He stopped; the light went out of his eyes. He was once more outwardly his former self.
“That is all. I want you to understand that at the end--if this is the end--I desire to feel towards that old man no thought or feeling of reproach, only of pity for the fatal act of a moment and the long punishment of seventy years--and you, whose ancestor he smote----”
“Only with forgiveness in the name of that ancestor and of pity akin to yours and equal to yours. Come, Leonard: perhaps the end has come already.”
They entered the Park by the broken gate and the ruined Lodge.
“I have been looking for some such call,” said Constance. “This morning I sent you that message. I knew it was a true message, because there fell upon me, quite suddenly, a deep calm. All my anxieties vanished. We have been so torn”--she spoke as if the House was hers as well--“by troubles and forebodings, with such woes and rumours of woes, that when they vanished suddenly and unexpectedly I knew that the time was over.”
“Many women are when they are interested. Oh, Leonard! what a happiness that there is always an end of everything--of sorrow, nay, of joy! There must come--at last--the end, even of Punishment or of Consequence.” She looked up and round. “The evening is so peaceful--look at the glories of the west--it is so peaceful that one cannot believe in storm and hail and frost. It seems to mean, for us, relief--and for him--forgiveness.”
Everything was, indeed, still--there was no sound even of their own footsteps as they walked across the springy turf of the park, and the house when they came within view of it was bathed in the colours of the west, every window flaming with the joy of life instead of the despair of death. Yet within was a dying man.
“Death is coming,” said Constance, “with pardon upon his wings.”
The news that there was a “change”--word meaning much--at the Hall had reached the village. The pride of the people, because no other village in England entertained a recluse who lived by himself in a great house and allowed everything to fall into decay, was to be taken from them. No more would strangers flock over on Sunday mornings from the nearest town and the villages round, to look over the wall at the tall stalwart figure pacing his terrace in all weathers with the regularity of a pendulum. In the village house of call the men assembled early to hear and tell and whisper what they had heard.