“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.