Chapter II.
Flight
Hugh Desmond was more of a hunter than a libertine. What he desired, he pursued, but after the capture he was sated, and would turn to a fresh venture. If he could stop short before the “kill” he would have been content. A devil drove him on to the very edge, and then some instinct less ignoble urged him to restraint.
For, though he went as Hugh Desmond, which was his family name, he was in reality the seventh Lord Reckavile, with a reputation so sinister that every decent woman shrunk from him till she knew him, and then fell in love with him.
A soldier of fortune, who had not the patience to remain in the Army, he had sought death deliberately instead of glory, in each of the foreign campaigns in which he had fought, always driven from country to country by the Curse, and too poor to take a position in which he might have earned distinction. He was hounded by a desire which knew no satisfaction, and a pride which claimed a high regard for honour.
Such had been the contradiction and the Curse of his race. It was with a sigh of relief that he stood on the platform and saw the train bearing Winnie back to London, and to her husband, slowly steam away. She had been lacrimose and vowed that she would never have a day’s happiness till he saw her again.
He had agreed to her acclamations, but wished to be quit of her, feeling angry with himself for a lack of ardour he could not induce.
On the way back to the hotel he made up his mind for another of those wild expeditions abroad which had filled most of his life.
Some evil fate led him to pass the Cathedral Church, where the organ was playing. The artist in him made him pause in rapture, and he entered softly. The sensuous odour of incense and the gorgeous music of the benediction service greeted him, and the dim lights, the towering pillars, and the blaze of the high altar, appealed to his aesthetic fancy, after the gross life of the last few days. How happily he could have become a monk, mortifying the flesh and flogging himself when unholy desires came to taunt him.
To devote his life to the Holy Virgin, and crush down the base part would be a fight worthy of his pride.
The organ ceased and the dreams with it. He looked round, and in the seats opposite to him, were the girls from the convent school, for this was a saint’s day.