W.B. Maxwell

The Devil's Garden

1914. Thornton Butterworth, 1926.

Blindly raging, he passed through the silent, deserted streets, and presently blundered into Regent's Park. It was all exquisitely pretty in the pure morning light, with dew-wet grass, feathery branches of trees, and the water of a river or lake flashing and sparkling; and as he stared stupidly about him, he thought for a moment that he was experiencing an illusion of the senses. Or was he a boy again safe in his forest? This sort of thing belonged to the happy past, and could have no proper place in the abominable present.

Facing dismissal from his position in the Post Office, William Dale has been driven half mad by the discovery that his wife has 'sacrificed herself' to an influential grandee in order to save his career. 'One thought had split away from all the rest, and every moment was becoming more definite, more logical, more full of excruciating pain. He thought now only of his enemy, of the human fiend who had destroyed Mavis and himself.'

He crossed a low rail, walked on a little way toward the water, and then threw himself face downward on the grass. He knew where he was now - in the present time, in a public pleasure-ground. London stretched about the park, and beyond that there was the vast round globe; beyond that again there was the universe; and it seemed to him that, big as it all was, it was not big enough to hold one other man and himself