He remarked the wide discrepancies between what he had proposed and what
he had accomplished. How insignificant circumstances had effected
momentous results! He saw how, whenever failure and dishonor had
filtered in, it was where weakness, self-indulgence, or untruthfulness,
had left an opening. He saw how one wrong had been a sure and easy path
to another, until in the end he had groveled face downward in the mire.
His mind turned on the two women between whom his path had lain: how
highly he had aimed, and how low he had fallen! How enviable would have
been his fate had he consistently kept to either! for each had been
peerless in her way. How despicable was his position having greedily
grasped at both! And now the one was dying, and the other degraded like
himself. A worthy record that!
One was dying: yes, that he knew, and felt that upon his speed and
resolution did it depend whether in this world he might hope for the
blessing of forgiveness from her lips. The thought urged him on,
like an ever-fretting spur. He butted yet more swiftly into the
darkness and against the reeling snow-flakes, and the road lay in
steadily-lengthening stretches behind him. She was waiting for him--that
he felt--and was striving, with all her kind and loving might, to hold
herself in life until he came. God help him, then, to be there at the
appointed hour!
And Cornelia? Of her he ventured not much to think. She was, perchance,
the key whereby, for her and for himself, this dark riddle should
hereafter be resolved. As Adam might labor for redemption only with his
sin about his neck, so they, out of the fabric woven of their disgrace,
must seek to fashion garments in which worthily to appear at heaven's
gates.
As his mind rambled thus, he came to the outskirts of a long, wooded
tract, which--for the map, as he had seen it at the railway-station, was
clearly marked out in his memory, from the beginning to the end of his
route--he knew was upward of ten miles from his starting-point; and, as
near as he could judge (his watch, lying at the bottom of the
fountain-basin in the Parsonage-garden, had never been replaced), it
must be rather more than half-past nine o'clock. He maintained the same
long, swinging trot, as unfalteringly as ever, though, perhaps, a trifle
less springily than at first. The footing was deep and heavy, the thick
fir-trees having kept the snow from being blown off the road, as in
more exposed situations. Bressant was wet to his skin, for the
temperature had risen, and the flakes melted as fast as they fell. Most
of his glow and vigor remained, however, and he was no whit disheartened
or doubtful. But the sky bent darkly over him, and the tall trees shut
out all but a strip even of the scanty light that came thence. The moon
would not rise for hours yet.