ple" were, muttered a curse between his
teeth. Drexley turned frowning away.

"At any rate, if you hear anything of him," he said, "let me know."

"Does the Countess de Reuss intend to be kind to him?" Rice asked.

"Go to the devil!" Drexley answered savagely.

CHAPTER XI

DOUGLAS GUEST GETS HIS "CHANCE"

There followed a time then when the black waters of nethermost London
closed over Douglas's head. He struggled and fought to the last gasp,
but in the end the great stream carried him away on her bosom, and with
scarcely a sob he watched all those wonderful rose-coloured dreams of
his fade away into empty space. He was one of the flotsam and jetsam of
life. No one would have the work of his brains, and his unskilled hands
failed to earn anything for him save a few dry crusts. He had made
desperate efforts to win a hearing. Whilst his few pence lasted, and
his inkpot was full, he wrote several short stories, and left them here
and there at the offices of various magazines. He had no permanent
address, he would call for the reply, he said; and so he did, till his
coat burst at the seams and his boots gave out. Then he gave it up in
despair. It was his work that was wrong, he told himself. What had
seemed well enough to him amongst the Cumberland hills was crude and
amateurish here. He was a fool ever to have reckoned himself a writer.
It was the _Ibex_ which had misled him. He cursed the _Ibex_, its
editor, and all connected with it. That was at the time when he had
sunk lowest, when it seemed to him, who, only a few days ago, had looked
out upon life a marvellous panorama of life and colour and things
beautiful, that death after all was the one thing to be desired. Yet he
carried himself bravely through those evil days. Every morning he
stripped and swam in the Serpentine, stiff enough often after a night
spent out of doors, but ever with that vigorous desire for personal
cleanliness which never left him even at the worst. As soon as his
clothes fell into rags about him he presented the strange appearance of
a tramp whose face and hands were spotless, and who carried himself even
till towards the end with a sort of easy grace as though he were indeed
only masquerading. But there came a time when the luck of the loafer
went against him. From morning to night he tramped the streets, willing
to work even till his back was broken, but unable to earn a copper. The
gnawings of hunger roused something of the wild bea