‘One of the results of the eye-opening process, I suppose?’
He nodded sullenly. ‘My name used to be Dawson,’ he said.
‘You don’t mean to say,’ I cried, ‘that you are the Dawson who was supposed to have been drowned years and years ago?’
‘I was that man—that unhappy man! But why,’ he cried, turning round fiercely upon me, ‘why do you make me go back to all these hateful things?’
‘Then is the memory of your former life hateful to you?’
‘I escaped from the most wretched condition that a man was ever in: tied to a woman who made my life an intolerable burden. She was not a bad woman, not an unworthy woman. She was—— Well, she had a mother who was fat and well to do, and lived in St John’s Wood.’
Houlot laughed hoarsely, knocked out his pipe on the empty stove, looked mechanically for some tobacco in a jar on the chimney-piece. It was empty. I offered him my pouch, which he took with an indignant scowl.
‘Well, I was meant for great things,’ he went on between the whiffs of his pipe—‘meant for great things; and here I am. Life fribbled and frittered away, and that woman the main cause of it! There was no escape from her any other way. I believe in my heart that the woman loved me in her fashion; all the greater was my unutterable woe.’
‘And you ran away from her?’
‘I disappeared from existence. I would not harm the woman. I would not spoil her life any longer. No; I adopted another plan. At the risk of my own life, I contrived that my death should be apparent. The means were simple enough, although they caused me some anxious thought and preparation. I went down to a little visited part of the coast with which I was well acquainted, and put up at an inn where I was known. Taking my cue partly from the well-known farce of Box and Cox, I went out one morning early and deposited a suit of clothes in a little niche in the cliffs: a wild and solitary spot, rarely visited by any living creature. Later in the day, I went out again, telling the people of the inn that I was going to bathe. I left my clothes on the beach and took to the water. I had chosen my time so that the set of the tide would carry me to the place where I had deposited my clothes, and I drifted along with little exertion. Arrived at the spot, I landed, found my clothes all right, and put them on. Then I started on foot along the coast till I reached a road-side station, made my way to London, and then crossed the Channel, intending to go to Paris. I thought that I should be able to get literary employment there; for French is as a second native tongue to me. My mother was a Frenchwoman; her name was Houlot; hence the name I adopted. But I took this place on my way; and on the journey I fell from the roof of the diligence, and the wheel went over my hand. Amputation was necessary; and by the time that I was cured, I had spent all my little store of money and owed something beside. But the people here were very humane and kind. I set to work to write with my left hand, and earned a little money meanwhile by teaching English; and by degrees I got into the knack of writing again, and contributed some articles to the English press, by which I got a little money. It was all a flash in the pan; my pupils fell away, my articles were no longer acceptable. My friend here’—pointing to the bottle—‘was always at my elbow. But I shall shake myself free one of these days.’