When George had seen old Tom Craik enter his carriage and drive away
from the house, he breathed more freely. He could not think very
connectedly of what had happened, but it seemed to him that the old man
had played a part quite as contemptible as that which Totty herself had
sustained so long. He would assuredly not have believed that the
terrific anger of which he had witnessed the explosion was chiefly due
to the discovery of what was intended to be a good action. Craik had
never liked to be found out, and it was especially galling to him to be
exposed in the act of endeavouring to make amends for the past. But for
this consideration, he would have been quite capable of returning the
will to its place in the cabinet, and of leaving the house quietly. He
would have merely sent for a lawyer and repeated the document with a new
date, to deposit it in some place to which his sister could not possibly
gain access. But his anger had been aroused in the first moment by the
certainty that Totty had understood his motives and must secretly
despise him for making such a restitution of ill-gotten gain. George
could not have comprehended this, and he feared that the old man should
do some irreparable harm if he were left any longer with the object of
his wrath. The look in Craik’s eyes had not been reassuring, and it was
by no means sure that the whole affair had not finally unsettled his
intellect.
There was little ground for any such fear, however, as George would have
realised if he could have followed Mr. Craik to his home, and seen how
soon he repented of having endangered his health by giving way to his
wrath. An hour later he was in bed and his favourite doctor was at his
side, watching every pulsation of his heart and prepared to do battle at
the first attack of any malady which should present itself.
George himself was far less moved by what had occurred than he would
have believed possible. His first and chief sensation was a sickening
disgust with Totty and with all that recent portion of his life in which
she had played so great a part. He had been deceived and played with on
all sides and his vanity revolted at the thought of what might have been
if Craik’s discovery had not broken through the veil of Totty’s
duplicity. It made him sick to feel that while he had fancied himself
courted and honoured and chosen as a son-in-law for his own sake and for
the sake of what he had done in the face of such odds, he had really
been looked upon as an object of speculation, as a thing worth buying at
a cheap price for the sake of its future value. Beyond this, he felt
nothing but a sense of relief at having been released from his
engagement. He had done his best to act honestly, but he had often
feared that he was deceiving himself and others in the effort to do what
seemed honourable. He did not deny, even now, that what he had felt for
Mamie might in good time have developed into a real love, but he saw
clearly at last that while his senses had been charmed and his
intelligence soothed, his heart had never been touched. Doubts about
Mamie herself would present themselves, though he drove them resolutely
away. It was natural that he should find it hard to realise in her that
which he had never felt during their long intercourse, and while his
instinct told him that the young girl had been innocent of all her
mother’s plotting and scheming, he said to himself that she would easily
recover from her disappointment. If he was troubled by any regret it was
rather that he should not have left her mother’s house as soon as he had
seen that she was interested, than that he should have failed to love
her as he had tried to do. On the other hand he admitted that his
conduct had been excusable, considering the pressure which Totty had
brought to bear upon him.
The most unpleasant point in the future was the explanation which must
inevitably take place between himself and Sherrington Trimm. It would be
hard to imagine a meeting more disagreeable to both parties as this one
was sure to be. There could be no question about Trimm’s innocence in
the whole affair, for his character was too well known to the world to
admit the least suspicion. But it would be a painful matter to meet him
and talk over what had happened. If possible, the interview must be
avoided, and George determined to attempt this solution by writing a
letter setting forth his position with the utmost clearness. He turned
up the steps of a club to which he belonged and sat down to the task.
What he said may be summed up in a few words. He took it for granted
that Trimm would be acquainted with what had occurred, by the time the
letter reached him. It only remained for him to repeat what he had said
to Mamie herself, to wit, that if she would marry him, he was ready to
fulfil his engagement. He concluded by saying that he would wait a month
for the definite answer, after which time he intended to go abroad. He
sealed the note and took it with him, intending to send it to Trimm’s
house in the evening. As luck would have it, however, he met Trimm
himself in the hall of the club. He had stopped on his way up town to
refresh himself with a certain mild drink of his own devising.
“Hilloa, George!” he cried in his cheery voice. “What is the matter?” he
asked anxiously as he saw the expression on the other’s face.
“Have you been at home yet?” George asked.
“No.”
“Something very disagreeable has happened. I have just written you a
note. Will you take it with you and read it after you have heard what
they have to say?”
“Confound it all!” exclaimed Sherry Trimm. “I am not fond of mystery.
Come into a quiet room and tell me all about it.”
“I would rather that you found it out for yourself,” said George,
drawing back.
Sherry Trimm looked keenly at him, and then took him by the arm.
“Look here, George,” he said, “no nonsense! I do not know what the
trouble is, but I see it is serious. Let us have it out, right here.”
“Very well,” George answered. “Your wife has made trouble,” he said, as
soon as they were closeted in one of the small rooms. “You drew up Mr.
Craik’s will, and you kept his secret. When you had gone abroad, your
wife got the will out of the deed-box in your office and took it home
with her. She kept it in that Indian cabinet and Mr. Craik found it
there this afternoon, and made a fearful scene. Unfortunately your wife
could not find any answer to what he said, and thereupon Mamie declared
that she would not marry me.”
Sherrington Trimm’s pink face had grown slowly livid while George was
speaking.
“What did Tom say?” he asked quietly.
“He hinted that his sister had not been wholly disinterested in her
kindness to me,” said George. “Unfortunately Mamie and I were present. I
did the best I could, but the mischief was done.”
Sherrington said nothing more, but began to walk up and down the small
room nervously, pulling at his short grizzled moustache from time to
time. Like every one else who had been concerned in the affair, he
grasped the whole situation in a moment.
“This is a miserable business,” he said at last in a tone that expressed
profound humiliation and utter disgust.
George did not answer, for he was quite of the same opinion. He stood
leaning against a card-table, drumming with his fingers on the green
cloth behind him. Sherry Trimm paused in his walk, and struck his
clenched fist upon the palm of his other hand. Then he shook his head
and began to pace the floor again.
“An abominable business,” he muttered. “I cannot see that there is
anything to be done, but to beg your pardon for it all,” he said,
suddenly turning to George.
“You need not do that,” George answered readily. “It is not your fault,
Cousin Sherry. All I want to say, is what I had already written to you.
If Mamie will change her mind and marry me, I am ready.”
Trimm looked at him sharply.
“You are a good fellow, George,” he said. “But I don’t think I could
stand that. You never loved her as you ought to love to be happy. I saw
that long ago and I guessed that there had been something wrong. You
have been tricked into the whole thing—and—just go away and leave me
here, will you? I cannot stand this.”
George took the outstretched hand and shook it warmly. Then he left the
room and closed the door behind him. In that moment he pitied
Sherrington Trimm far more than he pitied Mamie herself. He could
understand the man’s humiliation better than the girl’s broken heart. He
went out of the club and turned homewards. He had yet to communicate the
intelligence to his father, and he was oddly curious to see what the old
gentleman would say. An hour later he had told the whole story with
every detail he could remember, from the day when Totty had told him to
go and see Mamie to his recent interview with Sherry Trimm.
“I am sorry for you, George,” said Jonah Wood. “I am very sorry for
you.”
“I think, on the whole, that is more than I can say for myself,” George
answered. “I am far more sorry for Mamie and her father. It is a relief
to me. I would not have believed it, this morning.”
“Do you mean that you were not in love?”
“Yes. I am just as fond of her as ever. There is nothing I would not do
for her. But I do not want to marry her and I never did, till that old
cat made me think it was my duty.”
“I should think you would have known what your duty was, without waiting
to be told. I would have told her mother that I did not love the girl,
and I would have gone the next morning.”
“You are so sensible, father!” George exclaimed. “I looked at it
differently. It seemed to me that if I had gone so far as to make Mamie
believe that I loved her, I ought to be able to love her in earnest.”
“When you are older, you will know better,” observed the old gentleman
severely. “You have too much imagination. As for Mr. Craik, he will not
leave you his money now. I doubt if he meant to.”
George went and shut himself up in the little room which had witnessed
so many of his struggles and disappointments. He sat down in his shabby
old easy-chair and lit a short pipe and fell into a profound reverie.
The unexpected had played a great part in his life, and as he reviewed
the story of the past three years, he was surprised to find how very
different his own existence had been from that of the average man. With
the exception of his accident on the river and the scene he had
witnessed to-day, nothing really startling had happened to him in that
time, and yet his position at the present moment was as different from
his position three years earlier as it possibly could be. In that time
he had risen from total obscurity into the publicity of reputation, if
not of celebrity. He was not fond of disturbing the mass of papers that
encumbered his table, and there, deep down under the rest were still to
be found rough drafts of his last poor little reviews. Hanging from one
corner there was visible the corrected “revise” of one of his earliest
accepted articles. At the other end, beneath a piece of old iron which
he used as a paper-weight, lay the manuscript of his first novel, well
thumbed and soiled, and marked at intervals in pencil with the names of
the compositors who had set up the pages in type. There, upon the table,
lay the accumulated refuse of three years of hard work, of the three
years which had raised him into the public notice. Much of that work had
been done under the influence of one woman, of one fair young girl who
had bent over his shoulder as he read her page after page, and whose
keen, fresh sight had often detected flaws and errors where he himself
saw no imperfection. She had encouraged him, had pushed him, and urged
him on, in spite of himself, until he had succeeded, beyond his wildest
expectations. Then he had lost her, because he had thought that she was
bound to marry him. He did not think so now, for he felt that in that
case, too, he had been mistaken, as in the more recent one he had
deceived himself. He had never been in love. He had never felt what he
described in his own books. His blood had never raced through his veins
for love, as it had often done for anger and sometimes for mere passing
passion. Love had never taken him and mastered him and carried him away
in its arms beyond all consideration for consequences. It was not
because he was strong. He knew that whatever people might think of him,
he had often been weak, and had longed to be made strong by a love he
could not feel. He had been ready to yield himself to a belief in
affections which had proved unreal and which had disappointed himself by
their instability and by the ease with which he had recovered from them.
Even in the solitude of his own room he was ashamed to own to his inner
consciousness how little he had been moved by all that had happened to
him in those three years.
He thought of Johnson, the pale-faced hardworking man, whose heart was
full of unsatisfied ambition and who had distanced his competitors by
sheer energy and enthusiasm. He envied the man his belief in himself and
his certainty of slow but sure success. Slow, indeed, it must be.
Johnson had toiled for many years at his writing to attain the position
he occupied, to be considered a good judge and a ready writer by the few
who knew him, to gain a small but solid reputation in a small circle. He
had worked much harder than George himself, and yet to-day, George Wood
was known and read where William Johnson had never been heard of. Of the
two Johnson was by far the better satisfied with his success, though of
the two he possessed by very much the more ambition, in the ordinary
acceptation of the word.
Then George thought of Thomas Craik, and of his sneer at ambitious men.
He had said that there was no pleasure in possession, but only in
getting, getting, getting, as long as a man had breath; that the wish to
excel other men in anything was a drawback and a disadvantage, and that
nothing in the world was worth having for its own sake, from money to
fame, through all the catalogue of what is attainable by humanity. And
yet, Thomas Craik was an instance of a very successful man, who had some
right to speak on the subject. Whether he had got his money by fair
means or foul had nothing to do with the argument. He had it, and he
could speak from experience about the pleasures of possession. There
must be some truth in what he said. George himself had attained before
the age of thirty what many men labour in vain to reach throughout a
lifetime. The case was similar. Whether he had deserved the reputation
he had so suddenly acquired or not, mattered little. Many critics said
that he had no claim to it. Many others said that he deserved more than
he got. Whichever side was right, he had it, as Tom Craik had his money.
Did it give him any satisfaction? None whatever, beyond the material
advantages it brought him, and which only pleased him because they made
him independent of his father’s help. When he thought of what he had
done, he found no savour of pride in the reflection, nothing which
really flattered his vanity, nothing to send a thrill of happiness
through him. He was cold, indifferent to all he had done. It would not
have entered his mind to take up one of his own books and glance over
the pages. On the contrary, he felt a strong repulsion for what he had
written, the moment it was finished. He admitted that he was foolish in
this, as in many other things, and that he would in all likelihood
improve his work by going over it and polishing it, even by entirely
rewriting a great part of it. He was not deterred from doing so by
indolence, for his rarely energetic temperament loved hard work and
sought it. It was rather a profound dissatisfaction with all he did
which prevented him from expending any further time upon each
performance when he had once reached the last page. Nothing satisfied
him, neither what he did himself, nor what he saw done by others.
Thinking the matter over in his solitude the inevitable conclusion
seemed to be that he was one of those discontented beings who can never
be pleased with anything, nor lose themselves in an enthusiasm without
picking to pieces the object that has made him enthusiastic. But this
was not true either. There were plenty of great works in the world for
which he had no criticism, and which never failed to excite his
boundless admiration. He smiled to himself as he thought that what would
really please him would be to be forced into the same attitude of
respect before one of his own books, into which he naturally fell before
the great masterpieces of literature. He would have been hard to
satisfy, he thought, if that would not have satisfied him. Was that,
then, the vision which he was really pursuing? It was folly to suppose
that he would be so mad, and yet, at that time, he felt that he desired
nothing else and nothing less than that, and since that was absolutely
unattainable, he was condemned to perpetual discontent, to be borne with
the best patience he could find. Beyond this, he could find no
explanation of his feelings about his own work.
The only other source of happiness of which he could conceive was love,
and this brought him back to his kindly and grateful memories of
Constance Fearing, and to the more disturbing recollection of his
cousin. The latter, also, had played a part and had occupied a share in
his life. He had watched her more closely than he had ever watched any
one, and had studied her with an unconsciously unswerving attention
which proved how little he had loved her and how much she had interested
him. He was, indeed, never well aware that he was subjecting any one to
a microscopic intellectual scrutiny, for he possessed in a high degree
the faculty of unintentional memory. While it cost him a severe effort
to commit to memory a dozen verses of any poet, old or modern, he could
nevertheless recall with faultless accuracy both sights and
conversations which he had seen and heard, even after an interval of
many years, provided that his interest had been somewhat excited at the
time. The half-active, half-indolent, wholly luxurious life at his
cousin’s house had in the end produced a strong impression upon him. It
had been like an interval of lotus-eating upon an almost uninhabited
island, varied only by such work as he chose to do at his own leisure
and in his own way. During more than four months the struggles of the
world had been hidden from him, and had temporarily ceased to play any
part in his thoughts. The dreamy existence spent between flowers and
woods and water, where every want had been anticipated almost before it
was felt, served now as a background for the picture of the young girl
who had been so constantly with him, herself as natural as her
surroundings, the incarnation of life and of life’s charm, the negation
of intellectual activity and of the sufferings of thought, a lovely
creature who could only think, reason, enjoy and suffer with her heart,
and whose mind could acquire but little, and was incapable of giving
out. She had been the central figure and had contributed much to the
general effect, so much, indeed, that under pressure of circumstances he
had been willing to believe that he could love her enough to marry her.
The scene had changed, the hallucination had vanished and the delusion
was destroyed, but the memory of it all remained, and now disturbed his
recollection of more recent events. There was a sensuous attraction in
the pictures that presented themselves, from which he could not escape,
but which he for some reason despised and tried to put away from him, by
thinking again of Constance, of the cold purity of her face, of her
over-studied conscientiousness and of her complete subjection to her
sincere but mistaken self-criticism.
He wondered whether he should ever marry, and what manner of woman his
wife would turn out to be. Of one thing he was sure. He would not now
marry any woman unless he loved her with all his heart, and he would not
ask her to marry him unless he were already sure of her love. The third
must be the decisive case, from which he should never desire to withdraw
and in which there should be no disappointment. He thought of Grace
Fearing, and of her marriage and short-lived happiness with its terribly
sudden ending and the immensity of sorrow that had followed its
extinction. It almost seemed to him as though it would be worth while to
suffer as she suffered if one could have what she had found; for the
love must have been great and deep and sincere indeed, which could leave
such scars where it had rested. To love a woman so well able to love
would be happiness. She never doubted herself nor what she felt; all her
thoughts were clear, simple and strong; she did not analyse herself to
know the measure of her own sincerity, nor was she a woman to be carried
away by a thoughtless passion. She loved and she hated frankly,
sincerely, without a side thought of doubt on the one hand nor of malice
on the other. She was morally strong without putting on any affectation
of strength, she was clear-sighted without making any pretence to
exceptional intelligence, she was passionate without folly, and wise
without annoyance, she was good, not sanctimonious, she was dignified
without vanity. In short, as George thought of her, he saw that the
woman who had openly disliked him and opposed him in former days, was of
all the three the one for whom he felt the most sincere admiration. He
remembered now that at his first meeting with the two sisters he had
liked Grace better than Constance, and would then have chosen her as the
object of his attentions had she been free and had he foreseen that
friendship was to follow upon intimacy and love on friendship.
Unfortunately for George Wood, and for all who find themselves in a like
situation, that concatenation of events is the one most rarely foreseen
by anybody, and George was fain to content himself with speculating upon
the nature of the happiness he would have enjoyed had he been loved by a
woman who seemed now to be dead to the whole world of the affections. It
was sufficient to compare her with her sister to understand that she
was, of the two, the nobler character; it was enough to think of Mamie
to see that in that direction no comparison was even possible.
“It would be strange if it should be my fate to love her, after all,”
George thought. “She would never love me.”
He roused himself from his reverie and sat down to his table, by sheer
force of habit. Paper and ink were before him, and his pen lay ready to
his hand, where he had last thrown it down. Almost unconsciously he
began to write, putting down notes of a situation that had suddenly
presented itself to his mind. The pen moved along, sometimes running
rapidly, sometimes stopping with an impatient hesitation during which it
continued to move uneasily in the air. Characters shaped themselves out
of the chaos and names sounded in the willing ear of the writer. The
situation which he had first thought of was all at once transformed into
a detail in a second and larger action, another possibility started up
out of darkness, in brilliant clearness, and absorbed the matters
already thought of into itself, broadening and strengthening every
moment. Whole chapters now stood out as if already written, and in their
places. A detail here, another there, to be changed or adapted, one
glance at the whole, one or two names spoken aloud to see how they
sounded in the stillness, a pause of a moment, a fresh sheet of paper,
and George Wood was launched upon the first chapter of a new novel,
forgetful of Grace, of Constance Fearing and even of poor Mamie herself
and of all that had happened only two or three hours earlier.
He was writing, working with passionate and all-absorbing interest at
the expression of his fancies. What he did was good, well thought,
clearly expressed, harmoniously composed. When it was given to the
public it was spoken of as the work of a man of heart, full of human
sympathy and understanding. At the time when he was inventing the plot
and writing down the beginning of his story, a number of people
intimately connected with his life were all in one way or another
suffering acutely and he himself was the direct or indirect cause of all
their sufferings. He was neither a cruel man, nor thoughtless nor
unkind, but he was for the time utterly unconscious of the outer world,
and if not happy at least profoundly interested in what he was doing.
During that hour, Sherrington Trimm, pale and nervous, was walking up
and down his endless beat in the little room at the club where George
had left him, trying to master his anger and disgust before going home
to meet his wife and the inevitable explanation which must ensue. The
servant came in and lit the gaslight and stirred the fire but Trimm
never saw him nor varied the monotony of his walk.
At his own house, things were no better. Totty, completely broken down,
by the failure of all her plans and the disclosure of her discreditable
secret, had recovered enough from her hysterics to be put to bed by her
faithful maid, who was surprised to find that, as all signs fail in fair
weather, none of the usual remedies could extract a word of satisfaction
or an expression of relief from her mistress. Down stairs, in the little
boudoir where she had last seen the man she loved, Mamie was lying
stretched upon the divan, dry eyed, with strained lips and blanched
cheeks, knowing nothing save that her passion had dashed itself to
pieces against a rock in the midst of its fairest voyage.
In another house, far distant, Grace Bond was leaning against a broad
chimney-piece, a half-sorrowful, half-contemptuous smile upon her strong
sad face, as she thought of all her sister’s changes and vacillations
and of the aimlessness of the fair young life. Above, in her own room,
Constance Fearing was kneeling and praying with all her might, though
she hardly knew for what, while the bright tears flowed down her thin
cheeks in an unceasing stream.
“And yet, when he came to life, he called me first!” she cried,
stretching out her hands and looking upward as though protesting against
the injustice of Heaven.
And in yet another place, in a magnificent chamber, where the softened
light played upon rich carvings and soft carpets, an old man lay dying
of his last fit of anger.
All for the sake of George Wood who, conscious that many if not all were
in deep trouble, anxiety or suffering, was driving his pen unceasingly
from one side of a piece of paper to the other, with an expression of
keen interest on his dark face, and a look of eager delight in his eyes
such as a man may show who is hunting an animal of value and who is on
the point of overtaking his prey.
But for the accident of thought which had thrown a new idea into the
circulation of his brain, he would still have been sitting in his shabby
easy-chair, thoughtfully pulling at his short pipe and thinking of all
those persons whom he had seen that day, kindly of some, unkindly of
others, but not deaf to all memories and shut off from all sympathy by
something which had suddenly arisen between himself and the waking,
suffering world.