On the third day that he had been trying to circumvent the stag, Harold felt despondent--not about the stag, for he had long ago ceased to take any interest in the brute--but about his own future.
It is to be regretted (sometimes) that an exchange of sentiments on the subject of love between lovers does not bring with it a change of circumstances, making possible the realization of a scheme of life in which those sentiments shall play an active part--or at least as active a part as sentiments can play. This was Harold’s great regret. Since he had found that he loved Beatrice and that Beatrice loved him, the world naturally appeared lovelier also. But it was with the loveliness of a picture that hangs in a public gallery, not as an individual possession.
His material circumstances, so far from having improved since he had confessed to Edmund Airey that it was necessary for him to marry a woman with money, had become worse; and yet he had given no thought to the young woman with the money, but a great many thoughts to the young woman who had, practically, none. He felt that no more unsatisfactory state of matters could be imagined. And yet he felt that it would be impossible to take any steps with a view of bringing about a change.
He had received several letters from Beatrice, and he had written several to her; but though in more than one he had told her in that plain strain which one adopts when one does not desire to be in any way convincing, that it was a most unfortunate day for her when she met him, still he did not suggest that their correspondence should cease.
It was the constant attempt to answer this question that gave the stag his chance of life when, on the afternoon of the third day, Harold was commanded by his masters the gillies to fire into that thickening in the mist which he was given to understand by an unmistakable pantomime, was the stag.
While the gillies were exchanging their remarks in Gaelic, flavouring them with very smoky whiskey, he was thinking, not of the escape of the stag, but of what possible end there could be to the love that existed between Beatrice and himself.
It was the renewed thinking upon this question that brought about the death of that particular stag and two others before the next evening, for he had arrived at a point when he felt that he must shoot either a stag or himself. He had arrived at a condition of despair that made pretty severe demands upon him.