Maurice Guest | Page 9

was not due to fatigue alone,
and he knew it. In sane moments--such as the present--when neither
excitement nor enthusiasm warped his judgment, he was under no
illusion about himself; and as he strode through the darkness, he
admitted that, all day long, he had been cheating himself in the usual
way. He understood perfectly that it was by no means a matter of
merely stretching out his hand, to pluck what he would, from this tree
that waved before him; he reminded himself with some bitterness that

he stood, an unheralded stranger, before a solidly compact body of
things and people on which he had not yet made any impression. It was
the old story: he played at expecting a ready capitulation of the
whole--gods and men--and, at the same time, was only too well aware
of the laborious process that was his sole means of entry and fellowship.
Again--to instance another of his mental follies--the pains he had been
at to take possession of the town, to make it respond to his forced
interpretation of it! In reality, it had repelled him--yes, he was chilled to
the heart by the aloofness of this foreign town, to which not a single tie
yet bound him.
By the light of a fluttering candle, in the dingy hotel bedroom, he sat
and wrote a letter, briefly announcing his safe arrival. About to close
the envelope, he hesitated, and then, unfolding the sheet of paper again,
added a few lines to what he had written. These cost him more trouble
than all the rest.
ONCE MORE, HEARTY THANKS TO YOU BOTH, MY DEAR
PARENTS, FOR LETTING ME HAVE MY OWN WAY. I HOPE
YOU WILL NEVER HAVE REASON TO REGRET IT. ONE THING,
AT LEAST, I CAN PROMISE YOU, AND THAT IS, THAT NOT A
DAY OF MY TIME HERE SHALL BE WASTED OR MISSPENT.
YOU HAVE NOT, I KNOW, THE SAME FAITH IN ME THAT I
HAVE MYSELF, AND THIS HAS OFTEN BEEN A BITTER
THOUGHT TO ME. BUT ONLY HAVE PATIENCE. SOMETHING
STRONGER THAN MYSELF DROVE ME TO IT, AND IF I AM TO
SUCCEED ANYWHERE, IT WILL BE HERE. AND I MEAN TO
SUCCEED, IF HUMAN WILL CAN DO IT.
He threw himself on the creaking wooden bed and tried to sleep. But
his brain was active, and the street was noisy; people talked late in the
adjoining room, and trod heavily in the one above. It was long after
midnight before the house was still and he fell into an uneasy sleep.
Towards morning, he had a strange dream, from which he wakened in a
cold sweat. Once more he was wandering through the streets, as he had
done the previous day, apparently in search of something he could not
find. But he did not know himself what he sought. All of a sudden, on
turning a corner, he came upon a crowd of people gathered round some
object in the road, and at once said to himself, this is it, here it is. He
could not, however, see what it actually was, for the people, who were

muttering to themselves in angry tones, strove to keep him back. At all
costs, he felt, he must get nearer to the mysterious thing, and, in a spirit
of bravado, he was pushing through the crowd to reach it, when a great
clamour arose; every one sprang back, and fled wildly, shrieking:
"Moloch, Moloch!" He did not know in the least what it meant, but the
very strangeness of the word added to the horror, and he, too, fled with
the rest; fled blindly, desperately, up streets and down, watched, it
seemed to him, from every window by a cold, malignant eye, but never
daring to turn his head, lest he should see the awful thing behind him;
fled on and on, through streets that grew ever vaguer and more
shadowy, till at last his feet would carry him no further: he sank down,
with a loud cry, sank down, down, down, and wakened to find that he
was sitting up in bed, clammy with fear, and that dawn was stealing in
at the sides of the window.

II.

In Maurice Guest, it might be said that the smouldering unrest of two
generations burst into flame. As a young man, his father, then a poor
teacher in a small provincial town, had been a prey to certain dreams
and wishes, which harmonised ill with the conditions of his life. When,
for example, on a mild night, he watched the moon scudding a silvery,
cloud-flaked sky; when white clouds sailed swiftly, and soft spring
breezes were hastening past; when, in a word, all things seemed to be
making for some place, unknown, afar-off, where he was not, then he,
too, was