Volume VII - Modernist Magazines Project

By Ella D'Arcy 303again. And presently he turned away light-heartedly, and walkedback to the Barracks.IIHe was glad, very glad, that his enemy was dead.This was the thought, this the feeling—a feeling of gladness,a thought, "But I am glad, glad, glad ! "—which kept himcompany all the succeeding days.The knowledge that he would never have to see him again—never again look upon his fatuous, handsome face—never againlisten to his voice, his smooth, even, complacent voice — thisknowledge poured through him with warm comfort.He would lie out on the grass, in the sun, revelling in a sensasationof well-being that was almost physical, and rehearsing inmemory the events as they had happened : Shergold's arrival,their conversation, Shergold's departure ; the great, good, satisfyingoutburst of vituperation with which Le Mesurier had pursued himfrom his threshold ; and then that brief moment of soul-fillingconsummation, of tangible, ponderable joy, on the Coupee.Remorse ? No, he did not feel the slightest remorse." Remorse ?— I thought a man who had killed another alwaysfelt remorse," he said to himself, with a vague sort of surprise, butwith very certain exultation. Hitherto, he had accepted tacitlythe conventional teachings on the subject. Bloodguiltiness mustbe followed by remorse, as certainly as night by morning. Theslayer destroyed, along with his victim, his own peace forever.He could no more enjoy food, rest, or pleasant indolence. And sleep—" Macbeth has murdered sleep ! " He must always be haunted bythe reproachful phantom of the dead, and shaken by continual aguefitsof terror, gnawed by perpetual dread, lest his crime should bediscovered