Freedom — a body that no one may ever find.
Or if found and identified, will it not be easy, if you but trouble to plan, to make it appear that you were elsewhere, visiting at one of the other lakes before you decided to go to Twelfth Lake.
What is wrong with it?
Where is the flaw?”
“But assuming that I should upset the boat and that she should not drown, then what?
Should cling to it, cry out, be saved and relate afterward that . . .
But no, I cannot do that — will not do it.
I will not hit her.
That would be too terrible . . . too vile.”
“But a little blow — any little blow under such circumstances would be sufficient to confuse and complete her undoing.
Sad, yes, but she has an opportunity to go her own way, has she not?
And she will not, nor let you go yours.
Well, then, is this so terribly unfair?
And do not forget that afterwards there is Sondra — the beautiful — a home with her in Lycurgus — wealth, a high position such as elsewhere you may never obtain again — never — never.
Love and happiness — the equal of any one here — superior even to your cousin Gilbert.”
The voice ceased temporarily, trailing off into shadow — silence, dreams.
And Clyde, contemplating all that had been said, was still unconvinced.
Darker fears or better impulses supplanted the counsel of the voice in the great hall.
But presently thinking of Sondra and all that she represented, and then of Roberta, the dark personality would as suddenly and swiftly return and with amplified suavity and subtlety.
“Ah, still thinking on the matter.
And you have not found a way out and you will not.
I have truly pointed out to you and in all helpfulness the only way — the only way — It is a long lake.
And would it not be easy in rowing about to eventually find some secluded spot — some invisible nook near that south shore where the water is deep?
And from there how easy to walk through the woods to Three Mile Bay and Upper Greys Lake?
And from there to the Cranstons’?
There is a boat from there, as you know.
Pah — how cowardly — how lacking in courage to win the thing that above all things you desire — beauty — wealth — position — the solution of your every material and spiritual desire.
And with poverty, commonplace, hard and poor work as the alternative to all this.
“But you must choose — choose!
And then act.
You must!
You must!
You must!”
Thus the voice in parting, echoing from some remote part of the enormous chamber.
And Clyde, listening at first with horror and in terror, later with a detached and philosophic calm as one who, entirely apart from what he may think or do, is still entitled to consider even the wildest and most desperate proposals for his release, at last, because of his own mental and material weakness before pleasures and dreams which he could not bring himself to forego, psychically intrigued to the point where he was beginning to think that it might be possible.
Why not?
Was it not even as the voice said — a possible and plausible way — all his desires and dreams to be made real by this one evil thing?
Yet in his case, because of flaws and weaknesses in his own unstable and highly variable will, the problem was not to be solved by thinking thus — then — nor for the next ten days for that matter.
He could not really act on such a matter for himself and would not.
It remained as usual for him to be forced either to act or to abandon this most WILD and terrible thought.
Yet during this time a series of letters — seven from Roberta, five from Sondra — in which in somber tones in so far as Roberta was concerned — in gay and colorful ones in those which came from Sondra — was painted the now so sharply contrasting phases of the black rebus which lay before him.
To Roberta’s pleadings, argumentative and threatening as they were, Clyde did not trust himself to reply, not even by telephone. For now he reasoned that to answer would be only to lure Roberta to her doom — or to the attempted drastic conclusion of his difficulties as outlined by the tragedy at Pass Lake.
At the same time, in several notes addressed to Sondra, he gave vent to the most impassioned declarations of love — his darling — his wonder girl — how eager he was to be at Twelfth Lake by the morning of the Fourth, if he could, and so thrilled to see her there again.
Yet, alas, as he also wrote now, so uncertain was he, even now, as to how he was to do, there were certain details in connection with his work here that might delay him a day or two or three — he could not tell as yet — but would write her by the second at the latest, when he would know positively.
Yet saying to himself as he wrote this, if she but knew what those details were — if she but knew.
Yet in penning this, and without having as yet answered the last importunate letter from Roberta, he was also saying to himself that this did not mean that he was planning to go to Roberta at all, or that if he did, it did not mean that he was going to attempt to kill her.
Never once did he honestly, or to put it more accurately, forthrightly and courageously or coldly face the thought of committing so grim a crime.
On the contrary, the nearer he approached a final resolution or the need for one in connection with all this, the more hideous and terrible seemed the idea — hideous and difficult, and hence the more improbable it seemed that he should ever commit it.
It was true that from moment to moment — arguing with himself as he constantly was — sweating mental sweats and fleeing from moral and social terrors in connection with it all, he was thinking from time to time that he might go to Big Bittern in order to quiet her in connection with these present importunities and threats and hence (once more evasion — tergiversation with himself) give himself more time in which to conclude what his true course must be.
The way of the Lake.