But Loder did not leave London. And the hour of two on the day following his dismissal of Chilcote found him again in his sitting-room.
He sat at the centre-table surrounded by a cloud of smoke; a pipe was between his lips and the morning's newspapers lay in a heap beside his elbow. To the student of humanity his attitude was intensely interesting. It was the attitude of a man trammelled by the knowledge of his strength. Before him, as he sat smoking, stretched a future of absolute nothingness; and towards this blank future one portion of his consciousness—a struggling and as yet scarcely sentient portion—pushed him inevitably; while another—a vigorous, persistent, human portion—cried to him to pause. So actual, so clamorous was this silent mental combat that had raged unceasingly since the moment of his renunciation that at last in physical response to it he pushed back his chair.
“It's too late!” he said, aloud. “I'm a fool. It's too late!”
Then abruptly, astonishingly, as though in direct response to his spoken thought, the door opened and Chilcote walked into the room.
Slowly Loder rose and stared at him. The feeling he acknowledged to himself was anger; but below the anger a very different sensation ran riotously strong.
And it was in time to this second feeling, this sudden, lawless joy, that his pulses beat as he turned a cold face on the intruder.
“Well?” he said, sternly.
But Chilcote was impervious to sternness. He was mentally shaken and distressed, though outwardly irreproachable, even to the violets in the lapel of his coat—the violets that for a week past had been brought each morning to the door of Loder's rooms by Eve's maid. For one second, as Loder's eyes' rested on the flowers, a sting of ungovernable jealousy shot through him; then as suddenly it died away, superseded by another feeling—a feeling of new, spontaneous joy. Worn by Chilcote or by himself, the flowers were a symbol!
“Well?” he said again, in a gentler voice.
Chilcote had walked to the table and laid down his hat. His face was white and the muscles of his lips twitched nervously as he drew off his gloves.
“Thank Heaven, you're here!” he said, shortly. “Give me something to drink.”
In silence Loder brought out the whiskey and set it on the table; then instinctively he turned aside. As plainly as though he saw the action, he mentally figured Chilcote's furtive glance, the furtive movement of his fingers to his waistcoat-pocket, the hasty dropping of the tabloids into the glass. For an instant the sense of his tacit connivance came to him sharply; the next, he flung it from him. The human, inner voice was whispering its old watchword. The strong man has no time to waste over his weaker brother!
When he heard Chilcote lay down his tumbler he looked back again. “Well, what is it?” he said. “What have you come for?” He strove resolutely to keep his voice severe, but, try as he might, he could not quite subdue the eager force that lay behind his words. Once again, as on the night of their second interchange, life had become a phoenix, rising to fresh existence even while he sifted its ashes. “Well?” he said, once again.
Chilcote had set down his glass. He was nervously passing his handkerchief across his lips. There was something in the gesture that attracted Loder. Looking at him more attentively, he saw what his own feelings and the other's conventional dress had blinded him to—the almost piteous panic and excitement in his visitor's eyes.
“Something's gone wrong!” he said, with abrupt intuition.
Chilcote started. “Yes—no—that is, yes,” he stammered.
Loder moved round the table. “Something's gone wrong,” he repeated. “And you've come to tell me.”
The tone unnerved Chilcote; he suddenly dropped into a chair. “It—it wasn't my fault,” he began. “I—I have had a horrible time!”
Loder's lips tightened. “Yes,” he said, “yes—I understand.”
The other glanced up with a gleam of his old suspicion “'Twas all my nerves, Loder—”
“Of course. Yes, of course.” Loder's interruption was curt.
Chilcote eyed him doubtfully. Then recollection took the place of doubt, and a change passed over his expression. “It wasn't my fault,” he began, hastily. “On my soul, it wasn't! It was Crapham's beastly fault for showing her into the morning-room—”
Loder kept silent. His curiosity had flared into sudden life at the other's words, but he feared to break the shattered train of thought even by a word.
In the silence Chilcote moved uneasily. “You see,” he went on, at last, “when I was here with you I—I felt strong. I—I—” He stopped.
“Yes, yes. When you were here with me you felt strong.”
“Yes, that's it. While I was here, I felt I could do the thing. But when I went home—when I went up to my rooms—” Again he paused, passing his handkerchief across his forehead.
“When you went up to your rooms?” Loder strove hard to keep his control.
“To my room—? Oh, I—I forget about that. I forget about the night” He hesitated confusedly. “All I remember is the coming down to breakfast next morning—this morning—at twelve o'clock—”
Loder turned to the table and poured himself out some whiskey. “Yes,” he acquiesced, in a very quiet voice.
At the word Chilcote rose from his seat. His disquietude was very evident. “Oh, there was breakfast on the table when I came down-stairs—breakfast with flowers and a horrible, dazzling glare of sun. It was then, Loder, as I stood and looked into the room, that the impossibility of it all came to me—that I knew I couldn't stand it—couldn't go on.”
Loder swallowed his whiskey slowly. His sense of overpowering curiosity held him very still; but he made no effort to prompt his companion.
Again Chilcote shifted his position agitatedly. “It, had to be done,” he said, disjointedly. “I had to do it—then and there. The things were on the bureau—the pens and ink and telegraph forms. They tempted me.”
Loder laid down his glass suddenly. An exclamation rose to his lips, but he checked it.
At the slight sound of the tumbler touching the table Chilcote turned; but there was no expression on the other's face to affright him.
“They tempted me,” he repeated, hastily. “They seemed like magnets—they seemed to draw me towards them. I sat at the bureau staring at them for a long time; then a terrible compulsion seized me—something you could never understand—and I caught up the nearest pen and wrote just what was in my mind. It wasn't a telegram, properly speaking—it was more a letter. I wanted you back and I had to make myself plain. The writing of the message seemed to steady me; the mere forming of the words quieted my mind. I was almost cool when I got up from the bureau and pressed the bell—”
“The bell?”
“Yes. I rang for a servant. I had to send the wire myself, so I had to get a cab.” His voice rose to irritability. “I pressed the bell several times; but the thing had gone wrong—'twouldn't work. At last I gave it up and went into the corridor to call some one.”
“Well?” In the intense suspense of the moment the word escaped Loder.
“Oh, I went out of the room; but there at the door, before I could call anybody, I knocked up against that idiot Greening. He was looking for me—for you, rather—about some beastly Wark affair. I tried to explain that I wasn't in a state for business; I tried to shake him off, but he was worse than Blessington. At last, to be rid of the fellow, I went with him to the study—”
“But the telegram?” Loder began; then again he checked himself. “Yes—yes—I understand,” he added, quietly.
“I'm getting to the telegram! I wish you wouldn't jar me with sudden questions. I wasn't in the study more than a minute—more than five or six minutes—” His voice became confused; the strain of the connected recital was telling upon him. With nervous haste he made a rush for the end of his story. “I wasn't more than seven or eight minutes in the study; then, as I came down-stairs, Crapham met me in the hall. He told me that Lillian Astrupp had called and wished to see me. And that he had shown her into the morning-room—”
“The morning-room?” Loder suddenly stepped back from the table. “The morning-room? With your telegram lying on the bureau?”
His sudden speech and movement startled Chilcote. The blood rushed to his face, then died out, leaving it ashen. “Don't do that, Loder!” he cried. “I—I can't bear it!”
With an immense effort Loder controlled himself. “Sorry!” he said. “Go on!”
“I'm going on! I tell you I'm going on. I got a horrid shock when Chapham told me. Your story came clattering through my mind. I knew Lillian had come to see you—I knew there was going to be a scene—”
“But the telegram? The telegram?”
Chilcote paid no heed to the interruption. He was following his own train of ideas. “I knew she had come to see you—I knew there was going to be a scene. When I got to the morning-room my hand was shaking so that I could scarcely turn the handle; then, as the door opened, I could have cried out with relief. Eve was there as well!”
“Eve?”
“Yes. I don't think I was ever so glad to see her in my life.” He laughed almost hysterically. “I was quite civil to her, and she was—quite sweet to me—” Again he laughed.
Loder's lips tightened.
“You see, it saved the situation. Even if Lillian wanted to be nasty, she couldn't, while Eve was there. We talked for about ten minutes. We were quite an amiable trio. Then Lillian told me why she'd called. She wanted me to make a fourth in a theatre party at the 'Arcadian' to-night, and I—I was so pleased and so relieved that I said yes!” He paused and laughed again unsteadily.
In his tense anxiety, Loder ground his heel into the floor. “Go on!” he said, fiercely. “Go on!”
“Don't!” Chilcote exclaimed. “I'm going on—I'm going on.” He passed his handkerchief across his lips. “We talked for ten minutes or so, and then Lillian left. I went with her to the hall door, but Chapham was there too—so I was still safe. She laughed and chatted and seemed in high spirits as we crossed the hall, and she was still smiling as she waved to me from her motor. But then, Loder—then, as I stood in the hall, it all came to me suddenly. I remembered that Lillian must have been alone in the morning-room before Eve found her! I remembered the telegram! I ran back to the room, meaning to question Eve as to how long Lillian had been alone, but she had left the room. I ran to the bureau—but the telegram wasn't there!”
“Gone?”
“Yes, gone. That's why I've come straight here.”
For a moment they confronted each other. Then, moved by a sudden impulse, Loder pushed Chilcote aside and crossed the room. An instant later the opening and shutting of doors, the hasty pulling out of drawers and moving of boxes, came from the bedroom.
Chilcote, shaken and nervous, stood for a minute where his companion had left him; at last, impelled by curiosity, he too crossed the narrow passage and entered the second room.
The full light streamed in through the open window; the keen spring air blew freshly across the house-tops; and on the window-sill a band of grimy, joyous sparrows twittered and preened themselves. In the middle of the room stood Loder. His coat was off, and round him on chairs and floor lay an array of waistcoats, gloves, and ties.
For a space Chilcote stood in the doorway staring at him; then his lips parted and he took a step forward. “Loder—” he said, anxiously. “Loder, what are you going to do?”
Loder turned. His shoulders were stiff, his face alight with energy. “I'm going back,” he said, “to unravel the tangle you have made.”
Loder's plan of action was arrived at before he reached Trafalgar Square. The facts of the case were simple. Chilcote had left an incriminating telegram on the bureau in the morning-room at Grosvenor Square; by an unlucky chance Lillian Astrupp had been shown up into that room, where she had remained alone until the moment that Eve, either by request or by accident, had found her there. The facts resolved themselves into one question. What use had Lillian made of those solitary moments? Without deviation, Loder's mind turned towards one answer. Lillian was not the woman to lose an opportunity, whether the space at her command were long or short. True, Eve too had been alone in the room, while Chilcote had accompanied Lillian to the door; but of this he made small account. Eve had been there, but Lillian had been there first. Judging by precedent, by personal character, by all human probability, it was not to be supposed that anything would have been left for the second comer.
So convinced was he that, reaching Trafalgar Square, he stopped and hailed a hansom.
“Cadogan Gardens!” he called. “No. 33.”
The moments seemed very few before the cab drew up beside the curb and he caught his second glimpse of the enamelled door with its silver fittings. The white and silver gleamed in the sunshine; banks of cream colored hyacinths clustered on the window-sills, filling the clear air with a warm and fragrant scent. With that strange sensation of having lived through the scene before, Loder left the cab and walked up the steps. Instantly he pressed the bell the door was opened by Lillian's discreet, deferential man-servant.
“Is Lady Astrupp at home?” he asked.
The man looked thoughtful. “Her ladyship lunched at home, sir—” he began, cautiously.
But Loder interrupted him. “Ask her to see me,” he said, laconically.
The servant expressed no surprise. His only comment was to throw the door wide.
“If you'll wait in the white room, sir,” he said, “I'll inform her ladyship.” Chilcote was evidently a frequent and a favored visitor.
In this manner Loder for the second time entered the house so unfamiliar—and yet so familiar in all that it suggested. Entering the drawing-room, he had leisure to look about him. It was a beautiful room, large and lofty; luxury was evident on every hand, but it was not the luxury that palls or offends. Each object was graceful, and possessed its own intrinsic value. The atmosphere was too effeminate to appeal to him, but he acknowledged the taste and artistic delicacy it conveyed. Almost at the moment of acknowledgment the door opened to admit Lillian.
She wore the same gown of pale-colored cloth, warmed and softened by rich furs, that she had worn on the day she and Chilcote had driven in the park.
She was drawing on her gloves as she came into the room; and pausing near the door, she looked across at Loder and, laughed in her slow, amused way.
“I thought it would be you,” she said, enigmatically.
Loder came forward. “You expected me?” he said, guardedly. A sudden conviction filled him that it was not the evidence of her eyes, but something at once subtler and more definite, that prompted her recognition of him.
She smiled. “Why should I expect you? On the contrary, I'm waiting to know why you're here?”
He was silent for an instant; then he answered in her own light tone. “As far as that goes,” he said, “let's make it my duty call-having dined with you. I'm an old-fashioned person.”
For a full second she surveyed him amusedly; then at last she spoke. “My dear Jack”—she laid particular stress on the name—“I never imagined you punctilious. I should have thought bohemian would have been more the word.”
Loder felt disconcerted and annoyed. Either, like himself, she was fishing for information, or she was deliberately playing with him. In his perplexity he glanced across the room towards the fireplace.
Lillian saw the look. “Won't you sit down?” she said, indicating the couch. “I promise not to make you smoke. I sha'n't even ask you to take off your gloves!”
Loder made no movement. His mind was unpleasantly upset. It was nearly a fortnight since he had seen Lillian, and in the interval her attitude had changed, and the change puzzled him. It might mean the philosophy of a woman who, knowing herself without adequate weapons, withdraws from a combat that has proved fruitless; or it might imply the merely catlike desire to toy with a certainty. He looked quickly at the delicate face, the green eyes somewhat obliquely set, the unreliable mouth; and instantly he inclined to the latter theory. The conviction that she possessed the telegram filled him suddenly, and with it came the desire to put his belief to the test—to know beyond question whether her smiling unconcern meant malice or mere entertainment.
“When you first came into the room,” he said, quietly, “you said 'I thought it would be you.' Why did you say that?”
Again she smiled—the smile that might be malicious or might be merely amused. “Oh,” she answered at last, “I only meant that though I had been told Jack Chilcote wanted me, it wasn't Jack Chilcote I expected to see!”
After her statement there was a pause. Loder's position was difficult. Instinctively convinced that, strong in the possession of her proof, she was enjoying his tantalized discomfort, he yet craved the actual evidence that should set his suspicions to rest. Acting upon the desire, he made a new beginning.
“Do you know why I came?” he asked.
Lillian looked up innocently. “It's so hard to be certain of anything in this world,” she said. “But one is always at liberty to guess.”
Again he was perplexed. Her attitude was not quite the attitude of one who controls the game, and yet—He looked at her with a puzzled scrutiny. Women for him had always spelled the incomprehensible; he was at his best, his strongest, his surest in the presence of men. Feeling his disadvantage, yet determined to gain his end, he made a last attempt.
“How did you amuse yourself at Grosvenor Square this morning before Eve came to you?” he asked. The effort was awkwardly blunt, but it was direct.
Lillian was buttoning her glove. She did not raise her head as he spoke, but her fingers paused in their task. For a second she remained motionless, then she looked up slowly.
“Oh,” she said, sweetly, “so I was right in my guess? You did come to find out whether I sat in the morning-room with my hands in my lap—or wandered about in search of entertainment?”
Loder colored with annoyance and apprehension. Every look, every tone of Lillian's was distasteful to him. No microscope could have revealed her more fully to him than did his own eyesight. But it was not the moment for personal antipathies; there were other interests than his own at stake. With new resolution he returned her glance.
“Then I must still ask my first question, why did you say, 'I thought it would be you?'” His gaze was direct—so direct that it disconcerted her. She laughed a little uneasily.
“Because I knew.”
“How did you know?”
“Because—” she began; then again she laughed. “Because,” she added, quickly, as if moved by a fresh impulse, “Jack Chilcote made it very obvious to any one who was in his morning-room at twelve o'clock today that it would be you and not he who would be found filling his place this afternoon! It's all very well to talk about honor, but when one walks into an empty room and sees a telegram as long as a letter open on a bureau—”
But her sentence was never finished. Loder had heard what he came to hear; any confession she might have to offer was of no moment in his eyes.
“My dear girl,” he broke in, brusquely, “don't trouble! I should make a most unsatisfactory father confessor.” He spoke quickly. His color was still high, but not of annoyance. His suspense was transformed into unpleasant certainty; but the exchange left him surer of himself. His perplexity had dropped to a quiet sense of self-reliance; his paramount desire was for solitude in which to prepare for the task that lay before him; the most congenial task the world possessed—the unravelling of Chilcote's tangled skeins. Looking into Lillian's eyes, he smiled. “Good-bye!” he said, holding out his hand. “I think we've finished—for to-day.”
She slowly extended her fingers. Her expression and attitude were slightly puzzled—a puzzlement that was either spontaneous or singularly well assumed. As their hands touched she smiled again.
“Will you drop in at the 'Arcadian' to-night?” she said. “It's the dramatized version of 'Other Men's Shoes!' The temptation to make you see it was too irresistible—as you know.”
There was a pause while she waited for his answer—her head inclined to one side, her green eyes gleaming.
Loder, conscious of her regard, hesitated for a moment. Then his face cleared. “Right!” he said, slowly. “'The Arcadian' tonight!”
Loder's frame of mind as he left Cadogan Gardens was peculiar. Once more he was living in the present—the forceful, exhilarating present, and the knowledge braced him. Upon one point his mind was satisfied. Lillian Astrupp had found the telegram, and it remained to him to render her find valueless. How he proposed to do this, how he proposed to come out triumphant in face of such a situation, was a matter that as yet was shapeless in his mind; nevertheless, the danger—the sense of impending conflict—had a savor of life after the inaction of the day and night just passed. Chilcote in his weakness and his entanglement had turned to him; and he in his strength and capacity had responded to the appeal.
His step was firm and his bearing assured as he turned into Grosvenor Square and walked towards the familiar house.
The habit of self-deceit is as insidious and tenacious as any vice. For one moment on the night of his great speech, as he leaned out of Chilcote's carriage and met Chilcote's eyes, Loder had seen himself—and under the shock of revelation had taken decisive action. But in the hours subsequent to that action the plausible, inner voice had whispered unceasingly, soothing his wounded self-esteem, rebuilding stone by stone the temple of his egotism; until at last when Chilcote, panic-stricken at his own action, had burst into his rooms ready to plead or to coerce, he had found no need for either coercion or entreaty. By a power more subtle and effective than any at his command, Loder had been prepared for his coming—unconsciously ready with an acquiescence before his appeal had been made. It was the fruit of this preparation, the inevitable outcome of it, that strengthened his step and steadied his hand as he mounted the steps and opened the hall door of Chilcote's house on that eventful afternoon.
The dignity, the air of quiet solidity, impressed him as it never failed to do, as he crossed the large hall and ascended the stairs—the same stairs that he had passed down almost as an outcast not so many hours before. He was filled with the sense of things regained; belief in his own star lifted him as it had done a hundred times before in these same surroundings.
He quickened his steps as the sensation came to him. Then, reaching the head of the stairs, he turned directly towards Eve's sitting-room, and, gaining the door, knocked. The strength of his eagerness, the quick beating of his pulse as he waited for a response, surprised him. He had told himself many times that his passion, however strong, would never again conquer as it had done two nights ago—and the fact that he had come thus candidly to Eve's room was to his mind a proof that temptation could be dared. Nevertheless there was something disconcerting to a strong man in this merely physical perturbation; and when Eve's voice came to him, giving permission to enter, he paused for an instant to steady himself; then with sudden decision he opened the door and walked into the room.
The blinds were partly drawn, there was a scent of violets in the air, and a fire glowed warmly in the grate. He noted these things carefully, telling himself that a man should always be alertly sensible of his surroundings; then all at once the nice balancing of detail suddenly gave way. He forgot everything but the one circumstance that Eve was standing in the window—her back to the light, her face towards him. With his pulses beating faster and an unsteady sensation in his brain, he moved forward holding out his hand.
“Eve—?” he said below his breath.
But Eve remained motionless. As he came into the room she had glanced at him—a glance of quick, searching question; then with equal suddenness she had averted her eyes. As he drew close to her now, she remained immovable.
“Eve—” he said again. “I wanted to see you—I wanted to explain about yesterday and about this morning.” He paused, suddenly disturbed. The full remembrance of the scene in the brougham had surged up at sight of her—had risen a fierce, unquenchable recollection. “Eve—” he began again in a new, abrupt tone.
And then it was that Eve showed herself in a fresh light. From his entrance into the room she had stayed motionless, save for her first glance of acute inquiry; but now her demeanor changed. For almost the first time in Loder's knowledge of her the vitality and force that he had vaguely apprehended below her quiet, serene exterior sprang up like a flame within whose radius things are illuminated. With a quick gesture she turned towards him, her warm color deepening, her eyes suddenly alight.
“I understand,” she said, “I understand. Don't try to explain! Can't you see that it's enough to—to see you as you are—?”
Loder was surprised. Remembering their last passionate scene, and the damper Chilcote's subsequent presence must inevitably have cast upon it, he had expected to be doubtfully received; but the reality of the reception left him bewildered. Eve's manner was not that of the ill-used wife; its vehemence, its note of desire and depreciation, were more suggestive of his own ardent seizing of the present, as distinguished from past or future. With an odd sense of confusion he turned to her afresh.
“Then I am forgiven?” he said. And unconsciously, as he moved nearer, he touched her arm.
At his touch she started. All the yielding sweetness, all the submission, that had marked her two nights ago was gone; in its place she was possessed by a curious excitement that stirred while it perplexed.
Loder, moved by the sensation, took another step forward. “Then I am forgiven?” he repeated, more softly.
Her face was averted as he spoke, but he felt hen arm quiver; and when at last she lifted her head, their eyes met. Neither spoke, but in an instant Loder's arms were round her.
For a long, silent space they stood holding each other closely. Then, with a sharp movement, Eve freed Herself. Her color was still high, her eyes still peculiarly bright, but the bunch of violets she had worn in her belt had fallen to the ground.
“John—” she said, quickly; but on the word her breath caught. With a touch of nervousness she stooped to pick up the flowers.
Loder noticed both voice and gesture. “What is it?” he said. “What were you going to say?”
But she made no answer. For a second longer she searched for the violets; then, as he bent to assist her, she stood up quickly and laughed—a short, embarrassed laugh.
“How absurd and nervous I am!” she exclaimed. “Like a schoolgirl instead of a woman of twenty-four. You must help me to be sensible.” Her cheeks still burned, her manner was still excited, like one who holds an emotion or an impulse at bay.
Loder looked at her uncertainly. “Eve—” he began afresh with his odd, characteristic perseverance, but she instantly checked him. There was a finality, a faint suggestion of fear, in her protest.
“Don't!” she said. “Don't! I don't want explanations. I want to—to enjoy the moment without having things analyzed or smoothed away. Can't you understand? Can't you see that I'm wonderfully, terribly happy to—to have you—as you are!” Again her voice broke—a break that might have been a laugh or a sob.
The sound was an emotional crisis, as such a sound invariably is. It arrested and steadied her. For a moment she stood absolutely still; then, with something very closely resembling her old repose of manner, she stooped again and quietly picked up the flowers still lying at her feet.
“Now,” she said, quietly, “I must say what I've wanted to say all along. How does it feel to be a great man?” Her manner was controlled, she looked at him evenly and directly; save for the faint vibration in her voice there was nothing to indicate the tumult of a moment ago.
But Loder was still uncertain. He caught her hand, his eyes searching hers.
“But Eve—” he began.
Then Eve played the last card in her mysterious game. Laughing quickly and nervously, she freed her hand and laid it over his mouth.
“No!” she said. “Not one word! All this past fortnight has belonged to you; now it's my turn. To-day is mine.”
And so, once again, the woman conquered. Whatever Eve's intentions were, whatever she wished to evade or ward off, she was successful in gaining her end. For more than two hours she kept Loder at her side. There may have been moments in those two hours when the tension was high, when the efforts she made to interest and hold him were somewhat strained. But if this was so, it escaped the notice of the one person concerned; for it was long after tea had been served, long after Eve had offered to do penance for her monopoly of him by driving him to Chilcote's club, that Loder realized with any degree of distinctness that it was she and not he who had taken the lead in their interview; that it was she and not he who had bridged the difficult silences and given a fresh direction to dangerous channels of talk. It was long before he recognized this; but it was still longer before he realized the far more potent fact that, without any coldness, without any lessening of the subtle consideration she always showed him, she had given him no further opportunity of making love.
Talking continuously, elated with the sense of conflict still to come, he drove with her to the club. Considering that drive in the light of after events, his own frame of mind invariably filled him with incredulity.
In the eyes of any sane man his position was not worth an hour's purchase; yet in the blind self-confidence of the moment he would not have changed places with Fraide himself. The great song of Self was sounding in his ears as he drove through the crowded streets, conscious of the cool, crisp air, of Eve's close presence, of the numberless infinitesimal things that went to make up the value of life. It was this acknowledgment of personality that upheld him; the personality, the power that had carried him unswervingly through eleven colorless years; that had impelled him towards this new career when the new career had first been opened to him; that had hewn a way for him in this fresh existence against colossal odds. The indomitable force that had trampled out Chilcote's footmarks in public life, in private life—in love. It was a triumphant paean that clamored in his ears, something persistent and prophetic with an undernote of menace. The cry of the human soul that has dared to stand alone.
His glance was keen and bright as he waited for a moment at the carriage door and took Eve's hand before entering the club.
“You're dining out to-night?” he said. His fingers, always tenacious and masterful, continued to hold hers. The compunction that had driven him temporarily towards sacrifice had passed. His pride, his confidence, and with them his desire, had flowed back in full measure.
Eve, watching him attentively, paled a little. “Yes,” she said, “I'm dining with the Bramfells.”
“What time will you get home?” He scarcely realized why he put the question. The song of Self still sounded triumphantly, and he responded without reflection.
His eyes held hers, his fingers pressed her hand; the intense mastery of his will passed through her in a sudden sense of fear. Her lips parted in deprecation, but he—closely attentive of her expression—spoke again quickly.
“When can I see you?” he asked, very quietly.
Again she was about to speak. She leaned forward, as if some thought long suppressed trembled on her lips; then her courage or her desire failed her. She leaned back, letting her lashes droop over her eyes. “I shall be home at eleven,” she said below her breath.
Loder dined with Lakely at Chilcote's club; and so absorbing were the political interests of the hour—the resignation of Sir Robert Sefborough, the King's summoning of Fraide, the probable features of the new ministry—that it was after nine o'clock when at last he freed himself and drove to the “Arcadian” Theatre.
The sound of music came to him as he entered the theatre—light, measured music suggestive of tiny streams, toy lambs, and painted shepherdesses. It sounded singularly inappropriate to his mood—as inappropriate as the theatre itself with its gay gilding, its pale tones of pink and blue. It was the setting of a different world—a world of laughter, light thoughts, and shallow impulses, in which he had no part. He halted for an instant outside the box to which the attendant had shown him; then, as the door was thrown open, he straightened himself resolutely and stepped forward.
It was the interval between the first and second acts.
The box was in shadow, and Loder's first impression was of voices and rustling skirts, broken in upon by the murmur of frequent, amused laughter; later, as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, he distinguished the occupants—two women and a man. The man was speaking as he entered, and the story he was relating was evidently interesting from the faint exclamations of question and delight that punctuated it in the listeners' higher, softer voices. As the new-comer entered they all three turned and looked at him.
“Ah, here comes the legislator!” exclaimed Leonard Kaine. For it was he who formed the male element in the party.
“The Revolutionary, Lennie!” Lillian corrected, softly. “Bramfell says he has changed the whole face of things—” She laughed softly and meaningly as she closed her fan. “So good of you to come, Jack!” she added. “Let me introduce you to Miss Esseltyn; I don't think you two have met. This is Mr. Chilcote, Mary—the great, new Mr. Chilcote.” Again she laughed.
Loder bowed and moved to the front of the box, nodding to Kaine as he passed.
“It's only for an hour,” he explained to Lillian. “I have an appointment for eleven.” He turned and bowed to the third occupant of the box—a remarkably young and well-dressed girl with wide-awake eyes and a retrousse nose.
“Only an hour! Oh, how unkind! How should I punish him, Lennie?” Lillian looked round at Kaine with a lingering, caressing glance.
He bent towards her in quick response and answered in a whisper.
She laughed and replied in an equally low tone.
Loder, to whom both remarks had been inaudible dropped into the vacant seat beside Mary Esseltyn. He had the unsettled feeling that things were not falling out exactly as he had calculated.
“What is the play like?” he hazarded as he looked towards his companion. At all times social trivialities bored him; to-night they were intolerable. He had come to fight, but all at once it seemed that there was no opponent. Lillian's attitude disturbed him; her careless graciousness, her evident ignoring of him for Kaine, might mean nothing—but also it might mean much.
So he speculated as he put his question and spurred his attention towards the girl's answer; but with the speculation came the resolve to hold his own—to meet his enemy upon whatever ground she chose to appropriate.
The girl looked at him with interest. She, too, had heard of his triumph.
“It is a good play,” she responded. “I like it better than the book. You've read the book, of course?”
“No.” Loder tried hard to fix his thoughts.
“It's amusing—but far-fetched.”
“Indeed?” He picked up the programme lying on the edge of the box. His ears were strained to catch the tone of Lillian's voice as she laughed and whispered with Kaine.
“Yes; men exchanging identities, you know.”
He looked up and caught the girl's self-possessed glance. “Oh?” he said. “Indeed?” Then again he looked away. It was intolerable this feeling of being caged up! A sense of anger crept through his mind. It almost seemed that Lillian had brought him there to prove that she had finished with him—had cast him aside, having used him for the day's excitement as she had used her poodles, her Persian cats, her crystal-gazing. All at once the impotency and uncertainty of his position goaded him. Turning swiftly in his seat, he glanced back to where she sat, slowly swaying her fan, her pale, golden hair and her pale-colored gown delicately silhouetted against the background of the box.
“What's your idea of the play, Lillian?” he said, abruptly. To his own ears there was a note of challenge in his voice.
She looked round languidly. “Oh, it's quite amusing,” she said. “It makes a delicious farce—absolutely French.”
“French?”
“Quite. Don't you think so, Lennie?”
“Oh, quite,” Kaine agreed.
“They mean that it's so very light—and yet so very subtle, Mr. Chilcote,” Mary Esseltyn explained.
“Indeed?” he said. “Then my imagination was at fault. I thought the piece was serious.”
“Serious!” Lillian smiled again. “Why, where's your sense of humor? The motive of the play debars all seriousness.”
Loder looked down at the programme still between his hands. “What is the motive?” he asked.
Lillian waved her fan once or twice, then closed it softly. “Love is the motive,” she said.
Now the balancing—the adjusting of impression and inspirations, of all processes in life, the most delicately fine. The simple sound of the word “love” coming at that precise juncture changed the whole current of Loder's thought. It fell like a seed; and like a seed in ultra-productive soil, it bore fruit with amazing rapidity.
The word itself was small and the manner in which it was spoken trivial, but Loder's mind was attracted and held by it. The last time it had met his ears his environment had been vastly different; and this echo of it in an uncongenial atmosphere stung him to resentment. The vision of Eve, the thought of Eve, became suddenly dominant.
“Love?” he repeated, coldly. “So love is the motive?”
“Yes.” This time it was Kaine who responded in his methodical, contented voice. “The motive of the play is love, as Lillian says. And when was love ever serious in a three-act comedy—on or off the stage?” He leaned forward in his seat, screwed in his eye-glass, and lazily scanned the stalls.
The orchestra was playing a Hungarian dance—its erratic harmonies and wild alternations of expression falling abruptly across the pinks and blues, the gilding and lights of the pretty, conventional theatre. Something in the suggestion of unfitness appealed to Loder. It was the force of the real as opposed to the ideal. With a new expression on his face, he turned again to Kaine.
“And how does it work?” he said. “This treatment that you find so—French?”
His voice as well as his expression had changed. He still spoke quietly, but he spoke with interest. He was no longer conscious of his vague and uneasiness; a fresh chord had been struck in his mind, and his curiosity had responded to it. For the first time it occurred to him that love—the dangerous, mysterious garden whose paths had so suddenly stretched out before his own feet—was a pleasure-ground that possessed many doors—and an infinite number of keys. He was stirred by the desire to peer through another entrance than his own, to see the secret, alluring byways from another stand-point. He waited with interest for the answer to his question.
For a second or two Kaine continued to survey the house; then his eye-glass dropped from his eye and he turned round.
“To understand the thing,” he said, pleasantly, “you must have read the book. Have you read the book?”
“No, Mr. Kaine,” Mary Esseltyn interrupted, “Mr. Chilcote hasn't read the book.”
Lillian laughed. “Outline the story for him, Lennie,” she said. “I love to see other people taking pains.”
Kaine glanced at her admiringly. “Well, to begin with,” he said, amiably, “two men, an artist and a millionaire, exchange lives. See?”
“You may presume that he does see, Lennie.”
“Right! Well, then, as I say, these beggars change identities. They're as like as pins; and to all appearances one chap's the other chap—and the other chap's the first chap. See?”
Loder laughed. The newly quickened interest was enhanced by treading on dangerous ground.
“Well, they change for a lark, of course, but there's one fact they both overlook. They're men, you know, and they forget these little things!” He laughed delightedly. “They overlook the fact that one of 'em has got a wife!”
There was a crash of music from the orchestra. Loder sat straighter in his seat; he was conscious that the blood had rushed into his face.
“Oh, indeed?” he said, quickly. “One of them had a wife?”
“Exactly!” Again Kaine chuckled. “And the point of the joke is that the wife is the least larky person under the sun. See?”
A second hot wave passed over Loder's face; a sense of mental disgust filled him. This, then, was the wonderful garden seen from another stand-point! He looked from Lillian, graceful, sceptical, and shallow, to the young girl beside him, so frankly modern in her appreciation of life. This, then, was love as seen by the eyes of the world—the world that accepts, judges, and condemns in a slang phrase or two! Very slowly the blood receded from his face.
“And the end of the story?” he asked, in a strained voice.
“The end? Oh, usual end, of course. Chap makes a mess of things and the bubble bursts.”
“And the end of the wife?”
“The end of the wife?” Lillian broke in, with a little laugh. “Why, the end of all stupid people who, instead of going through life with a lot of delightfully human stumbles, come just one big cropper. She naturally ends in the divorce court!”
They all laughed boisterously. Then laughter, story, and denouement were all drowned in a tumultuous crash of music. The orchestra ceased; there was a slight hum of applause; and the curtain rose on the second act of the comedy.