VIII.

Walter Arden, Via di Babuino, Rome, to Douglas Campbell, The Hut, Leith, Tasmania.

I HAVE let nearly a year and a half drift by, my dear old friend, without writing to you, although you have been in my mind very often during that time, and I have suffered and experienced much that I wanted to confide to the one man upon this earth from whom I am sure of sympathy in circumstances that might provoke ridicule from most people.

A year ago I was involved in a tragedy, which ended with the death of a most consummate villain, whose existence upon this earth had been a bane and a curse to helpless innocence. I gave you a detailed description of this man in my last letter, and of the unhappy girl who was then hovering on the brink of ruin, powerless as a bird that flutters spellbound by the baleful gaze of a snake. Her fate was swift and cruel. I took her back to her broken-hearted mother, with ruined health and a shattered mind, and her life since then has been a living death.

I will not give you the history of the seducer's end. It was sudden and violent, and in somewise mysterious, since the hand that killed him has never been discovered. It was in Paris that he met his death; but whether he fell in a duel, or was murdered in cold blood, is still an open question for the Parisian police; though the fact that he was found lying in an out-of-the-way spot, clad only in trousers and shirt, stabbed through the body, points to the former view. He had lived only to do evil, and there was no one to be sorry for his death; for I am told that his father, who survives him, has long ceased to interest himself in anything except

the prolongation of his own life, now verging on the century.

I remained in my old lodgings in Jermyn Street for some months after Lisbeth Berry's return to her mother's hearth; and I was able to help the poor mother by taking her daughter to three celebrated mental specialists; but from none of them could we obtain a hopeful opinion. The girl's condition was pronounced harmless, not far removed from imbecility, and the chances of recovery were poor. Yet recovery was said to be not impossible; and in the mean time she might safely live with her mother, with such care and supervision as the mother could give. There was nothing in the case to call for restraint or isolation. This was the only ray of comfort; and the boundless love of the mother finds a kind of happiness in the companionship of this blighted girl, and in toiling for her, and ministering to her.

And now I come to my own state of mind, which I have communicated to no living creature; since were I to confide in an ordinary acquaintance, he would only laugh at me, and were I to describe my condition to a doctor, he might write me down a lunatic.

For the last year, almost perpetually, I have been tormented by the sense of an unseen presence, a creature of evil, hovering near me, impalpable, invisible, unthinkable almost, for I can imagine neither form nor nature; and it is only by my own intense depression and vague horror that I conclude the presence to be evil. From the beginning of things I have struggled against the feeling. I have gone more into society, spent more hours in the easy-going and varied company at my club; but even there, in those most unromantic surroundings, in the billiard-room, in the cardroom, among men of the world, that haunting presence has still been with me; and in the midst of a rubber of bridge, in the excitement of a hundred-break at billiards, or the rowdy racket of snooker, that ghastly sense of the something evil close at my side, the something of another world overshadowing me, has made ease of mind impossible. Before I left London, my club-friends were telling me that I was looking very ill, that I had altered greatly in a very short time; and every one of the friendly souls was urgent with me to get myself overhauled by his

favourite physician. I had doctors' names and addresses pressed upon me. I was made to feel that I was a desperate case.

You know my old aversion to evening parties, from the days of our Oxford perpendiculars. Well, to elude this spectral company, I accepted every invitation that was sent me, and came to be known as a young man who was worth the trouble of a card, since he was almost sure to put in an appearance. The mystic words "at home" commanded my presence. I danced, I flirted, I listened to all the musical stars of the season. I saw all the plays, I heard all the operas. I was at Ascot, Sandown, even Newmarket. But go where I would, on the racecourse or on the river, in ballroom or concert-room, I carried that evil presence with me, until the haunted look in my face began to be noticeable even by frivolous beauty, and my partners, while approving my waltzing, began to tell me that I was looking dreadfully ill.

After that, I felt I was no longer fit for scenes of gaiety; so I left England before the end of the London season, and have been a wanderer in Switzerland and Italy ever since, rarely spending more than twenty-four hours in any spot, however it took hold of my heart and mind. In bitter truth I have been driven from place to place, a haunted man, trying, in daily change of scene, and in almost perpetual movement, to shake off that miserable sense of a presence other than my own, a presence that makes for evil.

One curious evidence of the something unknown and unexplainable has been a source of keen pain to me. I think you will remember my love of dogs, and how at Oxford I was seldom unaccompanied by my adored and adoring Splinter, a fox-terrier of undoubted race, offspring of a mother whose career was a brilliant succession of triumphs at Islington, Birmingham, and the Crystal Palace. When I

established my quarters in Jermyn Street, I sent Splinter, then four years old, to Wildernsea, my brother's place in Hertfordshire, in charge of an old gamekeeper whom I had known from childhood, and to whom I was not afraid to confide that precious existence.

In the beginning of that haunted feeling which has made my life a burden, sitting after midnight surrounded by the

books I love, in that quiet hour which was once the choicest portion of my day, I found myself longing for the vivacious companionship and frivolous distractions which my terrier had afforded me in the old college-rooms, when I was reading hard for my degree. I thought that Splinter's society would exorcise my demon, which I then believed to be only a mood, an unexplainable condition of nerves.

I ran down to Hertfordshire one fine May morning, spent a few hours with my brother and his belongings, looked round the old house and gardens, and brought Splinter back to London with me.

I had never lost touch with my favourite; for though Wildernsea and I have little in common except our race, we have always been on friendly terms, and I have spent two or three days at the old home every autumn, annually invited for one of his big shoots.

My dog welcomed me rapturously; and old Bowker, his custodian, assured me that at ten years old he was just as playful, mischievous and active as in his puppyhood, a fine ratter, and a "mark on cats." I was delighted to have him again, and having squared the guard, established myself with my lively friend in the assured privacy of a first-class compartment labelled "Engaged."

We had not been together half an hour before I detected a change in my dog. He fidgeted about the carriage, not with the joyous restlessness of old, but with the air of being pursued by something that he feared. Splinter, who knew not fear! He scratched the doors vehemently, rushing from one to the other, and looked at me with a piteous appeal in his expressive eyes; he put his paws upon my knee, looking up at me with dumb pleading; and finally, as if distressed at my not understanding him, set up a mournful minor howl, which made my blood run cold. Never before that evening had I heard such a sound from Splinter.

I kept him in Jermyn Street for a week; a week of distress for him, and of mental agony for me. He escaped from my room at every opportunity; for I was cruel enough to insist on having him with me whenever I could. He crept down to the basement, where he seemed perfectly happy, my servant told me, where he ate, drank, and took his ease. I tried to keep him in my room at night, recalling

our habits in college, when Splinter slept on my bed, and aroused me from slumber in the early morning, licking my face in a transport of affection, as if to welcome me back to the waking world. With such an early-rising companion, one could hardly miss chapel.

But that one night in Jermyn Street was enough. The dog lay with his nose against the door, making a low whimpering noise, like the subdued crying of a frightened child. After that night I let him sleep in my man's room, who assured me that never dog was a quieter or more endearing companion.

At the end of this troubled week I took my terrier back to Wildernsea; but I allowed him to make the return journey in the guard's van, where he made himself at home, and gave satisfaction. I told my old friend Bowker that Splinter did not like London; and this was my only explanation of his prompt return.

Undeterred by this painful experience, which I tried to account for as a purely material phenomenon, my own shattered nerves acting on the nervous system of a thoroughbred dog, I looked for a canine companion elsewhere. I bought a bulldog, of renowned breed and undoubted courage; but only to see my experience with Splinter repeated in almost every detail. The bull was happy in the kitchen, or with my servant. He was miserable with me.

I tried a Schipperke, a pert, irresistible little black beast, with alert ears and no tail, all vivacity and intelligence; but in my company he became paralyzed by fear. I tried a powerful Irish terrier, hardly past puppyhood, full of fight and high spirits; but he had not been with me an hour before he exhibited the same signs of terror that I had seen in the others. This was my final experiment. I sold my dogs, at a considerable loss, to the man who supplied them, and who evidently looked upon me as an eccentric, unworthy of four-legged friendship.

I cannot tell you how keenly I suffered from this failure, so humiliating to a dog-lover. It was the last straw; and from that time I have been a miserable man. If the horror is in myself, in my own shattered nerves and disordered mind, which by some subtle power communicates itself to the brute creation, the idea is scarcely less appalling than