Evening bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1895-1912, 1904-10-13
SHORT STORY FOR
EVENING HOURS
The METAMORPHOSIS
OF HARRINGTON

Colin Harrington came back to Eng
land to find himself famous.
He had left home four years before.
giving out that he was going abroad
for pleasure-the pleasure, scanda!
mongers had 1t, being that peculiarly
immoral delight which some men find
in the evasion Of clamorous and insist.
ent creditors.
lie had done himself fairly well, had
Colin Harrington, in the three years
that lay between his coming of age and
bis abrupt departure from England.
He had done a little--a very little
work. made u little love. and spent o
little money--the little, in this last
case, being all that had been left him
by the NONE too wealthy gentleman
who had had the honor of being his
father.
Abroad he had worked. Lacking the
means to pursue an enjoyable idleness
and there are few things more costly
he turned to the cultivation of the
gifts he unquestionably possessed, but
which he seemed to prefer in their lat.
ent condition. He had sent his work
home. II had found ready market,
grown In value. and in four short years
brought him enough fame to turn the
head Of any ordinary young man OF
twenty.seven. But. then, Colin was
not an ordinary young man. and sue.
cess left him cod and unchanged.
In measure, perhaps, IL straight.
ened out that moral obliquity Of his
touching his deDts-but only In meas.
ure. Some Of the larger ones he forgot
If, indeed. we may be allowed to use
the term where accident had no part.
And so it happened that a few of his
creditors, who hailed his triumphs and
his homecoming as the heralds of a
settlement. discovered that they had
run before their horse to market
Some went the length Of bearing him
with their claims, but he wriggled and
slipped through their hands just as he
wriggled and slipped through every.
thing else that was unpleasant.
ii' was NtIt 1T ll1lltS
tears in his voice when he protested
the was desperately sorry for the in.
convenience they might be suffering,
but he besought them-and here his
accents would grow seductive as a sir.
en's-to give him time. He had moth
ing TO speak Of. and II they pressed
him they would only disgrace him to
no purpose; while II they waited until
he should have earned something he
would satisfy them. Fame was his. In
the wake Of Fame, Fortune has at
times been known to journey. Let
them give him a chance, and they
would see. He was not quite specific
concerning what they would see, and
the last thing they thought themselves
likely TO see was their money, but
realizing perhaps how feeble a reed is
the law for the creditor-they consent.
ed to wait.
And while those poor creditors wait.
ed Colin Harrington spent his not in.
earnings with that jovial
recklessness characteristic Of his hap
py'so-iucky nature.
How long this atrocious state of
things might have prevailed but for
the intervention OF Mary Escott there
Is no saying with any degree OF Ger.
tainty, though-by basing a presump.
ton of the future upon our knowledge
OF Collins passive might hazard a
guess that il would have prevailed I'm.
iii second fitting from England be.
came imperative.
She, however, was destined to work
his metamorphosis, arresting his prog.
ress along the road of unconscious dis.
honesty that leads to perdition in the
abstract and the county court in the
concrete.
In the years of his adolescence Colin
had been very fond of Mary. There
had been certain tender passages be.
tM cen them, and the budding of a love
which Collins financial shortcomings
had cruelty nipped. Abroad he learned
that she had married. At the news he
had sighed prettily. and smiled with
fond retrospective amusement-fo no
hau known one or TWO other. and even
greater, passions since that which
Mary had inspired.
Later, he had heard that her husband
was dead, and this time he had sighed
rerfunctorily and without smiling, be.
lieying himself genuinely affected by
the mental picture he drew of her wild.
owhood. Thereafter he had forgotten
her, which platitude mongering cynlcs
tell us, is human natures vile way.
And now Of a sudden he came face
to face with her again. 1t was at a
regimental ball in his native town Of
Stollbridge. and the colonel's wife had
hustled him across and presented him
as the lion of the hour. They had
smiled upon each other the quiet smile,
fraught with never so little sadness, of
souls stripped of their illusions.
The colonel's wife had withdrawn,
and Colin, seating himself beside her,
was scribbiing hieroglyphs on her
- ~ '1aaaf1raiaHr