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The Wraith of Haddon Towers
(American)
By GLADYS HALL
he Finite and the Infinite ! The curious warring Duality of Man ! God and the Flesh ! Christ and the Devil ! Fleaven and Hell ! — The answer ?
Philip Drummond lav back in his steamer-chair, limply. His tired, disillusioned eyes seemed to probe the fathomless seas — his mouth was the mouth of a man who has smiled and been struck. He might have been one of us who seek an Ideal — find it — and know it to be brass. Or one who, laboring tirelessly, achieves, at last, a tower of mud. His was the face of a man who has striven mightily and gained — futility. The game had not been worth the candle. He had bitten
into the toothsome sweatmeat of life and had spat forth — sawdust.
As a matter of fact, Philip Drummond had grown from a sensitive, unhappy boyhood into a sensitive, keenly intelligent man — a man of flesh, with his spirit aching within him. For what, he did not know.
He had followed the call of his blood and married an airy, lovely confection of flowery skin, gold bair, and tantalizing eyes — and within a year she had trampled upon his sensibilities, wounded him variously, quenched forever the fire in his blood, and sent him hurtling into the deepest regions of himself.
He continued to live with her because— well, just because it never occurred to him to do otherwise; just as it had never occurred to him to rebel during his abused childhood. And she was his wife. And he had loved her.
She continued to revile him and bedevil him, and be jealous of him because — well, because she was a woman, and his wife, and it never occurred to her to do otherwise. He was certainly a defenseless victim and she harried him mercilessly and carried on outrageous flirtations behind his guileless back. One of them, in fact, had passed the treacherous limits of flirtation.
Then came the telegram from his uncle, Lord Drummond, in England, and he had taken the first outgoing steamer, leaving his serenely untroubled wife to her own devices — and the perfervid embraces of her paramour.
On the steamer, for the first time he felt alone with himself — alone with the soul that ached and persisted within him — that seemed to clamor for recognition, for concrete token of
(Forty three)