I had believed in my strength. Now a few hours had taught me the terrors of self-fear. The ghastly story of inheritance of wild passions from grandfather to grandfather, from father to son, pressed on my brain like a leaden disk thrust into my skull. I had first learned the joy of experiment with my strength; I was now to learn the pains of the ghosts which always seemed to be mocking the assertions of my will. A line of them, fathers and sons, pointed fingers at me and laughed. “You are doomed,” said they in matter-of-fact voices. I spent my days between determination to indulge myself, for the very purpose of testing my power in self-control, and the sickening relaxation of moral force that occurs from the mere deprivation of all hope of victory in the battle. The excuses of intemperance were never so clever as those I devised for my own satisfaction; the bald truth, that I had taught my body enjoyments which would never be shaken off before old age or infirmity had placed them out of my reach, was never better known than to me.
Fortunately my mother died before the outbreak of my barbarous nature had broken down the pride which caused me to conceal my true self from the daylit world. I sold the home and cursed its dank old trees and toadstools and silent, gloomy chambers the day I signed the deed. I went to city after city, leaving each as it threatened me with ennui or with retribution. Money went scattering hither and thither, spent madly, given, stolen, borrowed, with no regret but that the piper might some day, when the pay was no longer forthcoming, refuse to play.
Perhaps all would have been different had I not been pursued by a fiendish fortune at games of chance. As if Fate meant that my ruin should be complete, she saw to it that I was provided with funds for the journey. I have seen my last penny hang on the turn of a card, and come screaming back to me with a small fortune in its wake. Everywhere, misconstruing the results, men whispered of my luck. It was only once that the truth was told: at Monte Carlo a pair of red-painted, consumptive lips pouted at me with terrible coquetry over the table. “Pah!” said they. “The Devil takes us all on application. It is only very few he chooses! Monsieur has won again!”
She was right, but there is an end to all things and the end of all my ruinous luck came at Venice. It came with Margaret Murchie; it came, I believe, at the very instant that I saw her sitting in a café there—saw her sitting alone, golden from head to foot, golden of hair, golden of skin, golden rays shining from her eyes, showers of gold in the motions of her body—a living creature of gold, shining as a great mass of it, warm and bright and untarnished as a coin fresh from the pressure of the dies. I took her with me to Tuscany—stole her from an old vixen of a fortune-teller. Ah, I see she did not tell you all!—Never mind. There was no disgrace for her—she might well have told everything! She needed no blush for the story. It was the only pretty thing in my life.
The trees of that country grow at the edges of green meadows, tall and stately as the trees of Lorrain’s brush. Sheep, with soft-sounding bells, feed along the rich rolls of the land. Birds sing in the thicket at daybreak. The hills are alive with springs of matchless clearness. Butterflies hover over hedges and dart into half-concealed gardens.
For a month we played there like children. Her ignorance was charming. Her mind was like a fresh canvas; I could paint whatever I chose upon it, and loving her, I painted none but beautiful pictures, pictures of the divine things that were still left in the violated mortal sanctuary of the soul of Mortimer Cranch.
What did I accomplish by spreading all the fruits of my education and my familiarity with refinement before her? What did I accomplish by my mastery of mind? I accomplished my undoing! You need not ask how. I will tell you. I made this healthy, glowing Irish lass believe in the beauty of character which I insisted she possessed. I made her believe that she was a noble creature and that she was capable of fine womanly unselfishness. It was like the influence of the hypnotist. My own fanciful conception of her, at first described merely to awake in her the pleasures of admiration, became, when repeated, convincing to myself. I began to feel sure that she had the rare qualities which I had ascribed to her. I found myself desperately in love with her—not only intoxicated by the beauty of her body and the sound of her laugh, but by real or imagined beauty of character as well. This acted upon her powerfully. She, too, began to believe. Her capacity for goodness expanded. A sadness came over her.
“Why are you so thoughtful?” I said to her one midday as we sat together on a ledge overlooking the peaceful valley.
“Don’t ask,” she said bitterly, looking at the ground.
Curiosity then drove me mad. For two days I persecuted her with cruel questions. I believed that some regret for a secret in her past was troubling her. At last she told me. I believe she told me truly. She said that she knew that a girl without education and refinement could have no hope of being taken through life by me. She spoke simply of the unhappiness it would bring me if I were tied to her.