The young man’s face was pale. His jaw, hard-set in a grip of self-control, lent his clever, handsome features a suggestion of force remarkable for his twenty-two years. At maturity, his intellect, backed by so much character, would be formidable. He turned to the window, stared out of it for a long moment. Then he switched round upon the girl.
“So that’s your last word, Betty?—Finish?”
Her eyes dropped under his, were raised again in a volition which dared to match itself, though she was tremulous with the effort, against the challenge of his voice. Their blue depths were charmingly sincere.
“I cannot help myself, Jack.” She shook her head pathetically. “You ought to understand.”
His voice came grimly, with intent to wound.
“You are selling yourself to James Arrowsmith. Yes, I understand.”
She shuddered, turned away her head in despair of sympathetic comprehension. There was a silence during which both gazed down vistas of gloomy thought. Then she looked up again, diffidently venturing another appeal to his magnanimity.
“You know Father’s position——”
He nodded, sardonically.
“I know. He thinks his business is safe if James Arrowsmith is his son-in-law instead of merely his go-ahead competitor. He’s wrong. Arrowsmith would cut his own brother’s throat if he met him on a dark road and thought he had a dollar in his pocket. He’s just a modern brigand!”
The girl sighed.
“What can I do, Jack?—Father——”
He blazed out in a sudden fury.
“Oh, yes, I know! Father! I can’t help your father being a fool! It’s not my fault that he can’t recognize potentiality in a man—that he is only capable of appreciating a success that is already made, which he can measure by a balance in a bank! Give me ten years—I’ll eat up James Arrowsmith!”
The girl shook her head sadly.
“Ten years, Jack—it’s a long time ahead. We have got to deal with things as they are to-day. And to-day——”
“I’m nothing!” he said, bitterly.
She looked up at him.
“You are just a promising young man fresh from college, Jack! With a big future before you, I am sure of that—but it’s only a future!”
“I’ve started, anyway!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got that job on theRostrum—begin next week. And I’m going to make good!”
“Of course you are—but—we can’t marry on your pay as a very junior sub-editor.” She shook her head again. “We must be reasonable, Jack. If I saw any chance——”
“Yes,” he interrupted, brutally, “if you saw any chance of my driving you about in six months’ time in a big motor-car like James Arrowsmith’s—then you would condescend to love me!”
She stood up, her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh,don’t, Jack!” She turned away her head, pressed her hand to her eyes, dropped it in a hopeless gesture. She faced him again, her sensitive mouth quivering at the corners, her expression appealing from misery to compassion. Evidently, she hardly dared trust herself to speak. “You know I love you!” Her voice caught, almost broke. “You know I love you now—shall never love any one else. All my life I shall remember you—if I live fifty years——”
His short laugh was intended to express that terrible cynicism of Youth losing its first illusions.
“Cut it out, Betty! In fifty years you will be seventy. No doubt you will be a charming old lady. You may even be sentimental—you can indulge safely in the luxury, then! But you won’t even remember my name. You’ll only be interested in the love-affairs of your grandchildren!”
She smiled at him involuntarily—and then consciously maintained the gleam in her eyes, quick to emphasize and elaborate the note of comedy he had accidentally struck. It was escape from threatening acrimony.
“And you, Jack? In nineteen-seventy-two? Will you remembermyname?—Will you be even sentimental, I wonder?—Oh, I should like to see you—a cynical old grandfather, telling your grandchildren not to marry for money, but to marry where money is!—Oh, Jack!” Her voice was genuinely mirthful. “Youwillcome and see me and talk their affairs over with me, won’t you? We shall be two such dear old cronies!”
He had to concentrate on his frown, endangered by her infectious sense of humour.
“I shall never marry!” he announced, gloomily. “So there’s not much use in promising to discuss my grandchildren’s affairs with you fifty years hence. I shall never love another woman.”
She ignored the sombre vaticination, determined to keep on a safer plane of futurity.
“Oh, wouldn’t you like to see, Jack? Fifty years ahead—and all that will happen in the meantime?” There was just a hint of seriousness in the light tone, in the bright eyes which smiled into his. “If one could only know!” Her face went wistful. “I often wonder—these crystal-gazers and people—whether they can really see——” She looked up at, him. “Jack! You are so clever and know everything—don’t you know any place where one can go and really see what is going to happen?”
He smiled, half in pleasure at her flattery, half in the consciousness of being about to say a clever thing. The smile was wholly youthful, despite his assumption of withered cynicism.
“Yes. The place to which you are sending me.”
“What place?” Her tone was puzzled.
“Hell!” he said shortly.
She wrinkled her brows.
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course, you haven’t read Virgil,” he said, with the crushing superiority of the newly fledged graduate. “It’s in the sixth book—where he takes Ænas into Hades. He describes two gates there—a gate of horn and a gate of ivory. They are the gates through which all dreams come. Those that pass through the ivory gate are false dreams—the true ones come out of the gate of horn. I will sit down beside it, and report if any of them concern you. You haven’t left me much other interest,” he concluded, bitterly, “and this life will be just Hell.”
She looked at him in a short silence.
“You are being very cruel, Jack. Do you think there will be much happiness for me?” She turned away her head.
He laid both his hands on her shoulders, compelled her gaze to meet his.
“Then let me give you happiness! Betty, I love you! I love you! I care for nothing in the world but you! Risk it! Forget everything except that you love me and I love you! You will never regret it. I will make you the happiest woman on earth as I shall be the happiest man. You cannot live without love! I love you, Betty!—and I shall always, always love you! Trust yourself to it, whatever happens!”
She withdrew herself from him, shook her head hopelessly.
“I can’t,” she said, wearily. “I have promised——”
“Arrowsmith?”
“Father.” Her tone answered all the implications ofhis question with a dreary finality that left no issue. Her sigh was a seal upon resignation.
“Then it’s good-bye?”
She nodded in a forced economy of speech.
“Good-bye.”
He picked up hat, stick, and gloves and moved toward the door.
“You’ve nothing more to say to me?”
She shook her head, her eyes brimming with tears.
“No, Jack. Except that I shall remember this birthday as the most miserable day of my life. You have not made it easy for me.”
“Why should I?” he asked, the uncompromising egotism of youth suddenly harshly apparent. “You refuse the best gift I can offer you—myself!”
“I can’t help myself. But,” she hesitated on the pathetically forlorn appeal, “you might be kind.” Her eyes implored him.
He struck himself upon the forehead with a dramatic little ejaculation which matched the gesture.
“Bah!—It all seems like an evil dream to me!”
She smiled at him, sadly.
“I wish it came out of the gate of ivory, Jack—and not out of the gate of horn!”
He flushed, his raw sensitiveness resentful of this boomerang return of his own witticism.
“You can keep your sense of humour for James Arrowsmith, Betty!—Good-bye!”
He snatched open the door, went out. He could not visualize her standing there listening for his shattering slam of the front door, running to the window for a last glimpse. He thought of her only as mocking at the tragedy which was so real to him.
In a furious rage with the universe as constituted, he marched blindly out of the house and straight across the pavement with intent to quit even her side of the road. His brain in a whirl, he looked neither to right nor left, careless of an environment which was at that momentscarcely real to him. He only half-heard the raucous scream of a Klaxon horn, a warning human shout—and then something struck him violently on the side, followed it with a crashing blow on his head.
He could not see Betty’s face, tense and white, bending over his senseless body as it was extricated from under James Arrowsmith’s plutocratic car and—after her emphatic prohibition of hospital—borne into her father’s house.
* * * * * *
He felt himself shoot upward in the vast, familiar elevator of theDaily Rostrumbuilding. His head was full of important business, interviews with Senators, statesmen, financiers which had filled his busy day. With practised mental control he screened these matters temporarily from his consciousness, cleared his brain for the immediate tasks which awaited him. The elevator stopped opposite a door which bore his name. As he opened it he heard, with the little glow of observed success, the awed recognitory whisper of one of the two seedy journalists he left behind him in the lift: “The Editor!”
He entered the big room hung with wall-maps above the low-ranged bookcases, where a lady clerk was arranging his afternoon tea on a little table by the side of his massive desk. His secretary, evidently alert for his entrance, appeared at another door.
“Mr. Bolingbroke is waiting to see you, sir!”
“Good! Show him in!”
He settled himself in his big chair, glanced at the pile of papers on his desk, looked up to nod a curt greeting to the keen-faced young man who entered.
“Five minutes, Mr. Bolingbroke!” he said warningly, with a gesture toward the papers which awaited him.
The young man smiled.
“I can do more business with you, sir, in five minutes, than I can with another man in fifty,” he said, extracting a wad of typescript from an attaché case. “Here’s the draft of the last article.”
He took it, leaned back in his chair, ran his eye over it. It was headed “The Cut-throat Combine. The Arrowsmith Apaches Uneasy For Their Own Scalps. More Points for the Public Prosecutor.”
He skimmed it through rapidly. It was a scathing denunciation of a predatory Trust with which the proprietors of theDaily Rostrumhad quarrelled. Chapter and verse were given for a series of malpractices which, substantiated after this publicity, would infallibly bring the wrongdoers before a court of justice. He leaned forward, picked up a pencil, struck out a few sentences, made other points more telling. Suddenly he frowned, scored out a whole paragraph.
“You’re too tame over this infantile mortality business! You want to let yourself scream over it. That’s the note that’ll wake ’em up! Get all the sentimental parents clamouring for his blood!” He handed back the typescript. “Rewrite the final paragraph and it’ll pass.” He glanced at his watch. “Four and a half minutes, Mr. Bolingbroke!” he said, an almost boyish note of triumph in his voice, “and I guess it’s finish for Mr. James Arrowsmith!”
He turned to his tea while the journalist made his exit. Then he bent himself forward to the business on his desk.
As he ran through and signed letter after letter, his own phrase “Finish for Mr. James Arrowsmith!” rang in his head, repeated itself over and over again with almost the distinctness of an auditory hallucination. A detached portion of his consciousness listened to it, was lured into a train of thought that was not unpleasant.
Of course, he had no real personal grudge against James Arrowsmith. Without him——! He smiled as he set his signature at the foot of yet another letter. That was a long time ago! And he had prophesied it—he remembered, suddenly, his own words—“Give me ten years and I’lleatJames Arrowsmith!” Ten years! He glanced involuntarily at the calendar in front of him, read the date—1932. By Jove, itwasten years—tenyears ago—Betty’s birthday! He glanced again at the calendar—and dropped his pen on the desk with a sharp exclamation of annoyance. Good Lord, of course it was! It was Betty’s birthday to-day! And he had forgotten it!
For a moment or two he stared in front of him, his brows contracted into a frown which was directed impartially at circumstance and himself. He had been so terribly busy of late—but, of course, he must find time. Poor old Betty! He took up the telephone instrument on his desk, gave a number.
“Hallo! That you, Betty?—Jack. Jack speaking. Many happy returns of the day! What?—Of course I remembered!—What?—Well, it’s only five o’clock,” his tone was one of self-extenuation. “I say, old girl! We’ll go out to dinner—any restaurant you like! What? You’ve got an appointment?” He repeated the words incredulously. “Oh, very well!—I say, Betty! You haven’t got a cold or anything, have you?—Oh, all right—no, I only thought your voice sounded strange.” He frowned. “Very well—do as you like! Good-bye!” He put back the receiver with a vicious thud.
Throughout the remainder of the afternoon, while he gave directions to the series of sub-editors who came deferentially into his presence, an obscure worry persisted at the back of his consciousness. Of course—he had to confess it—he had neglected her of late. How long was it since he had been home? Only a month—or five weeks? The foreground of his brain, working at full pressure on the problems continuously submitted to it for instant decision, failed to solve the question—relegated it to be worried over by that independent consciousness at the back of his mind. It was a long time, anyway! Of course she understood. It was the paper—the paper to which he was the slave—which, practically, he never quitted (he had a bedroom in the building)—the paper of which he personally read every item that was printed and an enormous quantity of copywhich was not—the paper which was his pride, his joy, his one interest in life! Of course, she understood—but it was rough on her. Poor old Betty! He thought of her strange voice, and winced with remorse. She had been brooding over no letter that morning. If only she would have gone to dinner with him! He felt that he could have explained things, put everything straight. But she had an appointment! What appointment? With whom? He put a thought out of his mind, and the thought peeped persistently over the barrier. Impossible, of course! Preposterous! Docile little Betty? Besides—who could there be? His vanity was scornful of the idea.
Nevertheless, as he worked, an impulse kept rising in him, ever more powerfully, an impulse to go home—to go home at once. He fidgeted as he beat back the disturbing desire, had to concentrate himself fiercely upon his task. Suddenly, as though the obscure subconsciousness, which was, after all, his real self, had come to a decision in which his brain had no part, he surrendered. He was surprised at himself as he sharply pressed the bell-button upon his desk. His secretary appeared.
“Tell Mr. Thompson to see the paper through to-night. Get me a taxi at once!”
The well-disciplined secretary barely succeeded in veiling his astonishment.
“Very good, sir.—And if we get that cable from Yokohama——?”
He bit his lip in an unwonted hesitation. Upon the contents of a cable expected that evening from Yokohama he would have to decide the policy of his paper, and upon the policy of his paper, as outlined in the leader which would be published in the morning, depended to a large extent the direction of the current of popular opinion—the current which would set in a few days toward peace or war. To-night, if ever, he ought to remain at his post, but the dominant impulse which had swept over him would take no denial. He felt like a traitor to his professional code as he replied:
“I may be back. If I am not, ring me up. You will find me at home.”
His straight stare at the secretary challenged and browbeat the bewilderment in that young man’s eyes.
“Very good, sir,” he said, submissively, and departed.
A few minutes later he found himself speeding homeward in a taxi that, despite the reckless audacity of the liberally subsidized driver, could not go fast enough. The momentary halts imposed by cross-traffic seemed interminably prolonged delays. Of course he was a fool, he told himself—but his impatience increased with every second, set his fingers drumming upon the unread evening newspaper on his knee. At last! The taxi swung into the pavement in front of the tall block of flats where he had his city home. He jumped out with the feverish alacrity of a man who hastens to avert disaster, almost ran to the elevator.
Another moment and he was fitting his key into the latch. He swung the door open—was confronted by Betty in hat and furs, apparently just on the point of departure. She shrank back at his entrance, went white.
“Jack!”
The tone of her voice reëchoed in him like an alarm-bell. He looked sharply at her.
“Where are you going?”
She stared at him, white to the lips, evidently unable to answer. He repeated the question in a level voice from which, by an effort of will, he banished the wild suspicion which suddenly surged up in him.
“Where are you going, Betty?”
She laughed, a trifle hysterically.
“You are taking a great interest in my doings all at once, Jack! I’m going out, of course.—I told you I had an appointment.”
His eyes met hers, held them till they dropped and she went suddenly red. He opened the door of an adjoining room, gestured her to enter, followed her.
They stood and faced each other in a silence that seemed to ring with the menace of near event. He was the first to break it.
“Now perhaps you will tell me where you are going, Betty?” He held his voice on a note of politeness, but it was nevertheless sternly compelling.
Her eyes sought the carpet. Her bosom heaved deeply through a long moment where there was no sound save the suddenly perceived loud ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece. Then, on the wave of a resolve, she lifted her head, confronted him proudly.
“I am going to leave you, Jack!” It was evident that she had to fight to keep her voice from breaking. “I—I have had enough of it!”
His ejaculation was characteristic.
“My dear!—You must be mad!”
An answering anger came into her eyes.
“Mad or not—I mean it!”
“Leave Maisie?” he cried incredulously.
She smiled at him, more in control of herself now than he.
“No. I am taking Maisie with me,” she said with deliberate calmness.
“But you can’t! I will not allow it!”
“Perhaps you propose to sit here all day and watch her?” she asked, with biting sarcasm. Then, with a sudden change of tone, indignation flamed up in her. “What is she to you?—Is she any more to you than I am?—Do you see her from one month’s end to another?—Do you ask after her? Do you write to her? Do you take the faintest interest in her?—No!—Once you leave this flat and go to your hateful paper, you forget her as utterly as you do me!” Her eyes blazed at him. “Maisie and I are all the world to each other, Jack! And we will not be separated! We go together!”
The violence of this outburst from the woman whose docility he had so long accepted as naturally as he did that of his staff upon theRostrumshocked him profoundly.At the same time, a blinding passion of jealousy surged up in him.
“You shall not go!”
“I shall!” There was no mistaking the determination in her voice. “The moment your back is turned!”
The room seemed to reel about him. The hitherto so solid foundations of his existence had broken up suddenly beneath him. He could not have suspected so great a capacity for emotion in himself. He pressed his hand against his brow, closed his eyes tight in the sickening shock.
“Who is it?” he asked hoarsely. “The man?—His name?”
Her eyes seemed to be probing the depth of his wound as they looked into his, but they showed no compassion.
“I cannot tell you.” Her tone was unshakably firm.
There was again a silence, in which he fought for mastery over himself. He looked at her in uncomprehending despair.
“Betty! Betty, tell me why?—For God’s sake, tell me why!—You used to love me. Tell me why you’ve changed!”
She evidently was also fighting to keep his emotion from communicating itself to her. He thought, as he waited for her answer, that her head never looked more nobly beautiful.
“Do you remember, Jack? Ten years ago?—Ten years to-day?—You said to me: ‘You cannot live without love!’ You were right.” A sob, that almost escaped its check, came into her voice. “I cannot live without love.”
He looked for yet another moment upon the sad dignity of her face, upon the quivering, sensitive mouth, upon the eyes that brimmed with tears—then, with an impulsive movement, he sprang forward, seized her two hands in his. The tears were in his eyes also, and in his voice.
“Oh, Betty, Betty darling! I remember! And Isaid ‘I love you! I love you! Trust yourself to it whatever happens!’—Oh, Betty! Is it too late? Is it too late?”
Her eyes looked deeply into his, incredulous at first of his sincerity, then softening in a wonderful certitude, she let herself go into his enfolding arms, her mouth drawn wistfully close to his, yet still, for a moment, withheld. All pride went out of her suddenly. She implored, like a soul that has an unbelievable chance of life.
“Oh, Jack! You do love me?—You love me still!—Oh, Jack, Jack!”
She buried her head upon his shoulder, her body shaking with sobs.
He caressed her, soothingly.
“My dear! My beloved! My dear, dear Betty! Of course I love you! You and Maisie are all I have in the world—and it’s mostly you!—Oh, I know I’ve been a fool! I’ve thought only of my selfish ambition. But, dear, try me again! I’ll be so much kinder to you, so much more thoughtful.—And we’ll forget all this. Never remember it. I won’t even ask you the man’s name.”
She half-raised her head from his shoulder, swallowed tearfully.
“There—there wasn’t any man!” she said, and broke down again into a passion of sobs that would not cease.
* * * * * *
As he expected, the young man was waiting for him. Maisie was waiting also, standing very tall and rigid by the window, in all the dignity of youth measuring swords with the parental generation. He thought, as he came into the centre of the room, how like her mother she was—her mother twenty years ago, when she had facedherfather. He nearly smiled at the remembrance, checked himself with a thought of the matter in hand. This, of course, was quite different!
The young man rose to meet him. They shook hands with the amount of stiffness proper to the occasion. Hefound himself suddenly wishing that Betty were here, after all. He had been hasty in telling her to keep out of the way. She could handle Maisie more tactfully than he could. Very reasonable woman, Betty—she had seen his point of view at once. These thoughts passed swiftly through his mind as he invited the young man to a chair, seated himself. There was an awkward silence.
He and the young man broke it at the same instant.
“You wanted to speak to me——?”
“I think you understand, sir——”
Both stopped likewise at the same instant to make way for the other, and both failed to recommence.
Maisie stepped forward impatiently, stood between them, towering superbly.
“I don’t see why you want all this icy ceremony, both of you,” she said scornfully. She turned to her father. “Jim wants to marry me, Father—and I want to marry Jim. And that’s all there is to it!”
“Indeed!” He raised his eyebrows in mild sarcasm. “I wonder you thought it necessary to inform me of such a trifling matter.”
“We thought it better to tell you.” Maisie was cheerfully unscathed.
“Much obliged, I am sure. I’m very interested. I expect you will both of you want to marry lots more people before you’ve finished. I shall always be willing to lend a sympathetic ear when you care to tell me of the latest.”
“Father!” broke out Maisie indignantly. He felt that he had scored. “This is serious!”
“It always is,” he said philosophically. “And you, young man? I suppose you are burning to add your testimony of the solemnity of this occasion to Maisie’s?” He felt that if he could only keep it up on this tone he was safe. Maisie was apt to be so damnably stubborn and unmanageable once he failed to maintain superiority. As for the young man—well, of course, he was only a young man. He could soon managehim!
This young man, however, was no whit abashed.
“I am, sir,” he said, confidently. “Maisie and I are made for each other!” he added, uttering the banality as though it were now for the first time new-minted for the lovers’ lexicon.
“Really?—It is a happy chance, for certainly Maisie’s mother and myself omitted to take you into account when we——”
“Father!”
“—named her at the baptismal font,” he continued, equably. He had scored again.
The young man was impervious.
“Perhaps there are higher Powers than you, sir?” he ventured, with polite deference.
“—Even if you are the editor of theDaily Rostrum!” added Maisie viciously.
He resettled himself in his chair under this lively counter-attack.
“Well, let us drop these witticisms,” he said with some asperity. “Come to business. Let’s hear your case, if you have one.”
“Certainly, sir. I ask your permission to marry Maisie.”
“I appreciate the courtesy. What is your income?”
The young man hesitated.
“Well—at present, sir——”
“Nothing, I suppose?” He was still keeping his end up, was well-satisfied with the tartness of that question. He nearly smiled as he watched the young man wriggle.
“I must confess, sir—but I have qualifications—and I am ambitious!”
“All young men are ambitious,” he replied, oracularly. “Let us hear the qualifications!”
“I graduated with honours at my university——”
“Pooh! So did the man who sells my paper at the corner of the street!”
“—and I have great hopes of getting a good job.”
“Indeed!—Where?”
“On your paper, sir!”
He was staggered by the young man’s impudence.
“My compliments!—But, as I unfortunately fail to share those hopes, I must regretfully refuse the permission you ask for!”
He had only just managed to keep his temper.
Maisie sailed forward to the attack.
“But, Father, you have often told me that when you married Mother you were only a graduate with your first job on theRostrum! We don’t mind struggling—we shouldliketo struggle—just as you did!”
“Things were different then. That was a long time ago. In this year of nineteen forty-two life is much more difficult than when your mother and I were young.”
“It only seems so to you because you have got old. It isn’t difficult to us young people!” said Maisie, smilingly positive.
He winced under the unconscious cruelty of this remark.
“Perhaps you will allow my experience to be the best judge,” he said, snappily. “In any case, I refuse my permission! The idea is ridiculous!—I do not think there is any more I need say, young man,” he concluded, making a movement to rise from his chair.
Maisie pinned him down to it, both arms around him, kneeling at his side, her face—Betty’s young face!—looking up to him in winsome appeal.
“Father!” she said, and her voice was full of soft cajolery, “if any one took Mother away from you, wouldn’t you feel it dreadfully?” He had a sudden little flitting vision of a crisis ten years back. “Would life be worth anything to you?—I mean it seriously.” She paused for a reply he refused to give. “Well, Father—that’s just what life will be like to Jim if you take me away from him!”
“I don’t see the necessity of the parallel,” he countered, feebly.
“Oh, yes, you do. And Father!—If any one took you away from Mother?—What would life be like to her?—You know!Just a dreary blank!—And that’s what my life will be like if you send Jim away from me!”
“But——” he began.
She put her hand over his mouth, a deliciously soft young hand, with a faint fragrance that reminded him——
“No!” she continued, inexorably. “Listen to me! I haven’t finished. If any one took you from Mother, and she knew where to find you—what would she do? You know! She would go to you, whatever was in the way!—And, Father, that’s what I should do!—Father!” she said, and her tone was full of solemn warning, “would you like to think of your darling little Maisie starving somewhere in a top back room—and hating you,hating you!” her voice suddenly became almost genuinely vicious, “because you wouldn’t give her husband a chance to earn his living? Would you like to sit day after day, not knowing where she was, wondering all sorts of things—with Mother sitting on the chair opposite and not daring to say a word—day after day, and year after year, and never hear from her any more?—And all because you were a stubborn, foolish old man who had forgotten what real love was!”
“But, Maisie——” he did not himself know what he was going to say.
She snuggled up close to him, looked up into his face.
“Dadsie!” she said, and the voice was the voice of the child Maisie who had so often looked up from his knee with just that irresistible smile which had brought strange tears to his eyes then as it did now—sudden tears he could not quite keep back. “Dadsie!” she said once more and her tone went straight to his heart. “You do love your little Maisie, don’t you? And you want to make her happy—all her life you have wanted to make her happy and you’re going to make her happy now. You are going to give her Jim, her man—like you are Mother’s man—a chance to make good. You are going to give us both a chance to make good together—like you and Mother have made good together. You are still going to beMaisie’s dear, good, kind, generous father whom she will always love—aren’t you, Dadsie?”
The young man stood up.
“Sir,” he said, “I’ve lost my father. And if I could choose another one—I should like it to be you!”
The older man warmed suddenly at the unmistakable sincerity of his tone. He was a good lad, after all—very like himself, he thought—twenty years ago!
“Dadsie!” implored Maisie, her arms still about him. “Dadsie!—Say yes!—Just think it’s Mother and you starting for the first time!”
Something broke down in him—almost the barrier against unmanliness. He blew his nose quickly and his smile had a twist in it as he looked into Maisie’s eyes.
“That’s not fair!” he said. “But you’ve won. You shall have your chance.—You can start to-morrow, young man, but, mind—to work!” He stood up, went to the door.
“Betty!” he called as he opened it.
She stood there—smiling at him. He guessed suddenly that she had been there all the while.
“Well?” she said, her eyes happy.
He glanced round to where the two young lovers had stood. But they had vanished together into the garden.
“I’ve been an old fool, my dear!” he said, smiling.
“You’ve been an old dear!” she replied, putting an arm about him and coming with him into the room. “You couldn’t have made me a better birthday present!” Her eyes, also, were full of tears.
“Forty to-day!” he said, “and it only seems like yesterday since you and I——”
“And you still love me?” she queried, in a tone that had no doubt, looking up into his face.
“I still love you,” he replied, happily positive. “Just as I did then!”
Arms about each other, he led her in front of the big mirror over the fireplace and they smiled at the reflected picture of their union.
“She called me an old man,” he said, a little ruefully, patting his hair before the mirror. “I’m getting a bit gray, too.” He looked at her. “But you, dear, you haven’t got a gray hair—and in my eyes you are just as beautiful as ever!”
She shook her head slowly at him in delight.
“And you are just as handsome!”
He smiled down upon her.
“Maisie accused me of being too old to remember what true love was,” he said. “Do you think so, dear?—Have we forgotten?”
“Darling!” she whispered, as she snuggled close against him.
They kissed, believing that their kiss was just the kiss of twenty years ago. It wasn’t. It was a symbol of infinitely more.
* * * * * *
He sat tapping his foot impatiently on the carpet of the ante-room to the council-chamber of theDaily Rostrum. Behind the closed door a meeting of the chief proprietors was in secret deliberation. He glanced at his watch, his dignity fretting at this unwonted exclusion, an unacknowledged anxiety unsettling his nerves. He knew himself to be on the threshold of a new epoch. An enterprising, young-blooded syndicate was acquiring theDaily Rostrum, was even then in conclave with the old proprietors, agreeing upon the final terms. They had sent for him—had asked him (oh, most courteously!) to give them yet five minutes.
But he was resentful of those five minutes. Young Henry Vancoutter (not so very young now, though—he must be forty!—Let me see—twenty years——), the chief proprietor, ought to have treated him with more consideration. He deserved better than to be left cooling his heels while the destinies of his paper—hispaper, for he if any one had made it, had lived for it for forty years, had been its unchallenged autocrat for thirty—were inthe balance. The old man would never have done it, he thought, resentful of this rising generation. Never once was old Vancoutter lacking in the respect due to him, the prince of editors who had made his property one of the most valuable in the journalistic world.
He wondered what the future would bring. Doubtless the policy of the paper would be changed—that was only natural, of course. They must go ahead with the times (he nerved himself for an effort that he felt would be a tax upon his strength). Yes—perhaps they had fallen a bit behind of late. The circulation was not what it was—not half what it had been fifteen years ago. They had made rather a virtue of being a trifle old-fashioned, appealing to conservative instincts. Not in the old days, certainly—but for the last twenty years. And undoubtedly they had suffered from it. He must look up the side-lines a bit—the radio-service to private subscribers, for example. He drifted on to a vague calculation of the initial cost for the service of wirelessed cinema-pictures of current events, mingled with advertisements, with which their go-ahead rival theLightning Newswas making so great success with hotels and flat communities. His jaw set. He would beat them on their own ground. He would show the world that the editor of theRostrumwas still alive, was still a power.
Yes—he was not done yet. He could not—no one could—conceive theRostrumwithout him. He was the paper itself. There was not the faintest possibility of his being replaced. It was unthinkable as practical near politics, as unimaginable as death itself. Such a day was, thank God, still remote. Old proprietors or new, there was no question that he was the indispensable editor. But he would have to put his shoulder to the wheel.
He wondered what Betty would think of the changes. Poor old Betty! She was getting very frail, but (he thought, cheerfully) considering that she was sixty to-day she was a wonderful woman. He glanced at his watch again, fidgeted with impatience. She would be waitingfor him in the car outside—very nice of the old dear to come down for him every day as she had done for now, let me see, was it five or six years past? Ever since he had had his illness. Dear old Betty! He warmed himself with the thought of the splendid fur coat he was going to buy her as a birthday present that afternoon.
The door opened suddenly. Young Vancoutter uttered his name with a smile, murmured an apology, beckoned him in.
He entered, glanced round upon the familiar faces and the new ones gathered on each side of the long table. The new looked up at him with interest, the old bent over blotting-pads on which they scribbled idly. He seated himself.
Vancoutter spoke in his familiar crisp tones.
“Mr. Trenchard, I have to inform you that the board has come to very satisfactory terms with the syndicate who are, in fact, now the new proprietors of theDaily Rostrum.” The speaker paused for a moment, cleared his throat. “You will, of course, readily understand that these new proprietors wish to have complete control of their property and that their ideas of editorial management may not coincide with ours—with those which you have so successfully and so worthily upheld for so many years.” He felt himself turn sick as he listened, pinched his lips together lest his emotion should be remarked. A mantle of ice seemed to compress him. Vancoutter continued, with an indulgent smile: “We for our part, of course, have safeguarded the interests of a man who has served us so brilliantly, whose association with our paper——” ‘Our paper’! He almost smiled in bitter irony.“—has so materially contributed to bring it to that pitch of influence at which it is still maintained to-day. Therefore, as part of the purchase-price paid by the new proprietors, ten thousand shares have been set aside as your property—and, if you prefer it, the syndicate has engaged itself to buy those shares of you, cash down, at the current market valuation——”
He scarcely knew what followed. He had only the most indistinct recollection of several other long-winded speeches whose flattery was sincerely intended to soften the blow. He could not remember what he himself had said—apparently, he had kept his dignity—had duly thanked the old proprietors. Of all the welter of words, he clearly recalled only—“The younger generation, Mr. Trenchard! A man of sixty-two owes it to himself to retire!”—and they haunted him, rang over and over again in his brain like the knell of his life.
At last he escaped, went stumbling blindly down the stairs, forgetting, for the first time for forty years, the elevator. Betty was waiting for him in the closed car, her head peering out of the window. He groped for the door, almost fell into it. She helped him to the seat.
“My dear! What is the matter?” she said, white with alarm. “Are you ill?”
He clenched his jaw in the agony of his humiliation.
“Sacked!” he said briefly, the tears starting to his eyes. “Sacked at a moment’s notice!”
She stared at him, unable at first to grasp the full significance of his words.
“Oh, no, Jack! No!” she said. “No! You can’t mean it! It’s not true?”
He nodded, gazing fixedly out of the window, away from her.
“It’s true!” he replied grimly. “My life’s finished!”
She felt timidly for his hand, pressed it without a word. He turned and faced her. They looked for a moment into each other’s eyes, then suddenly he crumpled into her arms, a dead-beat old man, and sobbed like a child.
“Oh, Jack, dear! Jack!” she said, caressing the gray head upon which her tears fell like rain. “At last we can be together!”
* * * * * *
They sat side by side on the porch of the country-house, overlooking the wide lawns which swept down to a belt of trees and the river. Along the bank two youngcouples were walking in a close and intimate comradeship whose happiness was indicated by the bright young laughter which floated at intervals, in the stillness of the sunny afternoon, to the porch of the house. He watched them as they went, then turned silently to his companion. Betty sat, sweetly placid, a little smile just accentuating the loose wrinkles on the soft face, her eyes looking perhaps after the young people, perhaps into happy thoughts. He thought she was very beautiful as she sat there—and inestimably precious.
“Betty darling!” he said suddenly, lifting her hand to his lips, “to think that you are seventy to-day!”
She turned and smiled at him, her pale-blue eyes darkening with grateful love.
“Nineteen seventy-two, Jack!” she said, softly. “Do you remember——?”
His smile answered hers.
“Yes, dear. I remember——”
She checked him with a little gesture.
“Hush! Don’t speak!” she murmured, as though in awe.
They sat there, hand in hand, in silence, gazing over the lawns to where their grandchildren wandered with the lovers of their choice, in a quiet ecstasy for which they had no words. Love swelled in them, filled them with the soundless harmonies wherein Life’s discords are resolved.
* * * * * *
“Hush! Don’t speak!”
He opened his eyes. Betty was bending over him. Betty? He stared at her, puzzled. Where were the soft wrinkles, the gray hair? This was Betty—Betty as she used to be all that time ago. Then his consciousness readjusted itself suddenly to its environment. He gazed round on an unfamiliar bedroom where Betty moved with an air of proprietorship.
“I have had such strange dreams, dear——” he said weakly.
She bent over him again, smiled.
“From the gate of horn?” she asked. How charming she looked!
He collected his thoughts with an effort—remembered, all at once.
“I hope so, dear—please God, they are!”
She rearranged his pillow, smoothed the sheet under his chin, smiled again.
“Go to sleep, Jack—lots more sleep!” she commanded gently but authoritatively.
Without strength or will to protest, he let himself relapse once more into drowsiness. Suddenly he opened his eyes.
“What was the name of the man who wanted to marry Maisie?” he asked, as though he had long been puzzling over the question.
“Maisie?” She looked at him in blank lack of comprehension.
“Our daughter!”
A beautiful smile of tenderness, of something ineffably feminine, came into her eyes. What was it she gazed at in that instant of silence?
“Hush, dear. Don’t talk!” she said, softly, kissing him on the brow. “Go and sit again by the gate of horn.”
Mr. Gilchrist was nervous and fidgety. He was alone, not merely in the dining-room where he sat, but in the house; and solitude at night to a man accustomed to find comfort and distraction in the presence of others is a black desert where one starts at one’s own footsteps.
Sitting there in the dining-room of the pretty suburban villa he had had built some twenty miles from town, the familiar objects which surrounded him seemed to have grown remote, unfamiliar. Smoking his pipe, with the half-read newspaper on his knee, his ear was worried by the insistent ticking of the clock, and this ticking seemed a novel, almost uncanny, phenomenon. He could not remember having heard a sound from that timepiece before. There were features about the sideboard, too, as he gazed at it fixedly, that appeared quite strange to him. Certain details of inlay-work on the Sheraton-pattern legs he perceived now for the first time. These little unfamiliarities observed with his mind on the stretch—the latent primitive man in him scenting danger in solitude—added to the loneliness. The sheltering walls of the usual were pushed away from him. He felt himself exposed, out of the call of friends, in a desolation hinted by invisible malevolences. Of course, the feeling was absurd. He shook himself and tried to summon up a little of the bravura with which he had dismissed his wife and daughter to the dance at the village a mile away, making light of their protests that it was the one servant’s evening out, saying that at any rate she in the kitchen would not be much company to him in the dining-room where he proposed to sit andsmoke. His friend Williamson might drop in, too—anyway, he would be all right.
His friend Williamson had not dropped in, and with every slow minute ticked out by that confounded clock he had found himself less at ease. Once he got up and walked into another room, but the sound of his own footsteps, heard with astonishing loudness in the house empty of any other person, afflicted his nerves, and he returned to his former seat in the dining-room.
The seven-thirty express from town rushed by on the railway line which ran, fifty yards distant, parallel with the road; and the sound of it heartened him for a minute or two. The world of fellow-men was brought close to him for a flying second, and all his sociable instincts greeted it, claiming acquaintance, as it sped along. Then, as the noise of it died away into a silence yet more profound than before, the primitive in him again peeped out through his civilization, panicky, ear at stretch for stealthy danger. The stillness which surrounded the lonely house seemed charged with perils that stole near with noiseless footfall. A weird, mournful cry outside, breaking suddenly on that stillness, pulled him erect on his feet, listening, trembling. The cry was repeated, and he sat down again, telling himself that it was an owl, as doubtless it was; but his hand shook as he picked up his newspaper again and tried to read.
With some effort he forced his brain to grasp the meanings of the words, which related a murder case, announced in massive letters at the top of the column. The mental machine seemed to stop every now and then and he found himself gazing at some unimportant, common word in the line until it looked as strange and devoid of meaning as one in a foreign and unknown language. The comprehension of it required a deliberate effort of will.
Suddenly, with a soul-shaking unexpectedness, there was a violent, rapid knocking at the door.
* * * * * *
He was on his feet in an instant, shaking in every limb,panic-stricken as an Indian in a place of spirits. A primitive vague dread of the supernatural held him motionless, obsessed by a formless horror.
The knocking at the door renewed itself, a frantic hammering. The repetition lightened him, redeemed it from the vague purposelessness of the ghostly, suggested human anxiety at fever pitch. His imagination, relieved from the spell, flew to work, building catastrophes after familiar models. His wife and daughter? The disasters of fire, vehicular collision or heart-failure presented themselves in confused and fragmentary pictures. The door now resounded under a ceaseless rain of blows; and, trembling so violently as to feel almost ill, he ran to open it.
On the threshold stood a little, stout bearded man, past middle age. He struck one or two frenzied blows at the air after the door had swung away from him.
“What do you want?” demanded Mr. Gilchrist.
His visitor looked at him vacantly for a moment, seemingly unable to adjust his mind to human intercourse.
“For God’s sake, give me some brandy—if you are a Christian man!”
“Come inside,” said Mr. Gilchrist, and he led the way into the dining-room, the stranger following. “Bless my soul! What is it? An accident?” He spoke nervously, more to himself than to his guest, who replied nothing but stood swaying on his legs and kept from falling only by the clutched-at support of the table. “Dear me—dear me! One moment—I have some brandy here.” He fumbled with the key of the tantalus. “Here you are. Steady, man, steady! Sit down.”
The stranger drank off the brandy and took a deep breath, passing his hand over his brow like one recovering from a swoon. In the moment or two of silence Mr. Gilchrist had leisure to scrutinize him. He was without a hat, and his head shone in the lamplight, a polished dome rising from a narrow forehead and a half-ring of graywisps over his ears. His eyes protruded, globularly, but it could be guessed that they carried impressions to an active brain. His gray beard converged irresolutely to a point in front of his chin. His clothes were respectable but not well cut, and they were now soiled with earth. One trouser-leg, Mr. Gilchrist noticed, was badly torn. Altogether his appearance suggested a benevolent old gentleman, connected possibly with some dissenting religious body, who had been badly mauled in conflict with a gang of ruffians.
“Feel better?” asked Mr. Gilchrist. “Have some more.”
“No, I thank you, sir,” replied the stranger, and the tone of his voice assured his host that he had to deal with an educated man. “I feel much better. Alcohol, I may say, is an unfamiliar stimulant to me, and the action of a comparatively small quantity is powerful. If I might beg a little further indulgence of your kindness, however, I should be glad to rest myself a minute or two.”
“Certainly, certainly—by all means. You will find that a more comfortable chair. Have you met with an accident?”
The stranger’s protruding eyes flashed with a singular brightness at the question. Then he sighed and again pressed the palm of his hand across his brow.
“Your courtesy, sir, undoubtedly deserves some explanation of the plight you have so generously relieved.” The man’s tone and phrasing indicated a person accustomed to put his thoughts into an elaborated word-structure for the attention of an audience. “I hardly think that accident is the correct description of my misfortune. I am the victim, sir, of a traitorous chain of circumstances, a chain of circumstances so strange as to be scarcely credible.”
“Indeed?” Mr. Gilchrist had reseated himself and now bent forward, his face alight with interest kindled by his guest’s last sentence. “If I can help you in any way, I shall be glad to do so.”
The stranger acknowledged the offer by a downward inclination of the head.
“Your great kindness of heart needs no further exposition, sir—it is self-evident. I have no words sufficient to thank you. I greatly fear, however, that I am beyond human help. A matter of a few hours is the utmost respite from my fate that I can expect. None the less, I am deeply grateful to you for this breathing-space.”
The stranger sighed again, and his countenance settled into a resigned melancholy.
“You make me curious,” said Mr. Gilchrist. “Of course, I don’t wish to intrude——”
The old gentleman raised his eyebrows and made a protesting movement with his hand.
“In all probability, sir, you will soon be made acquainted with a garbled newspaper version of the calamity which has befallen me. Its dreadful nature is bound to flare into publicity. It is useless, therefore, for me to attempt to conceal it. If you care to hear the true version of a tragedy which every newsboy will be shouting to-morrow morning—a version stranger than the one counsel for defence and prosecution will adopt as a battle-ground for their wits—I will do my best to gratify your curiosity. I may say that it will be some comfort to me to know that one fellow human being—especially so kind-hearted a one as yourself—is acquainted with the real facts.”
“My dear sir!” began Mr. Gilchrist. “Surely—you are overwrought—an accident—I cannot believe——”
“I do not look like a murderer,” said the old gentleman, interrupting him, a pathetic little smile on his grave face. “Nevertheless I am one. It is the terrible truth, I assure you, sir. I am a murderer, a murderer trapped into crime by that chain of circumstances I spoke of. And I am a man that until to-day never wittingly took the life of any creature, however small.”
“But—my dear sir!” Mr. Gilchrist half rose from his chair. His guest waved him back into it.
“I am speaking the sober truth. You think that youare harbouring a madman. I am as sane as you. If you care to listen, I will relate the story, and when I have finished, if you desire to call in the local police, you are at liberty to do so. I give you my word that there will be no disturbance.”
Mr. Gilchrist sat back in his chair, half-fascinated, half-frightened.
“Go on,” he said briefly, not trusting himself to speak.
“I must first request your patience whilst I relate a few circumstances which, however remote they may appear from the terrible fact that has, among other things, made me your guest, are nevertheless intimately connected with it.
“I am a man in business for myself, in a small way, as the saying is. It might have been a larger way had not my intellectual activities been employed on subjects which I regard as of graver and deeper import than the purchase and sale of ephemeral commodities. For many years my mind has been more familiar with that region known briefly as the occult, than with the intricacies of terrestrial markets. I have striven earnestly to penetrate to those great secrets which throb behind this earthly veil—with what success I need not specify. Suffice it that a small society of fellow-seekers after the Truth chose me as their president, a position I still hold.
“However small your acquaintance with this difficult subject, sir, you are probably aware—from hearsay, at least—that it has two great aspects, good and evil. The pure in heart may achieve a certain mastery over forces hidden from the multitude and use them for innocent or praiseworthy ends, such, for example, as establishing communication between our loved ones who have crossed the threshold and those who remain here. This is known vulgarly as white magic. But there is a black magic. It is known to every adept that it is possible—difficult, perhaps, but possible—for self-seeking men who have, perchance before they became perverted, had the key to these vast mysteries put in their hands, to control themighty forces of which I have spoken and turn them, regardless of the suffering they inflict, to their personal advantage.
“It is possible, I say, though exceedingly rare. Few men, good or evil, are so fortunately endowed as to acquire a mastery over those forces for any purpose, and of those who have acquired it the majority are good. In any case they are rare. For myself, despite years of study and anxious striving, I have utterly failed to grasp those forces save in one or two trifling instances. This, by the way. For some time past I have been conscious—I cannot now tell you by what agency I became aware of it—that a group of men, greater adepts than any I have known, had in fact subjected forces terrible in their power and were using them to the danger of the world.”
The stranger turned his bulbous bright eyes to Mr. Gilchrist, who sat silent, gripped in a spell which was partly fear. In the moment or two of silence he heard that infernal clock ticking along with insistent industry. The stranger waited a brief space for some comment, and, receiving none, proceeded.
“You know, I have no doubt, that in the past—in the Middle Ages, for example—certain secret societies existed for purposes partly occult. I useoccultas a synonym for the spiritual, for all that lies beyond the veil. Such, I may remark, were the Rosicrucians. Others are known to every student of the subject. One might almost class it as common historical knowledge. Few, however, suspect that to-day such a society, immeasurably more powerful than the ordinary man considers possible, exists. It exists, and by some means it has penetrated to the very arcana of the spiritual world. It wields a power, by its control over forces that to call cosmic is to minimize, quite beyond ordinary resistance. And it wields that power for evil. I could point out several frightful disasters of recent times directly traceable to that society. It is a menace to the world!”
The old gentleman’s eyes flashed excitement at Mr.Gilchrist, who felt in a dream, scarcely knowing whether he was awake or sleeping.
“In one way only can it be overthrown—and it must be overthrown if our civilization is to continue. A group of men—equally adept but pure in soul—must meet and check each of their schemes and finally turn the immense forces, too great for ordinary comprehension, with which they work, against them, wiping them out of existence. Where that group of men is to be found, sir, I do not know; but if the disease is to find a remedy it must first be diagnosed. It was my duty, then, having discovered this monstrous danger, to proclaim it to the world. And, knowing full well the awful risks I ran, I did so. I contributed a long article to a periodical which exists for the diffusion of spiritual truth, and, so far as my knowledge permitted me, exposed the terrible enemy.
“I knew I invited disaster. Immediately I was warned—I cannot tell you by what channel the warning came to me—that the gravest perils threatened me. You, an ordinary man, whose most terrible engine of destruction possible to the imagination is a monster-gun battleship, can have no conception of the powers unchained against me. I cannot tell you with what fervour I strove to acquire control over forces that might befriend me, but in vain. Ever I was thwarted and baffled. I lost what little powers I had. Stripped of every means of defence, I waited in anguish for the blow to fall. What kind of blow it would be and whence it would come I could not tell. I knew only that it was inevitable. An undying enmity was all around me.
“I expected something cataclysmic, world-shaking. Fool that I was, I might have known better. ‘They’ are far too cunning thus to advertise their power needlessly. Day after day I dwelt in a world of terror, and nothing happened, save the complete interruption of any intercourse with the spiritual world. Malevolent forces had closed that door. I waited, each moment expecting disaster, I knew not from what quarter, as a man waits ina dark wood for the lurking danger to spring at him. Suddenly—a week ago to-day—they commenced to act.”
He stopped to allow the import of his words to have full effect on his host. Mr. Gilchrist opened his mouth as if to speak, but he could not give utterance to a sound.
“I was walking, about six o’clock in the afternoon, along Piccadilly. The thoroughfare was crowded. I felt almost happy in the throng. My mind was for the moment distracted from its ever-present anxiety, and I had almost forgotten my danger. Suddenly a man jostled against me and thrust a piece of paper into my hand. I glanced at it and knew my doom was upon me. Here it is.”
He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Mr. Gilchrist. It bore only the words, in fat black type: “Prepare to meet thy Judge.”
“But,” said his host, grasping at the familiar in this strange story, “this is merely a leaflet circulated by some religious body.”
“I know,” said the stranger, smiling. “That is their cunning. It conveys little or nothing to an outsider.But they knew I would know.I looked around for the man. He had disappeared. The blood surged to my head; I reeled dizzily against a lamp-post and for a moment or two knew nothing. The shock, long expected though it was, was awful. After a brief space my brain cleared. My giddiness seemingly had not been noticed. The street looked normal. I shook myself and prepared to continue on my way. At that moment I happened to look round and saw a large white bulldog sitting on the pavement and regarding me fixedly. Even then—I knew. But I affected to take no notice of it and commenced to walk onward. The dog got up and followed me. I walked faster, but the dog was always a couple of feet behind my heels. I stopped. The dog stopped. I went on again. The dog went on again also. There was no doubt of its connection with me.
“I cannot make you realize, sir, the awful fear thatsurged up in me, mastering me, throttling me. I almost choked. The lights, the houses, the people swam in my vision. For some moments I walked along blind, unseeing. I trust that I am not a coward, that ordinary danger would find me ready to meet it with some calmness of mind, but in contact now with the peril I had dreaded, such firmness as I have gave way. The seeming innocence of the manner in which my death-sentence was conveyed, the apparently innocuous character of the messenger they had sent, accentuated my terror. I felt that it was useless to appeal to my fellow-creatures for help. The certain reply would have been an imputation of madness. Above all, the purpose of the dog baffled me. It seemed impossible that my enemies, with all the vast forces at their command, should use so petty an instrument to strike at me. I could not even imagine in what manner the dog was to bring about my annihilation. The disparity of means to the end seemed grotesque.
“So strongly did I feel this that I half-persuaded myself that I was under an illusion, that the dog was merely a stray that had followed me for a few yards in the hope of finding a new home. Walking along, looking straight in front of me, for I dared not turn my head, I was almost comforted by a semi-belief that the dog was no longer in pursuit. Presently, with an effort of will, I looked back—to find, as reason told me I should, the animal still at my heels, padding along with its nose to the ground.
“I stopped, more from a suspension of faculties than from any desire to do so, and the dog stopped also. It sat calmly down, looking at me, and I could almost fancy a quiet, diabolic smile on the loose, ugly, dripping jaws. We exchanged a steadfast gaze—I can see it now; its eyes were red-rimmed, bleary, cunning. Standing there, I strove to divine its purpose. Suddenly it flashed upon me. The dog was tracking me to my home. Over the trail it had gone once it would go again, this time accompanied by the active agents of my foes. Why this roundabout method of reaching me was adopted will no doubtseem a puzzle to you, sir—it is so to me. But I was and am convinced of the fact.
“No sooner had I realized this,” pursued the old gentleman, “than I thought over means of ridding myself of it. The obvious way was simple. I walked along the streets in quest of a policeman. The dog got quietly on its legs again and followed. Some hundred yards or so farther on I saw an officer and approached him. It was at the corner where the street flows into Piccadilly Circus, and the open space was a maelstrom of traffic, starred overhead by the lamps which were beginning to glow against the darkening sky. I had to wait an agonized minute or two at the policeman’s elbow whilst he set two fussy and nervous old ladies upon their right way. At last he turned to me, and a radiance of hope commenced to break over the dark tumult of my mind as I explained to him that I was being followed by a stray dog and wished to give it into his charge.