He felt about him uneasily the sense of doom. He was in that
exaltation of fancy or dream when faint appeals are half heard far off,
but not by our human ears, and when whatever attempts to pierce the
armour of our mortality appeals to us by wailing and by despairing
sighs. It seemed to him that most unhappy things passed near him in the
air, and that the wood about him was full of sobbing. Then, again, he
felt his own mind within him begin to be occupied by doubtful troubles
worse than these terrors, an anxious straining for ill news, for bitter
and dreadful news, mixed with a confused certitude that such news had
come indeed, disturbed and haunted him; and all the while about him in
that stillness the rushing of unhappy spirits went like a secret storm.
He was clouded with the mingled emotions of apprehension and of fatal
mourning; he attempted to remember the expectations that had failed him,
friends untrue, and the names of parents dead; but he was now the victim
of this strange night and unable (whether from hunger or fatigue, or
from that unique power of his to discern things beyond the world) to
remember his life or his definite aims at all, or even his own name. He
was mixed with the whole universe about him, and was suffering some loss
so grievous that very soon the gait of his march and his whole being
were informed by a large and final despair.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25