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 hymn, Adeste Fideles. It was midnight it w