His business with Blessington over, Loder breathed more freely. If Lady Astrupp had recognized Chilcote by the rings, and had been roused to curiosity, the incident would demand settlement sooner or later—settlement in what proportion he could hazard no guess; if, on the other hand, her obvious change of manner had arisen from any other source he had a hazy idea that a woman's behavior could never be gauged by accepted theories—then he had safeguarded Chilcote's interests and his own by his securing of Blessington's promise. Blessington he knew would be reliable and discreet. With a renewal of confidence—a pleasant feeling that his uneasiness had been groundless—he moved forward to greet Eve.
Her face, with its rich, clear coloring, seemed to his gaze to stand out from the crowd of other faces as from a frame, and a sense of pride touched him. In every eye but his own her beauty belonged to him.
His face looked alive and masterful as she reached his side. “May I monopolize you?” he said, with the quickness of speech borrowed from Chilcote. “We see so little of each other.”
Almost as if compelled, her lashes lifted and her eyes met his. Her glance was puzzled, uncertain, slightly confused. There was a deeper color than usual in her cheeks. Loder felt something within his own consciousness stir in response.
“You know you are yielding,” he said.
Again she blushed.
He saw the blush, and knew that it was he—his words, his personality—that had called it forth. In Chilcote's actual semblance he had proved his superiority over Chilcote. For the first time he had been given a tacit, personal acknowledgment of his power. Involuntarily he drew nearer to her.
“Let's get out of this crush.”
She made no answer except to bend her head; and it came to him that, for all her pride, she liked—and unconsciously yielded to—domination. With a satisfied gesture he turned to make a passage towards the door.
But the passage was more easily desired than made. In the few moments since he had entered the supper-room the press of people had considerably thickened—until a block had formed about the door-way. Drawing Eve with him, he moved forward for a dozen paces, then paused, unable to make further headway.
As they stood there, he looked back at her. “What a study in democracy a crowd always is!” he said.
She responded with a bright, appreciative glance, as if surprised into naturalness. He wondered sharply what she would be like if her enthusiasms were really aroused. Then a stir in the corridor outside caused a movement inside the room; and with a certain display of persistence he was enabled to make a passage to the door.
There again they were compelled to halt. But though tightly wedged into his new position and guarding Eve with one arm, Loder was free to survey the brilliantly thronged corridor over the head of a man a few inches shorter than himself, who stood directly in front of him.
“What are we waiting for?” he asked, good humoredly, addressing the back of the stranger's head.
The man turned, displaying a genial face, a red mustache, and an eye-glass.
“Hullo, Chilcote!” he said. “Hope it's not on your feet I'm standing.”
Loder laughed. “No,” he said. “And don't change the position. If you were an inch higher I should be blind as well as crippled.”
The other laughed. It was a pleasant surprise to find Chilcote amiable under discomfort. He looked round again in slight curiosity.
Loder felt the scrutiny. To create a diversion he looked out along the corridor. “I believe we are waiting for something,” he exclaimed. “What's this?” Then quite abruptly be ceased to speak.
“Anything interesting?” Eve touched his arm.
He said nothing; he made no effort to look round. His thought as well as his speech was suddenly suspended.
The man in front of him let his eye-glass fall from his eye, then screwed it in again.
“Jove!” he exclaimed. “Here comes our sorceress. It's like the progress of a fairy princess. I believe this is the meaning of our getting penned in here,” he chuckled delightedly.
Loder said nothing. He stared straight on over the other's head.
Along the corridor, agreeably conscious of the hum of admiration she aroused, came Lillian Astrupp, surrounded by a little court. Her delicate face was lit up; her eyes shone under the faint gleam of her hair; her gown of gold embroidery swept round her gracefully. She was radiant and triumphant, but she was also excited. The excitement was evident in her laugh, in her gestures, in her eyes, as they turned quickly in one direction and then another.
Loder, gazing in stupefaction over the other man's head, saw it—felt and understood it with a mind that leaped back over a space of years. As in a shifting panorama he saw a night of disturbance and confusion in a far-off Italian valley—a confusion from which one face shone out with something of the pale, alluring radiance that filtered over the hillside from the crescent moon. It passed across his consciousness slowly but with a slow completeness; and in its light the incidents of the past hour stood out in a new aspect. The echo of recollection stirred by Lady Bramfell's voice, the re-echo of it in the sister's tones; his own blindness, his own egregious assurance—all struck across his mind.
Meanwhile the party about Lillian drew nearer. He felt with instinctive certainty that the supper-room was its destination, but he remained motionless, held by a species of fatalism. He watched her draw near with an unmoved face, but in the brief space that passed while she traversed the corridor he gauged to the full the hold that the new atmosphere, the new existence, had gained over his mind. With an unlooked-for rush of feeling he realized how dearly he would part with it.
As Lillian came closer, the meaning of her manner became clearer to him. She talked incessantly, laughing now and then, but her eyes were never quiet. These skimmed the length of the corridor, then glanced over the heads crowded in the door-way.
“I'll have something quite sweet, Geoffrey,” she was saying to the man beside her, as she came within hearing. “You know what I like—a sort of snowflake wrapped up in sugar.” As she said the words her glance wandered. Loder saw it rest uninterestedly on a boy a yard or two in front of him, then move to the man over whose head he gazed, then lift itself inevitably to his face.
The glance was quick and direct. He saw the look of recognition spring across it; he saw her move forward suddenly as the crowd in the corridor parted to let her pass. Then he saw what seemed to him a miracle.
Her whole expression altered, her lips parted, and she colored with annoyance. She looked like a spoiled child who, seeing a bonbon-box, opens it—to find it empty.
As the press about the door-way melted to give her passage, the red-haired man in front of Loder was the first to take advantage of the space. “Jove! Lillian,” he said, moving forward, “you look as if you expected Chilcote to be somebody else, and are disappointed to find he's only himself!” He laughed delightedly at his own joke.
The words were exactly the tonic that Lillian needed. She smiled her usual undisturbed smile as she turned her eyes upon him.
“My dear Leonard, you're using your eye-glass; when that happens you're never responsible for what you see.” Her words came more slowly and with a touch of languid amusement. Her composure was suddenly restored.
Then for the first time Loder changed his position. Moved by an impulse he made no effort to dissect, he stepped back to Eve's side and slipped his arm through hers—successfully concealing his left hand.
The warmth of her skin through her long glove thrilled him unexpectedly. His impulse had been one of self-defence, but the result was of a different character. At the quick contact the wish to fight for—to hold and defend—the position that had grown so dear woke in renewed force. With a new determination he turned again towards Lillian.
“I caught the same impression—without an eyeglass,” he said. “Why did you look like that?” He asked the question steadily and with apparent carelessness, though, through it all, his reason stood aghast—his common-sense cried aloud that it was impossible for the eyes that had seen his face in admiration, in love, in contempt, to fail now in recognition. The air seemed breathless while he spoke and waited. His impression of Lillian was a mere shimmering of gold dress and gold hair; all that he was really conscious of was the pressure of his hand on Eve's arm and the warmth of her skin through the soft glove. Then, abruptly, the mist lifted. He saw Lillian's eyes—indifferent, amused, slightly contemptuous; and a second later he heard her voice.
“My dear Jack,” she said, sweetly, “how absurd of you! It was simply the contrast of your eyes peering over Leonard's hair It was like a gorgeous sunset with a black cloud overhead.” She laughed. “Do you see what I mean, Eve?” She affected to see Eve for the first time.
Eve had been looking calmly ahead. She turned now and smiled serenely. Loder felt no vibration of the arm he held, yet by an instant intuition he knew that the two women were antagonistic. He experienced it with the divination that follows upon a moment of acute suspense. He understood it, as he had understood Lillian's look of recognition when his forehead, eyes, and nose had shown him to be himself; her blank surprise when his close-shaven lip and chin had proclaimed him Chilcote.
He felt like a man who has looked into an abyss and stepped back from the edge, outwardly calm but mentally shaken. The commonplaces of life seemed for the moment to hold deeper meanings. He did not hear Eve's answer, he paid no heed to Lillian's next remark. He saw her smile and turn to the red-haired man; finally he saw her move on into the supper-room, followed by her little court. Then he pressed the arm he was still holding. He felt an urgent need of companionship—of a human expression to the crisis he had passed.
“Shall we get out of this?” he asked again.
Eve looked up. “Out of the room?” she said.
He looked down at her, compelling her gaze. “Out of the room—and the house,” he answered. “Let us go-home.”
The necessary formalities of departure were speedily got through. The passing of the corridors, the gaining of the carriage, seemed to Loder to be marvellously simple proceedings. Then, as he sat by Eve's side and again felt the forward movement of the horses, he had leisure for the first time to wonder whether the time that had passed since last he occupied that position had actually been lived through.
Only that night he had unconsciously compared one incident in his life to a sketch in which the lights and shadows have been obliterated and lost. Now that picture rose before him, startlingly and incredibly intact. He saw the sunlit houses of Santasalare, backgrounded by the sunlit hills—saw them as plainly as when he himself had sketched them on his memory. Every detail of the scene remained the same, even to the central figure; only the eye and the hand of the artist had changed.
At this point Eve broke in upon his thoughts. Her first words were curiously coincidental.
“What did you think of Lillian Astrupp to-night?” she asked. “Wasn't her gown perfect?”
Loder lifted his head with an almost guilty start. Then he answered straight from his thoughts.
“I—I didn't notice it,” he said; “but her eyes reminded me of a cat's eyes—and she walks like a cat. I never seemed to see it—until to-night.”
Eve changed her position. “She was very artistic,” she said, tentatively. “Don't you think the gold gown was beautiful with her pale-colored hair?”
Loder felt surprised. He was convinced that Eve disliked the other and he was not sufficiently versed in women to understand her praise. “I thought—” he began. Then he wisely stopped. “I didn't see the gown,” he substituted.
Eve looked out of the window. “How unappreciative men are!” she said. But her tone was strangely free from censure.
After this there was silence until Grosvenor Square was reached. Having left the carriage and passed into the house, Eve paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs to give an order to Crapham, who was still in attendance in the hall; and again Loder had an opportunity of studying her. As he looked, a sharp comparison rose to his mind.
“A fairy princess!” he had heard the red-haired man say as Lillian Astrupp came into view along the Bramfells' corridor, and the simile had seemed particularly apt. With her grace, her delicacy, her subtle attraction, she might well be the outcome of imagination. But with Eve it was different. She also was graceful and attractive—but it was grace and attraction of a different order. One was beautiful with the beauty of the white rose that springs from the hot-house and withers at the first touch of cold; the other with the beauty of the wild rose on the cliffs above the sea, that keeps its petals fine and transparent in face of salt spray and wet mist. Eve, too, had her realm, but it was the realm of real things. A great confidence, a feeling that here one might rely even if all other faiths were shaken, touched him suddenly. For a moment he stood irresolute, watching her mount the stairs with her easy, assured step. Then a determination came to him. Fate favored him to-night; he was in luck tonight. He would put his fortune to one more test. He swung across the hall and ran up the stairs.
His face was keen with interest as he reached her side. The hard outline of his features and the hard grayness of his eyes were softened as when he had paused to talk with Lakely. Action was the breath of his life, and his face changed under it as another's might change under the influence of stirring music or good wine.
Eve saw the look and again the uneasy expression of surprise crossed her eyes. She paused, her hand resting on the banister.
Loder looked at her directly. “Will you come into the study—as you came that other night? There's something I want to say.” He spoke quietly. He felt master of himself and of her.
She hesitated, glanced at him, and then glanced away.
“Will you come?” he said again. And as he said it his eyes rested on the sweep of her thick eyelashes, the curve of the black hair.
At last her lashes lifted, and the perplexity and doubt in her blue eyes stirred him. Without waiting for her answer, he leaned forward.
“Say yes!” he urged. “I don't often ask for favors.”
Still she hesitated; then her decision was made for her. With a new boldness he touched her arm, drawing her forward gently but decisively towards Chilcote's rooms.
In the study a fire burned brightly, the desk was laden with papers, the lights were nicely adjusted; even the chairs were in their accustomed places. Loder's senses responded to each suggestion. It seemed but a day since he had seen it last. It was precisely as he had left it—the niche needing but the man.
To hide his emotion he crossed the floor quickly and drew a chair forward. In less than six hours he had run up and down the scale of emotions. He had looked despair in the face, till the sudden sight of Chilcote had lifted him to the skies; since then, surprise had assailed him in its strongest form; he had known the full meaning of the word “risk”; and from every contingency he had come out conqueror. He bent over the chair as he pulled it forward, to hide the expression in his eyes.
“Sit down,” he said, gently.
Eve moved towards him. She moved slowly, as if half afraid. Many emotions stirred her—distrust, uncertainty, and a curious half-dominant, half-suppressed questioning that it was difficult to define. Loder remembered her shrinking coldness, her reluctant tolerance on the night of his first coming, and his individuality, his certainty of power, kindled afresh. Never had he been so vehemently himself; never had Chilcote seemed so complete a shadow.
As Eve seated herself, he moved forward and leaned over the back of her chair. The impulse that had filled him in his interview with Renwick, that had goaded him as he drove to the reception, was dominant again.
“I tried to say something as we drove to the Bramfells' to-night,” he began. Like many men who possess eloquence for an impersonal cause, he was brusque, even blunt, in the stating of his own case. “May I hark back, and go on from where I broke off?”
Eve half turned. Her face was still puzzled and questioning. “Of course.” She sat forward again, clasping her hands.
He looked thoughtfully at the back of her head, at the slim outline of her shoulders, the glitter of the diamonds about her neck.
“Do you remember the day, three weeks ago, that we talked together in this room? The day a great many things seemed possible?”
This time she did not look round. She kept her gaze upon the fire.
“Do you remember?” he persisted, quietly. In his college days men who heard that tone of quiet persistence had been wont to lose heart. Eve heard it now for the first time, and, without being aware, answered to it.
“Yes, I remember,” she said.
“On that day you believed in me—” In his earnestness he no longer simulated Chilcote; he spoke with his own steady reliance. He saw Eve stir, unclasp and clasp her hands, but he went steadily on. “On that day you saw me in a new light. You acknowledged me.” He emphasized the slightly peculiar word. “But since that day”—his voice quickened “since that day your feelings have changed—your faith in me has fallen away.” He watched her closely; but she made no sign, save to lean still nearer to the fire. He crossed his arms over the back of her chair. “You were justified,” he said, suddenly. “I've not been—myself since that day.” As he said the words his coolness forsook him slightly. He loathed the necessary lie, yet his egotism clamored for vindication. “All men have their lapses,” he went on; “there are times—there are days and weeks when I—when my—” The word “nerves” touched his tongue, hung upon it, then died away unspoken.
Very quietly, almost without a sound, Eve had risen and turned towards him. She was standing very straight, her face a little pale, the hand that rested on the arm of her chair trembling slightly.
“John,” she said, quickly, “don't say that word? Don't say that hideous word `nerves'! I don't feel that I can bear it to-night—not just to-night. Can you understand?”
Loder stepped back. Without comprehending, he felt suddenly and strangely at a loss. Something in her face struck him silent and perplexed. It seemed that without preparation he had stepped upon dangerous ground. With an undefined apprehension he waited, looking at her.
“I can't explain it,” she went on with nervous haste, “I can't give any reasons, but quite suddenly the—the farce has grown unbearable. I used not to think—used not even to care—but suddenly things have changed—or I have changed.” She paused, confused and distressed. “Why should it be? Why should things change?” She asked the question sharp. ly, as if in appeal against her own incredulity.
Loder turned aside. He was afraid of the triumph, volcanic and irrepressible, that her admission roused.
“Why?” she said again.
He turned slowly back. “You forget that I'm not a magician,” he said, gently. “I hardly know what you are speaking of.”
For a moment she was silent, but in that moment her eyes spoke. Pain, distress, pride, all strove for expression; then at last her lips parted.
“Do you say that in seriousness?” she asked.
It was no moment for fencing, and Loder knew it. “In seriousness,” he replied, shortly.
“Then I shall speak seriously, too.” Her voice shook slightly and the color came back into her face, but the hand on the arm of the chair ceased to tremble. “For more than four years I have known that you take drugs—for more than four years I have acquiesced in your deceptions—in your meannesses—”
There was an instant's silence. Then Loder stepped forward.
“You knew—for four years?” he said, very slowly. For the first time that night he remembered Chilcote and forgot himself.
Eve lifted her head with a quick gesture—as if, in flinging off discretion and silence, she appreciated to the full the new relief of speech.
“Yes, I knew. Perhaps I should have spoken when I first surprised the secret, but it's all so past that it's useless to speculate now. It was fate, I suppose. I was very young, you were very unapproachable, and—and we had no love to make the way easy.” For a second her glance faltered and she looked away. “A woman's—a girl's—disillusioning is a very sad comedy—it should never have an audience.” She laughed a little bitterly as she looked back again. “I saw all the deceits, all the subterfuges, all the—lies.” She said the word deliberately, meeting his eyes.
Again he thought of Chilcote, but his face paled.
“I saw it all. I lived with it all till I grew hard and indifferent—till I acquiesced in your 'nerves' as readily as the rest of the world that hadn't suspected and didn't know.” Again she laughed nervously. “And I thought the indifference would last forever. If one lives in a groove for years, one gets frozen up; I never felt more frozen than on the night Mr. Fraide spoke to me of you—asked me to use my influence; then, on that night—”
“Yes. On that night?” Loder's voice was tense.
But her excitement had suddenly fallen. Whether his glance had quelled it or whether the force of her feelings had worked itself out it was impossible to say, but her eyes had lost their resolution. She stood hesitating for a moment, then she turned and moved to the mantel-piece.
“That night you found me—changed?” Loder was insistent.
“Changed—and yet not changed.” She spoke reluctantly, with averted head.
“And what did you think?”
Again she was silent; then again a faint excitement tinged her cheeks.
“I thought—” she began. “It seemed—” Once more she paused, hampered by her own uncertainty, her own sense of puzzling incongruity. “I don't know why I speak like this,” she went on at last, as if in justification of herself, “or why I want to speak. But a feeling—an extraordinary, incomprehensible feeling seems to urge me on. The same feeling that came to me on the day we had tea together—the feeling that made me—that almost made me believe—”
“Believe what?” The words escaped him without volition.
At sound of his voice she turned. “Believe that a miracle had happened,” she said—“that you had found strength—had freed yourself.”
“From morphia?”
“From morphia.”
In the silence that followed, Loder lived through a century of suggestion and indecision. His first feeling was for himself, but his first clear thought was for Chilcote and their compact. He stood, metaphorically, on a stone in the middle of a stream, balancing on one foot, then the other; looking to the right bank, then to the left. At last, as it always did, inspiration came to him slowly. He realized that by one plunge he might save both Chilcote and himself!
He crossed quickly to the fireplace and stood by Eve. “You were right in your belief,” he said. “For all that time from the night you spoke to me of Fraide to the day you had tea in this room—I never touched a drug.”
She moved suddenly, and he saw her face. “John,” she said, unsteadily, “you—I—I have known you to lie to me—about other things.”
With a hasty movement he averted his head. The doubt, the appeal in her words shocked him. The whole isolation of her life seemed summed up in the one short sentence. For the instant he forgot Chilcote. With a reaction of feeling he turned to her again.
“Look at me!” he said, brusquely.
She raised her eyes.
“Do you believe I'm speaking the truth?”
She searched his eyes intently, the doubt and hesitancy still struggling in her face.
“But the last three weeks?” she said, reluctantly. “How can you ask me to believe?”
He had expected this, and he met it steadily enough; nevertheless his courage faltered. To deceive this woman, even to justify himself, had in the last halfhour become something sacrilegious.
“The last three weeks must be buried,” he said, hurriedly. “No man could free himself suddenly from—from a vice.” He broke off abruptly. He hated Chilcote; he hated himself. Then Eve's face, raised in distressed appeal, overshadowed all scruples. “You have been silent and patient for years,” he said, suddenly. “Can you be patient and silent a little longer?” He spoke without consideration. He was conscious of no selfishness beneath his words. In the first exercise of conscious strength the primitive desire to reduce all elements to his own sovereignty submerged every other emotion. “I can't enter into the thing,” he said; “like you, I give no explanations. I can only tell you that on the day we talked together in this room I was myself—in the full possession of my reason, the full knowledge of my own capacities. The man you have known in the last three weeks, the man you have imagined in the last four years, is a shadow, an unreality—a weakness in human form. There is a new Chilcote—if you will only see him.”
Ewe was trembling as he ceased; her face was flushed; there was a strange brightness in her eyes She was moved beyond herself.
“But the other you—the old you?”
“You must be patient.” He looked down into the fire. “Times like the last three weeks will come again—must come again; they are inevitable. When they do come, you must shut your eyes—you must blind yourself. You must ignore them—and me. Is it a compact?” He still avoided her eyes.
She turned to him quietly. “Yes—if you wish it,” she said, below her breath.
He was conscious of her glance, but he dared not meet it. He felt sick at the part he was playing, yet he held to it tenaciously.
“I wonder if you could do what few men and fewer women are capable of?” he asked, at last. “I wonder if you could learn to live in the present?” He lifted his head slowly and met her eyes. “This is an—an experiment,” he went on. “And, like all experiments, it has good phases and bad. When the bad phases come round I—I want you to tell yourself that you are not altogether alone in your unhappiness—that I am suffering too—in another way.”
There was silence when he had spoken, and for a space it seemed that Eve would make no response. Then the last surprise in a day of surprises came to him. With a slight stir, a slight, quick rustle of skirts, she stepped forward and laid her hand in his.
The gesture was simple and very sweet; her eyes were soft and full of light as she raised her face to his, her lips parted in unconscious appeal.
There is no surrender so seductive as the surrender of a proud woman. Loder's blood stirred, the undeniable suggestion of the moment thrilled and disconcerted him in a tumult of thought. Honor, duty, principle rose in a triple barrier; but honor, duty, and principle are but words to a headstrong man. The full significance of his position came to him as it had never come before. His hand closed on hers; he bent towards her, his pulses beating unevenly.
“Eve!” he said. Then at sound of his voice he suddenly hesitated. It was the voice of a man who has forgotten everything but his own existence.
For an instant he stayed motionless; then very quietly he drew away from her, releasing her hands.
“No,” he said. “No—I haven't got the right.”
That night, for almost the first time since he had adopted his dual role, Loder slept ill. He was not a man over whom imagination held any powerful sway—his doubts and misgivings seldom ran to speculation, upon future possibilities; nevertheless, the fact that, consciously or unconsciously, he had adopted a new attitude towards Eve came home to him with unpleasant force during the hours of darkness; and long before the first hint of daylight had slipped through the heavy window-curtains he had arranged a plan of action—a plan wherein, by the simple method of altogether avoiding her, he might soothe his own conscience and safeguard Chilcote's domestic interests.
It was a satisfactory if a somewhat negative arrangement, and he rose next morning with a feeling that things had begun to shape themselves. But chance sometimes has a disconcerting knack of forestalling even our best-planned schemes. He dressed slowly, and descended to his solitary breakfast with the pleasant sensation of having put last night out of consideration by the turning over of a new leaf; but scarcely had he opened Chilcote's letters, scarcely had he taken a cursory glance at the morning's newspaper, than it was borne in upon him that not only a new leaf, but a whole sheaf of new leaves, had been turned in his prospects—by a hand infinitely more powerful and arbitrary than his own. He realized within the space of a few moments that the leisure Eve might have claimed, the leisure he might have been tempted to devote to her, was no longer his to dispose of—being already demanded of him from a quarter that allowed of no refusal.
For the first rumbling of the political earthquake that was to shake the country made itself audible beyond denial on that morning of March 27th, when the news spread through England that, in view of the disorganized state of the Persian army and the Shah's consequent inability to suppress the open insurrection of the border tribes in the north-eastern districts of Meshed, Russia, with a great show of magnanimity, had come to the rescue by despatching a large armed force from her military station at Merv across the Persian frontier to the seat of the disturbance.
To many hundreds of Englishmen who read their papers on that morning this announcement conveyed but little. That there is such a country as Persia we all know, that English interests predominate in the south and Russian interests in the north we have all superficially understood from childhood; but in this knowledge, coupled with the fact that Persia is comfortably far away, we are apt to rest content. It is only to the eyes that see through long-distance glasses, the minds that regard the present as nothing more nor less than an inevitable link joining the future to the past, that this distant, debatable land stands out in its true political significance.
To the average reader of news the statement of Russia's move seemed scarcely more important than had the first report of the border risings in January, but to the men who had watched the growth of the disturbance it came charged with portentous meaning. Through the entire ranks of the opposition, from Fraide himself downward, it caused a thrill of expectation—that peculiar prophetic sensation that every politician has experienced at some moment of his career.
In no member of his party did this feeling strike deeper root than in Loder. Imbued with a lifelong interest in the Eastern question, specially equipped by personal knowledge to hold and proclaim an opinion upon Persian affairs, he read the signs and portents with instinctive insight. Seated at Chilcote's table, surrounded by Chilcote's letters and papers, he forgot the breakfast that was slowly growing cold, forgot the interests and dangers, personal or pleasurable, of the night before, while his mental eyes persistently conjured up the map of Persia, travelling with steady deliberation from Merv to Meshed, from Meshed to Herat, from Herat to the empire of India! For it was not the fact that the Hazaras had risen against the Shah that occupied the thinking mind, nor was it the fact that Russian and not Persian troops were destined to subdue them, but the deeply important consideration that an armed Russian force had crossed the frontier and was encamped within twenty miles of Meshed-Meshed, upon which covetous Russian eyes have rested ever since the days of Peter the Great.
So Loder's thoughts ran as he read and reread the news from the varying political stand-points, and so they continued to run when, some hours later, an urgent telephone message from the 'St. George's Gazette' asked him to call at Lakely's office.
The message was interesting as well as imperative, and he made an instant response. The thought of Lakely's keen eyes and shrewd enthusiasms always possessed strong attractions for his own slower temperament, but even had this impetus been lacking, the knowledge that at the 'St. George's' offices, if anywhere, the true feelings of the party were invariably voiced would have drawn him without hesitation.
It was scarcely twelve o'clock when he turned the corner of the tall building, but already the keen spirit that Lakely everywhere diffused was making itself felt. Loder smiled to himself as his eyes fell on the day's placards with their uncompromising headings, and passed onward from the string of gayly painted carts drawn up to receive their first consignment of the paper to the troop of eager newsboys passing in and out of the big swing-doors with their piled-up bundles of the early edition; and with a renewed thrill of anticipation and energy he passed through the doorway and ran up-stairs.
Passing unchallenged through the long corridor that led to Lakely's office, he caught a fresh impression of action and vitality from the click of the tape machines in the subeditors' office, and a glimpse through the open door of the subeditors themselves, each occupied with his particular task; then without time for further observation he found himself at Lakely's door. Without waiting to knock, as he had felt compelled to do on the one or two previous occasions that business had brought him there, he immediately turned the handle and entered the room.
Editors' offices differ but little in general effect.
Lakely's surroundings were rather more elaborate than is usual, as became the dignity of the oldest Tory evening paper, but the atmosphere was unmistakable. As Loder entered he glanced up from the desk at which he was sitting, but instantly returned to his task of looking through and marking the pile of early evening editions that were spread around him. His coat was off and hung on the chair behind him, axed he pulled vigorously on a long cigar.
“Hullo! That's right,” he said, laconically. “Make yourself comfortable half a second, while I skim the 'St. Stephen's'.”
His salutation pleased Loder. With a nod of acquiescence he crossed the office to the brisk fire that burned in, the grate.
For a minute or two Lakely worked steadily, occasionally breaking the quiet by an unintelligible remark or a vigorous stroke of his pencil. At last he dropped the paper with a gesture of satisfaction and leaned back in his chair.
“Well,” he said, “what d'you think of this? How's this for a complication?”
Loder turned round. “I think,” he said, quietly, “that we can't overestimate it.”
Lakely laughed and took a long pull at his cigar. “And we mustn't be afraid to let the Sefborough crowd know it, eh?” He waved his hand to the poster of the first edition that hung before his desk.
Loder, following his glance, smiled.
Lakely laughed again. “They might have known it all along, if they'd cared to deduce,” he said. “Did they really believe that Russia was going to sit calmly looking across the Heri-Rud while the Shah played at mobilizing? But what became of you last night? We had a regular prophesying of the whole business at Bramfell's; the great Fraide looked in for five minutes. I went on with him to the club afterwards and was there when the news came in. 'Twas a great night!”
Loder's face lighted up. “I can imagine it,” he said, with an unusual touch of warmth.
Lakely watched him intently for a moment. Then with a quick action he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk.
“It's going to be something more than imagination for you, Chilcote,” he said, impressively. “It's going to be solid earnest!” He spoke rapidly and with rather more than his usual shrewd decisiveness; then he paused to see the effect of his announcement.
Loder was still studying the flaring poster. At the other's words he turned sharply. Something in Lakely's voice, something in his manner, arrested him. A tinge of color crossed his face.
“Reality?” he said. “What do you mean?”
For a further space his companion watched him; then with a rapid movement he tilted back his chair.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes; old Fraide's instincts are never far out. He's quite right. You're the man!”
Still quietly, but with a strange underglow of excitement, Loder left the fire, and, coming forward, took a chair at Lakely's desk.
“Do you mind telling me what you're driving at?” he asked, in his old, laconic voice.
Lakely still scrutinized him with an air of brisk satisfaction; then with a gesture of finality he tossed his cigar away.
“My dear chap,” he said, “there's going to be a breach somewhere—and Fraide says you're the man to step in and fill it! You see, five years ago, when things looked lively on the Gulf and the Bundar Abbas business came to light, you did some promising work; and a reputation like that sticks to a man—even when he turns slacker! I won't deny that you've slacked abominably,” he added, as Loder made an uneasy movement, “but slacking has different effects. Some men run to seed, others mature. I had almost put you down on the black list, but I've altered my mind in the last two months.”
Again Loder stirred in his seat. A host of emotions were stirring in his mind. Every word wrung from Lakely was another stimulus to pride, another subtle tribute to the curious force of personality.
“Well?” he said. “Well?”
Lakely smiled. “We all know that Sefborough's ministry is—well, top-heavy,” he said. “Sefborough is building his card house just a story too high. It's a toss-up what 'll upset the balance. It might be the army, of course, or it might be education; but it might quite as well be a matter of foreign policy!”
They looked at each other in comprehensive silence.
“You know as well as I that it's not the question of whether Russia comes into Persia, but the question of whether Russia goes out of Persia when these Hazaras are subdued! I'll lay you what you like, Chilcote, that within one week we hear that the risings are suppressed, but that Russia, instead of retiring, has advanced those tempting twenty miles and comfortably ensconced herself at Meshed—as she ensconced herself on the island of Ashurada. Lakely's nervous, energetic figure was braced, his light-blue eyes brightened, by the intensity of his interest.
“If this news comes before the Easter recess,” he went on, “the first nail can be hammered in on the motion for adjournment. And if the right man does it in the right way, I'll lay my life 'twill be a nail in Sefborough's coffin.”
Loder sat very still. Overwhelming possibilities had suddenly opened before him. In a moment the unreality of the past months had become real; a tangible justification of himself and his imposture was suddenly made possible. In the stress of understanding he, too, leaned forward, and, resting his elbows on the desk, took his face between his hands.
For a space Lakely made no remark. To him man and man's moods came second in interest to his paper and his party politics. That Chilcote should be conscious of the glories he had opened up seemed only natural; that he should show that consciousness in a becoming gravity seemed only right. For some seconds he made no attempt to disturb him; but at last his own irrepressible activity made silence unendurable. He caught up his pencil and tapped impatiently on the desk.
“Chilcote,” he said, quickly and with a gleam of sudden anxiety, “you're not by any chance doubtful of yourself?”
At sound of his voice Loder lifted his face; it was quite pale again, but the energy and resolution that had come into it when Lakely first spoke were still to be seen.
“No, Lakely,” he said, very slowly, “it's not the sort of moment in which a man doubts himself.”