W.J. Locke
The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
1905. The Readers Library Publishing Co., 1938.
I have a small house in Lingfield Terrace, on the north side of the Regent's Park, so that my drawing-room, on the first floor, has a southern aspect. It has been warm and sunny for the past few days, and the elms and plane-trees across the road are beginning to riot in their green bravery, as if intoxicated with the golden wine of spring. My French window is flung wide open, and on the balcony a triangular bit of sunlight creeps round as the morning advances...I have a delicious sense of isolation from the world. Away over those tree-tops is a faint purpurine pall, and below it lies London, with its strife and its misery, its wickedness and its vanity
The narrator is celebrating 'the seventh anniversary of my release from captivity', the day when he learned that all his male relatives had drowned in the Mediterranean and he had inherited a fortune and a title. Freed from the teaching job that he hated, and 'the degrading influences of Jones Minor and the First Book of Euclid,' he could now devote himself to a long cherished project, a History of Renaissance Morals.
In the afternoon I strolled into Regent's Park and meeting the McMurray's nine-year-old son in charge of the housemaid, around whom seemed to be hovering a sheepish individual in a bowler hat, I took him off to the Zoological Gardens. On the way he told me, with great glee, that his German governess was in bed with an awful sore throat; that he wasn't doing any lessons; that the sheepish hoverer was Milly's young man, and that the silly way they went on was enough to make one sick. When he had fed everything feedable and ridden everything ridable, I drove him to the Wellington Road and deposited him with his parents
Derelicts
George Newnes, 1907.
When they arrived at the Regent's Park they proceeded for some distance northwards up the great avenue. It was crowded. Joyce looked about him with a fidgeted air at the stream of passers-by. "Let us get away from the people and sit under a tree," he said, at length...They left the main avenue and wandered on over the green turf, seeking for a long time a piece of shade untenanted by sprawling men, or lovers, or heterogeneous families. At last they found a lonely tree and sat down beneath it
Yvonne has suggested the visit to the park, determined to uncover Stephen Joyce's dark secret. Eventually he is persuaded to tell her the full story, "the dreadful part of it," of why he had been sent to jail.
"Thank you for telling me," she said, coming near to him and taking his arm. "I did not know, how terrible it has been – and I never realised what a brave man you are"...They walked back to the park gates in a happy silence, drawn very near to one another, since both hearts were very full