The Pointing Man eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 252 pages of information about The Pointing Man.

The Pointing Man eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 252 pages of information about The Pointing Man.

“Hartley, impertinent?” Atkins’ eyes grew round.

“When I say impertinent, I mean not pertinent, or bearing upon any subject that I intend to discuss with him.”

The Rev. Francis Heath got up and walked towards the window, turning his back upon the room.

“I don’t mix in social politics,” said Atkins, soothingly.  “But at the same time, I can’t understand you, Heath.  What the devil does Hartley want to know?”

The clergyman caught at the curtain and gripped it as he had gripped the back of his chair at the Club.

“Never ask me that again, Atkins,” he said, in a low, hoarse voice.  “Never speak to me about this again.”

Atkins retreated quickly from the room; there was something in the manner of the Rev. Francis Heath that he did not like, and he registered a mental vow to let the subject drop, so far as he, a lieutenant in His Majesty’s Royal Engineers, was concerned, and never to allude to it, either for “fear or favour,” again.

IV

INTRODUCES THE READER TO MRS. WILDER IN A SECRETIVE MOOD

Draycott Wilder was a man who hoarded his passions and concentrated them upon a very few objects.  His work came first, and his intense ambition, and after his work, his wife.  She was the right sort of wife for a man who put worldly success first, and through the years of their marriage had helped him a great deal more than he ever admitted.  Clarice Wilder was beautiful, and had a surface cleverness combined with a natural gift of tact that made her an admirable hostess.  She could talk to anybody and send them away pleased and satisfied with themselves, and she had made the best of Draycott for a good number of years.  She had married him when marriage seemed a big thing and a wonderful thing, and her country home in Devonshire a small, breathless place where nothing ever happened, and where life was one long Sunday at Home, and Draycott, back from the East, had appeared as interesting as a white Othello.

For a time she received all she needed out of life, and she threw herself into her husband’s promotion-hunger; understanding it, because she, too, wanted to reign, and it gave her an inexplicable feeling of respect for him, for Clarice knew that had she been born a man, she, too, would have worked and schemed and pushed herself out into the front of the ranks.  She combined with him as only an ambitious woman can combine, and she supplied all he lacked.  It filled her mind, and she never awoke the jealousy that lay like a sleeping python in the heart of Draycott Wilder.  It was when they were in India that Clarice, for the first time, lost her grip and allowed her senses to get the better of her common sense, and she became for a brief time a woman with a very troublesome heart.  Hector Copplestone, a young man newly come to the Indian Civil Service, was sent to their Punjaub station.  He made Mrs. Wilder realize her own charm, he made her terribly conscious that she was older than him, he made her anxious and distracted and madly, idiotically in love with him.  She forgot that there were other things in life, she put aside ambition for a stronger temptation, and she did not care what Draycott thought or supposed.

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The Pointing Man from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.