Two Moods
A Man
Horace G.
Hutchinson
Two Moods of a Man
By
Horace G. Hutchinson
Author of "A Friend of Nelson," " Book of Golf and Golfers
" Dreams and their Meaning," etc.
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
vibe "Knickerbocker press
COPYRIGHT, 1905
BV
HORACE G. HUTCHINSON
Ube Unicherbocher press, Hew
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE SQUEAK OF A BOOT ... I
II. HIS " PLACE IN THE COUNTRY " . 13
III. VENUS OF THE VAN 2O
IV. BREAKFAST ..... 34
V. THE PHILOSOPHIC MUSE ... 40
VI. THE DAEMON ..... 50
VII. JIM LEE, THE GYPSY .... 73
VIII. DAWN OF THE SECOND MOOD . . 77
IX. GEORGE HOOD'S FATHER ... 99
X. " POOR GRACIA ! " .... 122
XI. IN THE NEW FOREST . . .129
XII. THE SECOND MOOD AT ITS ZENITH . 144
XIII. THE HAND OF DEATH . . . 157
XIV. GEORGE HOOD'S SECOND MARRIAGE . 162
XV. THE RETURN FROM THE HONEYMOON . 1 70
XVI. THE SOOTHING OF THE SEA . .176
XVII. WIFE AND HUSBAND .... 190
XVIII. THE BONDS OF MATRIMONY . . 2O2
iii
213S029
iv Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
XIX. FUMES OF OBLIVION . . . .212
XX. THE SECOND MRS. HOOD . . .229
XXI. REMORSE 254
XXII. EXPLANATIONS .... 285
XXIII. A FELONY 297
XXIV. THE HAND OF DEATH . . . 305
TWO MOODS OF A MAN
Two Moods of a Man
CHAPTER I
THE SQUEAK OF A BOOT
BY a mere chance it happened that I
saw into the soul and life of one man
more clearly and more closely than a man,
or even maybe a woman, often sees into
another man's soul perhaps more clearly
than it is often given to see into one's
own. Had it not occurred to this man to
write a certain letter to his bootmaker, or
had he written that letter ten minutes
earlier or ten minutes later, it is likely that
I never should have known him. I do
not affirm that he was a good man, still
less that he was a great one. But per-
haps even the most ordinary human being
2 Ube Squeafc of a Boot
would seem remarkable were his heart and
soul and their workings (if it is proper to
speak of them as two and not as one and
the same) seen clearly and closely.
It is possible and easy for those to
whom my friend's talk of his philosophies
and his fancies may seem no better than
foolishness to skip much of this if they
jump over Chapters V. and VI. altogether
they will be perhaps happier, and con-
ceivably no less wise but for those to
whom they do not seem intolerable it may
be helpful to the understanding of the
story to read them, for a story is more
easily understood if there be some know-
ledge of the person who plays the chief
role in it ; and these philosophies and fan-
cies were part of the very man, the chief
part and chief interest of him.
Obviously this is a book without a
hero, although it is mainly, or more or
less, concerned with one man ; but just
because it is a man that it is concerned
with, and not a lay figure, therefore it is
not concerned with either a hero or a
villain ; for a man is neither of these,
Squeafe of a JSoot 3
though composed of both that is, a man
of flesh, not the stuffed man of a bad
novel. A good novel does not have
heroes and villains, as is easily noticed.
It is not difficult to imagine a man to be
either hero or villain, but that presup-
poses that much is left to the imagination,
because of your little knowledge of the
man. But of this man I had a good deal
of knowledge. It was possible, of course,
to have called the book by the man's
name ; but that would convey nothing,
because no one will have heard of the
man before beginning to read the book.
And something might have been con-
veyed by calling it by a characteristic of
the man, such as " The man with the
cast-iron will," or something of that kind ;
only, unfortunately, the man had nothing
at all like a cast-iron will, and was very
human indeed that is to say, a medley of
characteristics. Or it might have been
possible to name it by some function or
office that the man exercised, as in writing
a life of Mr. Chamberlain one might con-
ceivably call it " The Colonial Secretary "
4 Ube Squeal? of a Boot
only that there might exist people who
do not think of Mr. Chamberlain as the
Colonial Secretary, but rather as if there
might be others ; or, again, " The Saviour
of the Empire," which also, however, has
the drawback that a section of the com-
munity might not perceive that it applied
of necessary and inevitable aptness to Mr.
Chamberlain. In any case such a title
was not eligible in the present instance,
because this man made no efforts at all
for the salvation of the Empire, nor for
the secretaryship of the Colonies, or any
other department, and not much effort, of
any normal kind at all, even for the salva-
tion of his own soul.
When first I happened to meet him he
was, as I indicated, writing to his boot-
maker. He always was something of a far-
ceur. I did not know him at all at that time.
I went into the writing-room of a club in St.
James's Street, and imagined I had the
room to myself. There was nobody there
when I went in, and, besides, it was in
September, when one rather expects to
have a club to oneself. I went to the
Ube Squeafe of a JSoot 5
writing-table and turned over the blotting-
book preparatory to writing a letter, when
I saw a letter already written lying open
and unfolded within. It was short enough,
very clearly written, and I hardly could
have helped reading it if I had tried. As
a matter of fact I did not try very hard,
one way or the other. I read it at a glance,
and was so surprised at it that, though I
am not much in the habit of talking to
myself, I exclaimed aloud, "What an ex-
traordinary letter ! "
" Ah, " said a voice behind me, of some
one who had come into the room noise-
lessly, almost directly following me. " I
think it is my letter that I must have left
there when I went out a moment ago. I
had forgotten it. Do you think it is such
an extraordinary letter ? "
" Oh, I beg your pardon," I said, rising
with a guilty laugh.
" Not at all," he answered. " You could
not help reading it. Do you think it so
extraordinary ? "
" Well," I said, " it is a quaint letter
is n't it ? To a bootmaker, I suppose ? "
6 Ube Squeak of a Boot
This was the letter:
" DEAR SIR, I am sorry to be obliged
to send back one of the three pairs of boots
last sent me. Both of the returned pair
squeak. The right one squeaks louder
than a pig under a gate and the left one
would squeak if the right one would let it
be heard. You must either get the squeak
out of them or else sell them to a church-
warden for taking the bag up the aisle in
church. " Yours faithfully,
" GEORGE HOOD."
" Yes, it 's to a bootmaker, naturally."
" Do you buy three pairs at a time ? "
" Yes, always lay them down. They
improve with keeping, you know very
much, boots, like wine. I wear them once
or twice when they 're quite green, to get
them into shape ; then stow them by to
mature, for the leather to toughen. They
wear twice as long then that 's economy,
and comfort too. It means you only have
to wear new boots half as often as if you
always wore them fresh from the shop,
and new boots are the devil for discomfort.
Don't you find them so ? "
TEbe Squeafc of a JSoot 7
I treated the answer as obvious. "You
seem to have given it a lot of thought." I
said.
" I always do. I always think out every-
thing everything bearing on practical life,
I mean. The other things don't let them-
selves be thought out the things that do
not bear on practical life you never get
to the end of them. It saves time think-
ing out the others makes for comfort, like
storing up your boots."
I was getting some lights on my new
friend. I had seen him in the club before,
but never had spoken to him, never had
noticed him. He disliked squeaky boots.
That was a light. It was rather a negative
light, it is true, but it went for something.
You cannot tell what a man is by the fact
of his dislike of a squeaky boot, but you
can tell what he is not not the utterly
healthy insensible being that does not no-
tice a thin noise. He was a man with
nerves, to be irritated.
In the club are certain lockers, or rather
pigeon-holes with locked doors, that may
be hired by any of the members for the
8 ZTbe Squeak ot a Boot
rent, wholly extortionate but not out of
proportion to their convenience, of five
shillings a year, in which may be left
pipes and tobacco pouch, papers what
you will.
My friend went to one of these and
opened it with a key on his watch-chain.
All that it contained were a tobacco pouch,
a short black clay pipe, and a volume of
Browning. This was another light
Browning and a black clay pipe. The
association suggested a complex charac-
ter in their owner. The name on the
pigeon-hole was " G. Hood."
He was a big strong man, perhaps
more than thirty, with brown hair and
beard, dark brown with golden lights, a
face giving a general impression of dark
eyes and a complexion owing more to the
air of the fields than towns an impression
of the virility and health that explained
the black clay pipe, and a dreaminess
about the eyes that explained the Brown-
ing. Somewhere about the mouth there
ought to have been the lines of humor
to explain the letter to the bootmaker, but
ZTbe Squeafe of a Boot 9
the golden brown hair of the face hid
these, if they were there.
The acquaintance so begun prospered.
We " passed the time of day " when we
met in the club ; sometimes we had
luncheon at adjoining tables and talked
meanwhile. I asked other members of
the club about him. All liked him, but
none knew much of him. He did not
seem to be the kind of man that makes
friends, or if he had friends they were not
of the club ; but of acquaintances, friendly
acquaintances, he had plenty. After a
little while it seemed as if I were his
friend rather more than any one else in the
club, and yet I knew practically nothing
about him. All our talk was of the every-
day subjects politics, theatres, sport
that do not reveal the soul that is in a
man, if he has one that is, of course, sup-
posing his trade is not politics or acting.
Then, one day, much to my surprise, he
asked me to come and stay with him in
the country it was the first time, by-the-
bye, that I ever had heard him mention
that he had a place in the country and I
io Ube Squeafe of a Boot
said I should be delighted, and asked him
where it was. To that very common-place
question he returned, I think, the most
extraordinary answer that any man ever
did return. Even he hesitated a little
about it, as if he felt I should deem it
unusual. " Well," he said, " I don't ex-
actly know."
" Not know !" I repeated blankly.
" No," he said, " not exactly. That is I
know pretty nearly, but not quite."
I looked hard at him. There was no
sign of insanity in his manner or appear-
ance, yet from that moment, until I actu-
ally saw his country place, I never doubted
at all that he was slightly mad. But there
was not the least indication of a tendency
to violent derangement. He was perfectly
gentle. When a man is like that, one
does not wish to press him too hardly,
and in any case it is rather delicate work
questioning a man who seems disposed to
evade your inquiries about the hospitality
he is offering you. So I said again in
some common form of words that I should
be delighted to come. He suggested
Squeafe of a Boot H
Monday of the following week as the first
day of my visit. " I think it's sure to be
Victoria," he said, " for the station, and I '11
let you know the train. Will an afternoon
train suit you ? It won't be more than
two hours at most from town."
That was agreed. On the Saturday
I had a note from him saying the train
went at 4 P.M., and at ten minutes to the
hour I met him, according to the sugges-
tion of his note, under the station clock.
44 What station do we book to ? " I asked.
" I think Hartfield will be best," he said.
" I have made arrangements for having us
met there."
Accordingly I booked to Hartfield.
When we were in the train he said : " By-
the-bye, I ought to have told you I hope
you have n't brought any dress clothes or
that sort of thing. My wife and I live
very simply."
It was the first time that he had men-
tioned a wife.
I said that I had dress clothes, but could
dine very contentedly in any others. We
arrived at Hartfield about a quarter to six,
12 tTbe Squeafc of a Boot
without a change. It is a station between
East Grinstead and Tunbridge Wells,
on the edge of Ashdown Forest. One
way of explaining, to those who do not
know the geography, where this fine
tract of forest or common land lies, is
to indicate how the railway lines roughly
define it. It is too highly tilted up and
severely ridged for any railway company
to care to run its lines across it. It lies,
then, bounded by the line from East
Grinstead to Groombridge on the north,
by the line from Groombridge to Uckfield
on the east and south, and by the line
from East Grinstead to Sheffield Park on
the west. That will fairly indicate where
it lies in the northern angle of Sussex.
CHAPTER II
HIS " PLACE IN THE COUNTRY "
" WE are very simple people," he had
said. " I hope you have not brought
more than a hand-bag. We may have to
carry it a bit ourselves."
Nevertheless, a fly was awaiting us at
Hartfield station on arrival of the train.
The dusk was falling. My friend had
some little difficulty, as it appeared, in
explaining to the driver exactly where he
wished to go. It struck me as curious
that the man did not know the house.
The road we followed, after passing
through the village of Hartfield, was one
of exceeding steepness, both in its ups
and downs, so we made slow progress. It
also struck me that probably it was a road
of exceeding beauty, had the light allowed
us to see more of the landscape ; but
13
14 trts " iplace in tbe Country "
before we had been driving many minutes
the warm summer night had descended,
obliterating all color. We passed one or
two farms or cottages with lights twinkling
in the windows, but evidently the country
was a wild and sparsely inhabited one.
On the whole our way was very much
more up than down, and it seemed that
we must have reached a considerable ele-
vation when my friend called to the driver
to stop.
" I think this is about as near as we can
get," he said, stepping out and lifting my
bag from the carriage. He had his own
bag also, but it was a very small affair, not
much larger than the bags that business
men use for their papers. He paid the
driver. " I think this will be our way," he
then said, striking off the road along what
was little more than a rabbit run across a
heather-clad waste.
For the first time in course of the ex-
pedition my heart began to beat anxiously
with the sensation of fear. I began to be
assured that I had committed myself to
the guidance of a lunatic. At every stage
Ibis " place in tbe Country " 15
of our journey something or other had
occurred to arouse my surprise. The
man's extraordinary doubt as to the sta-
tion we should come to, the conversation
between him and the flyman as to the way,
finally the indecision that he expressed as
we took the plunge on foot over the track-
less heath into the darkness all these ex-
traordinary circumstances, each in itself
trivial enough, maybe, had a cumulative
force that, as I suddenly realized the sum
of them, made my heart stand still with
fear. I looked back to where the horse
and fly remained on the road, the dark
mass of carriage and steed dimly seen, the
light of the lamp twinkling out through
the mist of heat rising from the body of
the horse panting from the exertions
of the up-hill road. It seemed to me that
here, in this homely fly with its driver,
was my last remaining link with the sane
world. I was on the point of calling my
friend to halt and give me an explanation
when the flyman turned his horse about
and the vehicle began to redescend the
hill again at the horse's slow trot. The
1 6 1bis " place in tbe Country "
last bond with a rational civilization was
severed. I was committed to follow my
lunatic it might be to the end of the
earth.
The emotional nature of man is curiously
constituted. While the horse, the carriage,
and the driver were there, within hail, I had
the strongest possible inclination to call
out to the driver to wait for me until I
should get from my friend a distinct ex-
planation of whither he was leading me.
But no sooner had the driver gone clean
out of the world, so far as any present
help in my circumstances was concerned,
and the rumbling of the vehicle died away
in the distance, than a change of emotion
took complete hold of me. I felt no sense
of fear any more. The die was cast now.
I was in for it, committed to the adven-
ture, and at once the spirit of adventure,
dormant no doubt, as an inheritance from
far-back generations, in the heart of even
the most conventional of men, asserted it-
self with force that left no nerve channels
available along which other emotions could
make themselves felt. I was not alarmed.
Dis "place in tbe Country" 17
I was but the more entertained and ex-
cited when my singular guide put his
fingers into his mouth and whistled in a
curious and peculiarly shrill manner that
was positive torture in the ear-drums, and
even seemed to rend the still night air in
a way that one could hardly fail to think
grievous to it a strident outrage on its
peace. And if this was a peculiar and dis-
tressing sound enough, it was answered
from the depths and the hazy mists in
the valley below by a voice yet more
peculiar and weird, repeating again and
again in a screaming welcome, echoing
and vibrating through the still night, " Ge-
orge ! Ge-orge ! " almost in dissyllable.
"What is that?" I asked, faint with
astonishment.
" That ? " he repeated with a laugh.
" It is my name George ! She knows
my whistle."
Again the strident sounds, in the
scarcely human voice, came shrilly to our
ears, " Ge-orge ! Ge-orge ! "
In spite of all the spirit of adventure
being aroused, a cold shudder went along
1 8 ibis " place tn tbe Country "
my marrow. " What manner of woman
could it be that would greet the approach
of a man by thus screaming his name out
through the dark of night in wild, un-
earthly tones that might startle a child
from its sleep into convulsions at half a
mile ? It was terrible. Was this his
maniac wife to whom this friend of mine
member of my respectable and dull St.
James's Street club was conducting
me in the midst of the wild Sussex
moor?" But I no longer felt myself to
belong to earth, still less to have any re-
lation with conventional society. I moved
in a strange wonderland where anything
might happen except the expected.
We went down the hill through a brush-
wood of oak and birch scrub rising to the
height of a man. Presently a glow, like
an island of dim light, was cast on the
haze lying in the vale below us. The
smell of wood-smoke came to us. Big
dark shapes, here and there lit by a ruddy
flare from a fire in the open, loomed up
through the night ; a great dog came out
at a gallop and jumped joyfully at my
Ibis " place in tbe Country" 19
friend, interrupting this greeting to throw
me a growl in the intervals. We came
within the circle of light, in the presence
of two vans and a tent. A man was by
the fire, tending it. Down the stair of
the bigger van came a woman with a
quick, young step. She stopped short a
moment, when about to greet my com-
panion, as she saw that he was not alone.
" I have brought a friend to stay with
us a day or two Gracia," he said ; and I
hope I bowed. I do not know what I
said. I trust that by the training of years
I behaved with decent grace, for all power
of acting on a reasoned motive went from
me when the full light of the lantern
swinging at the van's door fell on the
woman's face.
CHAPTER III
VENUS OF THE VAN
SHE was the most beautiful woman I
had ever seen. To say that is not to say
nearly enough to express the impression
that she made on me, not only then, but
since and always. She was not only the
most beautiful woman I ever had seen,
but she was quite in a different class of
beauty from every other. It was a differ-
ence of kind, almost more than degree.
It was a revelation to me that the human
face could be so beautiful. The form
of the face was Grecian. There was that
straight continuance of the line of the
forehead to form the line of the nose that
is so characteristic of the Grecian profile
as we see it expressed in the best sculp-
tures. Over and over again I have noticed
the likeness in this respect of the facial
20
IDenus of tbe IDan 21
lines of the woman of the van to the lines
of the face of that most beautiful work of
art ever seen by modern men, the Hermes
of Praxiteles. And the lower part of the
face of this wonderful creature was like
that of the Hermes too, which, after all,
has much that is typical of feminine facial
beauty. The full lips with their charm-
ing expression of pleasure and happiness
were the same, the firm and softly rounded
contour of the chin and cheeks was the
same. The face was a full, soft, perfect
oval in its form. The differences from
the type of the Hermes seemed to be,
in the first place, that this was a woman
of the dark type, of the Spanish color-
ing such as Velasquez paints it. It
is likely, indeed, that the model, or the
models, from which the Hermes was made
were dark ; but, for all that, the face in its
marble purity, as we see it, gives the im-
pression of the portrait of a fair blonde
youth. That, at least, is how it appeals
to me. So there was this difference, or
imagined difference, between the face of
the living woman and the face of the mar-
22 IDenus of tbe IDan
ble youth, in the first place ; and then the
hair on the woman's brow grew and clus-
tered low down with its dark curls, giving
to the wide forehead an impression of
even greater width than it had. And
finally the eyes, rather deep set under
the brows, were finer than those in the
statue. They were larger, wide-open
eyes, of a wonderful violet depth of color-
ing, and shaded with long dark lashes
curving upwards and adding to their
mystery and beauty.
Never have I beheld another such face,
and never shall. One of the greatest
charms that it had was its look of perfect
content and happiness. That of course
implies, of necessity, the look of perfect
health. The color and form of the woman
implied that also. Her height was me-
dium ; small by the standard of the young
woman of modern days ; perhaps five feet
and a half at most. For the modern
ideal of beauty her figure was too full,
not slim enough, of rounded contours. It
was the figure of a woman who had never
known the constraint of the tight waist,
IDenus of tbe Dan 23
and conformed in this again to the classic
Grecian type. Her head was without
other covering than the heavy coils of her
rich dark hair; her bo dice of dark purplish
red, cut low and adorned with some golden
open work, gave a sight of a beautifully
formed and much sunburnt neck and
chest ; her petticoat was of some coarse
stuff of grayish blue, and her feet were
clad in those shapeless slippers of canvas,
with rope-work soles, that are commonly
worn in the northern parts of Spain. Her
hands were as brown as if they had been
stained with walnut juice, but so small
that, as George Hood told me afterwards,
on the rare occasions that he had bought
gloves for her, he had been obliged to
buy children's sizes, or else to have them
specially made.
I have not the slightest doubt that I
stared like a fool, and a rude fool, at the
wondrous apparition of beauty in the un-
certain light of the lamps and the fire,
for I can recall none of my sensations
until I was aroused from a state of
stupid contemplation by Hood's laugh
24 IDenus of tbe Wan
reminding me that I was being introduced
to a lady.
Then some of the trite words that suit
the occasion came to my mind, and I was
going to say them when all other sound or
hope of hearing was drowned in that shrill,
cutting " Ge-orge ! Ge-orge ! " that I had
heard before, far off, but now heard close
at hand from the van itself. After the
screech had ceased there was a sound like
the beating of great wings, as if it had left
the air all in a turmoil. At the same time,
what looked like a white ghost showed in
the dim inside of the van.
" Polchinello quiet ! " cried the woman
of the van in the tone one uses to chide a
dog. She spoke with the accent of a
Latin tongue.
" Let the poor thing come out," said
Hood, going up the steps of the van. In
a moment he was back with a white cocka-
too of immense size on his shoulder. The
bird showed its pleasure by putting up and
down its big crest of orange yellow, rub-
bing its head against the man's cheek,
picking delicately with its great hooked
Denus of tbe Dan 25
beak at a hair of his beard, but pulling it
only in the gentlest way possible. Each
little tug was a caress.
"That is what it is that was calling?" I
said.
"Yes," he said. "Did you think "-
the woman and he looked at one another
and smiled ; evidently those two under-
stood each other " Did you think it was
Gracia ? "
When her red ripe lips parted to laugh
over the even white teeth she was more
adorably beautiful than ever.
" I '11 show you round," Hood said, " and
then we '11 have dinner. You won't want
to do much dressing. I told you you
would n't want dress clothes."
It was the only thing he had told me,
the only thing he did tell me, by way of
any kind of explanation. One might have
thought that he would have made some
apology, even a humorous one might have
suggested that it was a surprise to me to
find his "place in the country" just what
it was. But it did not occur to him to do
this. He " showed me round." The
26 IDenus ot tbe tflan
round was made soon. There were two
vans, rather bigger than the average size
that gypsies use. There was a big open
fire of sticks on the ground, and a stove of
some sort beside it. An old man with a
white beard, aquiline nose, and keen black
eyes was busied about the stove and fire,
cooking. The process was sensible to the
nose, more clearly than to the eye by the
flickering light ; and the tinkling clatter of
platters told a like tale to the ear, as the
things were handed out from the van by a
slip of a youth who seemed to act scullion
to the old man's cook. All this went on
to leeward of the van I had seen first, from
which the beautiful woman had come, and
the cockatoo. An occasional snort or a
stamp showed that there were horses pas-
turing close by.
I took my friend by the sleeve, away
from the hearing of the man cooking.
" Who is she ? " I asked, jerking a thumb
towards the first van.
" She ! " he said, in a tone of surprise
that I should ask the question. " That 's
my wife."
IDenus of tbe Dan 27
I was puzzled about the right dress for
this dinner. My bedroom was a part of
the second van, partitioned off from the
part where the plates and things were
kept. One could just stand upright.
The berth was a shelf along the wall of
the van. I put on a smoking suit of
rather a fine design and color, and went
round to the first van, beside which we
were to dine.
A wood table was set out on the grass
beside the van. The van door was shut,
and I had time to look at the preparations
for dinner without host or hostess seeing
me. The table was quite clean, and there
were knives and forks laid on it no
table-cloth. There were no plates yet,
but three wicker chairs set about showed
the number of the party expected. A
lantern, swung from a birch-bough that
reached over the table, lighted it all ; and
the night was so still that the lantern,
thus hung, hardly moved.
The van door opened, and from it
came, first, the white figure of the cocka-
too, helping itself down the van steps with
28 Menus of tbe Dan
beak and feet. Then it came over the
grass, with ungainly movements, towards
the table. There was a stick, a branch of
a tree cut so that two horizontal side
shoots stood out at the top, planted into
the ground at what you might, if you
like, call the head of the table, and up
this stick the creature climbed, hand over
hand, and beak over both, until it had
gained the top, There it stayed, perched
on the horizontal, saying nothing but con-
tinually bowing and elevating and depress-
ing its fine crest as if it were in agitation
at my unfamiliar presence.
Presently the beautiful woman came
from the van door. My friend followed,
and I saw that he was dressed for dinner ;
that is to say that, instead of the usual
dress of convention, he had a gray flannel
shirt, with collar of the same, rather open
at the neck, and a suit of rough tweeds.
" Polchinello can't make out your smok-
ing suit. Never saw anything so smart
before," he said with a laugh at the bird,
who still kept coquetting and curtseying
at me. " Tio ! Ready for dinner !"
IDenus of tbe Dan 29
I thought his " Tio " was a term of en-
dearment for the bird, but it seemed that
it was meant for the old man with the
bird-like face, who came now from the
murky glow about the fire with a great
bowl that smoked and gave a savory odor.
The slouchy youth brought soup plates
and banged each down on the table with
a clatter that sent the wings of the cocka-
too up in alarm, responsive to each bang.
" Soup ? " said Hood, when we had
taken our places.
" This is excellent. I never tasted bet-
ter." I said, referring to the soup.
"Do you know what it is?" Hood
asked me.
" Hare ? But no what is it ?"
" Squirrel. It is better than hare, is n't
it?"
"Yes," I said. "I think it is."
Trout followed as the next course.
" Tio, you Ve been tickling again." Hood
said severely. " I told you I would n't
have the trout taken out unless you
caught them fairly." Tio did not trouble
to answer, but chuckled with a kind of
30 Denus of tbe Dan
grim humor. A chicken and a landrail
on the same dish came then, and a very
good omelet, a little more savory of the
garlic than I wanted, finished the dinner.
Then there were apples and coffee very
good coffee.
Perhaps I was too frank in showing
that the dinner was beyond my expecta-
tion, for the host said to my hostess, "He
thought he 'd get nothing to eat but hedge-
hog and badger."
"Have your ever eaten them?" I
asked him.
" Badger often ; and it 's good," he said,
"but not hedgehog. I never could man-
age hedgehog. It 's always seemed a
little too ' sniffy ' for me."
" Odoriferous?"
He nodded. "Gracia's eaten it often
though. Have n't you ? "
" Oh yes, often," she said.
" Do they really cook it in a ball of
clay? That's how I 've been told."
" Yes," she said, " that 's the best way.
I never have it when we 're by ourselves
though."
IDenus of tbe IDan 31
" Is it a company dish ? "
" Gracia gets it when she goes into
company. That 's what she means," Hood
said. " When she goes down to the For-
est, and dines with her friends there, she
often has hedgehog."
"To the Forest?" I asked, puzzled.
" That 's the New Forest. We always
talk of it like that."
" And the hedgehogs are always cooked
like that in a clay ball ? " I asked Gracia.
" Yes, but I always make them kill
them first, if I have anything to do with
the cooking. I think it 's cruel not to,"
she said.
" Not to ? Not to what ? To kill them
first ? Do you mean to say they some-
times cook them alive ? "
" Oh, yes, that is the regular way
always."
Tio and the youth came and joined us,
now that dinner was over. As waiters
their costume was picturesque. Both
wore trousers spreading out bell-wise,
rather in the nautical style, over the feet,
but much tighter in the leg than sailors
32 IDenus of tbe Dan
wear them ; cut-away coats, and very
brightly colored, long skirted waistcoats.
The most striking feature of both cos-
tumes were the buttons of the coat and
waistcoat. In the case of the youth they
were of mother-of-pearl, very large indeed
on the coat, smaller on the waistcoat. The
old man's coat had buttons that seemed
to be made of some very large silver coins.
Looking at them closely, by such light as
the swinging lantern gave, while he sat up
by the table, I could see that they were of
some foreign country's mint. The but-
tons of his waistcoat were smaller, not
more than a third the size of the coat but-
tons, but to my astonishment they were
of gold. He must have carried some
value in his buttons.
After we had talked and smoked for a
while, Gracia said " Good-night " and went
up into her van, taking with her Polchi-
nello, the cockatoo ; and Tio and the
youth retired to the region of the other
van and of the fire to put things in order
for the night. George Hood and I were
by ourselves.
IDenus of tbe Iflan 33
" ' Tio ' means * uncle ' in Spanish, as I
dare say you know," he said. " I call him
that because Gracia has always called him
so. He is not her uncle really. I don't
suppose he is any relation to her at all. I
met these people in Spain when I was fish-
ing there are some really good trout in
some of the rivers of northern Spain
they are Spanish gypsies that is to say
Tio and the boy are. Gracia no one
knows what she is. She was a kidnapped
child that is certain, I think. Tio ad-
mitted that much to me ; but he does not
know whom she was taken from. He got
her in exchange for a mule. He and his
wife brought her up. But his wife is
dead. She died soon after I met them."
CHAPTER IV
BREAKFAST
IN the morning I awoke to the sounds
of a voice that I had not heard the night
before. I looked out and saw my host,
already dressed, playing pitch and toss
with a brown baby of some eighteen
months, that was screaming with joy at
each toss and each catching.
" Your property ? " I asked Hood, speak-
ing of the child.
" I have a half share in him. Perhaps
I ought to say a quarter only, and Gracia
three fourths. He is a fractional person."
" Never fractious ? "
" Never known to be. That is a reason
the more for saying he is three fourths
Gracia and only one fourth me."
It seemed a good reason for his adjust-
ment of the fractions. The impress of a
34
Breakfast 35
perfectly balanced nature and temper was
on the mother's face. The face would
have failed, I suppose, in some point of
perfect beauty had it not been so ; and
when I saw that wonderful face again in
the full light of the morning under which
we breakfasted, I set myself with deliber-
ate criticism the task of trying to find a
line that could be changed to add to its per-
fection but in vain.
Breakfast was like dinner, in the suffi-
ciency and goodness of the food, such as
trout and eggs, with coffee that Gracia
made by a spirit lamp on the table. The
breeze was so soft that, as soon as Hood
had sheltered the blue flame by putting
up a book for a screen, it burned quite
steadily. I looked at the title of the book,
which he had fetched from the van. It
was an Epictetus.
Next to her bewildering beauty, the
quality that most struck me in Gracia was
her repose.
" Do you read Epictetus ? " I asked.
She shook her head, smiling.
Hood smiled too. " Gracia," he said,
36 JSreafefast
" is like old Lord F . Some one asked
him whether he had read some book or
other, and he answered, ' I don't read
books.' "
" But I like them when you read them
to me," she said.
"Yes some books," he admitted.
" Provided they are poetry, and just of the
kind you like, you like them. Do you
know what Gracia's favorite book is?" he
asked, turning to me. " Why, Robert
Bridges's Shorter Poems. It shows a
pretty cultured taste, does it not ? "
" I don't think I know them," I had to
confess.
" Not know them ! I envy you. You
can't match his landscape description for
truth and beauty together. How is this
for a description of the Downs :
O bold majestic downs, smooth, fair, and lonely:
O still solitude, only matched in the skies;
Perilous in steep places,
Soft in the level races,
Where sweeping in phantom silence the cloudland
flies;
With lovely undulation of fall and rise:
JSreafefast 37
Entrenched with thickets thorned,
By delicate miniature dainty flowers adorned!
He did n't want ' dainty ' as well as ' deli-
cate ' in that last line, but is not the whole
thing good ?
" And this again :
The cliff-top has a carpet
Of lilac, gold, and green;
The blue sky bounds the ocean,
The white clouds scud between;
A flock of gulls are wheeling
And wailing round my seat;
Above my head the heaven,
The sea beneath my feet.
Nothing in it, of course," he commented,
"but it makes you see it all."
" It 's like Tio's playing when you say
poetry like that," Gracia said.
" Tio is a fiddler," Hood explained.
" We must have a concert to-night."
Epictetus had done his function as a
wind shield for the flame, which was let
go out. " I like this old fellow," Hood
said, taking up the volume and turning
38 Breafcfast
the pages. " His ideas of the kinship of
God and man are wonderful for the time
when he lived. I like this, too, in his
argument that, because man is akin to
God, it might be better for him to kill
himself to be free of the bonds of the body
and enjoy the kinship more fully. 4 Here,'
he says i. e., on earth ' there are rob-
bers, thieves, and Courts of Justice.' I
like the conjunction of the thieves and
Courts of Justice as equal evils."
I glanced at Gracia. During the recital
of the verses her eyes had sparkled, her
lips had smiled, all her face was lit with
appreciation. But the prose did not touch
her. Probably she did not understand it,
and what surprised me was that her brow
showed no sign of thought or of effort to
catch the meaning. She seemed just to
let it go by unheeded. In the course
of the morning I had some talk with her
alone, while Hood at a little distance
played with the child. I wondered that
she asked me nothing about my meeting
her husband and about our London life in
general. She asked few questions on any
JSreafefast 39
subject, though she would talk readily
enough on a topic of her own life that I
started. She struck me at once as notably
free from that attractive weakness of her
sex curiosity.
CHAPTER V
THE PHILOSOPHIC MUSE
" COME for a little stroll with me and
baby ; and I am going to teach you a new
sensation," George Hood said. " It is
a sensation any one may enjoy on a fine
day in summer in winter too, for that
matter, if it is n't so cold that the cold
overpowers all the other sensations. It
is very cheap, it is very pleasant, and it
is unlike any other sensation in the
world."
This was promising much. " Let us
lie down here," he said, when we came to
a nice mossy place beside the stream.
" No, not like that," he objected, as I re-
clined on one elbow " like this, flat on
your back."
So, flat on the back, with head cushioned
on the heather !
40
TEbe ipbtlosopbic flDuse 41
Then he said : " Look up now into the
sky. Look at the fleecy little clouds that
you can see, and yet you can hardly see,
going over the sky at any height you like
to say no one can check your estimate
now tell me what you feel."
" I can't," I said.
" No," with a chuckle, " I knew you
would n't be able to tell me. It is unlike
anything else in the world. It is inde-
scribable."
We lay there awhile, side by side, gaz-
ing up into the fathomless blue overhead.
There was a kind of vertigo, of the myste-
rious delightful sensation of well-being
and pleasant fancy that opium gives.
The process that went on in the brain
was hardly an intellectual one of consecu-
tive thought it was rather a succession
of sensations, all gently pleasurable. It
was the most nerve-soothing state I have
known.
One tired even of this after awhile, or
perhaps the truth is that one grew afraid
of it, afraid of its effect on the brain, as of
the influence of a narcotic. I turned on
42 Ube pbilosopbic
my side and took shorter views of a
spider hunting through the heather.
" I want a motif for a new book," I
said. " Can you give me one ?"
" Yes," said he. " I will give you the
elements of a very excellent book. Its
theme will be human nature, and human
nature perhaps as concerned more spe-
cially with its views of a spiritual life, a
hereafter, a religion however you like to
call it. The personce dramatis that you
must have are chiefly these a parson of
orthodoxy, an agnostic doctor, and a rus-
tic. The parson of orthodoxy will be of the
kind that believes in praying for rain, and
not only for rain generally but, as the
Welsh divine is said to have prayed in
addition, 'and not, O Lord, rain of that
lashing kind that comes down and floods
the fields in torrents and rushes off again
without doing a mite of good ; but the
soft, gentle, penetrating rain that we see
beginning about five o 'clock in the after-
noon, and looks as if it were going on all
night' explaining to the Almighty, do
you see ? the sort of thing that was
pbilosopblc flDuse 43
wanted, so that He could have no possi-
ble excuse for making a mistake. That is
the sort of parson. Well, such a man as
this will be genuinely surprised, he will be
altogether dumfounded to see a man of
agnostic notions, as I would have your
doctor be, going about among the poor of
his parish, doing good gratis, sitting up all
night to help an old man or old woman in
suffering and actually reading the Bible
yes, reading the Bible actually to our
old rustic on his death-bed. There has
got to be no mistake, mind you, about the
immense, the unbounded comfort that the
rustic has on his death-bed, and has had
all his life through, out of his utter simple
faith in the Scripture and all the Bible
promises. There must be no mistake
about that. Of course you can bring him
in as a bit of relief, as something of a comic
character, besides. These fellows cannot
fail to be humorous if only you can succeed
in making them natural.
" So, of course the parson will be as-
tounded yet more by hearing the doctor
thus reading the Bible ; but naturally he
44 ftbe IPbilosopbic nDuse
will be very much shocked too. He will
take he will even venture to take the
doctor to task for it afterwards, asking
him how he, the unbeliever, can dare, can
presume, can go so near the verge of
blasphemy as to read these sacred words
in the ear of a dying believer. And that,
of course, pulls up the flood-gates of the
doctor's eloquence on this hardest of all
the questions that is set before the honest
man, the seeker for truth, of to-day, who
cannot accept the faith of the orthodox
Christian, yet sees the immense comfort
(comfort that nothing but religious faith
of some sort, and faith, a convinced faith
in a hereafter) can bring to humanity
the question, namely, whether nothing is
to be put into comparison with truth,
whether it is truth that it behoves him
to go forth into the desert of delusion
(speaking of truth and delusion as he
conceives them, of course) and proclaim,
breaking down the images, like an Icono-
clast, though knowing he has nothing to
put on their empty pedestals, or whether
he should leave men in their infinitely
ttbe pbilosopbic /IDuse 45
consoling delusions with their idols that
are so dear and precious. Oh, it is a ter-
rible problem," he said, and sighed as one
who feels the weight of a great burden.
"Is it absolutely sure," I asked, " that
there is nothing that can be put on the
pedestals in the place of these idols ? "
" Nothing," he replied sadly. " Noth-
ing that I can see. Nothing, nothing,
that is to say, that appeals to me as in the
least degree satisfying. To some, as it
appears, it does seem more or less satis-
factory. Just read this, by-the-bye." He
took from the heather, where he had laid
it, as he spoke, a volume of Lectures and
Essays by W. K. Clifford. "Look at
this, at the end of his wonderfully good
essay, as it seems to me, on ' Body and
Mind ' characteristic of the man, by the
way, the order in which he puts the two,
body first, mind next, in the order of evo-
lution. He has come practically to this
conclusion, from the consideration of the
correlative nature of mind and matter (or,
as he would say, matter and mind) that
when the man dies and the nerves no
46 Zlbe ipbilosopbic flDuse
longer bring messages to the ' gray mat-
ter ' of the brain and conduct them down
again, all is annihilated. That is where I
would have you begin."
He handed me the book, and, breaking
off a bit of bracken, began thoughtfully
tickling with it the soles of the baby's
feet. I read on to the end of the interest-
ing chapter he had opened for me, while
the baby kept up an accompaniment of
gurgling appreciations and protests, as it
kicked its feet up away from the tickling.
When I laid the book down Hood began
to discuss the argument with a facility
that showed his perfect recollection of
it:
" The gist of what he says, as it touches
our doctor's argument, is just this, that he
offers us what is called the religion of
humanity as a substitute for those dear
comforting idols that he has knocked from
their pedestals, and I cannot say that I find
the substitute satisfying for me ; I do not
believe it can be a substitute satisfying
for you, and I am absolutely, beyond all
reach of argument, sure that it never, or
iPbilosopbic flDuse 47
not for very many generations, can be a
satisfying substitute for the poor rustic
to whom we have seen our doctor reading
the words of comfort, in which he has not
a shred of belief, at the death-bed. That
is the trouble of the whole matter."
I thought much about what he said
afterwards, but at the time I put it by in
my mind for later consideration, and said :
" Yes, you have given me three very good
characters maybe, and an interesting situ-
ation and discussion, but that will fill but
a very little corner of the canvas of a life
picture."
" Yes," he admitted, " that is true. I
will suggest some others. I will suggest
a group of young men. We will put them
at Oxford. I will suggest one that shall
have all the receptive faculty very highly
developed. He will be the one that will
take all the honors in the schools ; he will
be in after years the statesman, the cham-
pion of causes, impressing because im-
pressed. I will put him at the highest
level of that class of mind, if you like. I will
make him a Gladstone. Then I will have
48 Gbe pbilosopbic /iDuse
another, an able fellow, of an entirely dif-
ferent class of mind, a critic, a self-critic,
an analyzer, of the philosophic type of
mind. He will probe deeper beneath the
surface of things than the other. He
will not be a champion, an enthusiast.
He will be of colder nature, a doubter.
He will have no success, no worldly suc-
cess ; but he will cherish a secret scorn of
the success of the other, of the objects in
which his interests and his enthusiasm are
placed. If he dared to criticise the former
at the top of his success he would be
jeered for his presumption and folly at
criticising this champion. Yet perhaps
he would be right and the more right of
the two ; but he would not be in touch,
he would be out of touch with, perhaps he
would be ashamed of, the tendencies of
his age."
" I suppose you know," I said, " whom
you have taken as the model for your
hero both for this hero, and also for the
other, your doctor? It is that which has
made all you have said so interesting to
me."
jpbilosopbic flDuse 49
" The model ? No. No particular
model."
" The fact that you do not recognize
the model," I said, " makes it the more
interesting still. The hero in both cases
is yourself. Unconsciously you have given
each of them parts of your own mental
likeness."
" Which only shows," he said, laughing,
"if it is so which I don't for a moment
believe what a bad novelist I should
make, what a bad artist I must be. I can-
not lose myself in my creations."
CHAPTER VI
THE DAEMON
EVERY now and then the baby, crawl-
ing over the mossy carpet that the per-
petual sprinkling of the water from the
little fall had nourished to a vivid emerald
green, wandered perilously near the verge
of the low cliff, beneath which lay the pool
below the fall. On such occasions Hood
would go on hands and knees, after the
child, stretch out a hand and draw it
back by the ankle from the dangerous
abyss without the slightest interruption of
his dissertation. A strange scene this of
my friend of the respectable London club
uttering his philosophies, his baby, in
brown and unshamed nudity, crawling
over the moss ; below, the fall of the
water glancing white foam over amber
depths and prattling a constant accom-
50
Zlbe Daemon 5 1
paniment ; around, the white - stemmed
birches with their delicate lace-work foli-
age, the beauty of the bracken, the heather
and the gorse ; and above, the blue sky of
heaven in which the skylarks were carol-
ling the most charming music a scene
that one hardly believed to belong to the
same world as St. James's Street.
" He presents a great number of prob-
lems," said Hood, as we watched the boy
stretching his small, round limbs over the
moss. " To what life am I to bring him
up to that of his mother, wandering over
the face of the earth ? The common sense
of the world would say, ' Do something
better for him than that ! ' Yet how can
I take him from her? And as for that
something better, what is it ? Is it better
to be sitting in a London house than
here ? "
To feel the force of the question one
must realize what that " here " meant
the rippling brook, the beautiful glade,
the blue sky, the colors, the forms, the
brightness, the life that make the en-
chantment of God's country. Realizing
52
this, it was obviously absurd to put it into
the comparison with man's town. And
yet, in the very midst of it all the spirit of
convention was so strong upon me that I
had to answer : " They always say that a
man 's the happier for having some work
to do, some profession."
" They do," he asserted with grave
irony. " What is there that they will not
say ? After all, there may be something
in what they say in regard to this. The
ordinary man of to-day may have from
generations of toiling ancestors a disposi-
tion that makes work a necessity. For all
that, you will see that most men speak of
work as an excellent thing for others : they
do their best to escape it themselves. If
we were to believe the Bible, work was
given to man as a curse, not a blessing.
People forget that."
" Or is this a possibility, I will venture
to ask you," I said, " that we draw too
severe a line between work and play, as if
the one was pleasurable and the other
painful, distinctly ? Surely that is not
quite right. William Morris's ideal is a
Ube Daemon 53
moderate number of hours of daily work
that a man enjoys in the doing. When
you can realize the fact that there may be
and ought to be an enjoyment of work,
then we find the problem much simplified.
And it is a grave indictment of the state
of our society that we should feel a line
of acute division between them."
" That comes to what Huxley said, that
the one weak point in the teaching of
Christ as applied to modern needs is that
it preaches idleness and little thrift.
" The Bambino at least, he said, look-
ing towards his son, has no legacy from
his mother's side, I expect, of a strong dis-
position to work. She does not worry
herself with the search for Truth with a
big T."
" That may be," I said. "In any case,
it seems to me that in your argument, or
Clifford's argument, which you quoted
with approval, you required me to grant
you an enormous postulate, namely, that
it is a duty to seek Truth with the big
T, possibly even at the expense of happi-
ness."
54 Ube Bazrnon
" You are perfectly right," he said ; " it
is a most arbitrary postulate. Why should
we grant it ? And yet it is granted al-
most universally. Another postulate that
I would point out to you, equally arbi-
trary, is that we should study and do that
which tends to the preservation of the
race. Look at page 331 in that very book
of Clifford's Lectures and Essays that you
are holding. Happiness is an intelligible
end to strive for. It has been taken far too
much for granted, in my opinion, that
increase of knowledge tends to increase of
happiness. I believe that to have been
true in the creation up to a certain point
that the dog, let us say, has more hap-
piness than the reptile more suscepti-
bility of pleasures it is also true, more
susceptibility of pains, but I think the
pleasures exceed the pains. Evolution is
for the happiness of the creature up to a
certain point, I believe ; but it ceases to
be for the happiness of the creature ex-
actly as soon as that creature begins to be
man."
" Why so ? " I asked in some surprise.
TIbe 2>*emon 55
" Because exactly at that point the
creature begins to have consciousness that
it must die, that its time is short, and I do
say that this source of unhappiness (quite
a different thing from what is called ' the
fear of death,' I would have you under-
stand) outweighs by far at all events in
the present stage of evolution the su-
perior happiness, if any, derived from
higher organization, from intellectual and
aesthetic pleasure, and so on."
44 This is a very startling and gloomy
theory," I said.
" Quite so," he admitted, " but if we are
on the search for truth we must not,
according to our postulate, relinquish a
theory on any ground of that kind. It is
man that has invented the idea of time
and its finiteness, I would have you see.
Dogs and the lower animals live in a vir-
tual eternity. There is wretchedness in
this idea. It is not fear of death, as I
said. No man, speaking generally, fears
to die. He may fear, at the imminent ap-
proach of sudden or violent death that is
not the way it comes to most of us but
56 TTbe Htemon
whether a man be a Christian, a pagan, or
an agnostic, what you will, at the end, by
a natural beneficent process, his energies
and faculties lose so much of their grasp
on life that death seems but the right and
inevitable further step. Now and again
the step is accompanied with pain, but the
pain is physical, not mental ; it is inciden-
tal, not essential. But if death is to mean
annihilation, it is natural that, when we
look forward to it while our faculties are
still quick and active, the idea should re-
volt us."
" Is annihilation your idea?" I asked.
" At all events," he replied, " it is an
idea against which I strive with all my
heart and soul. I strive to catch every
fleeting glimpse of a light that may mean
something better. But in any case do not
let us deceive ourselves. If annihilation
is not to be our lot, then it must be a
continuance of the individual conscious-
ness, of the personal memory. The ego is
bound together by memory. Passage
through Lethe water means a virtual re-
incarnation. If we lose sight of that fact
Daemon 57
we deceive ourselves, and if we begin to
question it we begin a mere battle of
words."
" Do you think that really exhausts all
the possibilities ?" I questioned. " So many
people seem to make their halt somewhere
between these two opinions."
" It does not prove the ground to be
sound, that a number of people should
stand on it," he said. " However, there is
yet one other intelligible alternative
suggested besides annihilation or the con-
tinued existence of the present conscious-
ness according to the sense that we usually
apply to this ; and that is the possibility
that when we die we become part of, or
rather we discover that we here have been
only part of, a larger self. It is possible
and when I say it is possible, in this sense,
I mean merely that it is not contrary to
what we are entitled to say that we know
scientifically in that sense, then, it is pos-
sible that what we here and at present call
' self,' we shall some day learn to be only
part of a greater ' self,' of a conscious and
self-conscious personality that may have
58 TTbe Htemon
attributes at which we cannot guess, but
which may have, among those attributes,
the memory of the life upon earth passed,
for a while, by a part of itself. It may have
a memory of all the acts done here, and it
is not impossible (again in the same sense
of possible) that those acts may have a
moral meaning and significance in their
effect on the quality of the larger self. A
life in which acts have been done habitually
in opposition to the Divine voice, the con-
science, the daemon, the inherited moral
sense, or whatever you like to call it, may
possibly (in this sense of possible) degrade
the larger self into which the smaller self
will presently become re-absorbed. At
the same time it is likely that the larger
self would be able to take broader, proba-
bly wiser and probably more charitable,
views of the part of itself that it has seen
going astray on the earth rather as a
parent looks sadly but with charity on his
son's misdemeanors at school. And while
each of us here may be a part of some larger
self or personality (perhaps more than one
of us conceivably, all of us parts of the
Daemon 59
same transcendental personality) it is not
impossible that there may be even now
other parts of the same greater self, per-
sonality, or consciousness passing through
some form of existence in other universes
of which we know nothing, each of these
other parts, it may be, deeming, as most of
us do, that it is a complete and separate
self or personality ; or again it may be that
some of them may have some inkling, it
may even be full knowledge, that they are
but off-shoots or colonies, so to speak, of
the larger personality. The universal per-
sonality or mind, to try another simile,
may be as the wind blowing where it
listeth, the individual personalities, or
brains merely like the ,/Eolian lyres on
which it plays certain tunes for a while ;
and now and again, by favor of happy cir-
cumstances, the strings are so tight drawn
that they catch notes of a rare and divine
beauty, though as a rule they are too
dull to respond to this divine aura. But,
after all, it may be argued that this
comes back at the end, when death breaks
the lyre, to something so like personal
60 Ube Daemon
annihilation as to be indistinguishable
from it. That is the trouble."
" And you 've put the Recording Angel
entirely out of a job," I said flippantly, for
my head had begun to whirl with his be-
wildering speculations before he had trav-
elled more than half through them.
" Recording Angel ! " he answered,
cheerfully falling in with my own humor.
" ' Which I don't believe there 's no such
person.' Recording Angel, indeed ! Re-
cording devil, rather ! It would make a
devil of the best angel that ever was born
to go on with that kind of mean work for
all eternity jotting down all the slips of
unfortunate humanity.
" I have been looking up the Epictetus,"
he said, twisting a fetter of green bracken
round the baby's ankle that should delay
it just long enough in the undoing for him
to find the place in the book "to refresh
my mind about the passage I was speak-
ing of at breakfast. He says that though
from God come the seeds of all that is
generated on the earth, yet the 'greatest
and supreme and most comprehensive
TTbe Htemon 61
community' is that which is ' composed of
God and man ' curious notion is n't it ?
Of rational beings, he says that they only
are formed to have communion with God,
and have a consequent special right to call
themselves sons of God, and points out
how far this consideration ought to put us
above fear of mundane troubles, and how
far more valuable it is than kinship with
Caesar or any of the great ones of the
earth.
" Marvellous altogether, is it not ? " he
said. " It is in the ninth chapter of the
first book, and the translation is by George
Long. Of course there is some of the
jargon that we have outlived and out-
learned 'conjoined by means of reason,'
and so on ; but the conception is more than
a jargon the whole conception of God as
the one Father, Maker of all, the ' Great
Companion ' that Clifford talks about. It
is a more liberal conception in a way than
the modern one, which is held most liberal
because it would seem to extend something
of the communion with God to the lower
animals too, to whom Epictetus does not
62 ZTbe
deny a beginning of reason. The last
sentence of the passage, ' Shall not this re-
lease us from sorrows and fears ? ' is the
keynote of all that ancient philosophy, and
touches that which is most valuable in it
the importance that it assigns to tranquil-
lity, self-control, and command qualities
more difficult for the Greek and Latin
races than ours.
" He is wonderfully modern, this ancient
Epictetus ; and he has some splendid bits.
I like his comparison of the works of
Phidias and the other sculptors with the
works of God. He allows the marble
things all their glory only he goes on :
4 But the works of God have power of
motion, they breathe, they have the faculty
of using the appearances of things, and
the power of examining them. Being the
work of such an Artist, do you dishonor
Him? And what shall I say, not only
that He made you, but also entrusted you
to yourself ? ' Epictetus will not have it
that old pagan that the Great Artist has
put His work into the world without a
guide to show its feet how to go. For
ZTbe Daemon 63
this is what he says, after talking of the
heavenly bodies and their movements,
and so on : ' " But I cannot," the man may
reply, " comprehend all these things at
once." ' Epictetus will not listen to this
excuse of helplessness. ' But who tells
you,' he asks, 'that you have equal
power with Zeus ? Nevertheless he has
placed by every man a guardian, every
man's Daemon, to whom he has committed
the care of the man, a guardian who never
sleeps, is never deceived. For to what
better and more careful guardian could he
have entrusted each of us ? When then
you have shut the doors and made dark-
ness within, remember never to say that
you are alone, for you are not ; but God
is within, and your Daemon is within, and
what need have they of light to see what
you are doing ? '
"You will not, I should think, want
anything nearer the Christian idea of
conscience than this. It is the still, small
Voice, absolutely. Of course it may be
said by those who argue on the material-
istic side, that we of the modern science
64 TTbe S)eemon
have explained away this daemon into
something quite different. He has become
the instinct evolved out of primordial
matter by course of evolution, and by us
inherited ready made, and a trouble it is
no doubt that the daemon which tells a
Thug to go out and strangle a man is just
about first cousin to the daemon that tells
the Missionary to go out and change the
heart of the Thug whence comes a con-
flict of daemons. That is a trouble ; but
now in my own life I am come to a place
in which neither daemon nor any other
sense of direction seems to guide me. I
pray, I pray desperately hard, for direc-
tion, but it does not seem to come : what
I pray to be told, believing as I do the
main part of the Christian doctrine to be
a delusion, is whether it is my duty to,
whether it is God's will that I should, go
down into the arena and fight the battle
for what I believe to be truth, against
this delusion this delusion which, as I
have said, brings to so many people so
much happiness."
On this I felt that I had no answer to
ZTbe Daemon 65
give him. I went back to his previous
point.
"There is only one thing," I said, in
answer to his problem about the Thug
and the Missionary that would convert
the Thug, " only one supposition that
could harmonize the apparent discord,
and that is that the purpose of this life
and the furtherance of the Great Design
is fulfilled by each man doing that which
his daemon tells him is best ; that, so doing,
he achieves the best that is possible for
him, the best that his circumstances, en-
vironment, heredity, education and all the
rest of it permit to him here ; that so he will
mould as best he may what we call his
' character,' and that so, with this charac-
ter formed, and capable who can say of
what excellence (in spite of its grotesque
manifestations in this life) he may go on
into another life of quite other circum-
stances and environment, and there, in a
clearer light, be a corner-stone of the
Temple."
He replied that he wished that it might
be so, but that character and habit seemed
66 TTbe Daemon
to imply a machinery of nerves and
brain.
Later in the day I walked with Mrs.
Hood on the beautiful moorland. We
passed in our walk a cottage in which, as
Mrs. Hood told me, an old man was dying.
As we went by the door we heard George
Hood's voice within. He was reading.
He saw us from his seat by the old man's
bed and came out.
"How is old Baker?" Mrs. Hood
asked.
" It is a matter of hours only," he said.
" I don't think he will last till the morning.
But he 's quite conscious and quite happy."
I asked him what he had been reading.
He did not make answer to my first ques-
tion, so I repeated it, indiscreetly.
" I was reading," he said with a little re-
luctance, " the chapter of St. John about
the resurrection of the dead."
I felt ashamed of my insistence, but I
was searching, with growing interest, for
lights on my friend's character.
Gratuitously then he gave me a further
light or was it a further mystification ?
Htemon 67
" I have been doing something else,"
he said. " I have been sending a message
to my sister who died. I have asked old
Baker to take it to her."
I looked at him a moment to see
whether he was in earnest. It appeared
that he was so.
" Do you really believe in the possibility
of such a thing ? " I asked.
" In the possibility," he said, with em-
phasis on the word, " certainly. Whether
I believe that it can be carried is another
question. What do we mean by * belief '
after all ? "
" It is an original idea, at all events," I
said thoughtfully.
" Original ! Oh no, it is not that. I
cannot claim that for it. It was suggested
to me first by something I read of General
Gordon, 'Chinese' Gordon."
" General Gordon ! "
"Yes, it was a clear, and to his mind
quite a simple, conviction that any one
dying could carry a message for you to
another who had already passed through
the big gates.
68 Ube Htemon
"You deem this notion of sending a
message by one who is dying to one who
has gone before a fantastic one," he went
on ; " but if you will think a little you will
find, I am sure, that it is most rational
and simple. If there is to be another life
of the ego, of the conscious self, after
death, it implies that the ego will retain a
memory of its life on earth. On no other
assumption can you say that it is the same
ego, because the memory is the chief factor
that binds the ego together, it is the chief
factor in self-conscious identity. And
without that self-conscious identity there
is no real meaning, intelligible to human
beings, in the idea of the life of the ego
after terrestrial death. That being so,
and granted that the dead take with them
through the big gates the memory of
their life here, what more natural than
that they should be able to convey a mes-
sage from the living on this side to the
living on that? And what wonder if
such a message should come as a great
comfort ? We may even imagine each
newly dead surrounded by those who
Htemon 69
have gone before, anxious to hear his
news of affairs on the earth. Pure specu-
lation, of course, but, I submit, not irra-
tional speculation ! "
" Tell me some more about General
Gordon," I said. " Were you not in-
dignant when he was sacrificed in the
Soudan ? "
" Indignant ! Yes," he said musingly,
" I suppose I was indignant. Was he
sacrificed ? I suppose he was sacrificed.
No doubt, however, he sacrificed himself.
When he went to the Soudan he believed,
beyond question, that he went on a Divine
mission, and would receive Divine help.
But it is impossible to suppose that the
Cabinet believed so. He was one of the
most extraordinary men that ever lived in
his absolute, unquestioning, fearless obe-
dience to what Socrates and Epictetus
call the Daemon, the voice of God. He
did not know fear, nor self-will, yet he
had a temper, a violent temper. He was
the worst possible servant of a Govern-
ment, in a sense ; for if his Daemon ad-
vised him to act in a certain way, that
70 Ube Daemon
way he would take regardless of human
instructions.
" There is, after all, but one rule of life,
as it seems to me," he said, by way of
summarizing the outcome of all our talk
I should rather say of all his talk that
afternoon, " but it is sufficient. It is that
a man shall follow the voice within him,
the voice that the Greeks called the
' daemon/ and that the Christian calls the
conscience. To each man there is given
this guide, as I firmly believe, if he will
but follow its promptings, although, as
I have said, there is one problem in
my life about which I have sought its
guidance so far in vain. Even as you
listen to it and obey it, its voice grows
clearer ; but, if a man will not obey or
listen, the voice ceases to instruct. And
this is the deadly sin that a man sins
against and disobeys the guidance that is
given him, for by doing so he stifles the
voice or blunts his faculties for its percep-
tion. And as for the rest, if there is a
future life in which you and I and Gracia
and the boy and the rest shall come to-
TTbe Daemon 71
gether again well ; but if there is not
such a future life again well, although
less well. We gain nothing by all our
striving to know. The truest faith is to
rest content and grateful, although not
knowing. As for eternity it is futile to
talk about it, for we can have no concep-
tion of it except as a very long time,
whereas it is really only absence of time.
And as for time, we know hardly more
about it. We cannot conceive an end to
time, any more than we can conceive eter-
nity, for we can only talk of eternity as a
time when there shall be no time, which
is an absurd contradiction in terms. The
furthest we can go in the conception is of
a time when there shall be no more death
death, which is virtually the limit of
our time and, so doing, we have only
come to the point at which the animals
now are ; for, as I said before, to the best
of our belief they live their lives from day
to day as if they were in what it pleases
me to call eternity, for they have no
consciousness that their lives will end.
" I know nothing," he went on, " which
72 ZCbe
shows more convincingly the purely rela-
tive and inadequate notion that we have
of time than the thought that if we were
in one of those stars whose light takes
many hundreds of years to reach us, and
were endowed with infinite power of
vision, we should see the things not that
are happening to-day, but the things that
were happening so many hundreds of
years ago ; and further that, if we were
travelling away from the earth just a little
faster than light travels, and were en-
dowed with this infinite vision (all of
which, though of course utterly impossi-
ble, is perfectly conceivable), we should
see things on the earth happening in their
reverse order the horses racing in the
Derby going backward to the starting
point ; the shells, instead of pouring into
Port Arthur from the Japanese guns, go-
ing backward from the fort into the can-
non, and so on you may multiply the
instances as your imagination suggests."
CHAPTER VII
JIM LEE, THE GYPSY
THE following morning I was awak-
ened early by a strange voice. It was the
voice of a man talking in tones of petu-
lant anger, and the other parties to the
conversation were Tio and, occasionally,
the youth. I could gather from the tones
that some kind of dispute was going on,
but the talk was in what I presumed to be
the gypsy dialect, for I could hardly un-
derstand a word of it. I was just on the
point of getting out of my bunk to see
what was the matter when the voices be-
came less distinct and the men moved
away, and soon I dozed off again and only
awoke to be in time to wash and dress for
breakfast.
" You had a visitor last night, had n't
you ? " I asked Hood in course of the meal.
73
74 3fm %ee, tbe
" Yes," he said. " Did you hear him ?
I hope he did n't disturb you ?"
" Only in the morning," I said, " when
I ought to have been up. Who was it ? "
" It was Jim Lee, a friend of ours. He
came in rather far gone in beer. He had
been at the horse-fair at Groombridge.
He knew he was boozy and came out here
to try to walk it off, but he had had more
than he could carry. When he woke up
in the morning he was in terrible trouble ;
he bought a couple of colts from a farmer
yesterday for fifty pounds. He knew he
was boozy at the time, so he gave all his
notes to the farmer and told him to take
fifty pounds from them. That is the last
thing he remembers about it ; and when
he woke up this morning all his notes were
gone clean."
" But, fifty pounds ! " I said. "He gave
that for two colts ! How much had he
altogether, then?"
" He had five hundred altogether to
start with, that is. The farmer should
have taken fifty that would leave him
four hundred and fifty."
Xee, tbe 6ps 75
" But five hundred pounds ! Do you
mean to say any man would go about with
that sum of money all in notes on him ? "
Who is he, anyway, this Jim Lee?"
" Oh, he is a gypsy."
" But five hundred pounds ! Have
many of them as much money as that ?
And do they always carry it about with
them?"
"Well, you see," said Hood, "they
don't have a bank and a cheque-book
not as a rule at least and if you have n't
got that, and want to be spending any
money, you have to carry it about with
you. Besides, where would they put it
that it could be safer? As a rule, they
carry it in a pocket inside their waistcoats.
If you were to ask old Tio I dare say
he 'd tell you he 's got a pretty good sum
in his inside waistcoat, has n't he, Gracia ? "
She shook her head. " He 's not got
very much just now. He 's bought two
cottages quite lately."
" Cottages ! " I said. " Where ? "
"At Crewkerne," she said, "away in
the West ; the other side of the Forest."
76 3im %ee t tbe
" That 's the New Forest," Hood ex-
plained.
" And do you mean to go and live in
them ? " I asked.
"No, no," she said, with a laugh at the
question, in which Hood joined. "We
don't mean to live in houses, Tio and I."
"A good many of the gypsies own cot-
tages and small houses," Hood explained.
" It is their favorite form of investment,
but they never live in any of them. They
can't, for one thing."
" Can't live in them ? "
" Not very well. They get ill when
they try. It affects their spirits and actu-
ally their lungs. We tried it once did n't
we, Gracia ? and it was n't altogether a
success."
CHAPTER VIII
DAWN OF THE SECOND MOOD
IT was quite early in the summer that
I paid my visit to George Hood in the
country. For some time afterwards I did
not see him. He did not come to the
club, or, if he did so, it was always in my
absence, and inquiry from the hall-porter
showed that he had hardly been there. I
concluded that he was with his caravan
and small family circle, travelling as fancy
moved them. I contrasted the life with
my own in the hot, crowded town, and did
not find the comparison in my favor.
Towards the end of the London season
I had been dining alone at the club, and
one of the members asked me to go with
him to a box at the play which had been
given him by the actor-manager. The piece
was one of those musical operettas with
77
78 H>awn of tbe Secono
slight plot, to which one pays as much or
as little attention as one likes. Generally
they have a catchy song or two, and for
the rest there is nothing that one remem-
bers of them. We reached our box about
the middle of the first act, and on looking
down at the stalls I was much surprised to
see George Hood in the second row. Like
a good many others in the house, he was
paying slight attention to the stage, and
at the moment that I caught sight of him
was obviously so fully engrossed in talk
with the neighbor on his right, that for all
he knew of it no performance might have
been acted at all.
"Who is that George Hood is talking
to in the second row ? " I asked my com-
panion, who was one of those who made it
a duty to know every one and everything.
" That ? " he said in a tone of surprise ;
" don't you know who that is ? That is
Miss Whatman, the beautiful Olga What-
man, American, Philadelphian, twenty
thousand a year pounds, not dollars, and
not in Chicago sausages either real es-
tate, as they call it wonderfully clever girl,
H)awn of tbe Secono flDoofc 79
learned and all that, but good company,
too. Come over here to marry a duke, I
suppose, like all the rest of them. That 's
L on the other side of her. He 's
going to be a duke when his father dies,
which he ought to do soon by all rights.
That 's what he 's brought here for to-
night, no doubt to marry Miss What-
man. But the lady seems more taken
up with our friend for the moment, don't
she?"
" I did n't know Hood was in town,"
I said. " I wonder how long he 's been
up?"
"In town ! Why, he 's been here all the
season. Don't you know he 's been danc-
ing attendance on Miss Whatman ever
since she came over ? Where have you
been that you don't hear these things ? "
" I have n't been anywhere that it 's
fashionable to be," I said, " that 's quite
clear. And I suppose that George Hood
has. I Ve never seen him in the club for
ages."
" That 's so, my dear fellow. These
American ladies are exigeant. They make
8o H>awn of tbe Second /iDooo
terrible wives. If Hood does marry her,
he '11 find he 's caught a Tartar, I ex-
pect."
"Oh! he " ("He can't," I was
about to say, but then I checked myself
in time. I knew that Hood wished me
to regard as confidential my knowledge of
his domestic matters.) " He 's not likely
to do that, I should think," I ended
lamely.
" You never can tell," my friend said,
sagely. " George Hood 's a curious fel-
low. He has curious tastes and ways
not like the ordinary British ruffian that
we meet every day, you know. That sort
of thing has attractions for a woman, and
they do say that the beautiful Miss Olga
is very much taken up with him. He's
clever, of course, in his way, and so is she.
Of course, there 's a big competition. She 's
become quite the fashion, and of course
twenty thousand a year and a real beauty
she 's got ancestors, too, more than most
Americans don't go begging for want of
asking. Still, I believe Hood 's first
favorite for the stakes. Look at them
Dawn of tbe Secono flDooo 81
now. The duke that is to be, and mar-
quis that is, has got to do all his talking to
the old Miss Whatman aunt, on the other
side."
My gossipy friend relapsed into a
silence, and gave his attention to the
stage after this historiette ; but I had my
drama now a far more interesting one
than that we had come to see. I had
front seats for it. It was a drama that
was not without its pathos as I thought of
that transcendently beautiful creature with
the dumb, dog-like eyes in the caravan.
At that moment the heroine of the piece
came on the stage for the song of the
evening, with topical references and all
the rest of it, to be encored again and
again. At that moment, too, Hood
glanced up and met my eyes full upon
him. At the distance it was not certain
that he could recognize me, and for the
time being I could not tell whether or no
he had done so. But he gave his atten-
tion to the song. He ceased suddenly
from talking in his engrossed way to his
companion. She, too, turned to the stage,
6
82 2>awn of tbe Second
and I could study in profile her face,
which before had been nearly full towards
us. It was a refined, delicate face, with
that vivacity of expression that the Ameri-
cans often possess. In beauty of color
and classic perfection of feature, it bore no
more comparison with that astonishing
countenance of Hood's wife than a rush-
light to the sun, in the trite simile ; but
here the relatively insignificant features
were alive with the play of mind. Her
hair was of the color of ripe corn.
I recalled, and smiled at the recollec-
tion, Hood's description to me, in early
days of our friendship, of a small and very
select dinner party where the hostess was
a would-be soulful and clever woman with
fair hair. After detailing the boredom of
the party, with whimsical humor, Hood
had concluded : " D - n all clever
women. D - n all sandy women.
D - n all sandy clever women." Yet
here was one whom in his whimsical
mood he might quite well describe in just
these terms, but he did not look as if he
was at all disposed to d - n her.
Dawn of tbe Second flDooo 83
During the rest of the play he did not
at any time appear to become, to the same
degree as before, engrossed in his talk
with the American, and once or twice it
even seemed to me that she was a little
piqued with him for the attention that he
gave to the stage. She transferred some
of her doubtless sparkling conversation to
the rising duke, but possibly he did not
bear his part brilliantly, for their talks
were not prolonged. We left before the
end of the piece, so that there was no
likelihood of seeing Hood as we came out.
The following day it seemed only
natural that I should meet him at the
club. He had not been there for weeks
before, although I now knew that he had
been in London ; yet this day I had a
feeling that it was sure he would be
there.
" I had to come," he said, without greet-
ing me in any other formula and without
any handshake. " I had to come to see
you : I want to talk to you. I saw you
at the theatre last night. For days and
weeks I have not come here in order to
84 H>awn of tbe Second
avoid you. But now I must see you and
talk to you, although nothing has hap-
pened ; nothing, except that you saw me
at the theatre. I want to talk."
"Well," I said, "here I am. Talk
away."
" No, not here ; that would not do. We
should be interrupted. I hate a club. I
I could not talk to you here not as I
want to. What are you doing to-night ?"
" I am dining out," I said. " That is
all. I could come on to you afterwards if
you like. I suppose I shall get away at
eleven or so."
" That would do ; it is very good of
you." He spoke with an agitated grati-
tude at my acquiescence, as he had before
spoken with an agitated earnestness of
entreaty that I should consent to act as
audience to him.
" Where are your rooms ? " I asked.
He gave me a queer address in Chelsea.
" You drive along the King's Road till the
horse drops," he said. " It 's there."
I happened to be dining in the Ken-
sington direction, so the meeting was less
Dawn of tbe Secono /IDooD 85
inconvenient than it might have been.
Soon after eleven, by dint of questioning
of policemen and loafers of various kinds,
the cabman arrived at what he appeared
to think must be the street and the num-
ber I had given him. The wall of the
house looked singularly blank and unre-
sponsive, as walls without windows do,
but it had at least a door and a bell. The
bell was answered after much waiting by
a female who seemed of the charwoman
species. I asked for Mr. Hood, and,
when she had inspected me for a while
with an unfavorable eye, she consented to
usher me down a long stone passage till
we came opposite a door, at which she
knocked with resonant energy, and saying
briefly, " That 's him," ambled off down
the further depths of the ill-lighted space.
The door was opened by Hood himself,
who took my hand gratefully.
" I was afraid you would n't come," he
said.
" Why ? " I asked, rather naturally sur-
prised.
" Because I wanted so much to see you.
86 Dawn of tbe Seconfc /IDooo
I hardly know what I should have done if
you had n't come."
" But what a surprising place this is !."
I said, looking about me.
The room was large and lofty, lighted
apparently by a window in the roof during
the daytime, but for the moment by elec-
tric burners agreeably shaded to throw a
subdued rose-colored radiance. The walls
were hung with tapestries representing
hunting scenes of the Middle Ages. The
floor had a rich Persian carpet, into which
one's feet sank deliciously. In one corner
a drugget was spread upon it, and on this
stood an easel apparently carrying a can-
vas, but a sheet bearing innumerable
paint stains was thrown over it and hid
the picture, if there were one, from present
inspection. No pictures were on the walls,
but against the tapestry, and in admir-
able keeping with it, suits of iron armor
reflecting the glow of the light. The
mantelpiece was of finely carved marble,
presumably Italian of the sixteenth cen-
tury in design, and over it hung an ar-
rangement of old weapons and helmets.
Dawn of tbe Secono flDoo& 87
There were several carved wood cabinets,
of the same date as the mantelpiece, bear-
ing beautiful bronzes. Even the electric-
light fittings were of iron-work of the
same best period of Italian workmanship,
adapted to this essentially modern use.
Only the sofas and chairs were of the
newest and most luxurious pattern. It
was a room to wonder at anywhere, and
especially after the drive to this obscure
street, and the old dame, shuffling down
the dim stone passage, for usher.
"How did you find such a place?" I
asked.
" I found the place by accident," he
answered, carelessly, "and, of course, all
these things I put into it."
" Yes," I said, " I did not suppose they
belonged to furnished apartments."
" I had to ask you to come and see me,"
he said, reverting to the subject that evi-
dently was besetting his mind. " I had to
talk to you, to tell you. I had to tell
somebody. Have you ever felt like that
about anything?"
" I have felt like it, I think," I admitted.
88 Dawn of tbe Secono
" I do not know that I have ever quite
yielded to the feeling. And always, I
may tell you, also, I have been glad, after-
wards that I have not yielded. I want to
tell you this, because I want you to think
well before you tell me whatever it is that
you were going to. I fancy you are sure
to regret telling me afterwards, if you do
tell."
" Do you know what I think ? " he
asked.
"No. What?"
" That if you wanted to say a word that
would make me still more anxious to con-
fide in you it would be just what you have
said to me now this caution."
"Well," I answered, laughing, "that
was not my intention. I did not mean
to be so subtle. I meant simply what I
said."
" Yes," he replied, " I am sure you
did." Then, after a pause, " One generally
wants to tell this sort of thing to a woman
does n't one ? "
" I don't think I quite know what the
sort of thing is yet," I said.
2>awn ot tbe Second flDoofc 89
" Oh yes, I expect you do," he replied.
" You have made guesses, at least, and
I dare say they have not been far
wrong."
There was nothing to answer to this.
Naturally I had made guesses, and one
usually presumes one's guesses to be more
or less right. A long pause ensued. Ap-
parently, although he was so anxious to
talk to me, he was in no great hurry to
begin. I wondered whether he was
weighing my advice and debating the
wisdom of the proposed confidence, and
in spite of my word of warning I was con-
scious of sufficient human curiosity to
hope that he did not mean to take it.
" Has it happened to you," he asked
" but of course it has, I need not have put
it in the form of a question going down
a staircase or a passage in a strange house,
to come suddenly face to face with a fig-
ure that is quite strange to you, in some
ways the strangest figure, as it seems to
you, in the world, because it is so like
something that you know, and yet so un-
like ? Of course it is yourself that you
90 Dawn ot tbe Secont) /!Doofc
have suddenly come face to face with in a
mirror ; and to see yourself thus is some-
thing like a betrayal. To find yourself
with such an expression on your face !
To realize that it is thus that you must
appear to others ! It shows you your real
self, for an instant ; and it shows you, too,
how unlike this real self is to the face that
you put on that self when you know be-
forehand that you are about to meet it in
a mirror. Well, something very similar
to that happens to me often when some-
thing occurs to give me an unexpected
look at my real moral self. Sometimes
it is something in a book I think George
Meredith is the great revealer he and
Balzac and sometimes it is something
that I have done or felt without much re-
flection on its moral meaning, and sud-
denly have become conscious of, in its
real significance. We cannot make life
happy, but we can always make it inter-
esting, if we choose ; for when we have
done wondering at our fellow creatures
we must be fearfully dull if we cannot
find plenty of surprises in ourselves. I
Dawn of tbe Secono /IDoofc 91
have been surprising myself a good deal
in that way lately, I assure you."
I began to think that he was going to
take my hint of caution and to withhold
from me the confidence that I had advised
him not to make. I need not have feared
the disappointment. Even as I felt my-
self smiling at the human weakness of
curiosity in which I had detected myself
he began.
"You are the only one that knows," he
said " about Gracia, I mean. The only
one of people in London of the people
we know. I married Gracia," he went on,
"because I loved her. I suppose you
may think that a sufficiently natural ex-
planation hardly worth the making, per-
haps. What I mean is that I loved her
truly, deeply, passionately oh, yes, pas-
sionately, but the love was more than
passion. That is what I want you to
understand. It was it is a true, deep
affection, besides. She is wonderful."
" She is," I agreed cordially.
" Ah, you do not know her," he said
quickly, as if rebuking my presumption.
92 H>awn of tbe Secont> flDooo
"You know her, of course, as a very
beautiful woman ; no one could fail to
recognize that. But she has qualities, ex-
traordinary qualities. She is not a bit
like other women."
" No, I should not think she is," I
assented.
" She has wonderful qualities, but they
are all of the heart, of the temperament.
They are not those of the head, of the
mind. Do you know what I think they
are most like ? " He rose up as he spoke,
and began agitatedly walking to and fro
on the noiseless carpet. " They are most
like you will not misunderstand like
those of a very trusting, faithful dog."
" Yes," I said, " I quite understand what
you mean."
" There is this about Gracia that is so
wonderful," he went on. " I leave her
down there, there in that caravan it is
the life she loves best, you know ; in fact,
the only one that she can live with any
comfort and when I come back to her,
what do you think she does ? You have
seen for yourself. She does not assail
Dawn ot tbe Secon& /IDoofc 93
me with a flood of questions, as another
woman would ; she does not ask me where
I have been, what I have been doing,
whom I have seen. She asks none of
these things. She does not care to know.
Or perhaps she does not think she would
understand if I were to tell. At all events
she does not ask. That is what is so
wonderful."
" She trusts you so perfectly," I ven-
tured to say, as he paused.
" My God, she does ! " he replied with
a vehemence that startled me. " She trusts
me so perfectly. And she has had every
reason to. She has had yes."
He paused again. I knew that the
crucial point of the confession was coming,
and knew too that, however much the un-
burdening himself of it had become a
necessity to him, the final telling must be
hard.
"And she always shall be able to trust
me," he continued. " In the vulgar sense,
yes I shall never be unfaithful to her
at least, if I know myself I shall not. If I
were to be unfaithful to her, and to come
94 2>awn of tbe Secono
back to her, pretending, those eyes of hers
would kill me with the shame of it. If I
ever should, I would first break with her,
tell her. What do you think she would
do," he asked suddenly, " if I were to ?"
I thought over this for a while before I
answered, but I might as well not have
thought, for all I found to say was, " I
really cannot tell."
He laughed in a forced way. " And,
do you know," he said, " no more can I."
It interested me to find that my beauti-
ful enigma was an enigma even to him.
" Sometimes I think she would care," he
said, " for I do believe she loves me ; and
then again I think it impossible that she
should care for that or for anything im-
possible that anything could move to emo-
tion a nature so calm."
After a pause he went on : "But, after
all, is that the most serious unfaithfulness
that only sort of which the law takes
any note ? Is it not even worse if a man
takes from the woman to whom they are
due the best of his thoughts, sympathies,
aspirations, and offers them to another ? "
Dawn ot tbe Second flDoofc 95
" It is possible to put the question in
another way," I suggested, " and ask, ' Is
it to be supposed that one woman will be
able to appreciate, bring out, respond to,
all that is best in all the different sides of
a man's nature ?' Put the question in that
way, and you will find a different answer
ready for it."
" You are suggesting a kind of polygamy
of the soul. "
"If you care to put it like that. But,
after all, to come back to the concrete. In
your own case would it be possible for the
one woman to respond to the more intel-
lectual, aesthetic call it what you will
side of your own nature ? "
"That is just it, that is just it," he re-
plied eagerly. " It is nothing, to her, all
this one side the higher side, as we call
it of human nature, at least of cultivated
human nature. What, then, am I to do ?
Am I to be bound ? Am I to keep that
which is best in me down, to cripple it,
for the sake of being true to a vow?
Am "
" Or for the sake of pity for a woman
96 Dawn of tbe Secono flDooo
who loves you, and that woman the most
beautiful in the world " I interrupted him.
I was a little ashamed of the part I had
played, for I had put in its best light that
which I felt (I felt, rather than argued) to
be worst. At least, there was the vow.
My friend of the intellectual and aesthetic
soul was married (I at all events under-
stood and believed him to be married) to
the marvellously beautiful goddess of the
van. The sacredness of the marriage vow
ought to be a fundamental sanctity at the
bottom of all social foundation. One could
not lightly play the devil's advocate against
that. And yet here was a case of a man
married to one woman to whom all the in-
tellectual and aesthetic side was nothing.
To her it was nothing ; therefore, in giving
this to another woman, he was taking
nothing just no more and no less than
nothing from the other. Was there
unfaithfulness in this ? Was any one
one penny the worse ?
But this was casuistry. With a marriage
vow in one scale of the balance there
ought to be no consideration that could
Dawn ot tbe Second /IDoofc 97
weigh in the other. That is what in-
herited and acquired principle said. And
there was always this consideration fur-
ther : my friend never, he said, would be
unfaithful, in the vulgar sense, to his god-
dess of the van ; but he qualified this
brave assertion with a proviso "if he
knew himself." Did he know himself?
One had to ask that always. Does a
man ever know, when he goes on these
paths, where they are to lead him ; and is
not the most fertile ground of a man's
surprises his own strange heart ?
Curious though, when this man had
summoned me to hear his confession,
that I should be the one who was excus-
ing him, finding him reasons, he condemn-
ing himself ! For that was the way of it.
Of course the discussion ran into the
morning hours, with some, but not all,
names given, details mentioned, dots put
on " i's," and so on ; but none of all
that matters. There was the fact : my
friend stood at the crisis ; he had made
his confession ; he was no nearer the solu-
tion by reason of having made it. But he
98 2>awn ot tbe Second /lDoot>
had made it in response to the stern neces-
sity that comes at times to men, and more
often to women, of telling his trouble, of
getting some one to share the burden.
The trouble would be lighter for a while,
of course, after his telling it. I knew
that. I knew also that it would recur
just as strongly as ever, and that then,
very likely, he would regret bitterly that
he ever had told. I had warned him of
that probability at the outset, before the
telling ; but he would take no heed. So
that phase of the drama was done, and I
went home, in the glimmering dawn, very
sleepy.
" Man is put into this world," he had
argued, " with certain responsibilities ; but
the chief of all the responsibilities is him-
self, that he should make the best possible
of his own clay and the soul that animates
it." That, a categorical imperative of
egoism, was the phrase that summed the
question up. Was that, after all, the first
duty of man ? I was very sleepy. The
answer could wait at least till the morrow.
CHAPTER IX
GEORGE HOOD'S FATHER
THE very next day Hood came to my
rooms almost before I had finished break-
fast. For a little while he fidgeted about,
obviously uneasy ; then he said abruptly :
" I thought you would think it curious
that in all our talk last night we said no-
thing about Miss Whatman."
" Did we not say anything about her ?
I thought we had referred to her, more or
less directly, pretty often."
" More or less directly, yes chiefly less.
And that was the better way. But a point
that we never touched on was how far I
was free to well, let me say it, to marry
her."
" You seemed to treat the question as
if you were perfectly free," I said.
" As if I were perfectly free yes, that is
99
's jfatber
how I did wish to put it to you, for the
purpose of discussion. I am so legally
free."
"It was only a form of speech and
courtesy when you introduced Gracia to
me as your wife ? " I hazarded.
" Not entirely. And that is partly what
I wished to speak to you again about.
Gracia and I were married, according to
Spanish gypsy rites. And now I must
ask you to understand that that form of
marriage has just as much moral effect
for me as if we had been married in a
church, no more and no less."
" That is to say, it has virtually none."
" No," he said, " that is not an exact way
of putting it, because to Gracia it repre-
sents a perfectly binding agreement. It
is the recognition of that that makes it
something of a bond for me also. If I
were untrue to it, it would be a breach of a
covenant that she regards as sacred. That
is the moral position."
"And the legal?"
" There is no question of that. Legally
I am absolutely free. That is a point
Doo&'s jfatber 101
that I wished to make clear to you. That
is why I treated the situation as I did in
our talk last night. There is no legal
bond, no legal obstacle to my marrying
any free woman."
I said nothing. I thought several things,
but none of them, if spoken, would have
made for pleasant relations between us.
As I said nothing he added : " And that
very fact makes me feel the moral bond
between myself and Gracia so much the
stronger."
The addendum took from me all wish
to say the things that had been in my
mind the moment before. The strange
friendship between us, imperilled for a
brief space, stood re-established on its old
basis.
He was silent for a long while after this,
and I did not interrupt. I saw that he
was hard at work thinking, and one does
not interrupt a train of thought that one
expects to end with some interesting word.
It was very seldom that he disappointed
an expectation of the kind, but I must say
that I had looked for something very
102 <3eor0e tboofc's ffatber
different from the remark that came : " I
want you to know my father."
There was at least this merit in my
strange friend the thing that he said was
seldom to be forecasted : but this amiable
wish that I should see his father surprised
me the more, because I failed altogether
to perceive by what hooks it hung to the
talk that had gone before. I so often
failed to see the hooks, however, that I
ought to have ceased to feel surprise. It
was the first time that he ever had men-
tioned his father to me. I knew by hearsay
that he had a father, but a less domestic
man, a man more independent of family
ties, it was not easy to imagine ; for one
could hardly call the wonderful woman
of the caravan and the brown baby a
tie.
The barest courtesy would have obliged
me to say that I should be pleased to
know his father, even if it were not true ;
and it was absolutely true that I had be-
come keenly interested in every " light," so
to call it, that could help me to an under-
standing of this quaint fellow who had so
George Iboofc's ffatber 103
quaintly become my friend. I had grown
to regard him as a problem, a problem that
I wished to solve chiefly because of the
difficulty of the solution.
We arranged details of the visit. His
father lived in the country not in a van,
as he told me with a smile. We went
down for the proposed visit on the Satur-
day following the day on which he had
suggested it, travelling by a fast train to
Ipswich, then on by a train that crawled,
and stopped at all the little wayside
stations. At one of the smallest of them
we got out, and found a brougham wait-
ing for us with a coachman and footman.
It was not until we were in the brougham
that Hood told me anything of the party
we were to meet or the nature of our
probable reception.
"There will be no one there," he said.
" Only my father. You must not be sur-
prised if you do not find him very demon-
strative. I am not on very good terms
with him."
It did not sound cheery. I should have
preferred the caravan. But after all it
104 <3eorae Tboofc's ffatber
might possibly be interesting. Our visit
was for the " week-end," as it is the fashion
to call it, only. We were to return on
the Monday. If it were to be a bore, at
least it would be soon over.
The house was square, of red brick,
here and there relieved by white stone
facing an ugly house. But it looked
substantial and comfortable. The interior
confirmed the impression of the outside.
There were soft carpets, heavy, good, fur-
niture, abundance of light, of servants, of
all that goes to make for solid comfort,
and indicates that money is not considered.
Our host did not appear, to welcome us,
and we went to our rooms to dress.
When I came down to the drawing-room
before dinner I found my friend talking
with a man whom at the first glance I
should not have taken to be much older
than himself ; for, though his face was of
an astonishing and almost deathlike pallor,
his figure had the slightness that suggests
comparative youth. He might have been
a man only entering middle life, on whom
chronic delicacy has set its pathetic mark.
(Beorge Dock's jfatber 105
Hood introduced me to him as his father,
and by the first words of formal courtesy
with which he greeted me his voice seemed
at once to betray his age. It was the
thin broken voice of a man whose vital
tide is on the ebb.
During dinner the talk was of the most
general nature, and indifferently sustained.
Father and son discussed the questions
of the day in politics and the like com-
monplace subjects rather as if they had
been coevals but slightly acquainted with
each other than related as I knew them to
be. My anticipation that the visit might
not prove cheery seemed in course of ful-
filment, but still the situation was an inter-
esting one to study. The dinner was
short and simple, but perfectly cooked,
served on fine plate and table linen and
handed by a butler and two footmen.
Our host drank water, but claret, port,
and liqueur with the coffee were served to
George Hood and myself, and all were of
the best in their different kind. After
dinner Mr. Hood sat with us for half an
hour or so, smoking a cigarette or two,
'S ffatber
and then, with an excuse that his health
obliged him to go to bed early, left us to
our own devices. There was a studied
coldness and formality, with perfect cour-
tesy, in his demeanor to his son ; and to
myself, as his son's friend, he adopted the
same manner, which might, for all I knew,
be characteristic of him in all his dealings
with his fellow men. His fine marble face
never once relaxed into a smile through-
out the glacial evening. It was like the
face of an inscrutable sphinx, worn, it
might be by constant pain, into an ex-
pression of suffering immobility.
"Well," said George Hood, when he
had sat for some moments in silence after
our host had left us, " now you know my
father."
" I beg your pardon," I said, " I cannot
presume to say that I know him in the
very least."
Hood laughed his dry laugh. " You
do not know him?" he said. " No. No
more do I.
" He is not exactly the sort of man you
would choose for a father, is he ? " he
aeorge Doofc's jfatber 107
asked, as I made no reply to his last
remark.
" It is not a choice that is often given
one."
" What I cannot quite make out," he
said, " is how far I am to blame for my
father being as he is."
"No?" I said. "I do not quite
understand."
" Naturally. I will explain. In the first
place I must tell you what will surprise
you that my father is a man of a fear-
fully violent temper. He controls it, up
to a point, under an appearance of perfect
immobility of feature and expression ;
but when that point is passed he loses
control utterly. His temper gets abso-
lute possession of him. It really is like a
demoniacal possession. Unhappily for
me, and for him not unhappily perhaps
for her my mother died when I was
born, and I was left with him, his only
child, for him to educate. Well, you can
perhaps imagine the life better than I can
describe it. There were times when he
was kind to me. Indeed he was generally
io8 <$eorae Iboo&'s jfatber
kind to me, for I believe that he was really
fond of me, after his manner. But then
there were frequent gusts of temper, of
fearful, ungovernable temper, paroxysms
in which he was really not responsible ;
for the time being he was a madman, and
I have always thought that it was quite a
chance that he never murdered me in one
of those moods. And all provoked at
least when I was the cause of them
by some really quite innocent childish
naughtiness, or even in some cases by
some naughtiness of which he only sup-
posed that I had been guilty, although in
reality I never had. Those paroxysms,
I fancy, as much as anything, were the
cause of his sufferings and delicacy ; he
suffers fearfully at times from angina
pectoris, and his heart is always weak.
Well, the effect of it all on my own
character I dare say you can understand."
" You must have been terribly afraid
of him," I said.
" Terribly that is the word terribly
afraid of him. It almost makes me shud-
der, even now that I am a grown man
(Beorge Tboofc's jfatber 109
and could break him in two, poor father,
with my one hand, to think how fearfully
I was afraid of him. What should you
say," he asked abruptly, " were the chief
features of my character ? "
The answer was a delicate one ; and he
seemed to realize that I must find it so,
for without making much pause for my
reply he supplied it for himself. " I will
tell you indecision and obstinacy."
" I don't think you are treating yourself
quite kindly," I objected.
" At all events I am treating myself
justly, or endeavoring to," he persisted.
" It is difficult perhaps to know oneself,
but I think I can see into my own charac-
ter fairly well, although now and again, I
am bound to admit, it gives me surprises
occasionally, surprises by its impulses
towards nobility ; more often by its unex-
pected abominations and meannesses."
" I expect that is the case with most of
us," I said.
" My fear of my father had one very
natural, and I suppose inevitable, effect,
and that is that it made a liar of me. I
no (Beorae Tfooofc's jfatber
lied, as to what I had done or had not
done, in order to escape his anger, and
often I succeeded in escaping it. But
often again I was found out, and then
it was terrible. It is then that I wonder
sometimes that he did not kill me. Of
course, when my reputation as a liar was
established in his mind, there was no hope
for me. Nothing that I did was right,
nothing that I said was not suspected. If
I had been of a harder, less sensitive
character, I should less often have caused
him anger, I think, and perhaps in that
way I have to consider myself in some
degree responsible for aggravating his
sufferings."
" It seems to me you are too self-criti-
cal," I said.
" Goodness me ! " he exclaimed irrita-
bly. " Do you suppose I do not know
that ? Have you only just found it out ?
It has been my curse through life, the
reason of all my indecisions this fatal
habit of self-criticism, introspection, doubt
of my own motives, and all the miserable
train that follows. Amongst that train is
Oeoroe "fcooD's jfatber m
the occasional fit of obstinacy not in the
least because one sees clearly that the
course in which one persists is so emi-
nently right (often indeed one sees quite
clearly that it is wrong), but simply as
a kind of disgusted revolt and reaction
from one's indecisions. It is an attempt
to delude oneself into the idea that one is
strong rather as a weak man physically
(my father let us say) may clench his fist
and feel his biceps to try to give himself
the idea that he is not a weakling after
all."
" It seems to me that you have taken
one fairly decisive step in your life, at all
events," I said.
"You mean my Gracia?"
I nodded. " Of course," he said, re-
suming his parable without further atten-
tion to my interruption " of course, as I
grew up, the absolute physical fear of my
father passed away it seems absurd, does
it not ? to speak of physical fear of any-
thing so delicately frail as he is but all
the consequences on my own character
remained. I was introspective, as I have
H2 0eor0e Iboofc's tfatber
said, ultra-sensitive, prone to endless ex-
amination of my own motives. There
were comparatively few outbreaks of tem-
per on my father's part of which I was
not the cause, until the most fearful of
them all arrived as a consequence I sup-
pose a most natural consequence of
my telling him that I was married to
Gracia."
"You told him that?"
" Yes," he said, fully understanding the
significance of my question. " I told him
-that."
" Naturally," he resumed, " I had told
him nothing beforehand. What would
have been the good ? It would merely
have meant outbursts of passion very bad
for him, and certainly of no use or pleas-
ure to me. Besides, there was not much
4 beforehand.' I went into this, as into
most of the other important things of my
life, almost without intending it, without
calculation (or at least, if not that, for
I had calculated the pros and the cons
over and over again, without definite re-
solve). I was hurried into it, or I hur-
's ffatber 113
ried myself into it, at the last. I told
him nothing beforehand."
" And then you told him that that
you were married ? "
" Yes, I told him that. Again I hardly
knew, I had not made up my mind, what
precisely I should tell him ; I hardly knew
even whether it was right to call it mar-
riage. It was, after all, a form of mar-
riage ; I recognized it as being as sacred
as I could recognize any other form to
be. You will say, again, that means
' not sacred at all ! ' You are a scoffer.
At all events I told him I was married
it seemed simpler to state it so, at start-
ing ; there were such difficulties about
explaining exactly what had taken place.
So I stated it, meaning, so far as I had a
meaning in my mind, to clear up the posi-
tion afterwards ; and then he gave me
little chance to speak his passion was so
fearful and so voluble and of such chance
as he did give me to explain I was not
much inclined to avail myself, because he
made the position impossible for me.
He told me he would disown me altogether
8
H4 (Beorae Iboofc's ffatber
unless I cast off this wife ' this vagrant,
this tramp,' so on, and so on told me he
would cut me out of his will, and so on.
In a word, my pride was roused ; one of
those fits of stubborn obstinacy which are
the reactions of a naturally weak nature
took me. I shut my mouth, and to this
day he believes I am married to Gracia in
the firmest legal bond."
" But he has not disavowed you ? "
I said.
" Formally, no. You see the terms we
are on. As a son, he has practically dis-
avowed me. As an acquaintance, he
tolerates me still. I am permitted to in-
vite myself here, to invite a friend here
you have seen our welcome ! But he has
entirely cut me out of his will, except to
the extent of five hundred a year which
is settled on me ; and my present allow-
ance is five hundred a year. Before, be-
fore I told him of my ' marriage,' it was
practically anything I pleased. He is a
very rich man."
" And whom is his money to go
to?"
Oeorge 1boot>'s ffatber us
George Hood shrugged his shoulders.
" Can't say home for lost dogs."
" But if you were to tell him you were
not married ? "
" That is just it. That is just it. That
is just what I brought you down here to
consult you about. What if I were to
tell him I were not married ? What
then? And could I tell him so?"
" Of course you could tell him so," I
replied. " Would it not be the truth ? "
4t Would it not be the truth ? Yes.
But would it not be an infamy towards
Gracia, an infamy. Tell me that, my
friend. Tell me the truth."
" Do you think that a man commonly
wants the truth when he asks it of you
like that?"
" I don't know what I want," he cried
desperately. I want help help."
" I suppose you know why you have
come down here just now ? " I said.
" No," he replied, " I don't."
" And why you have brought me down
with you ? "
" No."
n6 <Beor0e Tboofc's jfatber
" Then I will tell you. You have come
down here in order to tell your father you
are not married, and you have brought me
down with you in order that I may tell you
you are right in doing so."
" Is all that so ? " he asked, searching in
his mind to see if he found there what I
told him. He did not deny it.
" And do you know why it is that you
have come down just at this time, after so
many years of silence, to tell your father
that you are free and not married ? " I
was determined to spare him nothing, so
that he never should plead later that he
had acted, or that I had advised him, in
ignorance of his motives.
He did not answer this question audibly,
but turned his head away and shook it.
He knew the answer perfectly, but I had
to put it into words for him : " It is be-
cause you no longer wish to think of
yourself as married. It is because you
wish to think of yourself as free. It is
because " I hesitated a moment, for this
last was a hard thing to have to say to a
man, and one could not tell how he might
(Beorge fsoo&'s jfatber 117
take it " it is because you wish to be put
into a position, financially, to be able to
marry."
I thought for an instant that he was
about to resent my words. He started
in indignation ; but then his indignation
was quelled by the absolute truth of my
accusation. He gave a helpless groan.
" It is quite true," he said, " quite true.
That is exactly the despicable kind of
thing I am."
" And now," I said, " now that we have
established that fact so pleasantly, and
are under no delusions as to what we are
talking about, now I will give you my ad-
vice on the matter, since you have asked
it. It is the advice that you wish, the
advice that you will take ; for it is ad-
vice to follow the course that you would
have taken whether my advice had been
for or against it ; it is that you should
go to your father and tell him the truth,
and the whole truth. Tell him, if you
like, that the reason you did not tell it
him long ago was that you regarded the
bond as sacred equally binding with a
us (Beorae tfooo&'s ffatber
marriage ceremony at the altar. If you
do not suppose that he will listen with
sufficient forbearance for you to get the
whole tale told succinctly, then I should
be inclined to write it all. The great
thing is to make sure that now, at last, he
should be put in possession of the whole
story, all clearly set out, with no dark
or mysterious corners left in it. Let
there be, so far as possible, an end of
all misunderstanding. That is my advice
to you, and it is advice, as I say, that you
will take."
" You know a great deal about me," he
said thoughtfully.
" There is a good deal more that I
don't know that I should like to know,"
I replied.
" Heavens and earth, I should hope
there is ! It would be a dreadful thing if
a man's soul gave up the whole stock of
its secrets to any man, or woman either.
Even to itself it has secret places. The
heart knoweth its own bitterness, it has
been said ; but the heart has secrets that
it does not tell even to its owner.
George Iboofc's jfatber 119
" Apart from the question of motive,
however," he went on, as I found no
ready reply to these philosophical com-
ments, "you think I should do right to
tell my father that I am not, strictly and
legally speaking, married ? "
" I think you would do right," I said
decidedly. " Indeed I am sure of it
from every point of view, right. What
has not been right is that you should ever
have told him, or should ever have al-
lowed him to believe, that you were mar-
ried. That is where the mistake has
been."
" Yes, I know," he said. " I have
known it all along, really. Of course it
has been only my confounded pride false
pride, no doubt, and obstinacy that has
prevented my telling him long ago. It
gave me a kind of satisfaction to let him
go on in this mistake that gave him so
much annoyance. There is no doubt of
it that at times the devil has possession
of me."
" And keeps possession for some while,
as it seems," I said.
120 <5eorge Iboofc's ffatber
" But to-morrow I will tell him yes, to-
morrow. It will be interesting at all
events, will it not, to see how he takes it ?
You will not be bored with your visit, I
think."
" Certainly I shall not," I replied with
truth. " I am very greatly interested."
" And you had expected to be very
badly bored, had you not ? "
"You seem to know a good deal about
me too," I said, laughing.
"There is one point," I said finally,
"which no doubt you have considered.
When you avow yourself unmarried you
avow at the same time a liaison of a
highly irregular nature. How do you
suppose that your father will be affected
by that news ? "
"It will affect him not at all," Hood
rejoined with confidence. " His views of
morality are far from rigid. I think, if
they had been more orthodox, or if my
mother had lived, I might perhaps have
hesitated more before I engaged myself
to Gracia."
" Ah, well," I said, " from the point of
<5eor0e fcoofc's jfatber 121
view of what you have to tell your father,
that is all as it should be wished. It
removes a difficulty."
Then we began to talk of matters that
do not touch the story, and so the time
passed till we went to bed.
CHAPTER X
" POOR GRACIA ! "
THE morrow was a Sunday, a warm
gray day with a colorless sky low down
over the land. In the morning I wan-
dered out from the house over the stretch
of links by which the pasture lands were
bordered, and so to a low range of sand-
hills covered with the yellow marram. The
tide was out, and long sand-flats stretched
away to the rippling waters of the English
Channel. The eerie cry of the seafowl
came from the flats as the waders went
hither and thither, seeking their insect
food in the soft ooze. As I lay in a con-
templative mood on the sand-hills I could
imagine my friend's life as a solitary boy,
with no mother, a father whom he dreaded,
not without reason, and who was wholly
unsympathetic with him. I could imagine
"poor racial" 123
his long lonely rambles among the sand-
hills facing the flat shore, and the in-
fluence that such surroundings would have
on the mind of a sensitive child and boy,
and therein seemed to find the key of
much that was enigmatical in the charac-
ter of this friend. Our host had not ap-
peared at breakfast, and George Hood
had told me that he seldom left his room
till mid-day. I had gone out by myself
in order to leave father and son together,
and give every opportunity for the ex-
planation which I did not doubt the son
would take this occasion of making, and
speculated vaguely on the manner in
which it was likely to be received. That
it would be acceptable, on the whole, was
scarcely to be doubted ; but at the same
time it was natural to suppose that any
parent, and especially one of so violent
a temper as Hood had represented his
father to be, would feel injured by the
discovery that he had been for so long
the victim of a delusion, of a mistake, of a
false statement.
My anxiety was much relieved as I
124 "fltoor 6racfa!"
approached the house on my return to see
father and son walking together on the
terrace, the former leaning on the arm of
the latter, evidently in perfect amity.
My host bade me " Good morning " with
a friendliness that was in marked contrast
with the icy courtesy of his manner on
the previous evening. He was equally
charming and friendly during luncheon,
which followed almost immediately, so
that it hardly needed the assurance which
George Hood gave me in course of an
afternoon stroll over the links to convince
me that the father had received the news
of his son's freedom from a bond which
he could not but look on in the nature of
a misalliance with so much relief that he
readily pardoned the deception in which
he had believed for so many years. His
readiness to pardon it had made no little
impression on his son, who was inclined
to see in it an almost pathetic evidence of
the father's loss of force.
" I could hardly believe," he said, in
narrating the interview to me, "that I
was talking to the same man that used to
"poor (Bracia!" 125
flare out at me so, only a year or two ago.
When I had explained all the truth to
him, to which he listened with perfect
patience, I tried to make him understand
the motive, if indeed I had any motive
clearly intelligible even to myself, that
had induced me to leave him in this delu-
sion ; but he cut me short by saying
in the most affectionate way, ' Oh yes,
George, my dear boy, you need not ex-
plain it all to me. I know that I have
often been a most impossible parent to
you. I know it well. I can understand
your difficulty.' I seem to myself to
know my father now, as he really is, for
the first time, and it frightens me to see
him so. Nothing before has ever made
me feel so strongly how ill he must be,
how changed he is. He reminds me of
some extinct volcano, with all its fire and
fury quenched."
" Does it not rather tend to show that
he is stronger, that he has a better con-
trol over himself and his irritable nerves ? "
I argued.
Hood shook his head sorrowfully. " I
126 "poor racial''
wish I could see it in that light," he said.
" But no, it seems to me almost as if the
hand of death were already upon him ; as
if he had lost so much of his vital force
of his former self."
Do what I would, I could not argue
my friend out of this mournful and almost
morbid view of his father's state a father
for whom, as it seemed, he was only just
beginning to be able to feel any real filial
affection. He had wasted few words, as
Hood had foreseen, in reprobating the ir-
regular mode of life which his son had
followed.
The rest of the afternoon and evening
passed in the most pleasant manner, the
mutual relations between father and son
being far more cordial and natural than on
the previous evening; and it seemed to
me as if the host was anxious to show
particular kindness to myself, in part, as I
thought, to make up for his rather frigid
reception, and in part as if attributing it to
my good offices that his son had been
brought into such a state of indifferent
grace as to be able to avow the true posi-
"poor Oracia!" 127
tion between himself and Gracia. The
kindliness of his manner I interpreted as a
tacit recognition and returning of thanks
for the service which he believed me to
have rendered. I knew, of course, that I
had done nothing in this respect to merit
his gratitude, for I was convinced that
George Hood had fully made up his mind
to apprise his father of the true state of
affairs, even had my advice been opposed
to his doing so. But, in fine, the visit
that had begun under such chilling auspices
terminated in very friendly fashion to the
mutual satisfaction of all the parties to it.
I had rather expected George Hood
would stay on for a day or two with the
father whom he seemed to have discovered
now for the first time, but instead of doing
so he accompanied me back to town, ac-
cording to our original programme. I
understood, however, that he had prom-
ised to come down again to visit his father
at the next "week-end." On the way to
London in the train we hardly exchanged
a word, each of us keeping to his own cor-
ner and his own reflections. What George
128 "poor (Bracia!"
Hood's may have been I could not know,
although I fancied that I could shrewdly
speculate. For the keynote of my own re-
flections, it may be expressed most briefly
and most accurately in two words " Poor
Gracia!"
CHAPTER XI
IN THE NEW FOREST
A WEEK or two later the wheels of happy
chance took me, on a bicycle, to that wild
garden land of England which we call the
New Forest. Thither I went by chance,
or in search of pleasant scenes and good
roads for the bicycle, but I may admit,
without prejudice, that I was attracted in
part by the hope that I might hear news
of the caravan and George Hood's wife
for thus in my mind I still would call her
that marvellously lovely lady. I knew,
from what Hood himself had told me, that
his household had been moving, in its lei-
surely fashion, westward, with " the for-
est," as all the wandering community call
it, as its bourne ; and, as I expected, a little
conversation with some of the van folk
who frequent the highways of the New
129
130 Un tbe IRew forest
Forest in such numbers soon gave me the
news I wanted, and indicated where I
should find the party in which I was in-
terested. I did not stay to ask myself the
nature of that interest. I had a desire,
that was not wonderful, to look once more
on the most beautiful face that my eyes
had ever seen, and promised myself some
pleasure in paying a call of ceremony.
The way that had been indicated to me
led me up from my headquarters in Lynd-
hurst through the sylvan road until it
comes out, just opposite the path to the
historic Rufus Stone, on that highway
leading from Winchester to Ringwood,
along the watershed known as Vinney
Ridge. Here, at some comparative alti-
tude, one is away from the woodland
scenes, on a moorland purple with heather
and bright with the bloom of gorse, and on
either side of the road is a splendid vista
over the trees, successive distances reced-
ing farther and farther from the eye, till
southward one can see the blue outline of
the Isle of Wight. Here and there the
road dips with sharp depression into a
Urt tbe IRew JF crest 131
little valley carved by one of the south-
ward-running streams, and in one of these
depressions I saw, beneath the birch trees
that fringe and mark the course of the
rivulets, an establishment familiar to my
recollection, of two caravans and a tent,
the blue smoke eddying up among the
graceful foliage of the birches, and shroud-
ing the scene in a mysterious and beautiful
haze.
The vans, beside which the horses were
grazing, were remote by some thirty or
forty yards from the road, sufficiently far
to receive only an attenuated sprinkling
of the dust raised by the passing vehicles,
yet near enough to see all the life and
movement of the road. The stream ran
down with a gurgle beneath the road
bridge and on past the encampment, for
the most part hidden by the masses of the
bracken that grows so tall and luxuriant in
that genial climate. Had I been suffi-
ciently acquainted with George Hood's
peculiar whistle I think I should have used
it to announce my presence, as I leaned
my bicycle against the low parapet of the
132 Hn tbe mew jforest
bridge, and made my way through the
bracken towards the vans. I did not
however, even so, arrive without due notice
given, for I was still at a distance of
twenty paces or so from the nearest of the
vans, when the well-remembered cry of the
big cockatoo came to my ears from some
hidden depths of the forest, and simul-
taneously, as if the cry was understood as
a signal of alarm, Gracia came to the door
of the van and stood shading her eyes
from the sun as I came towards her.
With the sunlight thus full upon her, I
could see her features more plainly than
she could discern mine, and not until I
was within a yard or two did her face show
recognition. Then she exclaimed quickly :
" Oh, it is you ! I am so glad to see you
and George ? "
There was an eagerness of interroga-
tion as she asked the question, the slightest
possible flush, and a look of expectation
on her features that were so seldom quick-
ened from their perfectly beautiful repose,
that came to me like a revelation, and made
my heart ache that I was obliged to an-
tn tbe IRew ^forest 133
swer : " No. I am alone. George is not
here."
I felt grateful to my lucky lack of ability
to imitate the whistle of her husband, which
alone had prevented my using it as I ap-
proached. As it was, her disappointment
was sufficiently keen for the moment
only. The next instant the anxious flush
had passed, and the face had resumed its
normal expression of perfect content, per-
fect health, perfect beauty. But I had
found out what I wanted to know. That
slight access of excitement, so slight that
only in a woman so reposeful as my friend's
most beautiful wife would it have been sig-
nificant at all, had said its say. It had
told me that the man she expected to ac-
company me was the man I will not say
the man she loved, because that is such a
vague word, with so many meanings, and
because love is such a different thing at
the heart of one woman and of another.
I will rather say the man that mattered,
the man for whom her pulses went quicker,
the man on whom her thoughts dwelt.
That is a better way of putting it than
134 fln tbe IRew forest
to say, simply and complexly, " loved "
which might be taken to mean anything,
everything, or nearly nothing. George
Hood was the man who obsessed her heart
and mind. I saw that, and the perception
gave me a pang as I thought of my latest
talks with this man. My latest talk of all
had been in the train coming up from his
father's house. We had not met since.
After the first eager question, whether
George was with me, she did not mention
him again, except incidentally. She still
had her wonderful gift of asking no ques-
tions, of appearing entirely free of natural
curiosity. It seemed to me, as I gazed
upon her marvellously perfect face, that
while it had certainly lost nothing of its
perfection there was a trifle less fulness in
the oval contour, a shade less brilliancy in
the still extraordinarily brilliant coloring.
We talked chiefly of her doings, and of
the daily small adventures and incidents
of their leisurely journey from the forest
of Ashdown to the New Forest. The life
struck me again, as it had struck me be-
fore, with a sense of the marvellous absence
Hn tbe IRew jforest 135
of any respect or care for time. There
was none of that conception of a task to
be accomplished, which harasses, even
while it dignifies, the daily life of most
civilized men ; there was no impatience.
These people seemed to have entered al-
ready on an eternity, of which really, so
far as we are able to grasp the idea, the
essence must be just this very absence of
the sense of time, absence of all sense that
the night cometh when no man may work.
Yet the only attempt at explanation of
eternity that we can give, to ourselves or
to others, is, as George Hood had observed
to me, to say that it is immensely long
time.
So far I had been fortunate in finding
Gracia by herself ; but now from the
gloom of the forest came an enchanting
procession, heralded, as the coming of
Pan should be, with melody. First came
Tio, in his picturesque dress, with the
fiddle, bowing as he walked ; then, follow-
ing, the brown-legged, bare-legged boy,
waddling slowly, in its first beginnings
of a walk ; finally, waddling likewise and
136 Hn tbe Hew jforest
intensely comic, but as grave as either of
the other two, the white cockatoo nodding
its head and alternately raising and drop-
ping its crest to the pulsing time of the
music.
This was the noble procession that
should have continued its course right up
to the steps of the van ; but on sight of
me Tio stopped, and the boy stopped, and
the cockatoo stopped, all with a single
assent, as if I had been the head of Me-
dusa to turn them all to stone. When
they saw who I was, the order of march,
slightly changed, was resumed. Tio con-
tinued his walk, but ceased his playing.
The boy crammed a fat hand into his
mouth, to stop shyness, and came forward
hidden by Tio. The cockatoo took up
the part of band, given over by Tio,
screaming " Ge-orge, Ge-orge, Ge-orge,"
at the top of its voice, apparently asso-
ciating me with its master. In this there
was reason, for it was in its master's com-
pany that it had seen me ; but it embar-
rassed the situation, for the remark was too
like that of Gracia at first sight of me.
In tbe mew jforest 137
Behind the procession itself, hardly as
if belonging to it, but rather as if only
unofficially attached, another man had
followed, as they came from under the
trees. He, like the others, had stopped
on seeing me, but unlike the others, had
not resumed his march when they recog-
nized me. He had gone off by himself
back into the forest.
Tio seemed pleased to meet me again,
and the boy threw off his reserve and
took his fist from his mouth as if he knew
me for a friend. Only the cockatoo re-
mained implacable, now and again croon-
ing " Ge-orge " to itself in soliloquy, but
showing up its crest in anger when I ap-
proached it to attempt a caress, as if to
indicate that I was to blame in not sup-
plying its evident desire for " George."
I felt that I was so, too.
Tio and I talked long, over tobacco, of
the moving incidents by flood and field
that had happened to them since I had
last seen them, in course of their slow
travel from that forest of Ashdown to this
forest called New. He asked me with
138 Hn tbe IRew jforest
a certain significance "where was Mr.
Hood?" and when I had answered as
fully as I could all the many questions
implied in the one, he asked no further
and I had a feeling that he was aggrieved,
for Gracia's sake, no doubt, rather than
his own ; but that he was too proud
again for her, rather than himself to
make complaint.
So, when the bats began to flit, I left
them. The cockatoo had his head be-
neath his feathers ; the boy had been put
to sleep. Gracia waved me a good-bye
from the van steps, and Tio came with
me to help light the lantern of my bicycle.
In course of this proceeding my mind
reverted suddenly to the man whom I
had seen in the rear of the procession
coming from the forest. He had stopped
when the rest of the procession halted,
arrested by my arrival, but had not come
forward with the others when their march
was resumed. It had seemed as if he had
almost intentionally turned back, that I
should not observe him. I asked Tio
who the man was.
Hn tbe IRew jforest 139
" Oh," he said indifferently, " that was
Jim Lee."
"Jim Lee?" I replied, searching my
memory.
" He 's the one that came to us in Ash-
down Forest the time you were down
there," Tio explained. " The one that
had lost all his money buying a colt at
Groombridge."
" I remember now," I said, the details
coming back to me. It was no wonder
that I did not recognize the man, for I
had not seen his face before, had only
heard his voice, which had awakened me
in the early morning, bewailing his loss.
" Did he ever get his money back ? " I
asked.
" Oh, yes," said Tio. "You see it was
like this Jim had agreed to give fifty
pound for the colts, and the colts were
worth that, for he had made the bargain
before he got boozed ; but when it came
to the paying, Jim knew he was boozed
then, so he just gave all the notes he had
to the farmer he was buying the colts off,
and told him to pay himself. The farmer
HO Hn tbe Iftew jforest
did that all right ; but, seeing the state
Jim was in, he thought the best thing he
could do was to take care of the notes for
him till he came to again ; so he put the lot
in his pocket. Jim was in a rare way, as
you may remember, when he came to, but
he went straight away back then to the
farmer to see if he could tell him any-
thing about the notes. Of course the
farmer knew he was sure to do that.
The farmer put him off for a bit, just to
tease him and to make him more careful
next time, and then handed him all the
notes over, barring the fifty for the colts."
" Is Jim Lee living with you I mean,
is he staying with you ? " I asked.
Tio answered with a little hesitation.
" In a way he 's staying with us," he said.
" That is, he 's in his own van, of course,
but it 's not far off."
"He travelled down with you from
Ashdown Forest ? " I suggested.
Tio looked at me suspiciously. He
showed still more hesitation before he
answered this, but when he did answer
he answered very fully. He answered
In tbe Hew jporest 141
not only the question, but all that the
question seemed to him to imply, and
more than I ever had intended it to imply.
" Yes," he said, speaking with a slow de-
liberation that he intended to be impres-
sive, and that did not fail to impress me.
"He travelled with us from Ashdown
Forest. Oh, yes," he went on, " I know
what it is you mean to ask perhaps what
Mr. Hood sent you down to ask."
I interpolated that Mr. Hood had no
knowledge of my visit, but he continued
without paying any heed to me: "Jim
Lee is here often, and he is not here
without an object. He knows, as well as
you know and as well as I know as well
as every one except that poor girl knows
that the marriage Mr. Hood went
through with her is no marriage at all,
here in England. He knows that," Tio
went on, with wrath gathering in his eyes
and in his voice, "and the best thing you
can do is to go back and tell Mr. Hood
that if he don't value his own property
there 's other people that does. You 'd
better tell him that perhaps that '11 teach
142 fln tbe Hew jforest
him." Tio wagged his head in sorrowful
anger.
" But she does n't care for him, Tio,"
I said, with confidence; "for Jim Lee, I
mean."
" She ! " said Tio with a tinge of scorn in
his voice, but I could hardly tell whether
it were meant for her or for the very
notion of her caring for such as Jim Lee.
" She is bound up heart and soul with
Mr. Hood. He that is, Jim Lee has
offered her all that a queen could want.
He has four houses all his own in Crew-
kerne, and a bit of freehold down outside
of Bournemouth " Tio jerked his thumb
southward to indicate the direction of this
estate as he spoke " and two vans, and
I should think upwards of thirty horses ;
but she she is bound up heart and soul,
as I say, with Mr. Hood."
I had known it before he told me. I
had seen in her eyes, as we spoke of
George Hood together, that he was the
man for her that mattered, and that all
the rest were nothing ; so it was no more
than my own previous conviction that Tio
In tbe flew jf crest 143
confirmed. But the fact of Jim Lee in
the background knocking at the door of
her heart with the gifts that would make
a queen's dowry, of four houses cot-
tages, they were better to be described,
no doubt in Crewkerne, the freehold
winter standing-room for a van outside
Bournemouth, the vans and the horses
all this lent the dramatic interest that
alone was needed to complete the situa-
tion ; and ruminating thereon very sorrow-
fully I followed the gleam of my lamp
along the way that led back to civilization.
THE SECOND MOOD AT ITS ZENITH
I CAME back to London with my
mind made up to see George Hood and
hint to him, with all the delicacy that the
case required, my conviction that Gracia
was suffering by his neglect. Hood was
himself one of those whom he described,
with his turn for whimsical paradox, as
" understanding what you meant even
after you had said it." Ulsjlair for the
meaning that we try blunderingly to ex-
press in words was wonderful. I had
spoken not ten words to introduce my
subject before he knew all that I had to
say to him and a good deal more of what
I thought, but should not be able to say.
He changed the subject then with an
abruptness that was equivalent to closing
it, and at once asked me to dine with him
144
Ube Second flDoofc at its 2enitb 145
and a small party at the Carlton and come
on for bridge in his studio afterwards.
It is no use trying to describe that din-
ner party. I could describe that Carlton
Restaurant most people know that al-
ready or a Carlton menu that again is
hardly a novelty but what I am unable
to describe, or give idea of, are the humor,
the wit, and real brilliancy of George
Hood's conversation that evening. What
we in England understand by conversation
is very different from the notion conveyed
by the same word in America, where, by-
the-bye, they would say that conversation
is dead in England a lost art. With us it
is a quick exchange of thought suggested
by thought. It is not dead ; where it ex-
ists it is very much alive indeed, but it
exists in few places, principally at some
rather Bohemian clubs and at certain
dinner tables in London, and also (which
may not be believed easily) in some provin-
cial towns. The ancient analogy of the flint
and the steel comes in not amiss to give
the hint of the meaning of good conver-
sation according to our view. According
146 ZEbe SeconD /IDoofc at its z:enitb
to the American view, conversation has
more of the character of monologue,
of oratory, and even includes anecdote.
America says of our conversation that it is
not talk, but barking. We are sometimes
apt to find the American disposition to
oratory a bore. The facts are the more
curious because respective national char-
acteristics might have led us to expect the
case reversed. Nevertheless it was an
American, an American lady, Miss What-
man, who was the steel to the flint of
George Hood's wit at his dinner party and
after.
According to programme, the after-
dinner time was to be given up to bridge,
and it is seldom that its claims are ne-
glected; but when we were gathered in
George Hood's wonderful studio and the
duel of wit (for mainly it resolved itself
into duologue) between these two, com-
menced at the dinner table, was resumed,
the rest of the party seemed very content
to leave the cards alone and take the
rdle of audience.
"Are they always like this?" I asked
Ube Second flDoofc at its Zenitb 147
one of the guests, who, as I knew, must
often have met Hood and Miss Whatman
at the same dinner table.
" They are always good," he answered.
" I always have said that meeting them
together was the best play in London.
But I have never known George as quick
as he is to-night. He is putting out the
very best of himself."
I had hardly expected any other answer.
It was inconceivable that it could always
be thus. It was certain, too, that on my
friend's part, whom I knew to be by dis-
position the most lazily dreamy of men,
the intellectual effort must be great ; but
with the words of the reply, " he is putting
out the very best of himself," illumination
came to me, or so I fancied, in a flash. I
seemed to understand all at once the rea-
son and motive of this unusual effort.
The coruscation of wit, as it is called,
was a spectacle arranged mainly for my
own benefit. When I had thrown out the
advanced guard of my intended hints to
Hood on the subject of Gracia, he had al-
most immediately invited me to make one
148 Ube Seconfc /IDoo& at its Zenitb
of this present party ; and now I seemed
able to perceive the connection between
the one and the other, my own hints and
the invitation, which had escaped me be-
fore. He desired, or so I thought that I
perceived, that I should see his intellect at
its brightest, as it was capable of shining
in presence of the sympathetic brilliance
of this American, in order that I might
realize the full force of the attraction that
was taking him from Gracia of the perfect
but soulless body, so that I might perhaps
give him justification for yielding to an
attraction which developed in him mental
capacities of such splendor. And* with
that thought inevitably came a compara-
tive rating of these two women, each in
her way so exceptional, so astonishingly
different.
The American was an attractive woman.
She had the aristocratic carriage that ap-
pears to belong of a common right to the
cultured women of the great republic. To
classical correctness neither her features
nor figure had even a remote claim. The
forehead was high and narrow ; the eyes
Ube Second /IDoofc at its 2enitb 149
were not large, but arresting of the atten-
tion with their vivacity of expression of
every thought and feeling ; the nose was
straight, too thinly cut for beauty ; the
mouth was small, but too firmly closed in
repose to allow its lines to be soft and
alluring ; the chin was remarkable, long
and pointed, following a flat angle of the
jaw that gave some suggestion of a snake-
like fineness ; the neck was slender, well
placed on the small, square shoulders ; the
figure finely slender, and the feet and
hands curiously small for the height, which
was above the medium. The ripe-corn-
colored hair was gathered in clusters high
on the head. She was simply, but even as
I, a man, could not fail to see, perfectly
dressed, and wore only enough jewelry to
avoid the affectation of wearing none.
Absently, as I noticed the contrast be-
tween the woman who now held George
Hood by the charm of her mind and that
other who had held him once by the charm
of her body, I took from the table a manu-
script book in which, as it seemed, Hood
jotted down any quotation that pleased or
150 TTbe Second /IDoofc at its 2enitb
struck him, and the first in the whole book
was this, from Charles Kingsley :
Do the work that 's nearest,
Though it 's dull at whiles,
Helping when you meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles.
I smiled. The simple and wholesome
view of life and duty was so remote from
the practice of my friend who had made
this quotation with approval. The next
was a line from Balzac : " Le temps le
mieux employe est celui qu'on perd."
That was better in accord with his prac-
tice. Then came :
Laugh, and the world laughs with you ;
Weep, and you weep alone ;
For the sad old Earth must borrow her mirth,
She has sorrow enough of her own
and so on. This was excellent counsel,
but it was not made for my friend's assimi-
lation, who was in the first place quite in-
capable of commanding his moods, and in
the second quite indifferent to what the
" sad old Earth " did. He could plough
ttbe Seconfc flDoofc at its Zenitb 151
his own furrow, happily or unhappily as it
might be ; but the approval and com-
panionship of his fellow men did not enter
at all into the profit-and-loss account of his
happiness.
The party began breaking up. Good-
byes are boring, and I kept in the back-
ground. Miss Whatman came across the
studio to me, after throwing her cloak
about her shoulders. " Good-bye," she
said. And I, too, said " Good-bye." Then
she added, " I wonder why it is you don't
like me ? I want you to like me. You
are George Hood's friend."
To this kind of remark it is hard to find
an answer all in an instant ; and truthfully
I was not sure whether or no I liked her.
It was true at least that I had an antago-
nistic sentiment towards her on account of
Gracia. But how did she know this ? I
had not been aware that she had regarded
me with more than the most passing at-
tention all the evening ; and yet here she
surprised me by revealing to me my own
feeling with a knowledge of it greater than
my own !
152 Ube Second flDoofc at Its Zenith
She was gone before I had said any defi-
nite word that had meaning, and a minute
later Hood and I were alone. He looked
at me, saying nothing, but with eyes that
asked a question. I nodded, answering
the question. " Is she not wonderful ? "
he asked, as if to test that he had been
right in thinking that I understood the
question in his eyes ; and again I nodded.
" Women doubtless," said he, " speaking
generally, God made for different pur-
poses, to fulfil different needs of the man
for whom woman is the helpmeet. Some
are made for sympathy, some for the one
use, some for the other ; and some, there
is not the slightest doubt, God must have
made when He was in a very evil mood
and did not want His creation to be too
happy. That is the only explanation of a
good many of them."
" Try another explanation," I suggested,
" that it is not God at first hand, but only
His servant, man, that made those women
such as they are."
" That savors a bit of the pulpit," he
replied, with a just rebuke ; " but even
Second flDoofc at its Zenitb 153
taking that as you say it, man was God's
servant in the matter, and for that which
a man does through his agent the law of
man holds him as responsible as for that
which he does himself. I do not know
why you should judge your God by a
more indulgent standard."
He took up a book and began to read,
saying, " Do you know the Song of Khan
Lada ? " I shook my head this time, and
he read :
Only in August my heart was aflame.
Catching the scent of your wind-stirred hair,
Now, though you spread it to soften my sleep
Through the night I should hardly care.
Only last August I drank that water
Because it had chanced to cool your hands ;
When love is over, how little of love
Even the lover understands ! '
He stopped reading and did not speak
for a little while. Then he said, " It is
curious, but, do you know, I do not think
that Gracia ever once told me that she
loved me not directly, in words."
" But she has proved it," I said.
1 Lawrence Hope : The Garden of Kama.
iS4 TTbe Secon> flDoofc at its Zenttb
" Yes," he agreed, " she has." He had
been turning over the leaves of the book
and now began to read again :
Whether I love you ? You do not ask,
Nor waste yourself on the thankless task.
I give your kisses at least return,
What matter whether they freeze or burn ?
I feel the strength of your fervent arms,
What matter whether it heals or harms ?
You are wise : you take what the gods have sent,
You ask no question, but rest content,
So I am with you to take your kiss,
And perhaps I value you more for this,
For this is Wisdom : to love, to live,
To take what Fate or the gods may give,
To ask no question, to make no prayer,
To kiss the lips and caress the hair,
Speed passion's ebb as you greet its flow,
To have, to hold, and, in time, let go !
Of course, while he read, I had to do
the work of interpretation, to translate the
words out of the impersonal sense in which
they were meant by the writer into the per-
sonal sense of the relations of the reader
with Gracia, in which I quite understood
that he intended me to take them.
ft be Second flDoofc at its Zenttb 155
At the end of the reading, and after a
little pause, he said, " No. She asks no
questions. She did not ask you any about
me, about my life ? "
" No," I replied, " none."
" No," he said. " She would not. It is
not her way. In that she is wonderful.
Well, I will ask one question of you about
her : do you think there is any one, any
of her own people, to whom she gives a
thought when I am away from her ? "
" No," I answered, with an indignation
that I did not trouble to conceal from him.
" I am certain there is not."
" You are quite right," he said, rather
wearily " right to be angry with me for
asking such a question. I am ashamed of it
myself. It would make things easier per-
haps if she did." Then, after a quick pace
or two up and down the room, he added,
" Do you know I believe she would have
a stronger hold on me if she did ? "
" Quite likely, I should think, I said.
" Such is the nature of man."
Evidently we were growing sententious
and sleepy. I got up to go. " And if
156 Ube Second /IDOO& at its Zenitb
she thinks of none of them," I said, "you
may be sure it is not from want of oppor-
tunity, temptation, asking however you
like to put it. Tio told me when I was
down in the forest, that Jim Lee is always
after her, to get her to marry him. He
apparently attaches no great importance to
the form of bond you contracted with her."
" I am afraid the morals of the average
gypsy are not as exemplary as some people
who have written about them would make
believe," he said. " Probably Jim Lee
does not attach a great deal of importance
to any form of the marriage bond, whether
a priest or a blacksmith tied it.
" I shall be away from town for a day or
two " he said as I bade him good night. " I
had a letter this morning from the old
butler saying that my father has not been
so well. He does not seem to think it any-
thing serious, but I shall go down to-
morrow to see how he is."
CHAPTER XIII
THE HAND OF DEATH
WITHIN a week I was in Scotland, and
on the morning after my arrival saw in
the London papers notice of the death
of George Hood's father. " From heart
failure," the brief account said. I wrote
at once to my friend such words of sym-
pathy as my genuine grief for him
prompted. Apparently the death had
been sudden, for it had occurred the very
day after the dinner party mentioned in the
last chapter. In a sense it had also been
unexpected, for Hood himself had ex-
pressly said that though he was going to
Suffolk in reply to a letter from the ser-
vant telling him that his father was not so
well, still he had no apprehension of the
illness being immediately critical. At the
same time I knew also that Hood was
157
158 TTbe Ifoano of Beatb
aware that such a catastrophe was prob-
able at any moment, and therefore could
hardly come as a surprise although, when
the long expected did happen, it could
not fail to give something of a shock.
I received no answer I had expected
none to my letter of condolence, and it
was not until my return to London, many
weeks later, that I again heard anything
or saw anything of my friend.
He spoke very feelingly about his
father's death, saying how hard it seemed
that he should be taken now, just when
father and son had learnt to understand
and appreciate each other. He told me
how much he regretted the years of misun-
derstanding years, as he felt, lost forever,
in which he might have received and have
given so much happiness, but for their
misunderstanding years in which he
might have known something of a home
life more conventional than either the life
of the van or the life of the Kensington
studio. Then he began to tell me the
manner of his father's death.
Hood had a look, which struck me im-
Ube 1ban& of Deatb 159
mediately that I saw him, of nervous
strain, as if he had passed through some
hard experience since our last meeting ;
and when I heard of the last scene of his
father's life I was not surprised that it had
left traces. It appeared that on arrival
at his Suffolk home he had been told that
his father was much as when the message
that had summoned him was sent ; he had
gone up to the room, which was dignified
with the name of study, where his father
commonly sat : there he had found his
father seated before a table covered with
papers, with a waste-paper basket at his
elbow. Already the basket was half full,
or more, with the papers torn up and de-
stroyed, and the process of destruction
was in further course when it was arrested
by George Hood's entrance into the room.
It was arrested at once, and it was arrested
forever, for, as he entered, his father
raised his white face, for an instant his
lips formed themselves to the expression
of a smile, signifying a pleased recogni-
tion of his son whom he was expecting;
then, whether even this light emotion and
160 Ube TEmno of Deatb
its gentle access of pulse-beat were too
severe a strain on the enfeebled heart, or
whether the appearance of his son unan-
nounced, although expected, occasioned a
shock of surprise, slight yet too heavy for
its over-worn recipient, his face changed
its look of pleasure to one of frightful
anguish ; and a change, as rapid, of color,
from white to livid, again giving place to
a more pallid hue than ever, passed, even
in the brief interval between George
Hood's opening of the door and reaching
his father's side. It was Hood's firm be-
lief that his father was dead before he
came to him. For all human uses, at
least, his state was equivalent to death,
for he never spoke, moved, or showed a
sign of consciousness again.
" There fell from his hand," said George
Hood, " even as I came to him, a paper.
The coincidence is striking. What, do
you think, that paper was ? It was the
will made by him when he was on bad
terms with me, the will that dispossessed
me of all my natural rights, the will he
had made under the false impression
Dano of 2>eatb
that I was married to Gracia. He died
almost in the act of tearing it." George
Hood looked at me curiously.
"It was in his hand. He had already
torn it," I said, allowing just so much of
the interrogative tone to come into the
words as would suggest the expectation
of an answer.
He did not give me any answer. He
sat looking at me in the same curious way
as before.
CHAPTER XIV
GEORGE HOOD'S SECOND MARRIAGE
EVENTS move fast when life is monoto-
nous. Mine was monotonous enough to
permit surprise at the pace with which
changes broke the current of George
Hood's life. Sooner than I should have
supposed that the law's proverbial delays
would allow it I saw proof of his father's
will, a will of date prior to that of George's
gypsy wedding. It argued therefore, the
destruction of a later will of the will
made while the testator was on ill terms
with the son of the will which the son
told me he had seen in the hand of the
testator when dying of the will concern-
ing which I had asked : "He had already
torn it ? " but had received in answer only
my friend's curious, enigmatic look. The
will, as stated in the Illustrated London
News to have been proved, left virtually
162
6eorae Iboofc's Second flDarriaae 163
everything, and it was a great sum, to my
friend. That was the first of the changes
in his life. He had become a rich man
from a poor one. It is a change that gen-
erally means a good deal. It was a change
that had, as I knew, a peculiar significance
in George Hood's life for the moment, for
it meant that he was now placed in a
financial position which enabled him to
marry whom he would without incurring
the charge of fortune-hunting which kind
critics would not have hesitated to bring
if he had proposed to Miss Whatman with
the very moderate prospects that he en-
joyed while under his father's displeasure.
The advent of the second of the changes
in the life of my friend was announced to
me in the form of a request that I should
be his best man at his marriage with Miss
Olga Whatman. Following my accept-
ance of this office I was formally intro-
duced by Hood to his fiancte as his closest
friend, and found myself at once regarded
with the interest that was natural. It was
an interest with which I could not flatter
myself that the lady had ever favored me
164 George Iboofc's Second
before, and I understood its significance
immediately. It meant, " To what degree
is he malleable ? How much information
shall I extract from him ? "
I do not wish to draw an unamiable
portrait. It was so natural as to be inevi-
table that this should be the lady's point of
view. In return for the little, and the
generalities, that I gave her she told me
much of her views for George Hood in
the future. She wished him to go into
Parliament, to gain office and a seat in the
Cabinet. Her ambition was of the better
kind it was ambition frankly, there was
no pretence of duty or serving his country.
She was under no delusion of the kind
that makes some women think that one
man, the one man in whom they take in-
terest, is the one man that the country
wants. She was too clear-sighted into her
own motives, and gifted with too just a
sense of proportion, to lose herself thus.
But the ambition was of the better kind.
It had no arritre penste of social advan-
tage. She had quite sufficiently " arrived "
already to be independent of that. A
George Iboo&'s Second /IDarriage 165
Cabinet Minister's wife is not necessarily
any figure in society ; but Miss Whatman,
before being anybody's wife, distinctly
was. So the ambition was not of the
vulgar kind. But she recognized and
appreciated her husband's gifts of intel-
lect, which were unusual, and she wished
to see him go down with them into the
common arena of politics and do battle
for her after all it is very like the mediae-
val lists, with wits instead of lances con-
foundinghis foes and emerging triumphant.
" George has the talent, has he not,"
she said, after sketching the career she
desired for him.
" Certainly he has the intellect," I said,
" to become anything."
"What's the distinction you mean to
draw?"
" I mean that he has the mental gifts to
rise to any position you like ; my doubt is
whether he has the wish and the will to
make him exert his gifts."
She nodded at that, with a glad confi-
dence in her eyes. I knew her thought
to be, " I will be the will and the wish for
166 <3eorge tboofc's Second /Carriage
him " ; but though she was really in love,
she was not so fatuous as to say it.
" Would n't it be splendid," she ex-
claimed, " to be Prime Minister of an an-
cient country like England, to feel that
you were making history ? It would be
glorious."
" I don't think the glory of it would
appeal to George," I said.
Her wise reticence was not proof against
this. " I will make him," she said, with a
note of assured triumph. " Why should a
man let his talents rust in the earth ? "
Already, whether by virtue of Miss
Olga's influence, or by the workings of
other causes, I found a change in my friend.
He seemed to have lost something the
quality that was one of his greatest attrac-
tions for me his power of indolence, his
gift of repose. In his common-place book
I had seen quoted, of course with tacit ap-
proval, the passage of Balzac, " Le temps
le mieux employe est celui qu'on perd " ;
and he had lived as if that maxim had hold
of his heart. As a boy, he had told me,
he had astonished a master who had asked
1boot>'s Second flDarriage 167
him what he was going to do during a
spare hour between lessons. " I 'm going
to do nothing," he had said. Pressed as
to what " nothing," meant, it was found
that it really did mean nothing no game,
no book, no talk, no walk, not even sleep,
simply the wakeful enjoyment of doing
nothing. It was Oriental. He had de-
veloped this disposition, which is not natu-
ral in a boy, as he grew up, until the habit
of doing nothing and the faculty of enjoy-
ing it a very valuable and rare one had
become quite characteristic of him. But
since his engagement, as I fancied, he had
lost a good deal of it. It seemed almost
as if he had closed down the page, for the
purpose of using the maxim as a working
one in life, that bore these words of Balzac,
and had taken to heart instead those words
of Kingsley's which I had found quite in
friendly neighborhood with those of
Balzac in his book :
Do the work that 's nearest,
Though it 's dull at whiles,
Helping, when you meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles.
168 George iboo&'s Secon>
I do not know that lame dogs to be
helped came in his way much, although
he affected charitable work in general ;
but he seemed constantly to have near at
hand a work to be done, and to go from
one work to another in feverish haste, as
if he had acquired a new and strange
passion for creating duties for himself.
The change could not fail to set a mark
on his face, which had begun to wear a
look of nervous strain that was new to it.
The wedding was as quiet as possible,
owing to the recent death of Hood's father.
Nevertheless, the papers found it needful
to write a good deal that was superfluous
about the marriage of one who had been
so well known in London society (or in
a certain section of it) as Miss Whatman.
Four days after the wedding, when I
came from the club to my rooms in St.
James's Place about midnight, I was fol-
lowed. A man overtook me as I reached
my lodgings. He gave no word of greet-
ing, but thrust into my hand a torn and
dirty fragment of newspaper, saying in a
foreign voice that was familiar to me, " Is
<3eor0e Ifoooo's Second /IDarriaoe 169
that true ? " There was a ring of some-
thing very like menace in the tone, and
for a moment I was glad that my back was
to the wall, and the main street close at
hand. Then I recognized him.
" Tio ! " I said surprised, " is it you ? "
But by way of all answer he repeated
his former question, with a fierce nod
towards the bit of newspaper that I held
in my hand :
" Is that true ? "
I read the heading of the paragraph by
the fanlight above the door and recognized
it as one of the accounts of Hood's
wedding that had gone the round of the
papers.
" Yes," I said. " Yes, it is true." There
was nothing else to be said, however greatly
I might regret the necessity of saying it.
It was my intention to question the old
man about Gracia, to discover in what light
he and she viewed this marriage, on formal
lines, of my friend ; but he gave me no
chance. He waited only for my answer,
"Yes, it is true," and was gone.
CHAPTER XV
THE RETURN FROM THE HONEYMOON
I WAS disturbed, more than a little, by
the menace that seemed implied by the
question asked by Tio as he thrust the
dirty scrap of newspaper into my hand.
Had I known how to do so, I should have
communicated the hint of danger to my
friend, but I did not know his address.
His lawyers offered to forward a letter for
me, but I did not care to send a message
of this kind by any devious and doubtful
channel. I determined to wait till he re-
turned from the Continent. So long as he
was abroad I did not suppose that he was
in immediate risk. I wrote to him through
his solicitors, saying only that I should be
pleased to hear from him directly he came
home ; and in response to that letter had a
wire from him at Milan saying that he was
170
Ube IReturn from tbe Ibonegmoon 171
on his way back with his wife and asking
me to dine with them in London on that
day week.
Just before his marriage Hood had
bought one of the old-fashioned houses in
Berkeley Square, and it was here that I
went to dine with him and his bride.
" You are our first guest the first to
break the bread of hospitality in our
house," Mrs. Hood said. She entertained
me, and George scarcely less, during din-
ner with a charmingly vivacious and
humorous account of their winter honey-
moon in Sicily. With Taormina for their
headquarters they had made expeditions,
both by land and in a yacht, and the days
appeared to have gone in ideal idling
fashion.
Hood and his wife seemed as mutually
happy as two people can be. The look of
nerve-strain on his face that I had noticed
was gone, with that sense of restlessness
which had accompanied it. He was again
as I had known him, the lazy, brilliant
idler, complected of the idealist and
humorist, looking at life through dreamy
172 tlbe Uteturn from tbe Tbonepmoon
half-closed lids and strangely and beauti-
fully tinted glasses. I dreaded the com-
munication that I had to make to him after
dinner, about the menace that I had
fancied in Tio's tone. After all it might
be the purest fancy. In the interval of
nearly a fortnight that had elapsed since
the night when he had accosted me in St.
James's Place, the impression that the
gypsy's manner had made upon me had
grown less vivid. It might have meant
nothing after all. I felt a great reluctance
to trouble my friend's newly regained
peace by reference to a subject that was,
to say the least, out of harmony with the
present circumstances. Nevertheless, I
had to explain in some way the meaning of
the letter I had written him requesting a
meeting. The true way was the most
simple, and in a word or two I told him
what had occurred and the impression it
had made on me.
By way of answer he took my hand in
his own.drew it behind his back and just be-
low the shoulder blade, and then pressing
it on his body, said, "Do you feel that ? "
TReturn from tbe Ibone^moon 1 73
But for the obsession with which my
own mind was full, but for the picture I
had often conjured of Tio with his Spanish
knife, stealing up behind my friend to
plunge the blade into his heart, I might
not have known the significance of the
hard yet yielding substance on which my
fingers pressed ; but with the light of that
fancied picture to interpret for me I had
no difficulty.
"Mail?" I said.
He nodded. "Just a very small plate
like a porous plaster," he said, laugh-
ing.
" Yes," I said gravely. " It is too small.
If there is necessity for wearing it at all it
ought to be larger. And it is too low
down."
" It is not," he said with a quiet con-
fidence. " It would be if old Tio was a
bungler, or if he had been brought up in a
different school of the cuchillo. The Span-
ish gypsy does not strike downwards nor
upwards. He prods, as if with a rapier.
I have heard it all argued scientifically.
It is the safest and surest way."
174 ftbe IReturn from tbe Ibonesmoon
I saw that he had taken his measures
with a forethought that left no room for
my suggestions.
" Your wife knows ? " I asked.
He shook his head. " Luck has been
with me so far. She has never happened
to feel it. When she does I must give
some explanation, I suppose. She will
think me a coward, or absurdly apprehen-
sive of attack. It does not matter."
" Had you any reason, before I spoke to
you, for being afraid of Tio ? "
" Only such reason as my knowledge of
his character and the character of the peo-
ple he belongs to gives."
" Is Tio the one you were afraid of?"
" I think so yes. Whom else ? "
I shrugged my shoulders. " Gracia ? "
I said, with a question in the tone.
" I think not," he said doubtfully. " I
could not say."
Then he began to ask me about Gracia
and about the boy, whether I had seen them
lately, and so on. He told me in what
county they were far away in the west, in
Devon that at least was the direction in
TTbe TReturn from tbe Ibonegmoon 175
which they had been said to be going,
when they came out of their stationary
winter quarters near Bournemouth, by
Hood's lawyer, who supplied Gracia with
money. He asked me if I would go down
and see them and report to him how they
were all faring ; and this I promised to do
within a week or so.
CHAPTER XVI
THE SOOTHING OF THE SEA
IT was at Dulverton that I came first on
the track of the party I was looking for.
Now and again in the quest I had paused
to ask myself my motives. It was not
affection for George Hood that drove me
on these wanderings in search of these
wanderers. I had doubts of the nature
of my sentiment for him. Friendship it
included, without doubt, but affection I
could hardly claim for it. I doubted much
if I had a real liking for the man to whom
I refer so often in these pages as my
friend. There was much in him that was
attractive ; there was something also that
repelled. But above all, he was interest-
ing. His life and the problems that it re-
vealed to me were unusually interesting.
That was the real key that I seemed to
176
Ube Sootbina of tbc Sea 177
find for the motives that sent me touring
over combe and moorland roads on a
bicycle that jolted sorely in the ruts and
water-worn places. Shrewdly I asked my-
self if I had dealt fairly in this self-search-
ing. I suspected myself sorely ; again
and again asking myself if it were really
on account of this, my doubtful friend,
that I went these odysseys, and in no
measure on account of that beautiful
woman, beyond all others that I had ever
seen for beauty, who was reputed to be
his wife. But, though I suspected, I could
not convict myself. With the best will in
the world to find myself guilty I had per-
force to pass a verdict of heart freedom.
The woman of the caravan, Gracia, was a
charm to the eyes, but I found that she
had said nothing to my heart.
It was at Dulverton that I first heard of
the party, from one of the moor gypsies,
and was told that they had been there
Tio, Gracia, and the boy but had gone
westward again across Exmoor to the
Barnstaple country. So that way, too,
towards the setting sun, I had to turn my
178 ZEbe Sootbing of tbe Sea
wheels, through the early spring weather
which comes softly and kindly in the genial
combes, but leaves the higher ground bare
and swept by east winds for weeks longer.
At length I came down off the moorland,
and as I left it heard fresh tidings of those
I sought. They were gone westward still
to the Braunton Burrows, on the edge of
Bideford Bay and the estuary into which
run together the rivers Taw and Torridge.
So then I pedalled on to the old town of
Barnstaple, across its bridge that spans
the river Taw, and in a mile or two came
to a by-road which led out to a sandy
waste where the track that would bear my
cycle was lost in soft powdery sand, and I
had to take to my feet, pushing the re-
luctant bicycle. There was a track to fol-
low, and the track had been cut within a
few days certainly since the last high
gale, that would have obliterated all traces
on the sand by the wheels of a heavy
wagon. Moreover, beside the track,
where a spring had moistened the sand
and made it plastic, I found, twice, the
impress of human feet, bare of shoes or
Sootbina ot tbe Sea 179
stockings, some small, some larger ; and
these silent witnesses told me that the
caravan had gone forward, with Gracia
and her boy sometimes walking barefoot
by the side, and I guessed that this track
would soon bring my search to an end, for
it certainly led out to the beach, and it
was unlikely that there would be any other
road connecting with it that would lead
to the beach by another way. The track
went gleaming and blinding white over
the white sand that threw back the rays
of the mid-day spring sun like a solid heat.
It was breathless in the shelter of the sand-
dunes that only the thin yellow marram
clothed. Here and there turf had won
over the sand and there was a close, many-
colored carpet of thyme and other tiny
and low-growing flowers with the bees
going over them in myriads, with a cease-
less hum, and small blue butterflies in-
numerable. Where water had lain, and
the tall rushes grew, their stems were
dotted with the cocoons of the gay burnet
moth. Here and there were patches of
euphorbia.
i8o Ube SootbinQ ot tbe Sea
The sound of the sea grew louder and a
fresher and more salt breath came to re-
lieve the heat, and presently, on the land-
ward side of a high dune facing the sea, I
saw the travelling homes I was in search
of. The watchful cockatoo gave notice of
my coming first, with its screeching cry
of " Ge-orge, Ge-orge," never failing, or so
it seemed, to associate me with its master,
in whose company it had first seen me. I
cursed the bird from my heart at the
thought that its call would suggest to
Gracia, as it had done once before, that
he whom she must regard as her husband
by all law, human and divine, as known to
her, was near at hand, only that she might
be disappointed sadly. About the wagons,
however, were only Tio and the youth,
who dragged themselves out from the
shade underneath the vans in which they
had been lying, passing their time in that
blissful occupation of doing nothing at
which they were so proficient. Tio ap-
proached me with eyes blinking at the
glare of the sun. I was a little doubtful
about his reception of me, but it was not
tTbe Sootbtno of tbe Sea 181
hostile, though its coolness was almost re-
freshing in the heat of the day. It was
no less obvious than it was natural that
George Hood's friends were not reckoned
by Tio of the value at which he once held
them.
I asked after Gracia and the boy. Tio
said they were down by the shore. "Bath-
ing?" I asked. "Paddling?"
Tio shrugged his shoulders, as if to in-
dicate that he could not say what they
might be doing. Then he added, " She
sits all her time now looking out to sea."
I did not want to hear more, and there
was a choke in my voice that did not make
talking easy, so full of pathetic meaning
seemed Tio's simple words describing
Gracia's favorite occupation. I went by
the track he indicated to me, leading
among the sand-hills to the shore, and there
I found her, as he had led me to expect,
looking out to sea. She sat in a cave of
the sand-dunes, used, likely enough, in the
winter by a 'longshore gunner, as he lay
out at the dusk of dawn or twilight for
the flighting duck. She sat with her knees
i8z TTbe Sootbina of tbe Sea
drawn up and her elbows upon them, and
her chin buried in her hands, gazing sea-
ward. The sand of the foreshore went shim-
mering away down in such a golden haze
of sunlit splendor that one could scarcely
make out, for the dancing mirage, where
the sea met the land ; but farther out there
was a line of brightest snowy white, where
the breakers raced eternally on the estuary
bar. The white line broke sharply the
azure surface of the sea that stretched
north and west between the headlands of
Morte and Hartland, with no interruption
save the low outline of Lundy Island in
the distance between. There was not a
soul within view ; nevertheless, Gracia sat
there in the hollow of the sand, looking
over the sea ; but I could guess that her
eyes of speculation were not filled by the
scene before them, but had retrospections
and regrets for their occupation. The
soft sound of my footsteps on the shelly
beach was lost in the song of the light
breeze combing the marram grass that
fringed the cave of sand in which she sat,
so that she did not hear nor notice me till
ZTbe Sootbing of tbe Sea 183
I was close upon her. Then she raised
her face from her hands and looked at me.
I was there as the emissary of him
whom I called my friend, George Hood ;
yet, as the woman turned her face on me,
I found a voice at my heart cursing him
for the pain he had caused, for the beauty
he had marred. By the light of the suffer-
ing written on that face, which before had
been of almost too perfect beauty to be
disturbed by any definite expression, the
wisdom of those sophistries by which
Hood had led even me, a person without
prejudice in this regard, to admit that his
path of duty might consist with wedding
the American who seemed made to draw
the brightest and the best from him, to ele-
vate his intellectual nature to its highest
possible degree these sophistries seemed
stricken to dumb and wicked foolishness
by the pain I read on the face of the
woman whom Hood used to call his wife.
And as I cursed my so-called friend in my
heart, I wished him the worst that I could
conceive in wishing him one look at that
face as I saw it then.
i8 4 TTbe Sootbfng of tbe Sea
It was beautiful still, maybe it was more
beautiful than it had ever been before,
though I do not think that possible. The
oval of the outline was less full and more
delicate, but the mouth, in winning an ex-
pression of sadness, had lost the curves
that had made its perfection. Above all,
the change was in the eyes, that had a
look of longing that one does not see in
the eyes of a happy man or woman. They
were as the eyes of a dog that had to
make all its prayer with them, since the
gift of speech has not been granted. I
could not see the boy for the moment.
Probably he was at play among the sand-
hills.
When she saw me she greeted me as if
we had met but the day before. It is a
manner characteristic of these folk, to
whom the unexpected is their constant
portion because they have formed no
plans and no anticipations of the future
event. She put out a hand to me as I
climbed up the slipping wall of sand,
where for two steps forward I made one
back, and courteously moved to give me
ZTbe Sootbina of tbe Sea 185
space to sit beside her. Then, when I
was seated, I found myself tongue-tied.
There was nothing to say before such
silent sorrow as this woman suffered, and
suffered without complaint with acqui-
escence, as in the rain or the sunshine or
the other gifts that are sent and are taken
without question. I talked to her of all
kinds of indifferent things of the view, to
which she was blind. She confessed to
me that she had come hither with a desire
to gaze on the sea. There is in the aspect
of the sea something that always has solace
for sentient things in pain. But she did
not understand clearly that it gave her
solace. Her desire to look upon the sea
was instinctive and quite irrational, and
she took in no details of its beauty. When
I said that the sea was blue she assented,
and when I drew her attention to the
shimmering mirage over the sand she
nodded amiably, but the scene had no
hold of her aesthetic sense.
I asked after the boy ; and the question
was answered rather humorously by the
appearance, at the moment, of the urchin
1 86 ftbe Sootbino of tbe Sea
himself round a corner of a sand-hill a
hundred yards or more away, in hot pur-
suit of a burrow-duck or sheldrake that
had come from its home down a rabbit-
hole in the sand-hill and proposed to walk
sedately over the sand of the shore into
the sea. But the proposed sedateness
was a little disturbed by the boy's detec-
tion and pursuit of it. Nevertheless it
still did not deign to take to its wings to
escape from such a pigmy, but accelerated
the pace of its ungainly waddle, so that
the actions of the two, the boy and the
bird, pursuer and pursued, had a ridicu-
lous likeness to each other, as the chase
went on, not rapidly, over the sand and
into the shimmer where sea joined shore.
A light of gladness came into the mother's
eyes as she watched the comedy with a
wide smile on her lovely face. It was not
necessary to ask how the boy fared. His
vigorous efforts, on his tiny legs, after the
black and white bird spoke for themselves.
Every twenty yards or so he fell prone on
the sand, but quickly scrambled up again
and resumed the hunt. At length the
Ube Sootbfng of tbe Sea 187
bird gained the rippling wave, and imme-
diately its waddling gait was changed
for a most graceful carriage as it swam
out swiftly over the dancing waves. For
a while the boy watched it, then came
running back over the shore again, stop-
ping once in a while to pick a shell or
other jetsam that attracted him. We
watched him silently as he came ; all this
while Gracia had asked no question about
George Hood. The very fact that she
had not done so showed me that she
knew all that had happened. It was not
likely that Tio would have had the discre-
tion, even if he had had the power, to keep
from her the news conveyed by the scrap
of paper that he had submitted to me in
London. As I thought of his appearance
under the gaslights it seemed almost in-
credible that this sunlit, sea-bright, sandy
place could be part of the same world as
that ; yet not only was it part of the same
world, but the two scenes so unlike were
closely linked by some human destinies.
When the boy came up we all sat and
chatted awhile about the incidents that
1 88 Ube Sootbfna of tbe Sea
had befallen on their journey across the
moor, and the shells and treasures that
the boy had found on the beach. Gracia
said that she was trying to teach him his
letters, but that he preferred to run wild
rather than to learn. As earnestly as I
could, without impertinence, I urged her
to give the boy education, and at that she
did at last give some outward sign of her
emotion, throwing her arms abroad with a
despairing action and exclaiming, " What
is the good ? What is the good ? His
father has forgotten us."
I tried then it was not a very excellent
try, for my sense of right was outraged
to urge that this was not so ; I said that
he spoke often, anxiously and affection-
ately, about them both, which was true,
and drew attention to the fact that he did
not fail to send the regular supplies of
money as a proof that he had not, as she
supposed, forgotten them.
"Oh yes as for that the money!"
she said scornfully ; and indeed, when one
knew her manner of life, one knew that
here, for once, the scorn of money was not
Sootbing of tbe Sea 189
an affectation ; " but he does not care any
longer, he never comes to see me, he never
wants to see me."
She got up suddenly as she said this,
gathered into her own hand the hand of
the child who had been looking at her with
surprised round eyes all the while that she
was speaking, and so went down over the
sand-hill, leaving me seated. I understood
that she did not desire that I should follow
her, and my thoughts, as I sat and gazed
at the fair sea-scape, were hot against my
friend who had done so great a wrong.
After a while I went back to the wagons,
but Gracia and the boy were not there. I
no longer met Tio as a friend indeed I
was not too sure whether he might not
have tried, if the dusk had fallen, to make
me proxy for George Hood and scapegoat
for his sins, and find a sheath for his
Spanish knife beneath my ribs. But he
and the youth contented themselves with
glances of cold animosity as I took my hot
way back over the white sands.
CHAPTER XVII
WIFE AND HUSBAND
THE Hoods, as I have said, had bought
one of the fine old houses in Berkeley
Square, and I found Mrs. Hood very kindly
disposed towards me, regarding me, as she
observed laughingly, in the light of her
husband's dme damnte. " I suppose," she
said, " that as you have served him as best
man, so one day you will be called on to
play the part of advocatus diaboli at the
Great Judgment."
"Not he," George Hood had replied
readily. "He knows a good deal about
me, but there are depths of my villainy
that not even he has ever plumbed."
How much of his " villainy " had been
revealed to his wife I did not know, but
wondered, as my thoughts went back to
the sad and beautiful face on the sand-
190
TKHlfe anfc fwsbanfc 191
hills of Braunton Burrows. I had been
virtually made free of the house in Berke-
ley Square, free to drop in casually to
luncheon and to propose myself to dinner,
and thus had every opportunity of study-
ing George Hood's second manage even as
I had the first. It was impossible not to
recognize Mrs. Hood's charm and grace.
She had in very liberal measure those
gifts of self-possession and alert intelli-
gence that seem remarkable to us, but are
almost common property with the cultured
of her countrywomen. She had also her
full share of the exigeance which is charac-
teristic of them in the matrimonial relation,
yet in spite of it I was quickly able to see
that my friend had not surrendered his free-
dom at discretion. On most points where
she was insistent he made the same grace-
ful show of yielding, but yielded scarcely
at all in the substance of any question that
arose between them. Without doubt she
was aware of her failure to influence him
completely as she wished, and a little
piqued by her failure. There was no evi-
dence, for example, of George's acquies-
i9* Mife ant) twsbanfc
cence in her desire that he should seek a
seat in Parliament. He never absolutely
declined to consider the project, but effec-
tually defeated it by making no effort
whatever to realize it ; and his Fabian
tactics in this instance were only typical
of his conduct in regard to other questions
of their mutual difference.
I made a third at one of these discus-
sions in the Berkeley Square house, and
it happened, as Mrs. Hood assured me,
that he had never expressed his views so
freely to her when they were alone. Mrs.
Hood, of course, was the eager, animated
talker, full of schemes for her husband,
while the husband himself lay in an atti-
tude of something like Oriental indolence
on a long-seated armchair, smoking cigar-
ettes and listening to his wife's eloquence
in a mood of humorous cynicism, both
mood and attitude suggesting all that is
most remote from ambition.
" Mr. Balfour as good as told me there
was a safe constituency you could have,"
she declared emphatically. " He said he
could not tell me the name now, for it was
TKHtfe anfc 1busban& 193
not yet vacant, but he would let me know
as soon as ever he was at liberty to."
" Mr. Balfour ! " Hood commented.
"You have made up your mind, then, to
run me as a Conservative, Olga ? "
Mrs. Hood disregarded the remark.
" If only you would bestir yourself to do
something ! "
" That is what everybody 's doing be-
stirring themselves but it does not in the
least follow that they 're doing anything ;
as a rule the contrary the more bestir-
ring, the less accomplishment."
Mrs. Hood shrugged her shoulders
hopelessly. She had said her say. Hood
took his cigarette from his mouth, settled
himself more luxuriously than before in
the depths of the long chair, and then, as
if he deemed the guns of the enemy si-
lenced for the moment, began to do a
little talking on his own account. " You
see," he said, " the weak point of politics
as a profession is that after you have
slaved and slaved, with heaven only knows
what waste of breath and energy, to pass
a certain measure, the opinion of the
194 Mife anD
world will be divided as equally as may
be as to whether or no you have done
more good than harm by it. If you were
to take a poll of the English world, you
would find opinions fairly divided as to
whether it was better for the world that
Gladstone has lived or it had been better
that he never had been born that is a
proposition that any Conservative will
grant you. If you are talking to a Radi-
cal, put Beaconsfield in place of Gladstone,
and he will grant you the proposition just
as readily as the other will grant you the
other. Well, when that is how the ac-
count has to be made up at the last, it
does not seem as if all the labors, even of
the greatest politicians, could be of any
very decisive value."
" Do you mean by that that when opin-
ions are equally divided, truth lies mid-
way ? " Mrs. Hood asked quickly. " There
was a time when opinions were fairly
equally divided as to whether the sun went
round the earth or the earth went round
the sun."
"And what difference did it make to
Hdifc anfc DusbaTto 195
human happiness when the question was
decided?" Hood asked.
" It made just this difference, as it seems
to me," she said, "that with the answer
to the question the main doctrine of the
Christian religion passed into the region
of the unbelievable at once. When it was
thought that the world was the centre and
pivot of the universe it did not seem so
incredible that the Creator should take so
much interest in it as to send down His
Son that the shedding of Divine blood
might expiate human sin. When that
notion of the earth as the centre and pivot
was dispelled and the earth was found to
be on the rim of a system of which the
sun was the centre, with countless other
systems around fully as important, then
the whole idea became inconceivable. It
was not to be thought that the Creator
could send His Son into each of these
countless planets to be crucified in each
for the sake of His creatures' salvation.
That would be a little tr op fort, mon ami"
" My dear Olga/' Hood replied wearily,
blowing a puff of smoke away as if other
196 Wife ant) tmsbant)
things might be blown aside as easily,
"you are a very clever woman, so clever
that I almost doubt sometimes if your
mind is quite feminine. As soon as you
begin to argue I am reassured. The
centre, if by that you mean the point of
greatest interest the focus of interest in
the universe does not depend on posi-
tion. It is the point of highest develop-
ment, wherever that may be. We have
reason to think that in such of the uni-
verse as our eyes, at the small ends of tele-
scopes, make visible to us, the point of
highest development is with human be-
ings, on earth. Therefore, even from that
point of view there is no reason (except
that it is altogether unreasonable, as hu-
man reason goes) that this miracle of
miracles should not have been performed
on the earth, just because the earth is at
the circumference, instead of the centre,
of our solar system. Its locality in the
system is no argument. And, again, the
plurality of worlds, which it pleases you for
your argument to suppose inhabited, cre-
ates no added difficulty. The miracle is
Wife anO f>usban& 197
difficult of credibility indeed, but if it can
be believed that it happened once, there is
no difficulty whatever in believing that it
can be repeated. Besides, granting your
big assumption of the plurality of worlds
supporting something like what we call
human life, it does not follow that in every
human society there was a ' fall ' requir-
ing 'redemption.' Your most orthodox
might concede you that."
" Of course, I know I am a woman, a
poor woman," Mrs. Hood replied, with
ironic humility, " and therefore logic is not
to be expected of me ; but is it the logical
conclusion from what you have been say-
ing that the best way for you to pass your
life is to be an utter idler ? "
Hood turned to me with a delighted
smile. " What a disadvantage," he ex-
claimed, "mere man is at with woman
through being bound by rules of logic !
What man would dare the strategy of a
flanking movement like that ? No, Olga,"
he continued more seriously, " I am not
contending that the ideal life for me or
any one is one of utter idleness, but it is
198 TKHffe ant)
possible to lead a life not altogether idle
outside of politics and outside of any
recognized profession. It is not neces-
sary to call a man an idler because he is
not earning a certain number of hundreds
or thousands a year. After all, that is not
the end of life."
" You speak as if you knew what the
end of life was," she retorted.
" I wish I did," he replied. " Shall we
say, by way of a suggestion, to get one
inch nearer truth ? At all events, I do
not feel that I should fulfil my own end
in life if I tried to get into Parliament in
place of some other man who is much
more eager to get there, and probably is
much better fitted for it. It is not as if
there was any lack, fortunately enough,
of people to carry on the legislature and
the government of the country. On the
contrary, they are tumbling over each
other to get into Parliament and to get
office why ? is one of the eternal mys-
teries. I suppose man is so constituted
that he likes to manage his fellow-crea-
tures."
Mife anfc twsbanfc 199
" Certainly woman is ; but she does not
seem always to get her way," Mrs. Hood
said, with a whimsical humor.
" They are all so busy," he said with a
weary sigh, " like a hive of bees, but
they make so little honey. And ' God in
heaven, what can it matter ? ' as some one
says Free Trade or Protection, a little
richer or a little poorer ? "
" But, George, you cannot deny that
humanity has advanced. It would not
have advanced but for the efforts made
by humanity."
" Would it not ? " he asked. " It
seems to me humanity has a tendency
to go along in the direction that de-
mands least effort, in spite of the busy
bees. I grant you the advance though,
although it is a tremendous indictment
of the scheme of human evolution that
such things can be possible after all these
centuries as occurred in Manchuria or,
to escape playing the rdle of the self-
righteous Briton shall we say in South
Africa?"
" Nature has always been regardless of
200 Mife ant) Dusbanfc
the individual, so long as she can improve
the type."
" Nature ! yes," he agreed, almost with
energy. " But you surely would not hold
up Nature for our guidance in this at
least ? It is Nature's greatest triumph to
have evolved man ; that is to say, a crea-
ture capable of sitting in judgment on
Nature's methods and finding them cruel,
barbarous. She has created something
that has to be better than the laws by
which she has created him. He has to
fight with and on the side of Nature,
evolution, God if you will, to render the
type more perfect and that means that
he has to be a great deal better than
Nature would have him be. This he can
only do by obedience to the guide, the
daemon, with which Nature, or the God
of Nature, has gifted every man in some
degree."
" And your daemon tells you," said Mrs.
Hood with an irony rather Socratic, " that
you ought not to go into Parliament ? "
" It seems indicated to me that I should
be wasting my time if I did."
TKHtfe ant) tmsbanfc 201
" Your time ! And that is a commodity
so very precious ! "
" You are getting frivolous, Olga. I
like you ever so much better so than when
you are merely logical."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE BONDS OF MATRIMONY
THE hospitality affected by the Hoods
took the shape of small dinner parties, at
which conversation might be general,
rather than of the banquets of a score
of guests and upwards, which make virtu-
ally several small dinner parties of the
one ; and in these select circles there often
was much of that striking of the flint and
steel together in which the conversational
powers of husband and wife were con-
spicuous. But when they dined alone,
with myself as a third, as often happened,
there was little of this display of fireworks.
In a short time Mrs. Hood was good
enough to give me that best proof of
friendship which consists in being able to
remain silent in presence of another, with-
out embarrassment, if the mood of silence
202
Ube Bonfcs of flDatrimoni? 203
is upon one ; and I soon began to see that
she was one of those brilliant talkers who
require a gallery. George Hood himself
had practically said as much to me, with-
out any intention of finding fault or hint-
ing at disappointment or disillusion in his
wife's society. And yet I felt that he had
suffered a certain disillusion, notwithstand-
ing. It was so like him to expect the too
much and the impossible, that I was in no
way surprised. The flint must find the
steel with its edge fresh, and not dulled by
use, if it is to give its most flashing re-
sponse. In spite of his disillusion, Hood
was immensely proud of his wife, and loved
her, as it was in him to love, with an affec-
tion that was always at work to idealize
its object. Nevertheless he had not long
been back in London before I found that
he was losing all that he had seemed to
recover of his old indolent and comfort-
able repose. The nerve strain appeared to
hold him again in its grip, and his eyes had
the suggestion of wakefulness at night,
which is so pitiful to see.
I have written that it was pitiful, and it
204 ftbe 3Bon&s of /IDatrimonp
was now, just at this point of his career,
that an immense pity for him began to
take hold on me. It was one thing to feel
the emotion of poignant anger against him
as I looked at the lovely sad face on the
sand-hills ; but when I saw his own face
scarcely less sad, I became in a sense the
more pitiful because I knew him to bear
the additional pain of the consciousness
that his grief was of his own making, aris-
ing out of the sadness of heart that I felt
sure he must be suffering on account of the
grief that he had brought upon Gracia. I
supposed that I could analyse his feeling
accurately, thus : he had sinned against
the one woman, being resolved to bear as
he might with the remorse of conscience
on her account ; and, thus having acted,
found the reward of his sin that is to say,
the society of his wife less valuable to
him, less pleasant to him, than he had an-
ticipated. Pleasant he found her com-
panionship, no doubt ; but the value, in
drawing out that which was best in him,
in keeping him ever at his intellectual best,
perhaps with some brilliant eventual result
ZTbe Bonfcs of /IDatrimonp 205
that the world would recognize that im-
agined value he found to be delusive.
And as he became conscious of his disap-
pointment, he became at the same time
conscious of the tie that he had formed
for himself by this new form of contract
with a woman, leaving him so much less
freedom than that former one. I could
perceive him chafing in the bonds of social
convention that he had forged for him-
self and had knowingly sinned in forg-
ing, in that he had given grievous pain by
so doing to a woman who had offered up
her life to him as his wife demanded his
escort for this or that party or this or that
country-house visit that had no attractions
for him. His wife loved him, and she
was an American, either of which alone
perhaps would have sufficed to make her
exigeante ; the two together conspired to
add an element of jealousy to her exi-
geance. There followed as a matter of in-
evitable course, the small, the injudicious,
and the untimely recriminations on her
part of the " Ah, it does not amuse you to
be with me" type that is so familiar and
206 Ube JSonfcs of
more than slightly vulgar in its banality.
Suspicions followed on the part of the wife,
suspicions absolutely groundless, as I be-
lieved, so far as concerned any infidelity
even of thought on the husband's part, yet
suspicions which necessarily meant weari-
ness and boredom for the husband and a
possible turning of his heart for brighter
companionship and friendlier sympathy to
other women, which in itself might afford
ground for the very suspicions that had
been in great measure the cause of such
first turning. Moreover I had to confess
to myself that I could recognize some real
grounds, of the negative kind, for Mrs.
Hood's suspicions, for I was myself sur-
prised by her husband's frequent absence
from the house. In a business man, or a
professional man, possibly in a golf player,
it would have been intelligible, but Hood
was none of these. He was much of an
indoor man, and yet I seldom found him
at home. Once or twice his wife had said
to me, not without a sub-acid flavor in the
tone, " I never see George now ; he is so
much away."
ZTbe Bonos of /IDatrimong 207
Then I inquired where he went. She
looked at me a moment as if surprised that
I should ask ; then said, " I do not know.
I do not question him."
From what I had observed and had
heard when husband and wife were to-
gether I knew that this was not precisely
an accurate statement, but without doubt
the lady believed it as she made it. On the
contrary, being, I have said, an American,
and also a woman in love, she often
subjected her husband to a catechism
that I, as a bachelor, deemed extremely
troublesome and also extremely injudi-
cious. George Hood writhed under the
questioning, but on the whole bore it well,
with his usual humorous cynicism, and had
the wit to throw it off lightly in his answers.
Seriously taken it would have been intoler-
able. I wondered that Mrs. Hood did not
attempt to get information from one whom
she looked on as her husband's chief friend,
but she always spared me her questions.
One day, however, she spoke of a picture
shop, close to the club, at which she had
seen an old print that she admired. " I
208 ZTbe Bonfcs of
was in a hurry when I was passing," she
said. " Some day I mean to go in and
look at it carefully and ask the price."
" Let me look at it for you and ask," I
suggested.
" Oh, no," she answered carelessly. " I
will get George to do it. He is so often
at the club."
" At the club ! " I exclaimed. " Why,
he is never there ! "
The very slighest, yet sufficiently signifi-
cant, change of expression passed across
Mrs. Hood's face for a moment and was
gone again ; but it had been enough to
make me regret keenly the careless truth
I had blurted out. She had fairly caught
me in a trap, and the fact that she went
on with perfectly unchanged tone to dis-
cuss the points of the print with which
she had ground-baited her trap, filled me
with a sense of uneasy doubt whether I
had often before been snared by her in
like manner only more subtly so that I
had not even felt the teeth of the trap
and had been unaware of the trapping.
Had she pursued the subject of George's
Bonds of /iDatrfmons 209
attendance, or non-attendance, at the club
further I should have feared her less,
though to have done so would really have
proved her yet more subtle, for it would
have concealed her subtlety. As it was,
I determined henceforward to be on my
guard, but already I knew that my first
guard had been passed.
The inferences to be drawn were ob-
vious. George was absent from his house
during hours for which he did not give
full account when questioned by this wife
whose exigeance evoked much question-
ing, or if the account was full it was fal-
lacious, for if he implied that he was often
at the club the implication was a false
one. I asked other members if they had
seen him there, and inquired of the hall
porter ; the answers were unanimous, that
he came hardly ever. Of course this was
not the only club in London of which he
was a member, but it was the one which
Mrs. Hood had indicated distinctly that
she understood him to use.
One night, however, or, more strictly
speaking, in the small hours of one morn-
Ube JSont)s of /IDatrimons
ing, it did happen to me to see him at
the club. One by one those with whom
I had talked and smoked or played bridge
had gone, and I was waiting lazily on,
only wondering when I could rouse my-
self enough to walk the few hundreds of
yards to my rooms, when George Hood's
familiar voice aroused me, and even as I
recognized it I noticed at the same time
that it had in it a peculiar timbre. It rang
with a clear resonance that was not usual,
and the words came quicker, free from his
habitual lazy drawl. The substance of his
speech too was not altogether like him.
" I am so glad," he said, "to find you
alone. I want to have a talk with you.
My wife has been doing me the honor of
being jealous of me. It was a high com-
pliment, of course, but it is boring."
" Yes ? " I said. " Who is the lady ? "
He laughed in genuine amusement at
the question. " That is just it," he said.
" Cherchez la femme. That is exactly
what my wife is doing. It is exactly what
I do not know what no one knows. It
is amusing."
ZIbe JBonfcs ot flDatrfmonp 211
" You said just now that it was boring ? "
" So it is. It is both in turns like
life. What I said first is more true than
what I said last. It is more boring than
amusing."
" You are rather enigmatical. Can you
not put it all a little more plainly, with a
little more detail ? "
" I don't know whether I can. It is
very late. Do you want to go to bed?
For my part I never felt more wide awake
in my life."
" I was fearfully sleepy a minute ago,
before you came in. I am quite wide
awake too now. We cannot talk here all
night, though. They will want to shut
up the club. Come over to my rooms.
We shall be quiet there."
CHAPTER XIX
FUMES OF OBLIVION
As we crossed the street he passed his
arm through mine. In another man this
might have meant nothing, but it was a
form of masculine caress that I had never
known my friend to use before, and con-
firmed the impression given me by his
words that he was not in quite a normal
state. Before we had left the club I had
glanced at him sharply to see whether he
had been dining or supping too well. I
had never had such an idea about him
before, and a look had been enough to
assure me that there was no ground for
it now. His step was perfectly steady,
his hand as it lay on my arm was firm,
and he spoke with a fluent speed and
lucidity that argued an even and excep-
tional clearness of head.
212
jf umes of blipion 213
" What is the matter with you ? " I
asked, as soon as we were in my rooms.
" Matter with me ! Nothing," he said,
looking at me keenly, almost with sus-
picion, so that I feared for a moment that
my unguarded question might quench the
source of his fluent speech. But the im-
pulse of his mood was too insistent to be
stayed, and he had scarcely sat down in
his chair before he began his explanations.
" My wife, I have told you, does me
the honor to be jealous of me. Possibly
you may have noticed it that she takes
me to account for all the minutes of my
day, and of all of them, it is true, I can-
not give an account. I think if there was
one mood of a woman more than another
that would dispose me to seek consolation
in other feminine sympathy it would be
just this. Lately, it is true, she found a
reason, or what she deemed to be a reason
I am certain of the fact, for I noticed a
change in her mood to me directly after
the very moment of the incident for an
access of her doubts. By an unfortunate
coincidence she came into my study at
214 df umes of Oblivion
the moment that I was reading a paper
which it was imperative that she should
not see. I had no resource but to scuffle
it away as best I could into the drawer in
my bureau, in the hope that she would
not notice my action. She did notice it.
I knew directly that she had seen it by
her glance of suspicion, and I knew for
some time afterwards that she had seen it
and had drawn certain inferences from it
by the change in her attitude to me. Is
all that interesting ? Not very interesting
yet, I think. Had that been all it would
be a very uninteresting story, extremely
banal just a woman's letter to a man
that he could not or would not show to
his wife. I did not come to tell you a
nursery tale like that. What was inter-
esting was Olga's own action and its
denouement. She had me watched by de-
tectives, and at length she found, I sup-
pose, what she wanted, or what she did
not want ; she found, at least, where I
went to in those absences of which she
wearied me so to give her an account.
And when she found out she was, I sup-
jfumes of blivion 215
pose, more or less happy. At all events
she has been entirely different to me."
"In what way different ? "
"If I explain to you, you must under-
stand clearly that it is explanation only,
not complaint. Heaven knows that it is
not I that have ground for complaint
against my wife in our relations. Entirely
the contrary is the case ; it is she that
has all the ground for complaint. I have
very much indeed for which to be grate-
ful to her ; but at one time, until she had
satisfied her mind by her discovery, she
was what shall I say? well, trying.
She was difficult. ' Uncertain, coy, and
hard to please,' the hackneyed old words
of the poet who knew women so well,
have not been beaten. Perhaps that
might describe it best. Nothing that I
did, or did not, was right. There was no
pleasing her ; and as I have said, and as
you have seen, she catechised me end-
lessly. Perhaps if I had sworn at her it
would have been better for both of us,
but I have not the faculty in me of swear-
ing at a woman ; and, besides, she had a
216 ffumes of
show of right because I could neither
account fully for my goings nor had the
strength of mind to tell her roundly I
would not be questioned. You see the
impasse."
" No," I said, " I do not. I do not see
that you have, or had, arrived at an im-
passe at all. I have not yet been given
any reason why you could not explain
your absences to your wife. That would
have been a way out, and until I under-
stand more fully, it is obliged to seem a
simple one."
He nodded at this, with a smiling com-
prehension. " Until you understand more
fully," he repeated. " You quickly shall."
He got up from his chair. " It is a warm
night," he said. " Will you come for a
little walk, or drive, if you like, with me ?
Then I will show you."
I think with any other man of my ac-
quaintance I should have parleyed and
asked explanations, perhaps made excuses.
With Hood I was so used to acting on his
suggestions and to find reward in the in-
terest of the revelations they resulted in,
jfumes of blivion 217
that it hardly occurred to me to parley.
The sleepy mood had long passed and I
was quite inclined for a stroll with an un-
known goal.
There are certain reasons, which will be
quite obvious, for not indicating the goal
precisely. We went across Piccadilly Cir-
cus through those curious streets that are
haunted by the theatrical people, pas-
sing through Covent Garden, where the
night wanderers were yielding to the
awakening business of the great market,
vans already arriving from suburban gar-
dens, and cart horses steaming out on the
chill of coming dawn. We stopped at the
door of a large house in a mean street.
Hood looked back down the street to see
that no one was following immediately,
and knocked twice and gently. The door
was opened after a few seconds by a weary-
eyed, foreign night-porter, who gave Hood
a candle, without a word passing, and
nodded. We went up the stairs. A
faint but pungent smell pervaded the place.
Hood opened a door on the first-floor
landing and we went into a room of which
218 jfumes of blivion
the only piece of furniture at all remark-
able was a low wide couch running most
of the length of one wall. The sickly
pungent smell was stronger here than on
the stairs.
"You know what the smell is, I sup-
pose ? " he said, as he watched me in-
haling.
" I am not sure," I answered with hesi-
tation.
" Oh, yes you are," he said with a nerv-
ous laugh. " It is opium."
I understood. I understood that this
was his way of making confession to me,
whom he had come to look on rather in the
light of his father confessor. I under-
stood that he had chosen this way, the way
of showing me the fact, rather than make
the difficult, the degrading, confession in
words. I looked, I saw the wretched-
ness of it. I realized all that it meant,
the shame ; disgust and pity strove to-
gether for the chief place in my heart,
and I stood silent, finding no word to
say.
" Can you bear it ? " he asked. " Shall
3fumes of Oblivion 219
we sit here a little while or shall we go
outside ? I want to tell you about it." He
spoke in a strangely humble way, as if
with a sense of his degradation, and an
anxiety that was pitiful to hear my verdict
on him.
" I think, if you don't mind," I said, in
a tone that I felt to be cold and unsym-
pathetic, " that I would rather go outside."
Then I added, my heart smiting me with
a deep pity for him, " By Heaven, I am
sorry for you."
He did not answer that, and we went
out again into the summer night, now
turning to dawn.
" That is the explanation," he said,
presently. " That is the mistress of
whom my wife was jealous. She knows it
now I know that she knows it and she
too, like you, is sorry for me is good to
me. It is more than I deserve."
"As for what you deserve I do not
know," I said, " but there is another feel-
ing towards you in which Mrs. Hood and
I must share, that is in the determination
to help you to free yourself from this"
220 jfumes of blivion
it seemed better to leave the pronoun by
itself to indicate my meaning.
He shook his head sadly. " I do not
know," he answered. " I am afraid it is
impossible. I am a slave, fast bound.
Several times I have done my best to shake
off the fetters, but they have always
fastened again on me. I know myself too
well to have any hope, even with your
good help and Olga's."
" How did you come to it? " I asked.
" How did I come to it ? By gradual
steps, such as, I suppose, are the begin-
nings of most descents that are precipitous
enough in the end. In the first place I
took it as a kind of medicine. My heart
gives me trouble at times, and pain it is
an inheritance from my father, I suppose
and the opium allayed it. Then I have had
troubles, troubles a good many of which
you know, but some one in particular
that you do not know. Perhaps I shall
tell you some day, and when I do you will
think even worse of me, if that is at all
possible, than you must think now. I do
not mind. I never did mind much, show-
jfumes ot blivion 221
ing the worst of myself to you ; and they
say that the opium habit takes all self-re-
spect from a man. I can quite believe it.
And besides the actual troubles that are
objective, there is the subjective trouble
of a brain that never rests. I know you
have thought of me you have even
spoken to me of myself so sometimes as
possessing a peculiarly blessed faculty for
doing nothing. I can assure you you
never were more mistaken. I do not be-
lieve there is another man in the world so
absolutely incapable of doing really no-
thing, of letting his brain be at rest from the
continual treadmill of thought, as I. And
this drug enables my brain at least to be
at rest. That is its negative boon. But
it has many others on the positive side.
It is the mistake of most of you others,
who never have lived in the world that lies
on the other side of the opium haze, to
think that all it does for you is negative,
soothing, narcotic. It has its stimulating,
energizing influence too. Of course I am
not so foolish as to deny that the reaction
is terrible, that the sum total of the effect
222 ffumes of blivton
is perdition. I am not walking on the down
gradient blindfold."
Unless one has the misfortune to be a
person with no interest whatever in human
nature, in which case the world must be
a very dull place to live in indeed, it must
be obvious that I had here, in the house-
hold of two in Berkeley Square, as satis-
factory a problem for study as life often
has to offer. Up to a certain point I had
traced with grieved sympathy, the course
of my friend's married life running, as it so
often does, in a world of human misunder-
standings, according to one or other version
of the never-old comedy of Much Ado
about Nothing husband and wife truly at-
tached to each other, yet drifting mis-
erably apart. There arrived a definite
moment at which all this was changed. I
was aware of the change, even before the
moment and the reason of it were revealed
to me by my visit under Hood's guidance
to his opium den. Up to that moment
Mrs. Hood had treated her husband with
a petulance and a disposition to find fault
and make difficulties that were extremely
jfumes of blivion 223
trying for him, as I had no doubt, but yet
were by no means inconsistent, in my
judgment, with a very real affection.
Starting straight away, as I was able now
to recognize, from the moment when she
made the pitiable discovery which Hood
himself had revealed to me, she became
good to him, with a protecting half-
motherly tenderness that was infinitely
touching to witness for one who knew, as
I knew, its motive source. The situation
had, besides, its piquancy ; for while Hood
was fully aware that his wife was ac-
quainted with his degrading weakness,
she was playing her part in blissful uncon-
sciousness that he knew her to be aware of
it. I learned from Hood that she had
said nothing to him of her knowledge, and
made no direct attempt to deter him ; but
she laid herself out with a tact that she had
not shown before, and a devotion that was
unmistakable, to devise any amusement
or interest that her husband could enter
into, with the view, no doubt, of occupy-
ing his thoughts so that his temptation
should have less opportunity to attack him.
224 Jfumes of blivion
In the meantime, while she said nothing,
I was learning by degrees the fatal extent
to which the habit had hold of my poor
friend. Of course I did my best, the
little futile best that in the like cases
is the utmost one can do, to induce him
to desist from it, reiterating all the very
obvious arguments which he knew by
heart, and had conned over to himself
a thousand times, the necessity of taking
a grip on himself, and so on. The argu-
ments were obvious and anything rather
than original, but there is a singular qual-
ity in the human mind by which arguments
that are perfectly well known come to have
a fresh force by repetition. It is the qual-
ity on which all the force of suggestion
depends. By the reiteration of these very
commonplace arguments, aided and abet-
ted very powerfully by the tender solici-
tude of his wife, which the very fact that
she had the delicacy to conceal her know-
ledge of his fatal habit made perhaps the
more appealing, it did appear to me that
some ground was being gained, that Hood
was strengthening himself, I knew at the
jfumes of blMon 225
cost of a severe struggle. He told me
with satisfaction that he was placing longer
and longer intervals between his visits to
the vilely smelling den in Soho, and that
the visits were shortening in duration. I
began to have a hope. And then, all in a
day I knew not for a long while by what
disastrous accident the whole course of
the drama in which my r6le was that of
chief inspector altered. Two days before
I had seen Hood and his wife together
and they had been cheery she gently
solicitous, he with his charmingly humor-
ous response just as I had known them
for some while past. Two days later I
came to dine with them at home to make
up a party of four for bridge. I had not
been two minutes in the room before I
was aware of a change in the atmosphere.
The change was in Mrs. Hood. Her
manner to her husband had changed at
once from that of a woman with whose love
an element of the protective and the mater-
nal feeling mingles. It had changed to
the manner of a woman firmly resolved to
do her duty to the man she has married,
226 jfumes of blivion
to behave with a correctness to which no
exception could be taken. But all the
tenderness was gone. In its place was a
courtesy, a coldness, a distance that hardly
was consistent even with affection.
It was evident to me, who knew him so
well, that Hood perceived the changed
manner it was inevitable that he should
do that. What was not so essentially in
the nature of things was that he was no less
evidently taken aback by it. Clearly he
had no knowledge of its cause. Again and
again, in the course of the evening, I saw
him glance at his wife in surprise at her
glacially polite tone. At other moments
I would find her, thinking that she was
unobserved either by him or me, looking
at her husband with an air of scrutiny and
study, as if she had made some new dis-
covery in the depths of his heart, and was
seeking an explanation or a fuller account
of it. The situation was an intensely in-
teresting one, but painfully distressing.
The moment was a crucial one in George
Hood's life that I realized very clearly.
If he relapsed now there would be little
ffumes of blivion 227
chance indeed of his salvation, and few
days only had gone, since the bridge party
at which I had observed the change in his
wife's manner, when I met him again, and
was shocked by the alteration in his looks.
All the old signs were there ; the pallor,
the bistre circles below the eyes, the laxity
of the facial muscles, that told of a re-
lapse to the worst depths of his besetting
weakness.
Clearly he was aware of his state, and
was ashamed of it, for he would hardly
speak to me or meet my eyes, in which
he found perhaps some quite uninten-
tional hint of accusation.
And if he was thus changed by the
sudden withdrawal of his wife's tender-
ness, a change scarcely less apparent and
painful was to be read on her face also.
That she had suffered some kind of shock
was very obvious.
At their small dinners she was as charm-
ing a hostess as before ; beautiful, with
her tall, sinuous figure and refined face ;
but her husband's humor was no longer
the steel that the flint of her wit struck
228 JFumes of blivion
upon. For him, or in response to him,
she had no word to say except the banal
words that were necessary, and her face,
like his own, began to wear the pitiful un-
mistakable signs of the nerve strain the
dark rings below the eyes and all the rest.
It is a strain that the more delicate physi-
cal nature of the woman does not with-
stand as a man's constitution withstands
it ; and within a few weeks of the day
on which I first noticed the remarkable
change of Mrs. Hood's manner to her
husband the signs of suffering and illness
in her face grew distressing.
CHAPTER XX
THE SECOND MRS. HOOD
ONE day that I had been at luncheon
with Hood and his wife at Berkeley
Square he had gone out early and left us
alone together. She sat silent for awhile,
and answered only in monosyllables when
I spoke to her. Suddenly, as if she had at
length made up her mind to a course that
she had long been debating, she asked :
" I suppose you knew George's first
wife?"
In my utter surprise at the question
thus thrown at me unawares, I could do
nothing more than murmur a helpless
"Yes."
" What was she like ? Who was she ?
Why have I never been told of her ? "
She asked the questions quickly, ex-
citedly, almost hysterically.
229
230 Ube Second flDrs. tbooD
I got up from my chair and walked a
pace or two about the room to regain my
own calmness before answering.
" Don't you think," I said then, " that
your husband is the person to whom you
ought to address these questions ? "
" No," she replied, " no, I do not,"
and now there was a firmness and decision
in her voice that had their source in
anger. " These are not questions that I
ought to have to address to my husband
or to anybody. They are questions that
never ought to have arisen to be asked.
The answers to such questions ought to
have been given me long ago, before I
was married, unasked."
Her indictment was most painfully
true. I had no word of valid defence
to oppose to it. "And since," she said,
" my husband has not thought it well to
tell me these things, I am asking you,
who are his friend and apparently in all
his secrets, to tell me. Or am I to sup-
pose that a conspiracy of silence has
been formed against me that I am to
receive no enlightenment as to these facts
Second flDrs. DooD 231
which, after all, do somewhat concern
me?"
" There is no conspiracy of silence,
certainly not," I said, in a manner that I
felt to be weak and hesitating. " But I
do not really know how much I ought to
say how much I am at liberty to say."
She shrugged her graceful shoulders
disdainfully. " It does not seem to me
that such a position as that is very in-
accurately described as a conspiracy of
silence."
" Let me speak, Mrs. Hood. Let me
explain," I pleaded. " There is no con-
spiracy there is no compact between
George and myself that I shall keep
silence about what I know of his private
affairs. He never has demanded any
promise of secrecy from me about them.
And yet I know quite well that he
understands that I look upon that know-
ledge as confidential. Therefore, I do not
feel myself wholly at liberty, without his
leave, to speak to you on these subjects.
" At the same time I have this feeling
no less strongly in fact, far more strongly
232 Ube Second flDrs, 1boo&
that you ought to be informed about it
all ; that it would have been far better
had you been informed about it long ago,
before you married. I even went so far as
to recommend this course to George, and
I understood from him that he intended
to follow it ; but it does not seem that he
did so."
" Understood from him that he in-
tended to follow it ; but did not do so ! "
she repeated. " How well I know that
impression which he is so skilful in im-
parting, and which leads to absolutely
nothing ! Your ideals of honor and con-
fidence in friendship are very lofty," she
continued with irony. " Will they per-
mit you at least to tell me this why
George's father objected so much to his
marriage ? Was she not a lady ? "
" I think that was the father's objec-
tion," I said, after a moment's thought.
"But even so, what reason was there
for all this mystery ? Why should I not
have been told ? "
" Mrs. Hood," I said earnestly, " I
think it would have been better, infinitely
TTbe Second flDrs. Iboofc 233
better, if there had not been any mystery
at all if you had been told every-
thing."
" Then why will you not tell me every-
thing now at least," she said, correcting
herself, " as much as you know ? How
much you know, how much I know, how
much there may be behind, I suppose no
one knows except my poor husband him-
self."
That last phrase struck my attention
" my poor husband." Much cause as she
might have, and actually had no doubt to
blame her husband, there remained in her
heart some of that " pity which is akin to
love " if she could use the epithet " poor."
I found myself debating this in the re-
cesses of my mind, even while my more
superficial mental activities were engrossed
with the question that she had put to me
why should I not tell her everything, so
far at least as I knew it ? And I believed
that I knew all there was to tell. After
all, I was bound to no secrecy ; I dis-
approved of the entire course of action of
my friend, and especially of that part of it
234 Ube Secon> /IDrs. 1boo&
which consisted in making a mystery to
his wife of his past life. He had even
acquiesced in my suggestion that it would
be far better for his wife to be informed of
everything. I could therefore reasonably
argue that I was only acting as he had
formally approved, in being the medium
for his wife's information. Still I tempor-
ized. The idea of betraying a confidence
tacitly reposed in one is not an idea that
becomes pleasant by virtue of a few cold
arguments decking it with a show of justi-
fication.
" Ask me questions," I said at length ;
" I will answer them if I can that is, if I
feel that I can."
I detected, and without surprise, a
scornful curl of the lady's finely cut lip at
the weakness that permitted me this com-
promise with my conscience.
" Please don't do violence to your senti-
ments," she said, in a tone that made me
feel as Joseph Surface should have felt
if he had any sense of shame in him.
" What was her name ? "
" I don't know," I said, " what her
Seconfc /IDrs. 1boo& 235
surname was. Her Christian name is
Gracia she is a Spaniard."
" Is ! Was, you mean."
" Is, still is," I persisted.
"You mean " she looked at me with
eyes dilating with horrified astonishment
" that she is alive still ! "
I nodded.
" Then my husband - ! " she gasped.
" Do you mean to tell me that I am not
married ? "
" Oh, no, no," I said, even in the midst
of this scene of staccato emotion scarcely
able to refrain from smiling at the idea
suggested. " George is not quite as bad
as that."
" You mean there was a divorce ? "
" I mean that there was never a mar-
riage a legal marriage."
" Oh ! " She sat silent a while, think-
ing, I could fancy, with relief, on the
changed view-point of the situation to
which this intelligence brought her. Then
she said, looking at me keenly, " Is that
true ? "
Clearly it was no game of compliments
236 ZIbe Second flDrs. 1booD
and fine phrases that we were playing.
The words came as the heart prompted
them.
" Yes," I said simply, " it is quite true."
" Forgive my asking such a question,"
she said, realizing that it was not quite with-
in the social conventions. " I had reasons,
I have reasons, for thinking that there was
a marriage."
" And I have George's word," I said,
" for knowing that there was not."
" For knowing," she repeated, with an
emphasis that indicated clearly a possi-
bility that " knowledge " might have
sounder foundation.
I shrugged my shoulders. After all,
this was a view that had not before oc-
curred to me that George might have
deceived me and his father, too, all along,
in this matter. We were dealing with a
tangled skein, and my faith in my friend
was not strong.
" Where is she now, this woman ? "
I was able to answer truly that I had
not the most vague idea. Then came the
feminine question that was inevitable I
Ube Second flDrs. Tboofc 237
think an Englishwoman would have asked
it sooner " what age is she ? Is she
good-looking ? "
In form these were two questions, in
fact, they were one. I was on the point of
answering unguardedly that she was by far
the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
Luckily I reflected in time that any such
appreciation could only aggravate the situ-
ation.
" Yes," I said, " she is certainly good-
looking."
" And young ? "
" And young."
She paused for a moment before her next
question, and both from her hesitation and
from her tone when she did ask it, I knew
that the asking cost her an effort.
" Do you know whether George has
seen her since our marriage ? "
" I am quite certain that he has not," I
said.
" Thank you," she answered. " I know
by your tone that you are glad to be able
to tell me that."
She asked me then whether there were
238 TTbe Secont) /iDrs. 1boo&
any children, and I told her about the boy.
From that she led me to give a full ac-
count of the extraordinary gypsy life, the
circumstances under which the gypsy mar-
riage had taken place, and so on. My
conscience reproached me at times, in
course of the recital, with violating
George's confidence ; but, after all, I had,
as I told myself again, never promised
secrecy ; the whole story was one that I
had strongly advised should be disclosed
to the wife before marriage, and I had
understood George to acquiesce in that
counsel. Both for him and for her I
deemed it far better that the truth should
be told her, and with these reflections I
stifled as best I might any reproaches that
my conscience suggested.
When I had told Mrs. Hood all that I
had to say, she was silent for a long while.
Then she said, " After all, it is no more
than many other men have done before
marriage, is it ? "
"No more, no worse, certainly," I re-
plied.
" But I do wish that he had told it to
Ube Second flDrs. Tboofc 239
me all himself. I would have forgiven
him."
" Yes," I said, " I wish he had."
She reflected again, silently, before her
next words, which surprised me when
they came. " I have humiliated myself
sufficiently, have I not, in asking these
questions ? "
" I don't know that you have humili-
ated yourself," I said. " I am very sorry
for you."
" That is practically the same thing I
have appealed to your pity. Well, it has
not failed me, and I am very grateful.
Oh, I am very grateful," she repeated ear-
nestly. " I cannot tell you how grateful
I am, nor how much I want a friend. I
am here, a woman in a strange country.
I do not make friends very easily. I
could not ask you to be my friend if I
did not know how much of a friend you
were to George. You have told me much
about the husband ; I am going to tell
you something now about the wife, if you
will have the kind patience to listen to it."
Certainly I would listen ; but as for
240 zrbe Second flDrs. 1boo&
friends, American though she was, I could
imagine no Englishwoman having more.
Her acquaintance was enormous, and one
of the charms of the small dinners at the
Hoods' was the uncertainty who or of
what class might be one's fellow guests.
The party might be political cabinet
ministers and their wives. It might be
artistic painters or sculptors without
their wives ; or, if the artists were femi-
nine, without husbands ; for art and matri-
mony are not good friends. It might be
musical. It might even be smart, with dec-
orative people whose heads were empty
but their chatter glib in its own small
circle, and their laughter ready to respond
to very little wit. The only thing that
they seldom were was financial, for the
hosts were too well off and too unlike
their neighbors to want to speculate, or
to give dinners in exchange for those
Stock-Exchange tips which generally are
so cheap to those who give them and so
expensive to those who take them. And
often there was a most admired and
surprising confusion of these various ele-
Second flDrs. t>oo& 241
ments. This, if it can be done with suc-
cess, is the very triumph of the dinner
giver, but it requires an extraordinary
social gift on the part either of host or
hostess to bring successful harmony out
of the elements of such discord. Mrs.
Hood had these extraordinary qualities as
hostess. George in large measure had
them as host, and thus their parties were
a joy.
But all this does not make friends, as
Mrs. Hood said truly when I suggested
to her that she, of all women in London,
had not the right to talk of herself as
friendless, though it means an enormous
acquaintance. It was quite possible withal
that she might be, as she said, in lack of
a friend, and there was a distinct reason
that she should make me her confidant in
the fact that so much had been confided
to me already. With me she had but to
take up the parable with the beginning
of her married life. There was little in
George Hood's previous life that was
unknown to me or so I ventured to sup-
pose. But it was of the wife, not of the
242 Zlbe Second /IDrs.
husband, ostensibly, that Mrs. Hood had
to tell me.
" I don't think," she said, in the slightly
nasal tone that seems to give an air of
added reflection and value to what an
American says, "that an American girl"
(she pronounced it " Amurrican," but it is
tiresome to insist on these accentuations)
"begins married life with quite the same
ideas as an English girl. She has illu-
sions, of course, but they are not precisely
the same illusions. She does not imagine
that she is marrying an angel and going
to Paradise straight away, but she does
imagine that she is marrying something
that she is going to make do what she
wants it to do. An English girl does not
begin with that idea. She begins with
the contrary notion that she ought to
do what her husband wants her to do.
Whether she intends to do it, and whether
she does it, are quite another story. The
illusion I began with was that I was going
to make George do what I wanted him
to do.
" The worst sign in him was, and I
Second /IDrs. Tfooofc 243
ought to have recognized it from the be-
ginning, even before we were married,
that he never fought. He always seemed
to be giving in, to be taking it lying down,
whatever I had to give him. And yet, if
I had only realized it, he never did what
I wanted of him after all, not in the
least particular. Or if he did, he just did
enough of it to keep me quiet, so long as
it did n't matter to him ; but directly it
began to matter, from his point of view, I
never moved him an inch. Loved me !
Well, I suppose he did, all the time ; but
made a fool of me all the time, for all
that, and made the bigger fool of me just
because he let me think all the time that
I was making a fool of him. If I had
recognized strength of character in him,
in doing all this, I could have borne it
better ; but George's is not a strong char-
acter. His very method of getting his
own way showed that. But I must say
that I do admire George. I think he is
the cleverest man I ever met."
" I quite think so too," I said.
" And the most useless ; the man who
244 tlbe Second flDrs.
will have done least good in his genera-
tion, who will just go out of life without
any one noticing, and will not have made
a cent's worth of difference, at least not
the right sort of difference, to the world
by his life."
" I 'm afraid that would be just about
the truest epitaph that could be put over
most of us," I said.
"Yes, but not above most that are as
clever as George," she replied with con-
viction. " There are not so very many
that are as clever."
"You told me you were going to tell
me about the wife, not the husband," I
said.
" And so I am," she answered. " I am
telling you what a fool the wife was, in
what she thought of the husband and of
what she was going to make of the hus-
band. Perhaps you '11 think that I did n't
love him that I don't love him because
I can talk so. You 'd be very wrong if
you did think that. I believe there was a
time when I did n't love him, and I '11 tell
you why. I failed I failed with George
ZCbe SeconD /IDrs. TbooD 245
failed to make what I wanted out of
him. I don't know what I wanted ex-
actly. I wanted something celebrated
a cabinet minister, or premier, or some-
thing of that kind. Well, of course,
George was not cut out to go on those
lines I ought to have known that from
the start ; but I was a fool, as I say. So
George continued to go his own way, and
when I found that, I got annoyed with
him, and I dare say I let him see it, and
then he sought the friendship of other
women that is what I could not stand,
but I see now it was all my own fault that
drove him to it, my misunderstanding of
him and my thinking that I could make him
do what I wanted, and then being vexed
when I found I could n't, and letting him
see that I was vexed ; and after that of
course, when he was disappointed in me,
he tried to find the ideal woman who
would n't disappoint him. I don't mean
to say, you know, that he went out de-
liberately woman hunting or ideal hunt-
ing ; I don't mean that, but he ' went
a-roaming' in a dissatisfied way, trying
246 Ube Second /IDrs.
for comfort, not knowing in the least what
comfort it was he wanted. Oh, it must
be funny being a man ! Perhaps there is
one thing, though, that seems more funny
to you being a woman."
" It must be funny being a woman, no
doubt," I assented.
" So it is, but it is not always amusing
not to oneself at least. I think you
would not believe, perhaps you could not,
being a man, how I used to torment my-
self when I saw George wanting the com-
panionship of other women."
" Oh, I don't know about that," I said.
" I don't think that jealousy has any par-
ticular sex."
" And I 'm sure it has," she maintained.
"It is far worse for a woman. I was
mad, I think, with jealousy I suppose
jealousy is the right name for it and I
think I was not well ; for a long time
I was bothered with sick fancies, and
thought George was in love with every
woman he spoke to. I 'm sure it sent up
my temperature of nights, thinking of it
as I lay awake. And then I came into
Ube Secorto flDrs. 1booo 247
George's room one day as he was sitting
at his bureau, and as I came in he jostled
a letter or something away in his hand
and put it into a drawer and locked
the drawer. That made me mad. I
was as certain as if I had seen and read
the letter that it was a letter which
he did not wish to show me, from some
woman. As if I should have cared to
read it ! "
"Yes," I said. "As if!"
She laughed. " Well, of course that 's
nonsense ; that 's only a way of saying.
Of course I was dying to know what was
in that letter really ; but, equally of course,
I took no notice at the time. I did not
say anything to George. I pretended not
to have seen him shovelling the letter
away. Well, do you know, that happened
twice. Twice it happened that I came
into the room and found him reading a
letter which he shovelled away into the
drawer as soon as I came in. When he
did it the second time, it seemed more
than twice as bad as when he did it the
first. I think it was then that I began to
248 Ube Second flDrs. 1boo&
hate George. I 've left off doing that
now, you know."
I nodded.
" I said," she went on, " that I had hu-
miliated myself before you. You did not
seem to understand when I said it. I ex-
pect you understand now. At all events
you will when I tell you what came next.
You see the situation there was I, twice
I had seen my husband conceal this letter,
and I suspected all sorts of things, and
one day, when George had gone out, I
came into his room and there were his keys
lying on the open part of the bureau.
You see now what I am going to tell you,
that is so humiliating. Yes there was
the key and there was the drawer I knew
which the key was that opened it and
within was (or in all probability was) the
letter that I was not meant to see. What
I ought to have done was to go out of the
room, out of the house, go to a theatre, to
the dentist, to any amusement or pain or
emotion that would take my thoughts
away. What I did was this I sat down
in the room with my back to the bureau.
ttbe Seconfc /IDrs. Tboofc 249
I would not look at it. But I saw it all the
same, though my back was turned to it ;
and not only saw the bureau but actually
seemed to see through the wood of the
drawer and read the writing that I imag-
ined written on the letter inside the drawer.
Once I did go out of the room and slam-
med the door hard in the hope that it
would bring a servant or somebody that
would distract my thoughts and give me
something else in my mind's eye besides
that ugly square bureau and that glitter-
ing bunch of keys that seemed to have
some hypnotic suggestion and magnetism
in their gleams. But no one came. At
length I went back on tip-toe, praying now
that nobody might come to interrupt me,
although only a few minutes before I had
been hoping that somebody would come.
I did not hesitate any longer. I went
straight up to the bureau, took the keys
and opened the drawer. The paper was
there that I was looking for I knew the
look of it well. It was not at all of the
nature that I had suspected it of being
but it gave me proof (I imagined it at least
250 Ube Seconfc /IDrs. 1booO
to be proof) of what I had never for a
moment suspected before, of George's
previous marriage.
" It 's a pretty story is n't it ? " she said
ironically, as I made no comment when
she paused.
" It is a very human story at all events,
in some of its aspects."
" And so she is still alive ? "
"Yes," I said, knowing that the "she"
could refer but to one person. " She is
still alive ? "
Mrs. Hood did not speak for a moment,
and when the next words came they were
a little enigmatic. She said :
"Is that the reason, I wonder? Poor
George ! "
" The reason of what ? " I asked, though
she had seemed to be speaking rather to
herself than to me.
She did not answer at once. It seemed
as if she were debating some question
in her mind. Presently it appeared
what the question at debate was, and
the answer. She had been deliberating
whether she should make further con-
ZTbe Second flDrs. 1boo& 251
fidences to me, and at length had decided
to do so.
" I will tell you," she said. " You will see
then why I am so greatly in want of a
friend. I have told you something of
what I found in that drawer I seem to
have been punished more than enough, do
I not, for my wickedness in opening it ?
I found something else in it an address
that aroused my suspicions. It was the
address of a house in Soho. After that,
do you know what I did ? "
" Not precisely," I replied, though I had
a shrewd idea that I knew.
" I can hardly bear to tell," she said
shamefacedly; "but since youknowsomuch
that is bad about me, you may as well
know the worst. I was still half crazed,
I think, with my suspicions as to what
George did in the hours he was away from
me hours for which he could not, or
would not, give an account. I had him
watched by a detective to that house of
which I told you I found the address, and
do you know what I discovered ? "
" Yes," I said, " my dear lady, I do know.
252 zibe Second flDrs. TfoooD
And I cannot tell you how deeply sorry I
am for you and for him."
" You know ! " she exclaimed in great
surprise. " What is there that you do not
know about this poor husband of mine ?
Tell me this," she said almost fiercely,
looking at me as if she would drag the
truth, against my will if necessary, from
me. " Do you know have you been de-
ceiving me all this time do you know all
that I found, all that I have not told you,
in that paper that was in the drawer ? "
I assured her so earnestly that I had not
the most remote conception of what might
be conveyed or concealed in the paper she
spoke of that I think my manner, perhaps
more than the words, carried conviction to
her, and she began with a renewed trust in
me, that had been momentarily shaken, to
ask me the details of my knowledge of her
husband's use of the drug, how long he had
taken to the habit, how he had spoken
when I urged him to refrain, and so forth.
She spoke with such earnest solicitude
that it was impossible for me to think that
her love for him was dead, nor did she
ZTbe Secon& flDrs. TbooO 253
show any of that loathing that might be
almost natural towards one who was the
victim of such a degrading weakness, al-
though she fully seemed to realize the
horror of it.
" You have said nothing to him your-
self about it, have you ? " I asked.
" Nothing as yet," she answered. Then,
after a moment's pause, " I hardly feel as
if I can."
" You will, Mrs. Hood," I said, as firmly
as I could, and as gently. " It is not for
me, of course, to point out to you the line
in which your duty lies, but I am quite
confident that you will. I am also confi-
dent that no one else's speaking can have
anything like equal effect."
She took a turn or two in the room, ab-
stractedly adjusting the combs that were
in her bright hair. The final pat was a
firmly decisive one. She had made up
her mind.
"Yes," she said, " I will speak to him."
CHAPTER XXI
REMORSE
I WAS not able to convince myself to my
satisfaction of the probable effect of the
news I had been able to give her on Mrs.
Hood's relations with her husband. In
some measure I had put the matter in a
more favorable light than that in which
she had regarded it since her discovery of
the incriminating paper. I had assured
her that this was, in effect, no previous
marriage of which she had been kept in
ignorance, but was really rather one of
those pre-nuptial and unlicensed liaisons
which nearly every man who has found
himself with money in a large city has
formed in his youth, and of which he hesi-
tates, perhaps out of a fine feeling of
respect for her modesty, to say anything
to his wife. From this point of view the
254
1Remor.se 255
concealment is rather to be regarded as a
tribute to her more refined nature than as
an offence against honor and candor. On
the other hand I had been obliged to tell
her that, though this liaison belonged to a
part of his life that her husband had wholly
left behind him, still he was not so en-
tirely severed from it as she had imagined
by the great gulf of the death of the
former object of his love. She lived still,
still depended on and received his bounty.
This reflection was one that might in the
case of a wife of a jealous temperament,
as I knew Mrs. Hood to be, make the
situation more aggravated than before.
From the way in which she received what
I had told I augured that I had not done
unwisely, in the interests of the mutual
relations of husband and wife, to make
this virtual breach of confidence of my
friend's secret, but that augury was based
only on Mrs. Hood's first acceptance.
Further consideration might very conceiv-
ably have changed her view. It is true
that she had spoken in the most affection-
ate way of her husband as we discussed
256 TRemorse
the possibility of aiding him to break from
the fetters of the fatal habit in which he
was fast bound ; but all that was immedi-
ately after I had told her of the true in-
terpretation to be placed on the discovery
that she had made. The course of that
discussion did not give her any leisure for
the arrangement of her thoughts, and I
was in secret dread as to the outcome
of the inevitable process of her mental
brooding over what she had heard. It
was therefore a purest delight and relief
to me, on my next meeting with Hood,
when he began speaking in the lazy drawl
that was his normal manner :
" The world is full of surprises, and to-
day for a wonder I have had a pleasant
one. For the most part I find them the
reverse of pleasant. My wife has begun
to treat me again like an old friend, not
merely as if we had been introduced the
day before yesterday."
Of course I knew precisely what he
meant, but, equally of course, I could not
quite say so. Well as I knew him, it
seemed to be demanded of me that I
IRemorse 257
should affect to have perceived nothing
left to be desired in his wife's manner with
him at any time.
" What do you mean ? " I asked.
Of course, with his more than feminine
quickness of intuition, he appreciated ex-
actly the train of thought that had led me
to the remark. He laughed, and then
was good enough to say :
" If I knew what a gentleman was, ex-
actly, I should say that you were always
one. My wife has been to me," he went
on, " with the air of one making a confes-
sion, to confide in me what I knew before,
but of course I did not tell her so, that
she had employed one of those lights of
the earth called private detectives and had
discovered who the mistress was that had
some claims upon my time." So far he
had spoken with the cynicism characteris-
tic of him. He went on in a much more
serious tone that proved him to be really
touched : " I cannot tell you how kind and
tender she was to me, praying me for her
sake as well as my own to pull myself to-
gether and leave this blessed stuff for the
258 IRemorse
devil to smoke in hell, as I am very cer-
tain he does not, for then it would be hell
no longer. And I have promised her, my
friend, and I will renew my promise to
you too " he was speaking very solemnly
now, as if he felt that he was making some
kind of sacred vow, although I knew only
too well how little there was that he held
sacred " that I will give up this blessed
and accursed drug. I would swear it if I
knew by what to swear. But we will leave
it so without vain swearing. I will do my
very best, both for her sake and for mine,
as she said."
" And if you resolve your mind like that
you will have strength. I am confident
you will."
" Thank you, my friend," he said. " You
are very good to me, both you and she.
What, I wonder," he went on, speaking
softly, as if to himself, " can be the reason
of her changing to me so suddenly, and
so completely so delightfully."
I hesitated whether to tell him that I
believed I knew the reason of the change,
but in some measure this would have been
TRemorse 259
to betray her confidence, and I reflected
that a woman does not forgive you as
readily as a man will forgive, your breach
of confidence, though it may be that a
man will be a more faithful keeper of a
confidence. And while I hesitated Hood
resumed :
" Do I show any signs of it in my man-
ner?" (There was no need to indicate
more exactly the meaning of the "it.")
" Do my eyes show it ? Is my hand be-
ginning to shake ? Do you see signs of
my brain going ? "
" No, no, no," I said, " not that."
" I have often wished it would go.
Yes, I have wished to heaven, often, that
I might go mad. Then perhaps I might
have some peace of mind. At present I
have none."
" What is it that troubles you so ?
Gracia ? "
"Gracia!" he said. "Yes Gracia!"
His voice seemed to linger and dwell on
the musical syllables of the Spanish name
as if he found some comfort in the sound.
" Do you not think it natural that my heart
260 TRemorse
and my conscience should be troubled
about Gracia about her and about my
boy ? I have not said much to you not
even to you who are my best friend
about it all. What use, after all, to try
to translate one's emotions into the spoken
word ? " I might have answered him that
I knew no man who made the attempt
more often, or on the whole with more
success. " But it is for you to judge,
rather, and estimate what my feeling
must be. After all, I have loved this
woman. In a way I believe I love her
still no, not love, but I have the affec-
tion of a dear friendship for her, and, be-
sides, she is the mother of my boy ! I
think of him, too, so constantly that be-
tween the two it seems to me as if my
whole mind were obsessed by them, and
I can have no room in it for other thought
and other trouble. Yet I have so much
more. Has it ever seemed curious to you
that I have not been down to see them
Gracia, I mean ? "
"Curious," I said, "not so much that
you have not been down to see them
IRemorse 261
as that you have not seemed to want
to."
" Have not seemed to want to," he re-
peated. " Yes, I suppose it must have
seemed to you like that. It only shows
how little one can appreciate the impres-
sion one makes on one's friends, even on
those who are the most understanding.
As for not wanting to go down and see
them," he said, " it is a want, at times it
has become almost a necessity, that has
beset me daily, almost hourly. It has been
by the strongest effort only that I have
kept myself back and dissuaded myself
from taking train to wherever they might
be, and seeing them for myself. You tell
me of the boy that he grows bigger,
rounder, browner. His body is well. I
am doing nothing for his mind and for his
soul. What am I to do? How can I
do anything ? I am in the net of my own
weaving. Can you understand the motives
that have kept me from going to see
them?"
" I think I can, in part," I said.
" The motives are two, and both are
262 TRemorse
women. Gracia is the one, Olga the other.
As regards Olga, there would be neither
infidtlitt de coeur nor de corps, as the
French say, in my paying a visit to Gracia
and the boy ; but it would be better, more
discreet I feel that I owe it to her, as part
of a very large debt due from me to her
not to. As for Gracia, you can under-
stand, I think, how I shrink from seeing
her, how I hardly could bear to see her,
feeling that I have made her suffer deeply,
out of her love for me, and yet how I long
to see her ! I expect you can understand.
It is so hard not to see her to see them
both and yet to see her I sometimes
think would be harder still. It would be
more than I could bear."
"She would have no reproaches for you,"
I said.
" No, no," he said bitterly, " she would
have no reproaches ; and that would make
my self-reproach so much the sharper.
That, too, you can understand. But it is
amazing to me that you have not perceived
all this without my telling you. When
one feels something with a great intensity,
IRemorse 263
one has a natural disposition to think that
it must reveal itself to a friend's sympathy.
It only shows how easily one is mistaken.
It is even satisfactory in some degree to
find that one is less transparent than one
had supposed. I have had wonderful les-
sons in my life from two women, and I
have not deserved either of them."
"There cannot be the slightest doubt
of that," I said, with a candor I knew he
would not resent.
" After all, about Gracia a man must
be true to his own self, he must do the best
for his own nature ; that is the most sacred
trust that has been given him ; he must
follow the dictates of his own 'daemon.'
Am I not right ? "
" Whether you are right I do not know,"
I said. " I know at least that in saying
this you are consistent with what you have
always preached. But have you been as
consistent in practising what you have
preached, and if you have been consistent
in the practice, are you, in your own life, a
striking testimony to its excellence ? After
what you have just told me, that it has
264 TRemorse
brought you to this stage that you wish
you could go mad, that so perhaps you
might win peace of mind, can you say that
your system is a success ? "
" I know, I know," he said. " I am a
fair argument against my principles. But
I tell you it is not by reason of my system,
and not so much by reason of my incon-
sistency, but of my cowardice, my lack of
courage and decision in carrying it out,
that I am such a fine argument against it."
" I don't quite follow," I said.
" No ? Well, I will expound. It is
marvellously simple. In the first place I
was consistent enough ; I followed the dic-
tates of my 'daemon,' as I believed, with
Gracia. I do not reproach myself with
that, I do not reproach myself that I did
not marry her, but what I do reproach
myself with is that, not marrying in any
legal sense, I yet weakly allowed myself to
go through a form with her which she un-
doubtedly believed to be a legal marriage.
I ought to have taken my courage in two
hands and said to her boldly : ' This is no
binding marriage that we are making ; we
IRemorse 265
are not bound to each other in any legal
sense.' Had I done that, I might have
been free of remorse now I do not know.
" Again, it was merely in the obstinacy
of a radically weak nature that I allowed
my father to believe for so many years
that I really was married to Gracia. In
that I did him a fatal wrong, a wrong that
without doubt embittered his life and
hastened his death."
" You are not sparing yourself," I said,
said.
He took no notice of this. " Once
again, when I married Olga, my weakness
and indecision prevented my taking the
right course which you and my ' daemon,'
as I am pleased to call him, too urged
upon me. Whether rightly or wrongly, I
decided to marry Olga. In my circum-
stances such as I had created them the
fact that I had acted wrongly in creating
them did not affect the question I be-
lieve I was right then in making that mar-
riage. If you knew the ideals with which
I entered upon it, I believe that even you
too might think I was right in doing so.
266 TRemorse
Of my ideals of our intimate life together
I need not speak. Of my ideals of our
social life I may say that I imagined it
would be entirely different from that
which we see familiarly the husband sit-
ting in a silence, blighted by the presence
of the wife, or the still more blighting
spectacle of the husband eloquent while
the wife sits admiringly listening to his
every word. I had imagined a brilliant
give and take of suggestion and response.
Well the reality you have seen. But,
whether I acted rightly or wrongly in
marrying, this at least is certain, that I
acted wholly wrongly in not telling my
wife at the outset all about my previous
relations with Gracia. Some day she is
bound to find them out. Maybe she has
found them out already. What do I
know ? Sometimes there seems to be
so little real sympathy between us, that it
is impossible for me to know what passes
in her thoughts."
I hesitated a moment, as I had done be-
fore, and had I hesitated longer I might
have answered differently or, again, not
TCemorse 267
at all but this time I told myself that at
least one cause of misunderstanding be-
tween these two I would sweep away at
all costs, and exclaimed recklessly : " You
may reassure yourself on that point. She
knows it all already."
" Ah," he said quietly, " you told her ! "
" No," I replied. " In the first in-
stance, she found it out herself. Later I
told her when she questioned me the
truth. It was better she should know the
real truth than the truth as she believed it
to be. It was the wrong interpretation
that she put on what she discovered that
built up such a barrier between you.
When she knew the real truth her love
for you broke down the barrier in a
moment."
" She found out for herself how ? "
The question put me into deep waters.
To answer it I had to give away much of
the confidential avowal made to me by the
wife. I seemed in a position between the
two in which I was constantly giving to
the one the confidences of the other. The
reckless mood was upon me still, and I
268 IRemorse
had the conviction that my betrayal was
better than the lack of understanding
which the lack of mutual confidence be-
tween them had produced. Even with
this conviction I hardly know how I should
have answered but for a glance at my
friend. His pale, worn face had gone
more pallid, as white as a sheet of paper.
He repeated :
" How did she find out ? "
" She found some letter or document,
or something which virtually told her. It
told her wrong, however. It told her you
had been married ; and she imagined it
referred to a former marriage, which you
had kept a secret from her, with a woman
who was dead."
Preoccupied with the task of saying just
enough, but not too much, I finished my
sentence before I looked directly at my
friend. To my horror I then saw him lying
back in his chair, as pale as death, in a
state of physical collapse. He was fumb-
ling with his left hand at his waistcoat
pocket, and let fall a tiny bottle which
rolled without breaking to the floor. I
IRemorse 269
picked it up and read on the label, " To
be taken in case of an attack." I pulled
the cork out. " For you to take now ? " I
asked. He was too far gone to reply ex-
cept by a very slight motion of his hand
and a droop of the lids over the eyes,
which I accepted as affirmative signs. He
aided me feebly in putting the tiny bottle
to his mouth, and drank off its contents.
Then he lay back with closed eyes. His
breath, which he had fetched in feeble
gasps, came more evenly. Presently the
tinge of color that passed with him now
as the hue of health came back to his
cheek ; his face lost its absolutely death-
like pallor. His eyes opened, he passed
his hand over his forehead as if he were
removing an oppressive weight. Then he
smiled at me.
" That is better," he said in a low voice.
As soon as I saw him in a fair way
of recovery I left him, at his own request,
by himself, under promise that I would
call to see him on the following morning,
when he would be more master of himself,
and able to talk to me. He had a hand-bell
270 IRemorse
within reach to summon a servant if any
repetition of the heart attack occurred, but
he assured me that its recurrence was not
the least likely.
The next day, when I called, he seemed
quite himself again, asserted manfully that
he was perfectly well, and hardly would
answer my inquiries in his impatience to
resume the conversation which the attack
had interrupted.
" You know what the document was,
I suppose, which my wife found which
told her so much, and so much that was
untrue ? "
" No," I replied, " I do not know."
" She is a wonderful woman," he said
with admiration. " I should not say that
she was altogether a sympathetic woman,"
he went on with that passion for analysis
which would never leave him, even on his
death-bed. " It is hard for a brilliant wo-
man to be really sympathetic. The one
quality implies an interest in the words
and acts of another person that is incon-
sistent with the other. The brilliant wo-
man has no attention to spare : she is an
IRemorse 271
egoist. But my wife is a wonderful
woman, a woman of wonderful goodness
of heart, even if she is not truly sympa-
thetic. You will see it when I tell you
what the document was that she found."
" What was it ? "
" It was my father's will : the will he
made when we were on bad terms : the
will that disinherited me : the will that I
found on the table at home when I went
to him and found him tearing up papers
and dying in the act."
" But," I said, " but I do not under-
stand."
" No," he said. " You do not under-
stand. You will in a moment, when I
have explained to you will understand,
at least, as much as I understand myself.
There are some things that I find too
difficult for my understanding. When I
went to my father, as I think I narrated
to you, I found him in his study tear-
ing up papers. He had a drawer, taken
bodily from a cabinet, on the table beside
him. Obviously he was glancing over
a heap of papers before tearing them
272 IRemorse
up. Some had already been torn the
waste-paper basket at his side was half
filled with the fragments. Amongst the
papers, even under his very hand, was the
will that he had made under the impres-
sion in which I did so wrongly to let
him remain that I was legally married
to Gracia, the will of which the main pur-
port and purpose was my disinheriting.
Do you remember that you once asked
me whether this was among the papers
already torn ? "
"Yes," I said, " I remember perfectly."
" And what did I answer ? "
" Nothing. You seemed as if " I cor-
rected myself " you acted as if you had
not heard."
" As a matter of fact," he said, " it was
among those papers that were not yet
torn."
He paused, as if he expected that I
should make some comment, but I found
none that seemed to be the suitable one
to offer.
"It is you that say nothing now," he
remarked.
TRemorse 273
" I do not quite know what I ought to
say," I replied.
" I do," he replied. " What you ought
to say what at least seems the straight-
forward thing to say is that I am a d d
blackguard ; for of course it is evident
enough to you that the provisions of that
will which disinherited me never were acted
on, and the inference is inevitable that I
suppressed that will. I did. What I did
was this when the death-like collapse at-
tacked my father I hurried to his side,
but even before doing so I had noted
the nature of the short document lying at
his hand uppermost on the table, as if
it were the very next paper in its turn for
the tearing. The language of the law
is not concise, but the clerkly writing
is legible. Without a doubt of the gen-
eral tenor of the document, I conveyed it
to my pocket when I returned to put the
papers in order so soon as all possible
immediate aid had been given to my poor
father. He never regained consciousness,
as you are aware. A more careful read-
ing of the document only confirmed my
18
274 IRemorse
first impressions. The rest you know.
I suppressed the will. I acted as you
say, like a blackguard."
" I did not say so," I observed.
" As you think, then, I will say," he
replied, " and as all the world would think.
And yet," he continued, crossing his legs
and settling himself in his chair with a
kind of luxurious enjoyment of the situa-
tion, " let us look into the circumstances
of the case and examine them if we can
without any prejudice. Let us dismiss
myself, and the incident of my own bene-
fit derived from the suppression of the
will (it is only an incident in the ethical
aspect) altogether. Let us suppose that
I, having no interest in the will, one way
or the other, came into the room as I did
and found my father in the act of tearing
up papers, and amongst them this will
which I knew, not only from the fact of
its being amongst the other documents
that he was in process of destroying, but
also from what he had said to me on
many previous occasions, that it was his
settled wish and intention to destroy ,
IRemorse 275
suppose that I knew for certain that all
his wishes and intentions would be frus-
trated if this document were to be promul-
gated as his last will and testament ; what,
in those circumstances, would it be my
duty to do?"
The case assumed a singular aspect
under his handling.
" If any circumstances could justify one
in interfering with the course of law and
justice," I began with a feeble sententious-
ness, " then perhaps
He interrupted me abruptly. " Inter-
fering with the course of law yes. Inter-
fering with the course of justice no.
Say rather interfering with the course of
injustice. Behind the law you must look
to the intention in which the law is framed.
The law respecting a man's will is framed
with the intention that his wishes shall be
carried out. You will perceive that in
this instance those wishes would be directly
frustrated by allowing the law to take its
course."
" That is so, certainly, but yet "
The sense of sanctity with which a
276 IRemorse
testament is invested in the mind of every
rightly educated Englishman was too
strong in me to allow me to give his argu-
ment its just weight, without prejudice.
" I believe," I said with slow reluctance,
" that under the circumstances you may
possibly have been justified in
"In what?" he asked, as I paused,
scarcely liking to put my thoughts into
words.
" In destroying the will," I said. " I pre-
sume that is what you did."
"Unfortunately," he replied, "that is
what I did not do. I did not destroy
the will, but I concealed it. I kept it.
Ah ! " he exclaimed bitterly, " if you
knew me as you ought by this time to
know me, as I know myself, you would
know that it was not in my nature boldly
to destroy the will. I have kept it, I have
concealed it. From time to time I have
taken it out and looked at it, though its
phrases are seared into my brain. I have
been on the point of burning it. Again I
have been on the point of producing it,
of showing it to you, to my wife, to all the
TRemorse 277
world, of confessing myself a thief, a felon.
Ah, if you knew how the trouble of it all
and the remorse has preyed upon me, you
would not wonder that I had recourse to
that blessed drug. That is the chief
source of all the trouble of mind of which
I said to you a little while ago I could not
tell you, but of which the confession seems
to have been wrung from me by the force
of circumstances."
" And that is the document which your
wife has seen and which told her that
you were married ? "
He nodded. " And that is why I told
you," he said, " that my wife was a wonder-
ful woman. Just pause for a second and
picture to yourself what this meant to her.
She found this paper I suppose I left
the drawer open, I do not remember at
all events she found it, and, having found
it, what was it that it told her ? It told
her I had been previously married that,
at least, was how she was bound to under-
stand it and naturally there would come
to her, at that, a cruel sense that she
had been deceived, kept in the dark.
278 IRemorse
That was bad enough. No doubt at that
she felt her heart turned more than ever
against me. But the will said this, that in
consequence of my marriage I was disin-
herited that was the English of it,
stripped of its law jargon. So what did
that practically mean to her, seeing that
she knew very well that by the will that
had been proved, a will of much earlier
date, I was far from disinherited ? It
simply meant this, that I was concealing
this will, that I was a thief, a felon, a
criminal of the worst and lowest type of
course she knew nothing of my reasons
for the concealment. Do you follow all
that ? "
" Yes," I said.
" Then what does this woman do, when
she has discovered this ? Remember that
the very paper itself seemed to give her
evidence that she had been unfairly dealt
with, and remember, too, that there was
already some misunderstanding between
us. Did she denounce me ? No. Did
she treat me with scorn and contempt ?
No. On the contrary, her manner under-
IRemorse 279
went the most striking change towards
me. She lost all her petulance and small
fault-finding of manner, she never up-
braided me for big shortcomings or for
small, she was always courteous, always dis-
tantly polite. I did not understand it
then, but I understand it now, and it was
a manner that had in it all that was most
dignified. It had more of consideration
and friendship than I had any right to ex-
pect. And then, then," he repeated with
energy, " even with all that knowledge of
me, as soon as ever she discovered the
real truth out of your mouth, my friend ;
and I can never thank you enough for tell-
ing it to her then she became tender and
kind to me, doing all in her power, and,
thank God, she has helped me very effec-
tually, to save me from that dear, delight-
ful, accursed drug. I seem to see now, by
the light that is dawning on me, that my
wife has a true woman's heart ; and, do
you know," he concluded earnestly, " there
was a time when I was disposed to doubt
it?"
" I suspected something of your small
280 iRemorse
misunderstandings," I said, " and was so
grieved that I could do nothing to help
you."
" You have helped me," he answered.
" You have helped both of us in clearing
away much of these misunderstandings.
Ah, if I had had but the courage, before
my life came to this ! "
" Now that you know what my trouble
has been," he continued, " then if you also
knew, as I trust you never will, the relief,
the respite, and the rest given by this
blessed drug, you would not wonder at me
I think you would hardly blame me.
As for the trouble, that you can perhaps
imagine, after what I have told you ; but
as for the rest and the respite, I do not
know how can I explain ? Listen you
remember the time when I made you lie
on your back, down by the caravans in
that blessed time, long ago, in the glades
of Ashdown Forest, and made you look
up through the blue at the fleecy clouds
sailing overhead you remember that sen-
sation ? "
I nodded.
IRemorse 281
" There is another that Nature can give
you," he continued; "there are not many
spots that can give it ; it is not to be en-
joyed everywhere, like the hypnotism of
the blue depths of the sky. It requires for
its accessories first the sea, and then a
promontory running well out into the sea,
on which you may sit or lie and watch the
waves racing from you not at you, as
their similar aspect is. There, as you rest,
you see the smooth convexities of their
backs hurrying, hurrying away from you ;
and as you sit it seems rather as if the sea
was the thing at rest and you were mov-
ing, smoothly, irresistibly, without effort,
out to the open ocean. Something that
is to say, all the power of perception and
speculation seems to be drawn out of
your brain, so as to leave it in a state of
most blissful, restful trance, ready for the
reception of the most beautiful visions
which the unchecked imagination may
suggest to it. Well, that, or something
of that kind, is the blessed feeling that
this drug gives you. It is comparable
with none of the ordinary sensations of
282 IRemorse
life, for it is different from them all and
more delightful than the best of them.
That is the one world that I now live in ;
the other is such a world of mental tor-
ture as I don't suppose many other men
have a conception of."
" It is sad, is it not?" I said, willing to
take hold of the latter part of his speech,
which I could understand, rather than the
former, which was of a vague, dim world
into which I followed with difficulty. " It
is sad that you, of all men, should have
come to such a phase of life, after so much
sacrifice, ideals so high. You have made
faithful sacrifice, as you believed, to your
ideal of living, according to your ' daemon,'
of being true to your own nature, to its
promptings, to yourself rather than to the
conventions and it is to this end ! "
" Yes, to this end ; but it is to my in-
decisions that I owe it all, rather than to
the ideals I have followed. My sacrifice,
if you please to call it so, or my following
has not been faithful that has been the
great fault. After all, however, I am not
going to admit to you that this is the end.
TRemorse 283
Thanks to Olga and to you I am making
a good fight, really I do hope a winning
fight, but it is a hard one. The sky is
clearing of its clouds, though. There is,
I think, only one cloud of serious mis-
understanding left that about the will. I
cannot let Olga remain in her misconcep-
tion as to the true state of that case."
" You mean ? " I asked not quite
comprehending.
" I mean that at present, having read
that will and having no means of knowing
the tangle of motives that led in the end
to my suppressing it, she must naturally
look on me even as a bigger rascal than I
am. I appreciate what all that implies, of
course. She is a wonderful woman. It is
wonderful that thinking as she does of me,
she can still be so good to me. It is like
the love of a dog, as it seems to me, that
does not ask whether its master is the best
or worst of men, but merely loves him ;
and the more, the worse he treats it."
" It will be hard for you," I said.
" Would you like me to tell her?"
" No," he replied firmly, and nothing
284 IRemorse
could have shown me more clearly that at
last he had a definite purpose to end the
misunderstandings. " It is very good of
you, but I will do this for myself. We
will play the game of cross purposes no
longer."
" She is not at home, is she," I said
" your wife ? "
"No she is away motoring somewhere
I do not know where she has gone. I
do not question her goings. She returns
to-morrow, I think."
I was about to bid him good-bye when
he called me back.
"After all," he said, "I will ask your
help once again, so far as this, as to ask
you to be present when I tell my wife
about the will. The truth is that I never
now can trust this foolish heart of mine.
Of course there is nothing to be agita-
ted about, but if my pulse should get beat-
ing a trifle quickly there is no saying at
all what my heart would do. It is very
foolish."
CHAPTER XXII
EXPLANATIONS
THREE days later, in answer to a sum-
mons, I called again at the house in Berke-
ley Square to make a third at the suggested
interview between Hood and his wife. I
was a little upset to find myself ushered
into a room where Mrs. Hood was, alone.
I feared that she might ask me all sorts of
questions as to how much I had told
George of what she had confided to me,
and blamed George in my heart for his in-
discretion in thus leaving me to the mercies
of his wife's curiosity. I need have felt
no such fear. Mrs. Hood was far too
eager to tell me her own news to waste
any time at all in hearing mine, and I soon
guessed that she had contrived that we
should have a few minutes alone together
to give her the chance of telling it.
285
286 Explanations
" I have been down in the West,"
she said, " in the car, and I have seen
her."
" Her ? Whom ? " I asked, but I felt
that I knew the answer.
" That woman, the gypsy Mrs. Hood,
as she calls herself." The words sounded
harsh, but were said without the least ran-
cour. " Yes," she went on, " I have seen
her and I can pardon most freely both him
and her. Or rather, I feel that there was
nothing ever that needed pardon. She
must have been there is no question of
it one of the most beautiful women in
her style in the world ; I never saw a
face to equal it in the beauty of feature ;
and the coloring must have been brilliant.
But to ask a woman who believes that a
man and a woman come into sympathy
with each other by something better and
higher than the mere bodily passion to
ask me, who believe that firmly, to be
jealous of such a woman as that is to sug-
gest an absurdity. Women have been
jealous, I believe, of their husbands' love
of a dog or a horse. I could not be it
Explanations 287
does not strike me as possible. And the
love of and for such a woman as that is
more canine than human. She could not
speak to him, she has no words to say, no
thoughts to utter that could appeal to the
best that is in George's nature. I not only
feel no jealousy that he gave some of his
lower passion to that poor beautiful thing
once I even feel that if he were to give
her that now I should be far less jealous
than if I saw him, as I actually have seen
him, engrossed, mentally and spiritually,
in accord and communication with a
woman of intellect. Then he might in-
deed be taking from me something of what
is best in him that is due to me. As for
the other bah ! "
" How did you find her ?" I asked.
" It is not difficult," she said, " in a car.
I knew from you the line of country I
should find her in down in the West
Blackmore's country, very nearly as far
down as Kingsley's country the Maid of
Sker's country to be exact. That was ex-
act enough. I soon got on track of the
van, and once you get on track of a van,
288 Explanations
and you in a motor, the hunt is not a very
long one."
" Did you tell her who you were ? "
" I am sorry," she said, " that you should
have so poor an opinion of my sense.
What I did was this when we saw the
van drawn up by the roadside we went
past it once, just to make sure that it
agreed with the description. Then, when
we had gone a mile or so past, we turned
again, and I said to the chauffeur : ' We Ve
got to break down just opposite that van
you saw drawn up by the roadside close
here.' He's been with me quite a while
and does n't ask questions. When we
came abreast of that van again we broke.
That was how I got introduced to her. I
told him (the chauffeur I mean) that the
car was to stay broke till I came and told
him it was to be mended again, and that
if he was asked in the meantime the name
of his employer, he was to say any name
in the world except the true one. There 's
one thing, by the way, I forgot to tell you
about her about the woman I mean."
" Yes, what is that ? " I asked.
Explanations 289
She lowered her voice to a whisper :
"The poor thing's dying."
" What ? " I exclaimed horrified. " Dy-
ing ! Are you sure ? "
" Sure ? Well, yes, I 'm afraid I 'm sure
as sure as I can be. It was a sad sight to
see her face, a sad sight. I asked her if
she was ill, and she said ' No ' at first, and
then she said that she did n't know ; but
she did really, I think. I cannot tell you
what 's the matter with her, but I think
the main thing is that she 's got no wish
to live. That 's about as bad a disease as
any, I expect. I got a doctor from Ex-
eter to come and see her. Of course he
had to come by accident too, the same as
I did. He told her he was a doctor and
persuaded her to let him look at her. He
said something about phthisis, a sort of
decline, and anaemia (I never saw a woman
who looked so ill look less anaemic) and so
on ; but he about said as much as that he
could n't understand it, only that she was
very bad, probably dying, poor thing, and
he could do nothing for her."
" Is nothing being done for her ?"
290 Explanations
" Nothing. That is, everything that
can be done. I made him promise that
he would go and see her again, as often
as ever he thought it any use to go and
see her, and once a week oftener than
that, and to report to me here. Is there
any more to be done ? "
I shook my head sadly, wondering
wondering at the heart of woman and its
mysterious workings. I wondered less at
the news that death had its grasp on the
woman whom I had known first as George
Hood's wife. If imminent death ever
were written on the face of a woman still
in fair health, it seemed to me that I
might have read it as I looked at Gracia's
perfect face while we sat together that
day before the sea on the sand-hills of
Braunton.
"How is the boy?" I asked. "Did
you see the boy ? "
Her eyes filled with tears. " I saw the
boy," she said. " He is splendid. He
made me wish one thing only you are
a man, but still you may guess what that
is."
Explanations 291
I might have guessed, though I was
mere man, as she said ; but, before I could
answer, the door was opened, and George
Hood entered the room. He carried in
his hand a long envelope. I thought that
his wife glanced at it and started slightly,
as if with recognition, or suspicion of
recognition, as she noticed it but could
not be sure. I was too greatly struck by
the look of Hood's face to be able to take
careful note of other details. It was the
first time for many days that I had seen
him in the morning, and in a clear light,
and his pallor and general look of ill-
health distressed me. The dark circles
below the eyes told of a lack of sleep, in
spite of the heavy lids that seemed to
testify to his continued use of narcotics.
He moved in a listless, dull manner, as if
he were still, at the moment, under the
drug's influence, and wished me " Good
morning " with an indifference that would
have amounted to a discourtesy in a man
of normal health.
" I wished you to be present," he said,
"at an interview I am obliged to have
292 Explanations
with my wife, in order to make to her an
explanation with regard to a certain docu-
ment which I have reason to think she
has read."
He spoke with the level tones of a man
reciting a rehearsed speech. Mrs. Hood
made a movement as if she would say
something in reply, but no words came,
and he continued :
" The document I refer to is a will
made by my father at a later date than
that proved as his last testament." As
he spoke he slightly raised the paper that
he held in his hand to indicate that this
paper was the document which he was
mentioning. " That will was made un-
der a misapprehension." He went on
to describe, still in the same even and
colorless tones, his father's belief that he
was married to Gracia, taking on himself
full blame for allowing that misapprehen-
sion to continue so long. He described
his reconciliation with his father, after ex-
planation of the facts. Finally, he came
to the dramatic scene of his entry to his
father's study, rinding him in the act of
Explanations 293
tearing up papers, among which was this
will, still intact ; and without a tremor or
change in his voice related the heart-
failure that was followed, after a period
of unconsciousness, by death, while all
the time the will that he had taken from
the table remained in his own keeping.
Thus he narrated the facts, and pro-
ceeded to the more or less casuistical
train of argument by which he had
deemed himself justified in the suppres-
sion of this that legally was the true will.
While he spoke I tried to discover the
impression that his words were making,
but quite vainly, for Mrs. Hood carefully
kept her head averted. She had her
elbow resting on the table and her face
on her hand.
Presently the course of Hood's reading
was interrupted by the sound, low but
unmistakable, of a sob from his wife.
Her figure shook a little, and I thought
it was time that I should get up and look
out through the window at Berkeley
Square. At the next sound of similar
distress Hood stopped speaking, and I
294 Explanations
heard his wife say in a broken voice,
" Forgive me oh, forgive me ! "
Hood answered, " Forgive you ? I
have nothing to forgive ! "
" Oh, yes, you have," she insisted, still
in the same faltering tones. " If you only
knew, you have so much to forgive."
" Well ? " he said.
" When I read that paper, the will
I have seen it before," she began, but he
interrupted her with :
"Yes, I know you have read it."
" You know ! How ? Well, it does n't
matter. I found your keys lying around,
and I was mad with jealousy, I could n't
help it I opened your drawer and I found
this thing, and I read it. Oh, that was
nothing," she said. " That in itself might
be bad enough for some women ; it might
be bad enough for some to have to con-
fess they had done that and ask their
husbands' forgiveness for it : but it is
nothing to what I have to ask you to
forgive me."
"Well?" he said again.
" Well, it was like this. So soon as I
Explanations 295
read that will and had got the understand-
ing of it into my head which I did n't do
in a minute then, from that moment right
away I began to think the very worst of
you. I judged that you had suppressed
that will in order to rob somebody-
anybody everybody, of that money. I
judged you the kind of man that ought
to be in prison. Can you forgive me
ever?"
" And having judged me so, and you
could not possibly judge me otherwise on
the evidence," he said " what did you do ?
All at once, from having been at cross
purposes with me, you became kind, con-
siderate, helping me ; you became every-
thing that a man wants his friend through
life to be. I really do not see how I am
to forgive you, for I really cannot see that
I have anything to forgive. Very, very
much the contrary."
The moment seemed to me to have come
when I ought to take a closer view of
Berkeley Square from outside the house.
So far as I could judge there was no im-
mediate fear of the crisis affecting George
296 Explanations
Hood's heart beyond the strain which that
organ could bear without my aid. I went
out of the room, and, as I believe, neither
of the others in it noticed that I went, nor
were they for the moment aware of my ex-
istence. As I opened the door I could
not resist one backward glance. Hus-
band and wife were hand in hand.
CHAPTER XXIII
A FELONY
IT was only the next day that I
found myself again in the Berkeley Square
house, in response to a message from
its hostess. Mr. and Mrs. Hood were
together in his study when I was shown
in.
" You went away just at the wrong time
yesterday," she said.
" Just at the wrong time," Hood re-
peated.
" I am very sorry," I replied with hy-
pocrisy.
Hood looked less ill than on the previ-
ous day. It was obvious that he had suf-
fered no severe heart trouble in the short
interval since I had seen him.
" George tells me," Mrs. Hood said,
" that you had some little doubt, when he
297
298 H jfelons
consulted you, as to what he should have
done about that will. Well, I have no
such doubt. Perhaps it is because I am a
wicked woman, perhaps it is because I
come from a land where we do not re-
spect the traditions quite as much as you
do over here. Anyway, whatever the rea-
son, I had not the slightest doubt, from
the moment that he told me, in your hear-
ing, all the circumstances connected with
that will, that the most wrong and dis-
honest thing he could ever do would be to
publish it, or have any hand in publishing
it, as representing the last wishes of his
father. He knew absolutely that it repre-
sented the very opposite of what were his
father's wishes at the end. He was there-
fore not only justified in not making that
will public, but he would not have been
justified unless he had taken every meas-
ure to prevent its being published. Well
he did not take every possible meas-
ure, and in consequence there has been
trouble."
"You mean ?" I asked.
" I mean that he ought to have de-
H jfelonE 299
stroyed it then and there. Dead men and
burnt wills tell no tales that 's what I
mean. Whether it would have been better
for him to have told me all about it before
we were married is another story that
was for him to judge and anyhow, it 's
too late to go back on all that now. But
what it is not too late to do, is to do to
that blessed will what ought to have been
done with the fallacious thing years ago,
and that is, burn it ; and it 's to be present
at that bonfire that we sent around for
you to-day."
She paused then, and looked at me.
George Hood looked at me also. I un-
derstood quite well the meaning of the
looks and the motive of Mrs. Hood's
speech. She had said, " We are going to
burn the will." What she meant was,
" We want to know what you think of
the idea of burning the will," and meant
also to suggest that I should think that it
ought to be burnt. They were looking at
me to see what I really did think. What
did I think ? The answer was not very
plain in my own mind. It was very well
300 H 3felon
for Mrs. Hood, an American and a woman,
as she had herself said with just apprecia-
tion, to decide the case on its merits. I,
who had " eaten dinners " and actually
been called to the Bar, was bound in a
certain attenuated form of legal calf. I
hesitated a while, but in the end the weight
of Mrs. Hood's arguments, which, after
all, coincided with the tendency of my
own view, induced me to say " Yes " not
to go so far, which her considerate way of
stating the case had made unnecessary, as
to say that I approved of the burning of
the will, but to consent, at their joint re-
quest, to witness the burning of the will,
which had already been determined on.
I compromised weakly with my convic-
tions, telling myself that this was their
affair, not mine, whether right was being
done or wrong, and so far aided and
abetted the act of felony as to give a poke
to the fire. I do not know what may
have been the sensations of the other and
more principal actors it was Mrs. Hood's
bold small American hand that actually
pushed the document into the flames but
301
for my own part I can say that I felt a
chill of conscious guilt shiver down my
back as the paper crackled and blazed. I
looked at George Hood to see whether
any access of pulse-beat was affecting
his heart, but he seemed perfectly un-
moved.
" End of Act I.," Mrs. Hood said cheer-
fully, as the flames died down and left
nothing but black bits of paper where the
will had been. " Now we ring up the
curtain on Act II. The property belongs
to George now. There is no possibility
of undoing that fact. If you and I and
he went into court and told the whole
story of the will, I don't suppose we should
get any one to believe it now, should we ?
At all events, we are not proposing to
do it. In the meantime the property is
George's : he is troubled to know what to
do with it. He is foolish feels a certain
unnecessary delicacy about keeping it. It
is foolish of him, but I love him the better
for feeling so."
She placed her hand on his arm in an
affectionate way of protection. I looked
302 H
at his face and was surprised. In all that
had gone before, in course of Mrs. Hood's
previous speech and argument about the
holocaust of the will, her husband had
taken a silent, but an obviously acquies-
cent and an intelligent part. In this
Second Act, as she called it, I could per-
ceive that his role was merely that of a
spectator, under the influence of an aston-
ished interest in the unfolding of the
drama. What she was saying now was
entirely new to him, and he had no pre-
conception what her next words would be.
" Have you any suggestions to offer,"
Mrs. Hood resumed, "as to what shall be
done with that money?" She looked
at her husband and she looked at me.
Neither replied.
" Then if you have no ideas," she said
she said "i-dea" with just a suspicion of
the American way of dwelling on the first
syllable. "If you have no i-deas, I will
tell you mine that the money shall be
put into a trust for the benefit of a certain
little boy I hardly know how to call him,
but he is a little boy that all of us know,
H Jfelong 33
and no doubt the law will have some way
of describing him so that he can be identi-
fied a little boy who is away down in the
West just now, living with his mother in
a caravan."
Perhaps Mrs. Hood ought not to have
done it just in this way. She ought to have
been more thoughtful, considering that
her husband's heart was not very sound,
and ought not to have subjected it to such
an emotional surprise. But the poor lady
had a good deal to occupy her excellent
brain, in planning all these schemes in a
financial and legal atmosphere that was
not familiar to her. George went fright-
fully pale. He pressed his hand over
his side convulsively. I fully thought
he was on the point of losing conscious-
ness, but after what appeared to be a
spasm of terrible pain recovered himself
quickly.
" Do you mean to say, Olga," he stam-
mered, "that you you can make such
a proposal as this ? "
" Yes," she said, with an affected
carelessness, " since no one else seems
304 H jfelonp
to have had the intelligence to propose
it."
Hood turned to me. " I told you long
ago," he said, "that she was the most
wonderful woman in the world ; but I did
not then know how wonderful."
CHAPTER XXIV
THE HAND OF DEATH
THE details of the trust were arranged
without difficulty, the law, as Mrs. Hood
had foreseen, finding a way of identifying
the beneficiary as it was pleased to call
him Mrs. Hood and myself being ap-
pointed as trustees. The process of the
business had required several interviews
at the house in Berkeley Square, but
about a fortnight after all had been
settled I received a summons from Mrs.
Hood more urgent than any that had
called me to the business meetings. The
words of the hand-sent note were not
very coherent ; they were written in evi-
dent haste, but I gathered from them that
Hood had suffered one of his most severe
heart attacks and was gravely ill.
When I came to the house I found that
20
305
TTbe tmnfc ot Deatb
the doctor was already there, and had
been in attendance for several hours. He
confessed himself in some doubt about
his diagnosis. It seemed that Hood had
been found by the housemaid, who came
in the morning to open the shutters of
the smoking-room, asleep, as she im-
agined, in the armchair. He had not
moved at the noise made in opening the
door, and the girl had gone out again.
The butler did not come down till half
an hour or so later, and immediately she
saw him the housemaid told him that she
had found their master in the smoking-
room, asleep. The butler then went in.
Hood was still half sitting, half lying, in
the chair, not having moved at all since
the girl first saw him. The butler thought
that there was something not quite natu-
ral in the absolute stillness with which
his master lay, and purposely made one
or two little movements and noises beside
him enough to awake a man in a normal
sleep, but Hood still did not stir or show
consciousness. Then the butler began
to be seriously alarmed. He went for
Sbe t>anfc of 2>eatb 3;
Hood's servant, who said at once that he
supposed his master to be suffering from
the effects of some narcotic which he had
been in the habit of taking. Between
them the two men carried Hood to his
room and laid him on his bed, with no
more movement on his part than if they
had been carrying a corpse. A little later
Mrs. Hood's maid took in her mistress's
tea, and by her they sent word that Mr.
Hood seemed seriously unwell. As soon
as Mrs. Hood had seen him she sent for
the doctor, who had tried one or two
simple means of bringing the patient
back to consciousness, but without suc-
cess. He had now determined to leave
him a while to allow the possible effect
of the narcotic to expel itself, but he con-
fessed to some doubt as to the degree in
which the comatose state of the patient
was due to narcotic poisoning, and the
degree to which it had been induced by a
heart seizure which he suspected. He
inquired particularly whether anything
had occurred the previous evening likely
to cause Hood shock or excitement, but
308 Tibe 1bano of S>eatb
nothing of the kind could be remembered
or suggested. When his wife had seen
him last, about eleven o'clock at night, he
had been in his normal state of indifferent
health. No one had seen him since. He
was in the habit of switching off the elec-
tric light for himself when he went to
bed.
I went to his room to look at him, and,
but for the doctor's assurance, should
have thought it to be but the corpse of
my friend that lay so pallid and inertly on
the bed. His face and even his lips were
of such an extraordinary whiteness that
they did not make a patch of color even
on the whiteness of the pillow. His hands
against the sheet had a certain tint, but it
was a yellow lividness of hue, not the color
of healthy blood and skin. The doctor
drew me aside and asked me if I was
aware of any circumstances in George
Hood's life that made it probable that a
shock might have occurred to his system.
" Of course," he added, " I do not ask you
to violate any confidences, but I know you
are his nearest friend." For answer I bade
Ube t>ant> of Deatb 309
the valet bring Hood's coat, and caused
the doctor to feel the patch of mail armor
sewn in where he had an apprehension of
Tio's Spanish knife. " I cannot tell you
any more," I said, " than what you may
infer from that." He nodded thought-
fully, but said nothing.
It was not until after mid-day that Hood
woke out of that deathly coma, and all
that while Mrs. Hood and the doctor and
myself were in and out of his room con-
stantly, watching for a sign of his con-
sciousness returning. The doctor, more
and more puzzled, was on the point of
sending for a colleague to share the re-
sponsibility by giving a second opinion-
he was actually downstairs writing his
note at the moment when George Hood
gently opened his eyes, looked up into
mine with the saddest smile of recogni-
tion, and moved his lips. Twice he ap-
peared to try to say the same words, but
no sound came from his feebly parted
mouth. I bent down over him with my
ear close to his face. " What did you say,
old friend ? " I asked him.
3io ZTbe tmnfc of 5>eatb
Then his lips moved again as before,
and I gathered the faintly uttered words :
" She 's dead."
I had no doubt that he was speaking in
pursuance of some dream or vision that
had occupied his hours of unconscious-
ness. I nodded to him, with a smile, as
one humors a sick man's fancies. Then I
went down-stairs, many steps at a time, to
summon the doctor.
From that moment until late in the
afternoon no one was permitted to see
Hood except the two doctors and a pro-
fessional nurse. The doctors' dictum was
that the heart was in state so feeble that
the slightest effort might be too great for
it, and both Mrs. Hood and myself were
forbidden to enter the sick-room on the
very reasonable ground that our presence
might induce Hood to make an effort to
speak to us which he would not be so
likely to make with strangers. The doc-
tors hardly tried to disguise their ex-
tremely grave opinion of the case, but
seemed inclined to think that the patient
gained strength as the day wore on.
ZIbe 1banC> of 2>eatb 3"
About six o'clock one of them came to
me and said : " We think you had better
go to him. He is so very anxious to talk
to you that to prevent it would be likely
to agitate and excite him more harmfully
than the actual fatigue of talking. But
try to let him talk as little as you can. Sit
close beside him, so that he will not have
to speak above a whisper."
A great change for the better had
passed in my poor friend's aspect during
the hours since I had seen him last. His
cheeks had a spot of hectic color, and his
lips had not the same deathly, bloodless
look. He greeted me with the smile that
always lighted his face so charmingly as I
came in.
" Glad to see you looking so much bet-
ter, old fellow," I said.
I drew the chair close beside the bed.
" Yes," he agreed in a weak voice, " I am
better, for a while I don't think it is for
long."
" Ah, you must n't say that," I pleaded.
" I don't say it very regretfully," he re-
plied.
312 Ube 1ban& of 2>eatb
" Not for yourself perhaps," I said.
" But you might regret it for us for your
wife and me, if anything should happen to
you."
" Would you miss me ? " he asked pa-
thetically. He put out a feeble hand and
sought with it till he found mine ready to
grasp it gently. " But that again will not
be for long. I think we shall all meet
again somehow somewhere."
" I am so glad you are able to think
that," I said.
"Then I don't think we shall have
any misunderstandings. I think we shall
all know each other then. It 's the not
understanding that makes all the trouble
and unhappiness, is it not ? "
" Most of it, no doubt," I said.
" Then you and I and Gracia and Olga
may all be friends together, I think. At
all events we shall know about it soon.
I shall know very soon. Gracia is there
already. She knows now."
" There already ! What do you
mean ? "
" I forgot. Did you not know ? Gracia
Hbe 1>an& of Beatb 313
is dead. She came to me last night to tell
me."
I had no doubt that he was slightly de-
lirious, but he spoke perfectly calmly.
" I think that was what upset me," he
went on, in the most matter-of-fact voice
to be conceived. " I was in the smoking-
room alone, late, and she came in ; or at
least she was there, I do not know how she
came in. I do not suppose that she opened
my door, for doubtless her body is there,
down in the West country. I cannot tell
you how it was, but I knew that she was
dead. She said nothing to me, and she
looked as I had always known her, with
all her beauty and color, but I knew that
she was dead. I was going to speak to
her, but it seemed as if the effort choked
me, and after that I remember nothing-
till now."
I had no manner of doubt that this story
was a suggestion of his subconscious mind
while he lay in his coma. I found that he
did not really wish to say much more to
me, after mentioning his wish and his con-
fidence that his boy should be well looked
3H ^ be 1bano of 5>eatb
after ; and remembering the doctor's cau-
tion that I should let him talk as little as
possible, I soon left him.
From time to time, during the rest of
the day, his wife and I were constantly
with him. The doctor had left instructions
with the nurse to call him by telephone if
any change occurred, and I augured the
worst from this. All through the after-
noon, however, there was no appreciable
loss in his strength, and whenever I saw
him he smiled with a cheerful courage
that was very touching. He did not talk
much more to me, his weakness probably
making compliance with the doctor's or-
ders in this respect quite easy for him.
Once when his wife came out she was in
tears, and I guessed that he might have
been saying " Good-bye" to her.
About half-past eight in the evening
Mrs. Hood and I were dining together
when a summons came from the nurse.
We hastened up-stairs to find that the
great change had begun. Hood lay with
a slight restlessness of the hands, but a
perfectly placid face. He was quite un-
ZTbe 1bano of H)eatb 315
conscious. Just before he died the doctor
came, but nothing was to be done, and in
silent helplessness we watched the peace-
ful passing of his life.
It was about half-past eleven when I
left the house where I had been so many
hours. My head was hot and fevered,
and I had a desire to walk far and fast
through the fresh night air before going
to my rooms ; but I had taken no more
than a few steps down the pavement of
Berkeley Square when a man stopped me.
For the first moment I thought he was a
beggar, but the next I recognized him. It
was Tio. Even by the uncertain gleam
of the street lamp I saw a look in his eye
that caused me to glance down the street
and feel a certain relief at the sight of the
familiar British figure of the policeman on
beat.
Tio lost no time and wasted no words
in formal greetings. " Is it true," he de-
manded with a fierce energy, " that he is
dead?"
" That who is dead ? " I asked, though I
knew perfectly of whom he spoke.
316 Hbe tmno of 2)eatb
" Your friend, Mr. Hood. Is he dead ?
I know this is his house. They told me
he was dead."
"Yes, Tio," I said, " he is dead. He
has been dead some hours."
He swore, in a fierce, low voice, a gypsy
oath. Then he put his hand to his belt
with a quick movement, at which I went
backward a step. Tio noticed my action,
and smiled with a scorn that seemed to
say I need not be afraid, that I was too
small game for his bag. He drew out his
knife, bent down and laid the bright blade
on the pavement, set his foot across the
steel, and with a press of foot and hoist
of hand snapped the blade in two. He
drew himself upright and crossed himself
piously. Then he expectorated, with a
solemnity which showed that this too was
part of some religious or mystic rite, over
the shattered steel.
"What did you do that for ? " I asked
him.
" I swore to her," he said in explanation,
" that the first thing my knife should
touch would be his heart, his life."
trnno of S>eatb 317
I thought of the patch of mail.
"His life is gone," he went on, "and
that oath is broken ; but now the knife is
broken too, and it will never be for any
other use."
" Did she require this oath of you ask
you to swear it, I mean ? "
" She ! She had no heart left for such a
thing. He that dead man stole all the
heart and courage from her. She ! She
was all the while begging me not to do it,
telling me I was not to do it."
" And why did you not do as she told
you ? Why did you come here on such
an errand ? What do you think she would
have said to you if you had come back and
told her you had done it ? "
" What she would have said ? " he re-
peated savagely. " I should not have
come if there had been a chance of her
'saying' when I went back. She has
gone, like him, where there is no ' saying,'
and they can be settling their affairs even
now between themselves."
I started with surprise. " You mean to
say that she is dead ? "
318 tlbe tmno of Beatb
" She is dead yes," he answered.
" A'nd you know, better than most, who
kiUed her. It was him, your friend, the
dead man in that house." He jerked
his thumb fiercely at the house in ques-
Jlion.
" She is dead ! " I echoed. " When did
she die?"
" Before midnight last a day from this
hour, hour for hour, or nearly so."
It was a very astonishing thing. . He
indicated the exact time at which George
Hood had fancied that he saw her. The
step of the policeman came resonantly up
the pavement. I said nothing till he had
passed us. My thoughts were full of this
strange coincidence, if it were not to be
called by another name. If Gracia had
not appeared to Hood, or if Hood had not
fancied her apparition (in whichever way
it may be right to state it) doubtless a
horrid tragedy would have been enacted,
followed by a horrid scandal. It is seldom
that these telepathic appearances, attested
by so many witnesses, of one at the mo-
ment of death to another, seem to serve
Ube 1bano of IDeatb 319
any purpose ; but this had served an
obvious purpose.
The policeman went by again with his
eye fixed in suspicion on Tio, and glancing
scarcely more favorably at myself. Tio
returned his look with undisguised hostil-
ity, and, as a precaution, set his foot on
the fragments of his knife.
" You say she begged you not to do
him an injury ? " I said when the man had
passed. There was no need to explain
to whom the pronouns referred to.
" When I offered to swear I would kill
him she wanted me to swear I would not.
Poor thing, he had taken all the heart out
of her. But I would not do it. I swore
that I would kill him."
" Was that soon before she died ? "
"Within an hour. Have you any more
questions ? "
" One or two. First, what are you
going to do now she is dead ? "
" Why do you want to know that ? "
" There is some money to come to you
under Mr. Hood's will."
Tio laughed. " Mr. Hood can keep his
320 Ube 1ban& ot Deatb
money," he said, " or, at least, any one it 's
of use to may have it. I don't want to
touch his dirt. I shall go back to Spain."
" You will do as you like about your
money," I said, " but there 's another thing
in the will that concerns you a little the
boy."
I had expected trouble, and it was a
relief when he said carelessly : " Oh, the
boy ! you may have him if you want him.
He's of no use to me."
Hate was a strong passion with Tio.
Because the child was half George Hood's,
whom he had hated, he was indifferent to
it, though it was also half Gracia's, whom
he had worshipped. Also, although hate
was a strong passion with him, it left room,
maybe, for other motives, and he was
doubtless relieved to be rid of the incum-
brance of a boy.
So that was the end of it, of the as-
pirations and the self-torturings. Hither
my friend had been brought by the guid-
ance of his " daemon," or rather, as he
would have phrased it, by his own ineffec-
tive following of the guidance. To this
TTbe toanfc ot IDeatb 321
end it had come at last, the life of him
who once had prayed God that he might
be shown the way of truth, with the view
of going down into the arena of life
and fighting to make it clear to others.
There was an irony in it all. Capable of
so much, accomplishing so little, or no-
thing at all ; or, if anything, only that
which it had been better had not been
done ! Yet that, after all, is perhaps more
than we have the right to say. It is not
for us but for the Creator of life to say
that He is, or is not, justified of this or
that one of His children, His creations.
To judge them is perhaps to judge
through them the Creator, which is hardly
within the duty of the creature.
THE END
BY MVRTUB REBD
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