I dared not

turn my face lest I should look upon her whom I had deeply wronged—the

forsaken tenement of this woman whose matchless love now begged with

her dying breath for my forgiveness!

A cowardly desire to lose consciousness ran through me, to forget

myself, to hide my shame with her in death; yet, even while this was

so, I sought most desperately through the depths of my anguished pity

to find some hint, if only the tiniest seed, of love—and found it

not…. The rest belonged to things unrealized….

I remember a hand being laid upon me. I lifted my head which had

fallen close against her cheek. The doctor stood beside me, his grave

and kindly face bent low. He spoke some gentle words. I saw him

replacing the needle in its little leathern case, unused.

Marion was dead, her deep secret undisclosed. That which she yearned

to tell me was something which, in her brief period of devotion, she

had lived, had faithfully acted out, yet herself only dimly aware of

why it had to be. The solution of this problem of unrequited love lay

at last within her grasp; of a love that only asked to give of its

unquenched and unquenchable store, undismayed by the total absence of

response.

She passed from the world of speech and action with this intense

desire unsatisfied, and at the very moment—as with a drowning man who

sees his past —when the solution lay ready to her hand. She saw

clearly, she understood, she burned to tell me. Upon the edge of full

disclosure, she was gone, leaving me alone with my aching pity and with

my shame of unawakened love.

“I have failed, but I shall try again….

IV

THAT, as you know, took place a dozen years ago and more, when I was

thirty-two, and time, in the interval, has wrought unexpected ends out

of the material of my life. My trade as a soldier has led me to an

administrative post in a distant land where, apparently, I have

deserved well of my King and Country, as they say in the obituaries. At

any rate, the cryptic letters following my name, bear witness to some

kind of notoriety attained.

You were the first to welcome my success, and your congratulations

were the first I looked for, as surely as they were more satisfying

than those our mother sent. You knew me better, it seems, than she did.

For you expressed the surprise that I, too, felt, whereas mother

assured me she had “always known you would do well, my boy, and you

have only got your deserts in this tardy recognition.” To her, of

course, even at forty-five, I was still her “little boy.” You, however,

guessed shrewdly that Luck had played strong cards in bringing me this

distinction, and I will admit at once that it was, indeed, due to

little born in me, but, rather, to some adventitious aid that,

curiously, seemed never lacking at the opportune moment. And this

adventitious aid was new.

This is the unvarnished truth. A mysterious power dealt the cards

for me with unfailing instinct; a fortunate combination of events

placing in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value,

clear opportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer could have

disregarded. What men call Chance operated in my favour as though with

superb calculation, lifting me to this miniature pinnacle I could never

have reached by my own skill and judgment.

So, at least, you and I, knowing my limited abilities, consent to

attribute my success to luck, to chance, to fate, or to any other name

for the destiny that has placed me on a height my talent never could

have reached alone. You, and I, too, for that matter, are as happy over

the result as our mother is; only you and I are surprised, because we

judge it, with some humour, out of greater knowledge. More—you, like

myself, are a little puzzled, I think. We ask together, if truth were

told: Whose was the unerring, guiding hand?

Amid this uncertainty I give you now another curious item, about

which you have, of course, been uninformed. For none could have

detected it but myself: namely, that apart from these opportunities

chance set upon my path, an impulse outside myself—and an impulse that

was new—drove me to make use of them. Sometimes even against my

personal inclination, a power urged me into decided, and it so

happened, always into faultless action. Amazed at myself, I yet

invariably obeyed.

How to describe so elusive a situation I hardly know, unless by

telling you the simple truth: I felt that somebody would be pleased.

And, with the years, I learned to recognize this instinct that never

failed when a choice, and therefore an element of doubt, presented

itself. Invariably I was pushed towards the right direction. More

singular still, there rose in me unbidden at these various junctures, a

kind of inner attention which bade me wait and listen for the guiding

touch. I am not fanciful, I heard no voice, I was aware of nothing

personal by way of guidance or assistance; and yet the guidance, the

assistance, never failed, though often I was not conscious that they

had been present until long afterwards. I felt, as I said above, that

somebody would be pleased.

For it was a consistent, an intelligent guidance; operating, as it

were, out of some completer survey of the facts at a given moment than

my own abilities could possibly have compassed; my mediocre faculties

seemed gathered together and perfected—with the result, in time, that

my “intuition,” as others called it, came to be regarded with a respect

that in some cases amounted to half reverence. The adjective “uncanny”

was applied to me. The natives, certainly, were aware of awe.

I made no private use of this unearned distinction; there is nothing

in me of the charlatan that claimed mysterious power; but my

subordinates, ever in growing numbers as my promotions followed, held

me in greater respect, apparently, on that very account. The natives,

especially, as I mentioned, attributed semi-deific properties to my

poor personality.