All this time his father grieved and grieved, and the Lady Henrietta spent hours in tears and prayer. Sir Charles had told her their son had met with a great sorrow, and they must bow their heads and leave him in peace, so there were no more gay young parties at Verdayne Place, and gone for ever were the visions of the grandchildren. Only Mark Grigsby was a constant visitor, but then--he knew.
Thus a year passed away, and Paul left on a voyage round the world. An Englishman's stern duty to be a man at all costs was calling him at last--bidding him in change of scene to try and overcome the paralysing dominion of his grief. But as far as that went the experiment proved futile. If moments came when circumstances did divert him, such as one or two great storms he happened to come across, and one or two exciting situations--still, when things were fair and peaceful, back would rush the ever-living ache. That passionate void and loss for which there seems no remedy.
Gentle, pleasant women longed to lavish worship upon him, and Paul talked and was polite, but all their sweetness touched him no more than summer ripples stir the bottom of a lake. He seemed impervious to any human influence, though when the look of a mountain or the colour of beech-trees would remind him of the Bürgenstock anguish as fresh as ever stabbed his heart. Yet all this while, unknown to himself, his faculties were developing. He read deeply. He had unconsciously grown to apply his darling's lucid reasoning to every detail of his judgment of life. It was as if it had before been written in cypher for him, and she had now given him the key. His mind was untiring in its efforts to master subjects, as his splendid physique seemed tireless in all manner of sport.
Thus he saw the world and its peoples, and was an honoured guest among the great ones of the earth. But the hardness of adamant was in him. He had no beliefs--no ambitions. He dissected everything with all the pitiless certainty of a surgeon's cold knife. And if his life contained an aim at all, it was to get through with it and find oblivion in eternal sleep.
Thoughts of his little son would sometimes come to him, but when they did he thrust them back, and shut his heart up in a casing of ice.
To feel--was to suffer! That perhaps was his only creed; that and a blind, sullen rage against fate. This was the lesson his suffering had taught him, and they were weary years before he knew another side.