A SON OF PERDITION

CONTENTS


CHAP. PAGE

I. LOVE IN IDLENESS 1

II. THE PROPHECY 16

III. THE FULFILMENT 31

IV. PLOTTING 47

V. THE MEETING 66

VI. A CONVERSATION 83

VII. BEHIND THE SCENES 99

VIII. LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM 112

IX. THE WARNING 128

X. IN CORNWALL 144

XI. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY 160

XII. SMALL BEER CHRONICLES 177

XIII. FURTHER SMALL BEER CHRONICLES 196

XIV. PREPARATION 215

XV. THE TRANCE 231

XVI. THE DISCIPLE OF LOVE 248

XVII. THE DISCIPLE OF HATE 267

XVIII. THE NIGHT BEFORE 282

XIX. THE MORNING AFTER 298

XX. THE UNEXPECTED 317

XXI. THE CHOICE 333

XXII. RIGHT IS MIGHT 350

XXIII. THE ETERNAL STRIFE 368

XXIV. DAWN 386




CHAPTER I

LOVE IN IDLENESS


"How can any one hope to transfer that to canvas?" asked the artist,
surveying the many-coloured earth and sky and sea with despairing eyes.

"Easily enough," replied the girl at his elbow, "those who see twice as
vividly as others, can make others see once as vividly as they do. That
is what we call genius."

"A large word for my small capabilities, Miss Enistor. Am I a genius?"

"Ask yourself, Mr. Hardwick, for none other than yourself can answer
truly."

Outside his special gift the artist was not over clever, so he lounged
on the yielding turf of the slope to turn the speech over in his mind
and wait results. This tall solidly built Saxon only arrived at
conclusions by slow degrees of laborious reflection. With his straight
athletic figure, closely clipped fair hair and a bronzed complexion,
against which his moustache looked almost white, he resembled a soldier
rather than a painter. Yet a painter he was of some trifling fame, but
being only moderately creative, he strove to supply what was wanting by
toilsome work. He had not so much the steady fire of genius as the
crackling combustion of talent. Thus the grim Cornish country and the
far-stretching Atlantic waters, so magically beautiful under an
opalescent sunset, baffled him for the moment.

"I have the beginnings of genius," he finally decided, "that is, I can
see for myself, but I cannot pass the vision on to others by
production."

"Half a loaf is better than none," said Miss Enistor soothingly.

"I am not so sure that your proverb is true, so I reply with another. If
indeed appetite comes with eating, as the French say, it is useless to
invite it with half a loaf, when, for complete satisfaction, one
requires the whole."

"There is something in that," admitted the girl, smiling, "but try and
secure your desired whole loaf by sitting mousey-quiet and letting what
is before you sink into your innermost being. Then you may create."

Crossing his legs and gripping his ankles, Hardwick, seated in the
approved attitude of a fakir, did his best to adopt this advice,
although he might well despair of fixing on canvas the fleeting vision
of that enchanted hour. From the cromlech, near which the couple were
stationed, a purple carpet of heather rolled down to a winding road,
white and dusty and broad. On the hither side of the loosely built wall
which skirted this, stretched many smooth green fields, divided and
subdivided by boundaries of piled stones, feathery with ferns and coarse
grasses. Beyond the confines of this ordered world, a chaos of bracken
and ling, of small shrubs and stunted trees, together with giant masses
of silvery granite, islanded amidst a sea of gold-besprinkled gorse,
tumbled pell-mell to the jagged edge of the cliffs. Finally, the bluish
plain of ocean glittered spaciously to the far sharp horizon-line.
Thence rose billowy clouds of glorious hues threaded with the fires of
the sinking sun, heaping themselves in rainbow tints higher and higher
towards the radiant azure of the zenith.