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
 
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