Once he was summoned to Queen's Gate. John Jacks lay on a sofa, in
his bedroom; he talked as usual, but in a weaker voice, and had the
face of a man doomed. Piers saw no one else in the house, and on
going away felt that he had been under that roof for the last time.
His mind was oppressed with the thought of death. As happens,
probably, to every imaginative man at one time or another, he had a
conviction that his own days were drawing to a premature close.
Speculation about the future seemed idle; he had come to the end of
hopes and fears. Night after night his broken sleep suffered the
same dream; he saw Mrs. Hannaford, who stretched her hands to him,
and with a face of silent woe seemed to implore his help. Help
against Death; and his powerlessness wrung his heart with anguish.
Waking, he thought of all the women--beautiful, tender, objects of
infinite passion and worship--who even at that moment lay smitten
by the great destroyer; the gentle, the loving, racked, disfigured,
flung into the horror of the grave. And his being rose in revolt; he
strove in silent agony against the dark ruling of the world.
One day there was of tranquil self-possession, of blessed calm. A
Sunday in January, when, he knew not how, he found himself amid the
Sussex lanes, where he had rambled in the time of harvest. The
weather, calm and dry and mild, but without sunshine, soothed his
spirit.
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