82 
THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 
As Mandeville was thinking of this he turned 
over his mother’s letter and found a post- 
script on the last page which he had not 
before noticed. Ij ran : (< Oh, my dear boy, 
J am so grieved T never told you I was two 
quarters behind with the rent ; and after 
this I really don’t know what to do. Can 
you lend me the money to pay it ? ” 
He ate nothing that morning. His break- 
fast consisted of a cup of coffee. It seemed 
that everything that could go wrong had gone 
wrong, and truly that was so as far as" big 
things were concerned, but during the day a 
hundred little disasters assailed him. 
The night came at last, and he was alone. 
Thompson did not come in. His mind 
worked strangely. At times he felt quite 
calm as though nothing mattered, and then 
again he was in a strange state of fury. He 
felt like a beast in the nets, a trapped animal. 
He walked about his room in agitation. Once 
or twice he took up a paper and tried to read 
it, but did not understand a word of what he 
read. He took down a book and put it back 
again. He took down another, by chance a 
copy of Hudson’s “ Purple Land.” He 
opened it at an old favourite chapter, and 
read what Manuel, also called “ The Fox,” 
said to Anselmo : u If Providence is angry 
against the entire human race, and is anxious 
to make an example, I know not for what 
reason so harmless and obscure a person as 
I am should have been selected.” 
This passage had often made him laugh, 
and he laughed now with a strange bitterness. 
He put the book back on the shelf and again 
took up the paper. His eyes lighted on the 
words, “ The Sale at Christie’s.” This was 
an account of a sale of pictures, and under- 
neath the heading there was a subheading, 
“ Record Prices.” Tic read the first para- 
graph blankly, for what his eye saw was not 
wholly reported to his brain. But presently 
he woke up, for he read the word “ Corot.” 
A good, a supremely good example of Corot, 
although it was a very small picture, had 
been sold for two thousand pounds. 
“ And Holloway has half-a dozen of them,” 
said Mandeville, “ and one f a supremely good 
example . 5 And he’s got money, unlimited 
money, and a dear little wife, and a beautiful 
boy. And Margery Thwaites is his wife’s 
friend. Some men have everything, and 
others have nothing . 55 
For himself he r did not understand how his 
mind worked, or what was going on in him. 
He was aware that something brewed in him, 
that something was being done. He was 
like a writer who sometimes repeats, it may 
be for weeks or months, a phrase, a sentence, 
knowing not whence it comes or what it fits! 
and at last begins to write in a strange fury 
of passion something which seems given to 
him ; and to his amazement this solitary 
phrase fits into the puzzle and is, indeed, the 
whole cause and the solution at once. For 
this is the work of the brain, which creates in 
secret even during sleep, a ceaseless mind that 
never rests. 
He heard the wind blow. He had noticed 
that day the signs of a coming gale, and 
now he heard the sough of the wind. 
The rain, too, fell heavily. He heard it 
thrown by the gusts across his window that 
fitted ill and let in the draughts. He went 
outside, taking a lantern with him and came 
to the stable where he kept his motor-bicycle. 
There he put on overalls and a mackintosh. 
He saw a strap hanging up, a strap that the 
previous tenant had left. Mechanically and 
with no formed intention, or with no formu- 
lated intention, he rolled it up and put it in 
his pocket. It would do to strap anything 
with. It would be useful to fasten something 
to his bicycle if he had anything to fasten to 
it. He opened his tool- box and looked in. 
The things that he needed were there ; 
wrenches, a screw-driver. One could do much 
with that screw-driver, so his mind told him. 
He wheeled the bicycle out into the deserted 
road, ran it a yard or two, and when it fired 
jumped into the saddle. His mind worked 
furiously, and he went at a pace to which he 
was not accustomed. The night was dark as 
pitch, the roads muddy and dangerous, yet 
he never slackened his pace although he knew 
that he risked his life at every moment. 
But a man's mind is a manifoldness ; lie 
knows little of the working of bis deep 
consciousness. The brain gives but vague 
outward suggestion of the processes that are 
going on within it. Even as he faced the 
weather and went headlong through the dark- 
ness he thought of certain irrelevant things, 
things connected with his profession, points 
he had read lately. He thought of his own 
people, of his youth, of the old hard and yet 
hopeful days when he lived in Lambeth and 
worked at St. Thomas’s. Margery came into 
his mind, his hopes came, his mother, his 
ambitions. 
Deeper than all these things there was some- 
thing in him which directed the way. It was 
eleven o’clock and after when he was aware 
that he was heading straight for Holloway’s 
with a purpose which he did not formulate 
and purposely left undefined. 
As he went he now said things to himself. 
