XIX
DESPONDENCY
Howard spent some very unhappy days after that, mostly alone. They
were very active at the Vicarage making expeditions, fishing,
playing lawn-tennis, and once or twice pressed him to join them.
But he excused himself on the ground that he must work at his book;
he could not bear to carry his despondency and his dolorous air
into so blithe a company; and he was, moreover, consumed by a
jealousy which humiliated him. If Guthrie was destined to win
Maud's love he should have a fair field; and yet Howard's
imagination played him many fevered tricks in those days, and the
thought of what might be happening used to sting him into
desperation. His own mood alternated between misery and languor. He
used to sit staring at his book, unable to write a word, and became
gradually aware that he had never been unhappy in his life before.
That, then, was what unhappiness meant, not a mood of refined and
romantic melancholy, but a raging fire of depression that seemed to
burn his life away, both physically and mentally, with intervals of
drowsy listlessness.
He would have liked to talk to his aunt, but could not bring
himself to do so. She, on the other hand, seemed to notice nothing,
and it was a great relief to him that she never commented upon his
melancholy and obvious fatigue, but went on in her accustomed
serene way, which evoked his courtesy and sense of decorum, and
made him behave decently in spite of himself.
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