as keen as ever.
During the whole of my married life, I had been conscious of an inner
protest against "settling down," as Tom Peters had settled down. The
smaller house from which we had moved, with its enforced propinquity,
hard emphasized the bondage of marriage. Now I had two rooms to myself,
in the undisputed possession of which I had taken a puerile delight. On
one side of my dressing-room Archie Lammerton had provided a huge
closet containing the latest devices for the keeping of a multitudinous
wardrobe; there was a reading-lamp, and the easiest of easy-chairs,
imported from England, while between the windows were shelves of
Italian walnut which I had filled with the books I had bought while at
Cambridge, and had never since opened. As I sank down in my chair
that odd feeling of uneasiness, of transience and unreality, of
unsatisfaction I had had ever since we had moved suddenly became
intensified, and at the very moment when I had gained everything I
had once believed a man could desire! I was successful, I was rich, my
health had not failed, I had a wife who catered to my wishes, lovable
children who gave no trouble and yet--there was still the void to be
filled, the old void I had felt as a boy, the longing for something
beyond me, I knew not what; there was the strange inability to taste any
of these things, the need at every turn for excitement, for a stimulus.
My marriage had been a disappointment, though I strove to conceal this
from myself; a disappointment because it had not filled the requirements
of my category--excitement and mystery: I had provided the setting
and lacked the happiness. Another woman Nancy--might have given me the
needed stimulation; and yet my thoughts did not dwell on Nancy that
night, my longings were not directed towards her, but towards the
vision of a calm, contented married happiness I had looked forward to
in youth,--a vision suddenly presented once more by the sight of Maude's
simple pleasure in dressing the Christmas tree. What restless, fiendish
element in me prevented my enjoying that? I had something of the fearful
feeling of a ghost in my own house and among my own family, of a spirit
doomed to wander, unable to share in what should have been my own, in
what would have saved me were I able to partake of it. Was it too late
to make that effort?... Presently the strains of music pervaded my
consciousness, the chimes of Trinity ringing out in the damp night the
Christmas h