But the mischief was already done. Archibald uttered a "d--n," threw down the end of the match and stamped on it wrathfully.

Morgan picked up the fallen candle, lighted it and replaced it on the mantelshelf. The wax was broken in the middle, and the top part leaned disconsolately to one side.

"We are sorry to have unwittingly interfered with your little arrangement," said Margaret, curtseying in mock apology. "But you are quite welcome to make free of my humble abode, so we shall leave you in possession. Come, Morgan." And the two swept out of the room.

"Come and lunch with me to-morrow at the hotel," said Archibald to Morgan, as he got into a hansom an hour later. "We'll spend the afternoon together. There are some points about my book I want to settle. 'Plain Thoughts of a Practical Thinker!' Splendid t.i.tle!

Morgan, you're indeed a genius. 'An attempt to investigate some questions of primary importance that are usually shelved.' That just hits it off--the very book I intended to write!"

CHAPTER VII.

When his father had driven off, Morgan, seized with a restlessness, began to stroll slowly homeward. He had at least wrung some happiness from the evening. His love for Margaret had been strong enough to absorb him, save when at moments his sense of his general position had obtruded. But now he surrendered himself once more to the mood which the events of the day had interrupted.

He was again conscious of the tragedy of his past life with its culminating episode of the evening before, and of the infinite possibility that life held of mystery and fantasy--a mystery and fantasy into which he was going to plunge. The hours he had just enjoyed, he told himself, must not be allowed to influence him. They must be sternly isolated from the future; the disattachment of the new life before him from the wreckage of the old must be complete.

Wreckage! He used the word deliberately, though he was aware there were elements in the position that would have made his estimate of it seem grotesque to many ears.

He was the son of a father of unlimited wealth, who idolised him now.

In addition to very many acquaintanceships, both in London and the country, that were pleasant even if they did not occupy the centre of his consciousness, he had the friendship of Lady Thiselton and the more intimate though less fantastic relation with the Medhursts. And, moreover, he was in love with a beautiful and talented girl, who, he modestly felt, had a great esteem for him--though any other eyes than those of the diffident lover would have seen at a glance that she loved him in return.

How could all these things fail to make a man happy, especially when the man was only twenty-eight years old?

But Morgan's happiness was dependent on his att.i.tude towards things, not on the things themselves. And just now he but perceived all these elements that might have made another life enviable as so many ironies. His ambition--his self-realisation and its recognition by his fellows--had been all in all to him; its abandonment had been the culmination of anguish infinite. The best years of his youth had been lost in vain effort, and some of the bitterness of early opposition that success might have purged still lingered in his spirit. His nature was proud and sensitive and his very failure made it impossible for him to ask for more money, even though he knew it would be forthcoming without stint. What wonder now if he perceived his life as a tragedy!

Common Sense would have advised him to put on one side all emotions and moods that arose out of and summed up the past, all the subtle feelings that possessed and mastered him; would have urged him to begin a new epoch, seek the paternal aid, retain his friendships, and persevere in his love; would have given him a.s.surance of a perfectly satisfactory outlook if he would but readjust his mental focus.

But Common Sense is obtuse and safe. Morgan was a ma.s.s of fine sensibility; his temperament was full of subtle light and shade--therefore dangerous. Plain-souled, clumsy-handed Common Sense, with perception limited to the thick outlines of character, could not have comprehended him, and would unwittingly have confessed it by cla.s.sifying him contemptuously.

Morgan had lived his own life--felt it. His present estimation of it was, therefore, spontaneous; not a cold estimation by mere intellect, but a living one by his whole complex being. And, as the result, he was meditating, at this period of pause and summing-up, to carry forward all that Common Sense would have suppressed, and to suppress all that Common Sense would have carried forward, to sacrifice all the inter-relations with others that const.i.tuted his outer life--even as he had already sacrificed the expression of his corresponding inner life; retaining only his emotional unrest.

And the seductive picture of the scented serpent-woman, ever smiling at him now with gleaming teeth, symbolised the future for him, and alone preserved the continuity of interest that stimulated him to go forward at all. His att.i.tude, in some respects, was a.n.a.logous to that of a romantic boy playing with the idea of running away from home, drawn by visions of marvellous adventures in strange lands. The sequel might be vague and in the clouds, but that very fact only made it the more fascinating.

His temperament had said to him that evening: "Let your business still be poetry, but weave it out of life instead of out of words." The thought resurged in his brain and then it struck him as crystallising his whole feeling about the future course of his existence, as furnishing the key to his position.

To make of life a fantasy, a poem, a dream! The idea was an illumination.

But beyond a half-considered intention of changing to humbler rooms and hiding therein from his world, he did not meditate any definite activity. The feeling at the bottom of his mind was rather that events would shape themselves. To this att.i.tude of pa.s.sivity his whole life had tended. His will-strength had gone into his pa.s.sionate desire of poetic achievement, and were it not that he had, so to speak, grown into relation with others, his life would have been utterly static.

The movement of their lives alone had taken his along. He had not the least idea now how he was going to become acquainted with the strange woman who filled his thoughts, but, without actually translating his feelings on the point into definite terms, he counted it as a certainty that a path would somehow be opened. It pleased him, too, to think that he owed his cognisance of her existence to that first impulse which had caused him to write to Ingram. That fantastic initiation had set in motion fantastic life-waves that were now flowing back to him.

For others the regularities of existence, the steady round of work, the care and h.o.a.rding of money; for him the mystery and the colour of life!

And in a flash of insight he seemed to understand that the poet in him had already a.s.serted itself in his life as well as in his work. Was it not the very curiousness of his relationship with Ingram had made it so palatable? Was it not the strangeness of his friendship with Lady Thiselton and the originality of her personality that appealed to him so much, and was it not his imaginative side that had always been so pleased with both? Was it not his peculiar temperament that had always made him keep his relation with each person a thing apart, so that each was unaware of the others; that had made him like to feel that his life, in a manner, was cut up into strips, along each of which he could look back with a certain sense of completeness, though it was only by the nice fusion of all these isolated completenesses that his existence could be seen as a whole?

But underneath the imaginative spirit of the poet lay the human spirit of the man. And if the former predominated the latter was not entirely dormant. If the poet in him coloured his life and thought, it was the man in him that felt the results, so that the instincts of the poet often clashed with the sympathies and affections of the man. Of this discord within himself he could not help being aware, but he knew it purely by its effect, for he had never searched deeply into the complexity of his nature.

Thus it was that the man in him was grieved at his having had to make promises of further visits to the Medhursts; was paying for every grain of happiness wrung from the evening by a reaction of pain unspeakable. But the poet in him governed, was trying to suppress the man.

He was roused from his meditations by a familiar voice when he was but a few feet from his own door.

"I have been hovering about for a quarter of an hour."

He was startled, then laughed. The veiled woman stood on tip-toe and kissed him on the forehead, he stooping mechanically to meet her movement.

"You don't mind the veil?" she said.

"How did you know I was not indoors and abed by this time?" he asked.

"I didn't know. I only came to meditate in the moonlight. I have been enjoying such exquisite emotions. Are you too tired for a promenade round the circle?"

He fell in with her humour.

"Morgan, reproaches have been acc.u.mulating. To save time--you know I never waste any--you shall have them all in one ferocious phrase. You have been brutal to me of late. I don't mean to say that you've ever ceased to be charming, but--why, at least, didn't you answer my note?"

"It only came this morning," he stammered, "and I haven't had time to read it yet."

"In other words, you wrinkled your brow as soon as you saw it, made up your mind I was beginning to be somewhat of a nuisance, and threw it aside unopened. Of course, you forgot all about it afterwards. You have a perfect genius for putting crude facts in a delicate way."

"Another new discovery about me."

"That is but the natural result of the profound thought I bestow upon you."

"Your profound thought contradicts itself. It declares me brutal and charming with the same breath."

"Profound thought always contradicts itself. I know it for a fact, because I've been looking up Hegel. The nice things and nasty things I say about you arise equally from my love for you, which is thus the unifying principle. The apparent contradictoriness, therefore, disappears in a higher synthesis."

"Quarter! A man can't stand having philosophers hurled at his head."

"But I kiss your head sometimes. I'm sure I'd much prefer that always, only you goad me into the other thing."

"I goad?"

"Yes. By your masterly inactivity when I am concerned. I have to force myself into your life, and after we've been chums for three years, you, left to yourself, ignore my existence. You have such a terrible power of negative resistance against poor, strong-willed me. But, after all, you admire me tremendously, don't you, dear Morgan?"

"I have told you scores of times you are the cleverest woman in the kingdom."

"I am the only woman who understands your poetry. I don't mean that as a bit of sarcasm at the expense of your compliment--I merely want to show you I deserve it."

He made no reply. For a few moments there was a silence.

"How reticent you are to-night!" she said at length. "You usually have quite a deal to tell me. Are the sentimental chapters preying on your mind? I do so much want to know about those sentimental chapters, but you always evade the subject. Tell me, _are_ there any in your life?"

"Ours was to be an intellectual companionship only."

"Comprising intellectual sympathy and kissing on the forehead--both of them chaste, stony, saint-like, tantalising things. But I'd be content for the time being if I were only sure your heart were perfectly free. I couldn't bear the thought of your making love to another woman."

"You are amusing."