BY
LUCAS MALET
(MRS. MARY ST. LEGER HARRISON)
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Wages of Sin
A Counsel of Perfection
Colonel Enderby's Wife
Little Peter
The Carissima
The Gateless Barrier
The History of Sir Richard Calmady
"Ask for the Old Paths, where is the Good Way, and walk therein, and yeshall find rest."—JEREMIAS.
"The good man is the bad man's teacher; the bad man is the materialupon which the good man works. If the one does not value his teacher,if the other does not love his material, then despite their sagacitythey must go far astray. This is a mystery of great import."—FROM THESAYINGS OF LAO-TZU.
..."Cherchons à voir les choses comme elles sont, et ne voulons pasavoir plus d'esprit que le bon Dieu! Autrefois on croyait que la canneà sucre seule donnait le sucre, on en tire à peu près de toutmaintenant. Il est de même de la poésie. Extrayons-la de n'importequoi, car elle git en tout et partout. Pas un atome de matière qui necontienne pas la poésie. Et habituons-nous à considerer le monde commeun oeuvre d'art, dont il faut reproduire les procédées dans nosoeuvres."—GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.
Dominic Iglesias stood watching while the lingering June twilightdarkened into night. He was tired in body, but his mind was eminently,consciously awake, to the point of restlessness, and this was unusualwith him. He had raised the lower sash of each of the three tall,narrow windows to its extreme height, since the first-floorsitting-room, though of fair proportions, appeared close. His thoughtrefused the limits of it, and ranged outward over the expanse ofTrimmer's Green, the roadway and houses bordering it, to the farnorthwest, that region of hurried storm, of fierce, equinoctial passionand conflict, now paved with plaques of flat, dingy, violet cloudopening on smoky rose-red wastes of London sunset. All day thunder hadthreatened, but had not broken. And, even yet, the face of heavenseemed less peaceful than remonstrant, a sullenness holding it as oftroops in retreat denied satisfaction of imminent battle.
Otherwise the outlook was wholly pacific, one of middle-class suburbansecurity. The Green aforesaid is bottle-shaped, the neck of itdebouching into a crowded westward-wending thoroughfare; while CedarLodge, from the first-floor windows of which Mr. Iglesias contemplatedthe oncoming of night, being situate in the left shoulder, so to speak,of the bottle, commanded, diagonally, an uninterrupted view of thewhole extent of it. Who Trimmer was, how he came by a Green, and why,or what he trimmed on it, it is idle at this time of day to attempt todetermine. Whether, animated by a desire for the public welfare, hebequeathed it in high charitable sort; or whether, fame taking a lessenviable turn with him, he just simply was hanged there, has affordedmatter of heated controversy to the curious in questions of suburbannomenclature and topography. But in this case, as in so many other andmore august ones, the origins defy discovery. Suffice it, therefore,that the name remains, as does the open space—the latter forming oneof those minor "lungs of London" which offer such amiable oases in thegreat city's less aristocratic residential districts. Formerly theGreen boasted a row of fine elms, and was looked on by discreetlyhandsome eighteenth-century mansions and villas, set in spaciousgardens. But of these, the great majority—Cedar Lodge being a happyexception—has vanished under the hand of the