ROOM
II HOBGOBLINS
III THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE

PART I

BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY

CHAPTER I

DEATH OF THE REV. CHARLES CARDINAL

Death leapt upon the Rev. Charles Cardinal, Rector of St. Dreots in
South Glebeshire, at the moment that he bent down towards the second
long drawer of his washhand-stand; he bent down to find a clean collar.
It is in its way a symbol of his whole life, that death claimed him
before he could find one.

At one moment his mind was intent upon his collar; at the next he was
stricken with a wild surmise, a terror that even at that instant he
would persuade himself was exaggerated. He saw before his clouding eyes
a black pit. A strong hand striking him in the middle of his back flung
him contemptuously forward into it; a gasping cry of protest and all
was over. Had time been permitted him he would have stretched out a
hand towards the shabby black box that, true to all miserly convention,
occupied the space beneath his bed. Time was not allowed him. He might
take with him into the darkness neither money nor clean clothing.

He had been told on many occasions about his heart, that he must not
excite nor strain it. He allowed that to pass as he allowed many other
things because his imagination was fixed upon one ambition, and one
alone. He had made, upon this last and fatal occasion, haste to find
his collar because the bell had begun its Evensong clatter and he did
not wish to-night to be late. The bell continued to ring and he lay his
broad widespread length upon the floor. He was a large and dirty man.

The shabby old house was occupied with its customary life. Down in the
kitchen Ellen the cook was snatching a moment from her labours to drink
a cup of tea. She sat at the deal table, her full bosom pressed by the
boards, her saucer balanced on her hand; she blew, with little heaving
pants, at her tea to cool it. Her thoughts were with a new hat and some
red roses with which she would trim it; she looked out with little
shivers of content at the falling winter's dusk: Anne the kitchen-maid
scoured the pans; her bony frame seemed to rattle as she scrubbed with
her red hands; she was happy because she was hungry and there would be
a beef-steak pudding for dinner. She sang to herself as she worked.

Upstairs in the dining-room Maggie Cardinal, the only child of the Rev.
Charles, sat sewing. She hoard the jangling of the church hell; she
heard also, suddenly, with a sur