His contemporaries had greatly envied him, when, as a mere matter of justice, they should have pitied him. All his better impulses had been gnarled by indulgence. He had done things that showed natural ability; but of what use was that? He was too old now to learn to draw. He played rather delightfully upon the piano, or any other instrument, for that matter. To what end? He could not read a note.
There was nothing that Arthur could not have done, if he had been let alone. There were many things that he would have done.
At college he had seen in one smouldering flash of intuition how badly he had started in the race of life. When others were admiring his many brilliancies, he was mourning for the lost years when, under almost any guidance save that of his beloved father, he might have laid such sturdy foundations to future achievements—pedestals on which to erect statues.
Self-knowledge had made him hard for a season and cynical. As a tired sea-gull miscalculates distance and dips his wings into the sea, so Arthur, when he thought that he was merely flying low the better to see and to observe, had alighted without much struggling in a pool of dissipation and vice.
The memory was more of a weariness to him than a sharp regret. Of what use is remorse—after the fact? Let it come before and all will be well.
At last, more by accident than design, he drew out of the muddy ways into which he had fallen and limped off—not so much toward better things as away from worse.
Then it was that Romance had come for him, and carried him on strong wings upward toward the empyrean.
Even now, she was only twenty. She had married a man more than twice her age. He had been her guardian, and she had felt that it was her duty. Her marriage proved desperately unhappy. She and Arthur met, and, as upon a signal, loved.
For a few weeks of one golden summer, they had known the ethereal bliss of seeing each other every day. They met as little children, and so parted. They accepted the law and convention which stood between them, not as a barrier to be crossed or circumvented but with childlike faith as a something absolutely impassable—like the space which separates the earth and the moon.