to quell such sentiments, and to repudiate their enunciator – trix, rather.”
The ice at Spelder Fields was in fine order. It was a large, flooded meadow on one of the Cranston farms, and although the Squire could have kept it closed to the public, that course would have roused such an amount of ill-feeling as to render the experiment not worth while, for it had been used from time immemorial. It was the rule, however, that anything tending to spoil the ice should be rigorously excluded, and elides were strictly taboo, while any approach to yahooism was promptly nipped in the bud. As the townspeople could not turn out till evening, during the daytime the privileged few had things all their own way.
We shall not, however, follow our party throughout the day. Be it briefly recorded, however, that Marsland surrendered at discretion to Sophie’s blue eyes and golden hair, and fresh, bewitching ways, and constituted himself her guide, philosopher and friend, and fetch-and-carry generally, through the uncertain and mazy evolutions of the ice – and how Eustace poured out the vials of his exuberant chaff upon them and upon everybody, and notably upon a brace of shaven and spectacled young clerics, who rather fancied themselves on skates, and, with singular unanimity of intent, were bent on imbuing Sophie with the same idea, but that our friend Marsland sailed in and cut out the prize from under their guns, apparently with the full approval of the prize itself.
“Time to knock off and give King Mob his innings,” cried Roland, whirling up to the bank and casting himself thereon.
“Oh, hang it, old man! Isn’t it rather soon?” objected Marsland, who, hand-in-hand with a certain blue-eyed young lady, glided by just in time to catch the suggestion.
“Rather soon! I should think it was!” echoed Sophie.
“I think Mr Dorrien’s right,” said Clara Neville, who had just been taking a turn or two round the ice with the first speaker. “It’s disagreeable being here when the place is full of rough people. Besides, it’s getting late.”
Ill-natured friends were wont to whisper that the fair Clara was getting somewhat passée and soured, and that the qualifications of the future aspirant to Ardleigh Court would not be so narrowly scrutinised now as of yore. But the answer to this libel was that she had refused two very good offers and one indifferent one. Her sister, Maud, was married, and Clara was left alone in the ancestral halls. And now she had made up her mind to smile favourably on Frank Marsland, who had on a former occasion or two begun to show her attention, when again that detestable Rectory furnished a thorn for her side. That chit of a girl had upset the plan, even as her sister had done years before. Poor Clara had not enjoyed her day.
“Er – Dorrien – if you don’t mind, I think we – er – I – will have half an hour more of it,” stammered Marsland. “Miss Sophie says she’d rather walk back – er – and I’ll see her safe home.”
“All right, Marsland,” replied his host. “Olive dear, do you mind driving back without me? You can take Margaret in the waggonette.” He had taken off his skates, and was standing with one foot on the step of the vehicle, wherein sat his wife, wrapped in furs, and looking very sweet in the crisp, frosty air. “Your father and I are going to walk. Oh, and by the way, he says they all can go straight back with us to dinner, so you’d better go on ahead and arrange accordingly.”
“Very well, dear. But I quite envy you your lovely walk.”
“Not a few quite envy me my lovely something else,” he replied meaningly.
“What? Oh, you dear old goose!” she laughed, blushing at the delicate compliment, her dark eyes flashing at him a bright glance of affection. “Now go and find Margaret – there she is, just coming off the ice – and then we’ll go.”
“Well, Roland, my boy, this sort of thing makes a man feel young again,” said the rector, as they began to step cut briskly on their homeward way. The sun had gone down, and the bare trees stood against the cloudless sky in delicate tracery, as in a steel engraving. The dead leaves crackled underfoot, and behind them the ring of the skates on the ice, and the voices and laughter of the skaters grew fainter and fainter.
“I suppose it does,” answered the other shortly, with a glance around as if to make sure that no one was within earshot. Then after a pause —
“Look. From where we now stand, it will take us the best part of an hour to walk home – I can call it home now – and the Hall is nearly in the centre of the estate. Well, all this I gave up of my own free will – flung it away with both hands. For what? For love. But even that which I had bought at the price of my birthright, was snatched from me not many hours after its purchase, for the very day after I had done this I learned that I was a ruined man.”
“My dear boy, I can never blame myself enough for my short-sightedness in that wretched business,” cried the old man in a distressed voice, letting his hand fall affectionately on the other’s shoulder.
“There is no question of blame in the matter,” went on Roland, speaking quickly and decisively. “And now, do you ever regret that things turned out as they did? Have you ever had during this year and a half which has passed since you gave Olive to me – any reason for misgivings as to her future?”
“Never, Roland – never! Not for a moment! You have been as a dear son to me, and my other children look upon you as a brother, indeed.”
Again there was a pause. The rector, understanding well that these questions were leading to something, refrained from interposing.
“Well – now I ask – could anything that might happen – that might come to light, rather – cause you to entertain such misgivings now?”
It was the rector’s turn to hesitate. Whither was the conversation drifting? His mind reverted to the rumours current in Wandsborough shortly after Roland’s disappearance, and his brow slightly clouded. Before he could reply Roland struck in.
“I know what you are thinking of. I solemnly assure you again, that those rumours were absolutely false. Whatever might happen would affect myself alone. On Olive’s account you need feel no anxiety whatever.”
“That is all I was hesitating about, Roland. And now, my dear boy, if you feel that you can give me your confidence, it may be that you will have no cause to regret it.”
The younger man made no immediate reply. If ever there were time and place for confidence, it was here, in the sweet and peaceful quiet of the evening, the moonlight sleeping upon the hill and the bare, leafless woods lying still and ghostly against the slopes. That confidence he was resolved to make at all costs. No longer could he bear his terrible burden unaided, for a desperate idea had occurred to him. Who could he more certainly trust than his old and revered friend, the rector himself? No man living. But what he shrank from was the possible – nay, probable – loss of intimacy that would result from the avowal. Dr Ingelow was an Anglican priest, but then he was also a father. No word would pass his lips – but would it not hasten his steps to the grave once the old man learned that his daughter’s husband was a murderer, a man whose life would be forfeit for the rest of his days? And how should he meet a murderer on terms of friendship from day to day? To Roland, circumstanced as he was, there seemed a strange, subtle, protecting influence in the cordial intimacy existing between himself and the old priest, and he dreaded to cut away this sheet-anchor with his own hand. So this idea had slipped from him in despair, and he seemed as one hopelessly drifting.
