“
We seem to be just in time, Mr. Hurd,” Wilhelmina said. “Do you mind coming back for a moment into your study? Mr. Macheson and I have something to say to you.”
He glanced at his watch. He was wholly unable to conceal his annoyance at their appearance.
“I am afraid,” he said, with strained civility, “that I can only spare a couple of minutes.”
“You are going to town?” she asked, as he reluctantly followed her.
“Yes!” he answered. “Mr. White wished to see me early to-morrow morning about the new leases, and I have to go before the committee about this Loughborough water scheme.”
“These are my affairs,” she said, “so if you should miss your train, the responsibility will be mine.”
“I can spare five minutes,” he answered, “but I cannot miss that train. I have some private engagements. And, madam,” he continued, struggling with his anger, “I beg that you will not forget that even if I am in your employ, this is my house, and I will not have that man in it!”
He pointed to Macheson, who was standing upon the threshold. Wilhelmina stood between the two.
“Mr. Hurd,” she said, “please control yourself. There is no reason why we should any of us quarrel. Mr. Macheson and I are here to speak to you of a matter in which he has become concerned. I asked him to come here with me. We have come to see you about Letty!”
“What about her?” he demanded, with some attempt at bravado.
“We find that there is an impression in the village that Mr. Macheson is responsible for her disappearance.”
Hurd seized his opportunity without a second’s hesitation.
“How do you know that it isn’t the truth?” he demanded. “He wouldn’t be the first of these psalm-singing missioners who have turned out to be hypocrites!”
Macheson never flinched. Wilhelmina only shrugged her shoulders.
“Mr. Hurd,” she said, “we will not waste time. Mr. Macheson and I are both perfectly aware that you are responsible for Letty’s disappearance.”
“It’s—it’s false!” he declared, swallowing with an effort a more obnoxious word. “Why, I haven’t left the village since the day she went away.”
“But you are going—to-night,” Wilhelmina remarked.
He flushed.
“I’m going away on business,” he answered. “I don’t see why it should be taken for granted that I’m going to see her.”
“Nevertheless,” Wilhelmina said quietly, “between us three there isn’t the slightest doubt about it. I tell you frankly that the details of your private life in an ordinary way do not interest me in the least. But, on the other hand, I will not have you playing the Don Juan amongst the daughters of my tenants. You have been very foolish and you will have to pay for it. I do not wish to make you lose your train to-night, but you must understand that if you ever return to Thorpe, you must bring back Letty Foulton as your wife.”
He stared at her incredulously.
“As my—wife!” he exclaimed.
“Precisely,” Wilhelmina answered. “I will give her a wedding present of a thousand pounds, and I will see that your own position here is made a permanent one.”
He had the appearance of a man beside himself with anger. Was this to be the end of his schemes and hopes! He, to marry the pretty uneducated daughter of a working farmer—a girl, too, who was his already for the asking. He struggled with a torrent of ugly words.
“I—I must refuse!” he said, denying himself more vigorous terms with an effort.
She looked at him steadily.
“Better think it over, Mr. Hurd,” she said. “I am in earnest.”
He hesitated for a moment, and then, with a glance at the clock, moved towards the door.
“Very well,” he said, “I will think it over. I will let you know immediately I return from London.”
She shook her head.
“You can take as long as you like to reflect,” she answered, “but it must be here in this room. Mr. Macheson and I will wait.”
He turned towards her.
“Miss Thorpe-Hatton,” he said, “will you allow me to speak to you alone for two minutes?”
She shook her head.
“It is not necessary,” she answered. “Mr. Macheson does not count. You can say whatever you will before him.”
A smile that was half a sneer curved his lips. He was like a rat in a corner, and he knew that he must fight. He must use the weapon which he had feared with a coward’s fear.
“The matter on which I wish to speak to you,” he said, looking straight at her, “is not directly connected with the affair which we have been discussing. If you will give me two minutes, I think I can make you understand.”
She met his challenge without flinching. She was a shade paler, perhaps; the little glow which the walk through the enchanted twilight had brought into her cheeks had faded away. But her gaze was as cool and contemptuous as before. She showed no sign of any fear—of any desire to conciliate.
“I think,” she said, “that I can understand without. You can consider that we are alone. Whatever you may have to say to me, I should prefer that Mr. Macheson also heard.”
Macheson looked from one to the other uneasily.
“Shall I wait in the passage?” he asked. “I should be within call.”
“Certainly not,” she answered. “This person,”she continued, indicating Stephen with a scornful gesture, “is, I believe, about to make a bungling attempt to blackmail me! I should much prefer that you were present.”
Stephen Hurd drew a sharp breath. Her words stung like whips.
“I don’t know—about blackmail,” he said, still holding himself in. “I want nothing from you. I only ask to be left alone. Stop this nonsense about Letty Foulton and let me catch my train. That’s all I want.”
Wilhelmina shrugged her shoulders.
“You are a very wearisome person,” she declared. “Did you ever know me to change my mind? Every word I have said to you I absolutely mean. No more, no less!”
One of the veins at his temple was protruding. He was passionately angry.
“You think it wise,” he cried threateningly, “to make an enemy of me!”
She laughed derisively, a laugh as soft as velvet, but to him maddening.
“My dear young man,” she said carelessly, “I think I should prefer you in that capacity. I should probably see less of you.”
He took a quick stride forward. He thrust his face almost into hers. She drew back with a gesture of disgust.
“You,” he cried, striking the table with his clenched fist, “to pretend to care what becomes of any fool of a girl who chooses to take a lover! Is it because you’re in love with this would-be saint here?”
He struck the table again. He was absolutely beside himself with rage. He seemed even to find a physical difficulty in speech. Wilhelmina raised her eyebrows.
“Go on,” she said coolly. “I am curious to hear the rest.”
Macheson suddenly intervened. He stepped between the two.
“This has gone far enough,” he said sternly. “Hurd, you are losing your head. You are saying things you will be sorry for afterwards. And I cannot allow you to speak like this to a woman—in my presence!”
“Let him go on,” Wilhelmina said calmly. “I am beginning to find him interesting.”
Hurd laughed fiercely.
“What!” he cried. “You want to hear of your ‘Apache’ lover, the man you took from the gutters of Parisinto——”
Macheson struck him full across the mouth, but Wilhelmina caught at his arm. She had overestimated her courage or her strength—he was only just in time to save her from falling.
“Brute!” she muttered, and the colour fled from her cheeks like breath from a looking-glass.
Macheson laid her on the couch and rang the bell. Suddenly he realized that they were alone. From outside came the sound of wheels. He sprang up listening. Wilhelmina, too, opened her eyes. She waved him away feebly. He smiled back his comprehension.
“The servants are coming,” he said. “I can hear them. I promise you that if he catches the train, I will!”
“Go on,” she said coolly, “I am curious to hear the rest.”“Go on,” she said coolly, “I am curious to hear the rest.”Page240
He vaulted through the window which he had already opened. The sound of wheels had died away, but he set his face at once towards the station, running with long easy strides, and gradually increasing his pace. Stephen Hurd, with his handkerchief to his mouth, and with all his nerves tingling with a sense of fierce excitement, looked behind him continually, but saw nothing. Long before he reached the station he had abandoned all fear of pursuit. Yet during the last half-mile Macheson was never more than a few yards from him, and on St. Pancras platform he was almost the first person he encountered.
“Macheson! By God!”
He almost dropped the coat he was carrying. He looked at Macheson as one might look at a visitor from Mars. It was not possible that this could be the man from whom he had fled. Macheson smiled at him grimly.
“How did—how did you get here?” the young man faltered.
“By the same train as you,” Macheson answered. “How else? Where are you going to meet Letty?”
Hurd answered with a curse.
“Why the devil can’t you mind your own business?” he demanded.
“This is my business,” Macheson answered.
Then he turned abruptly round towards the hesitating figure of the girl who had suddenly paused in her swift approach.
“It is my business to take you home, Letty,” he said. “I have come to fetch you!”
Letty looked appealingly towards Stephen Hurd.What she saw in his face, however, only terrified her.
“Look here,” he said thickly, “I’ve had almost enough of this. You can go to the devil—you and Miss Thorpe-Hatton, too! I won’t allow any one to meddle in my private concerns. Come along, Letty.”
He would have led her away, but Macheson was not to be shaken off. He kept his place by the girl’s side.
“Letty,” he said, “are you married to him?”
“Not yet,” she answered hesitatingly. “But we are going to be.”
“Where are you going to now?”
She glanced towards Stephen.
“I am going to take her away with me,” he declared sullenly, “as soon as I can get my luggage on this cab.”
“Letty,” Macheson said, “a few hours ago Miss Thorpe-Hatton offered Stephen Hurd a dowry for you of a thousand pounds, if he would promise to bring you back as his wife. He refused. He has not the slightest intention of making you his wife. I am sorry to have to speak so plainly, but you see we haven’t much time for beating about the bush, have we? I want you to come with me to Berkeley Square. Mrs. Brown will look after you.”
She turned towards the young man piteously.
“Stephen,” she said, “tell Mr. Macheson that he is mistaken. We are going to be married, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” he answered. “At least I always meant to marry you. What I shall do if every one starts bullying me I’m sure I don’t know. Cut thewhole lot of you, I think, and be off to the Colonies.”
“You don’t mean that, Stephen,” she begged.
He pointed to the cab laden now with his luggage.
“Will you get in or won’t you, Letty?” he asked.
She shrank back.
“Stephen,” she said, “I thought that you were going to bring mother up with you.”
He laughed hardly.
“Your mother wasn’t ready,” he said. “We can send for her later.”
“Don’t you think, Stephen,” she pleaded, “that it would be nice for me to stay with Mrs. Brown until—until we are married?”
“If you go to Mrs. Brown,” he said gruffly, “you can stay with her. That’s all! I won’t be fooled about any longer. Once and for all, are you coming?”
She took a hesitating step forward, but Macheson led her firmly towards another hansom.
“No!” he answered, “she is not. You know where she will be when you have the marriage license.”
Stephen sprang into his cab with an oath. Even then Letty would have followed him, but Macheson held her arm.
“You stay here, Letty,” he said firmly.
She covered her face with her hands, but she obeyed.
That night, and for many nights afterwards, Macheson devoted himself to his work in the East End. The fascination of the thing grew upon him; he threw himself into his task with an energy which carried him often out of his own life and made forgetfulness an easy task. Night after night they came, these tired, white-faced women, with a sprinkling of sullen, dejected-looking men; night after night he pleaded and reasoned with them, striving with almost passionate earnestness to show them how to make the best of the poor thing they called life. Gradually his efforts began to tell upon himself. He grew thinner, there were shadows under his eyes, a curious intangible depression seemed to settle upon him. Holderness one night sought him out and insisted upon dinner together.
“Look here, Victor,” he said, “I have a bone to pick with you. You’d better listen! Don’t sit there staring round the place as though you saw ghosts everywhere.”
Macheson smiled mirthlessly.
“But that is just what I do see,” he answered. “The conscience of every man who knows must behaunted with them! The ghosts of starving men and unsexed women! What keeps their hands from our throats, Dick?”
“Common sense, you idiot,” Holderness answered cheerfully. “There’s a refuse heap for every one of nature’s functions. You may try to rake it out and cleanse it, but there isn’t much to be done. Hang that mission work, Victor! It’s broken more hearts than anything else on earth! A man can but do what he may.”
“The refuse heap is man’s work!” Macheson muttered.
“But not wholly his responsibility,” Holderness declared. “We’re part of the machine, but remember the wheels are driven by fate, or God, or whatever the hidden motive force of the universe may be. Don’t lose yourself, Macheson! Sentiment’s a good thing under control. It’s a sickly master.”
“You call it sentiment, if one feels the horror of this garbage heap! Come to-night and look into their faces.”
“I’ve done it,” Holderness declared. “I’ve been through it all. Hang it all, do you forget that I’m the editor of a Socialist magazine? No! feel it you must, but don’t let it upset your mental balance. Don’t lose your values!”
Macheson left his friend in a saner frame of mind. His words came back to him that night as he watched the little stream of people file out from the bare white-washed building, with its rows of cheap cane chairs. It was so true! To give way to despair was simply to indulge in a sentimental debauch. Yet in a sense he had never felt so completely thepitiful ineffectiveness of his task. How could he preach the Christian morality, expound the Christian doctrines, to a people whose very sufferings, whose constant agony, was a hideous and glaring proof that by the greater part of the world those doctrines were ignored!
A man was shown into his room afterwards, as he was putting on his overcoat. Almost with relief Macheson saw that he at least had no pitiful tale to tell. He was a small dapper man, well dressed, and spoke with a slight American accent.
“Mr. Macheson,” he said, “I’m taking the liberty of introducing myself. Peter Drayton my name is, never mind my profession. It wouldn’t interest you.”
Macheson nodded.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, with some curiosity.
“Say, I’ve been very much interested in these talks of yours to the people,” Mr. Drayton remarked. “But it’s occurred to me that you’re on the wrong end of the stick. That’s why I’m here. You’re saying the right things, and you’ve got the knack of saying them so that people have just got to listen, but you’re saying them to the wrong crowd.”
“I don’t understand,” Macheson was forced to confess.
“Well, I reckon it’s simple enough,” Drayton answered. “These people here don’t need to have their own misery thrust down their throats, even while you’re trying to show them how to bear it. It’s the parties who are responsible for it all that you want to go for. See what I mean?”
“I think so,” Macheson admitted, “but——”
“Look here,” Drayton interrupted, “you’re a man of common sense, and you know that life’s more or less a stand-up fight. Those that are licked live here in Whitechapel—if you can call it living—and those who win get to Belgravia! It’s a pitiless sort of affair this fight, but there it is. Now which of the two do you think need preaching to, these people, or the people who are responsible for them? You’ve started a mission in Whitechapel—it would have been more logical, if there’s a word of truth in your religion, to have started it in Mayfair.”
Macheson laughed.
“They wouldn’t listen to me,” he declared.
“I’d see to that,” Drayton answered quickly. “It’s my business. I want you to give a course of—well, we’d call them lectures, in the West End. You can say what you like. You can pitch into ’em as hot as Hell! I’ll guarantee you a crowded audience every time.”
“I have no interest in those people,” Macheson said. “Why should I go and lecture to them? My sympathies are all down here.”
“Exactly,” Drayton answered. “I want you to stir up the people who can really help, people who can give millions, pull down these miles of fever-tainted rat holes, endow farms here and abroad. Lash them till their conscience squeaks! See? What’s the good of preaching to these people? That won’t do any good! You want to preach to the really ignorant, the really depraved, the West-Enders!”
“Do I understand,” Macheson asked, “that you have a definite scheme in which you are inviting me to take part?”
Drayton lit a cigarette and led the way out.
“Look here,” he said, “I’ll walk with you as far as you’re going, and tell you all about it....”
It was a sort of pilgrimage which Macheson undertook during these restless nights, a walk seemingly purposeless, the sole luxury which he permitted himself. Always about the same hour he found himself on the garden side of Berkeley Square, always he stood and looked, for a period of time of which he took no count, at the tall, dimly lit house, across whose portals he had once passed into fairyland. Then came a night when everything was changed. Lights flashed from the windows, freshly painted window-boxes had been filled with flowers, scarce enough now; everything seemed to denote a sudden spirit of activity. Macheson stood and watched with a curious sense of excitement stirring in his blood. He knew very well what was happening. She was coming, perhaps had already arrived in town. He realized as he stood there, a silent motionless figure, how far gone in his folly he really was, how closely woven were the bonds that held him. For time seemed to him of no account beside the chance of seeing her, if only for a moment, as she passed in or out. He never knew how long he waited there—it was long enough, however, for his patience to be rewarded. Smoothly, with flashing lights, a little electric brougham turned into the Square and pulled up immediately opposite to him. The tall footman sprang to the ground, the door flew open,he saw a slim, familiar figure, veiled and dressed in a dark travelling costume, pass leisurely up the steps and into the arc of light which streamed through the open door. The brougham glided away, the door was closed, she was gone. Still Macheson leaned forward, watching the spot where she had been, his heart thumping against his sides, his senses thrilled with the excitement of her coming. Suddenly his attention was diverted in a curious manner. He became conscious that he was not the only watcher under the chestnut trees. A man had stolen out from amongst the deeper shadows close up to the railings, and was standing by his side. Macheson recognized him with a start.
“What are you doing here?” he asked abruptly.
His fellow-watcher, too, showed signs of excitement. His cheeks were flushed. He pointed across the road with shaking finger, and looked up into Macheson’s face with a triumphant chuckle.
“Run to earth at last!” he exclaimed. “You saw her! You saw her, too!”
“I saw a lady enter that house,” Macheson answered. “What of it?”
The man whom he had once befriended drew a breath between his clenched teeth.
“There she goes!” he muttered. “The woman who dared to call herself the daughter of a poor land-agent! The woman who is deceiving her world to-day as she deceived us—once! Bah! It is finished!”
He started to cross the road. Macheson kept by his side.
“Where are you off to?” he asked.
The man pointed to the brilliantly lit house.
“There!” he answered fiercely. “I am going to see her. To-night! At once! She shall not escape me this time!”
“What do you want with her?” Macheson asked.
“Money—or exposure, such an exposure,” the man answered. “But she will pay. She owes a good deal; but she will pay.”
“And supposing,” Macheson said, “that I were to tell you that this lady is a friend of mine, and that I will not have you intrude upon her—what then?”
Something venomous gleamed in the man’s eyes. A short unpleasant laugh escaped him.
“Not all the devils in hell,” he declared, “would keep me from going to her. For five years she’s fooled us! Not a day longer, not an hour!”
Macheson’s hand rested lightly upon the man’s shoulder.
“Can you reach her from prison?” he asked calmly.
The man turned and snarled at him. He knew well enough that escape or resistance alike was hopeless. He was like a pigmy in the hands of the man who held him.
“This isn’t your affair,” he pleaded earnestly. “Let me go, or I shall do you a mischief some day. Remember it was you who helped me to escape. You can’t give me away now.”
“I helped you to escape,” Macheson said, “but I did not know what you had done. There is another matter. You have to go away from here quietly and swear never tomolest——”
The man ducked with a sudden backward movement, and tried to escape, but Macheson was on his guard.
“You are a fool,” the man hissed out, his small bead-like eyes glittering as though touched with fire, his thick red lips parted, showing his ugly teeth. “It is money alone I want from her. I have but to breathe her name and this address in a certain quarter of Paris, and there are others who would take her life. Let me go!”
Then Macheson was conscious of a familiar figure crossing the street in their direction. He had seen him come furtively out of the house they had been watching, and had recognized him at once. It was Stephen Hurd. Keeping his grasp upon his captive’s shoulder, Macheson intercepted him.
“Hurd,” he said, “I want to speak to you.”
Hurd started, and his face darkened with anger when he saw who it was that had accosted him. Macheson continued hurriedly.
“Look here,” he said. “I owe you this at any rate. I have just caught our friend here watching this house. Have you ever seen him before?”
Hurd looked down into the face of the man who, with an evil shrug of the shoulders, had resigned himself—for the present—to the inevitable.
“Never,” he answered. “Can’t say I’m particularly anxious to see him again. Convert of yours?” he asked, with a sneer.
“He is the man who visited your father on the night of his death,” Macheson said.
Stephen Hurd was like a man electrified. He seized hold of the other’s arm in excitement.
“Is this true?” he demanded.
The man blinked his eyes.
“You have to prove it,” he said. “I admit nothing.”
“You can leave him to me,” Stephen Hurd said, turning to Macheson.
Macheson nodded and prepared to walk on.
“There is a police-station behind to the left,” he remarked.
Hurd took no notice. He had thrust his arm tightly through the other man’s.
“I have been looking for you,” he said eagerly. “We must have a talk together. We will take this hansom,” he added, hailing one.
The man drew back.
“Are you going to take me to the police-station?” he demanded.
“Police-station, no!” Hurd answered roughly. “What good would that do me? Get in! Café Monico!”
Holderness leaned back in his worn leather chair and shouted with laughter. He treated with absolute indifference the white anger in Macheson’s face.
“Victor,” he cried, “don’t look at me as though you wanted to punch my head. Down on your knees, man, and pray for a sense of humour. It’s the very salt of life.”
“That’s all very well,” Macheson answered, “but I can’t exactly see——”
“That’s because you’re deficient,” Holderness shouted, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I haven’t laughed so much for ages. Here you come from the East to the West, with all the world’s tragedy tearing at your heart, flowing from your lips, a flagellator, a hater of the people to whom you speak, seeking only to strike and to wound, and they accept you as a new sensation! They bare their back to your whip! They have made you the fashion! Oh! this funny, funny world of ours!”
Macheson smiled grimly.
“I’ll grant you the elements of humour in the situation,” he said, “but you can scarcely expectme to appreciate it, can you? I never came here to play the mountebank, to provide a new sensation for these tired dolls of Society. Dick, do you think St. Paul could have opened their eyes?”
Holderness shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he declared. “They’re a difficult class—you see, they have pluck, and a sort of fantastic philosophy which goes with breeding. They’re not easily scared.”
Macheson thought of his friend’s words later in the afternoon, when he stood on the slightly raised platform of the fashionable room where his lectures were given. Not a chair was empty. Macheson, as he entered, gazed long and steadily into those rows of tired, distinguished-looking faces, and felt in the atmosphere the delicate wave of perfume shaken from their clothes—the indescribable effect of femininity. There were men there, too, mostly as escorts, correctly dressed, bored, vacuous, from intent rather than lack of intelligence. Macheson himself, carelessly dressed from design, his fine figure ill-clad, with untidy boots and shock hair, felt his anger slowly rising as he marked the stir which his coming had caused. He to be the showman of such a crowd! It was maddening! That day he spoke to them without even the ghost of a smile parting his lips. He sought to create no sympathy. He cracked his whip with the cool deliberation of a Russian executioner.
... “I was asked the other day,” he remarked, “by an enterprising journalist, what made me decide to come here and deliver these lectures to you. I did not tell him. It is because I wantedto speak to the most ignorant class in Christendom. You are that class. If you have intelligence, you make it the servant of your whims. If you have imagination, you use it to enlarge the sphere of your vices. You are worse than the ostrich who buries his head in the sand—you prefer to go underground altogether....
“As you sit here—with every tick of your jewelled watches, out in the world of which in your sublime selfishness you know nothing, a child dies, a woman is given to sin, a man’s heart is broken. What do you care? What do you know of that infernal, that everlasting tragedy of sin and suffering that seethes around you? Why should you care? Your life is attuned to the most pagan philosophy which all the ages of sin have evolved. You have sunk so low that you are content to sit and listen to the story of your ignominy....”
What fascination was it that kept them in their places? Holderness, who was sitting in the last row, fully expected to see them leave their seats and stream out; Macheson himself would not have been surprised. His voice had no particular charm, his words were simple words of abuse, he attempted no rhetorical flourishes, nor any of the tricks of oratory. He stood there like a disgusted schoolmaster lecturing a rebellious and backward school. Holderness, when he saw that no one left, chuckled to himself. Macheson, aware that his powers of invective were spent, suddenly changed his tone.
Consciously or unconsciously, he told them, every one was seeking to fashion his life according to some hidden philosophy, some unrealized ideal.With religion, as it was commonly understood, he had, in that place at any rate, nothing to do. Even the selfish drifting down the stream of idle pleasures, which constituted life for most of them, was the passive acceptance in their consciousness of the old “fainéant” philosophy of “laissez faire.” Had they any idea of the magnificent stimulus which work could give to the emptiest life! For health’s sake alone, they were willing sometimes to step out of the rut of their easy-going existence, to discipline their bodies at foreign watering-places, to take up courses of physical exercises, as prescribed by the fashionable crank of the moment. What they would do for their bodies, why should they not try for their souls! The one was surely as near decay as the other—the care of it, if only they would realize it, was ten thousand times more important! He had called them, perhaps, many hard names. There was one he could not call them. He could not call them cowards. On the contrary, he thought them the bravest people he had ever known, to live the lives they did, and await the end with the equanimity they showed. The equivalent of Hell, whatever it might be, had evidently no terrors for them....
He concluded his address abruptly, as his custom was, a few minutes later, and turned at once to leave the platform. But this afternoon an unexpected incident occurred. A man from the middle of the audience rose up and called to him by name.
Macheson, surprised, paused and turned round. It was Deyes who stood there, immaculately dressed in morning clothes, his long face pale as ever, his manner absolutely and entirely composed. He wasswinging his eyeglass by its narrow black ribbon, and leaning a little forward.
“Sir,” he said, once more addressing Macheson, “as one of the audience whose shortcomings have so—er—profoundly impressed you, may I take the liberty of asking you a question? I ask it of you publicly because I imagine that there are many others here besides myself to whom your answer may prove interesting.”
Macheson came slowly to the front of the platform.
“Ask your question, sir, by all means,” he said.
Deyes bowed.
“You remind me, if I may be permitted to say so,” he continued, “of the prophet who went about with sackcloth and ashes on his head, crying ‘Woe! woe! woe!’ but who was either unable or unwilling to suggest any means by which that doleful cry might be replaced by one of more cheerful import. In plain words, sir, according to your lights—what must we do to be saved?”
There was a murmur of interest amongst the audience. There were many upon whom Macheson’s stinging words and direct denunciation had left their mark. They sat up eagerly and waited for his answer. He came to the edge of the platform and looked thoughtfully into their faces.
“In this city,” he said, “it should not be necessary for any one to ask that question. My answer may seem trite and hackneyed. Yet if you will accept it, you may come to the truth. Take a hansom cab, and drive as far, say, as Whitechapel. Walk—in any direction—for half a mile. Look into the faces of the men, the women and the children.Then go home and think. You will say at first nothing can be done for these people. They have dropped down too low, they have lost their humanity, they only justify the natural law of the survival of the fittest. Think again! A hemisphere may divide the East and the West of this great city; but these are human beings as you are a human being, they are your brothers and your sisters. Consider for a moment this natural law of yours. It is based upon the principle of the see-saw. Those who are down, are down because the others are up. Those men are beasts, those women are unsexed, those children are growing up with dirt upon their bodies and sin in their hearts, because you others are what you are. Because! Consider that. Consider it well, and take up your responsibility. They die that you may flourish! Do you think that the see-saw will be always one way? A revolution in this world, or justice in the next! Which would you rather face?”
Deyes bowed slightly.
“You have given me an answer, sir, for which I thank you,” he answered. “But you must allow me to remind you of the great stream of gold which flows all the while from the West to the East. Hospitals, mission houses, orphanages, colonial farms—are we to have no credit for these?”
“Very little,” Macheson answered, “for you give of your superfluity. Charity has little to do with the cheque-book. Besides, you must remember this. I am not here to-day to plead the cause of the East. I am here to talk to you of your own lives. I represent, if you are pleased to have itso, the Sandow of your spiritual body. I ask you to submit your souls to my treatment, as the professor of physical culture would ask for your bodies. This is not a matter of religion at all. It is a matter, if you choose to call it so, of philosophy. Your souls need exercise. You need a course of thinking and working for the good of some one else—not for your own benefit. Give up one sin in your life, and replace it with a whole-hearted effort to rescue one unfortunate person from sin and despair, and you will gain what I understand to be the desire of all of you—a new pleasure. Briefly, for your own sakes, from your own point of view, it is a personal charity which I am advocating, as distinguished from the charity of the cheque-book.”
“One more question, Mr. Macheson,” Deyes continued quietly. “Where do we find the lost souls—I mean upon what principle of selection do we work?”
“There are many excellent institutions through which you can come into touch with them,” Macheson answered. “You can hear of these through the clergyman of your own parish, or the Bishop of London.”
Deyes thanked him and sat down. The lecture was over, and the people slowly dispersed. Macheson passed into the room at the back of the platform. Drayton, who was waiting for him there, pushed over a box of cigarettes. He knew that Macheson loved to smoke directly he had finished talking.
“Macheson,” he said solemnly, “you’re a marvel. Why, in my country, I guess they’d come and scratchyour eyes out before they’d stand plain speaking like that.”
Macheson was looking away into vacancy.
“I wonder,” he said softly, “if it does any good—any real good?”
Drayton, who was looking through a cash-book with gleaming eyes, opened his lips to speak, but thought better of it. He pointed instead towards the table.
The usual pile of notes was there—all the latest novelties in fancy stationery were represented there, crested, coroneted, scented. Macheson began to tear them open and as rapidly destroy them with a little gesture of disgust. They were mostly of the same type. The girls were all so anxious to do a little good, so tired of the wearisome round of Society, wouldn’t Mr. Macheson be very kind and give them some personal advice? Couldn’t he meet them somewhere, or might they come and see him? They did hope that he wouldn’t think them bold! It would be such a help to talk to him. The married ladies were bolder still. They felt the same craving for advice, but their proposals were more definite. Mr. Macheson must come and see them! They would be quite alone (underlined), there should be no one else there to worry him. Then followed times and addresses. One lady, whose coronet and motto were familiar to him, would take no denial. He was to come that afternoon. Her carriage was waiting at the side door and would bring him directly to her. Macheson looked up quickly. Through the window he could see a small brougham, with cockaded footman and coachman, waiting outside. He swept all the notes into the flames.
“For Heaven’s sake, go and send that carriage away, Drayton,” he begged.
Drayton laughed and disappeared. On the table there remained one more note—a square envelope, less conspicuous perhaps than the others, but more distinguished-looking. Macheson broke the seal. On half a sheet of paper were scrawled these few lines only.
“For Heaven’s sake, come to me at once.—Wilhelmina.”
“For Heaven’s sake, come to me at once.—Wilhelmina.”
He started and caught up his hat. In a few minutes he was on his way to Berkeley Square.
Over a marble-topped table in a retired corner of the café Stephen Hurd listened to the story of the man whom Macheson had delivered over to him, and the longer he listened the more interesting he found it. When at last all was told, the table itself was strewn with cigarette stumps, and their glasses had three times been replenished. The faces of both men were flushed.
“You see,” the little man said, glancing for a moment at his yellow-stained fingers, and then beginning to puff furiously at a fresh cigarette, “the time is of the shortest. Jean le Roi—well, his time is up! He may be here to-morrow, the next day, who can tell? And when he comes he will kill her! That is certain!”
Hurd shuddered and drank some of his whisky.
“Look here,” he said, “we mustn’t have that. Revenge, of course, he will want—but there are other ways.”
The little man blinked his eyes.
“You do not know Jean le Roi,” he said. “To him it is a pastime to kill! For myself I do not know the passions as he would know them. Wherethere was money I would not kill. It would be as you have said—there are other ways. But Jean le Roi is different.”
“Jean le Roi, as you call him, must be tamed, then,” Hurd said. “You speak of money. I have been her agent, so I can tell you. What do you think might be the income of this lady?”
Johnson was deeply interested. He leaned across the table. His little black eyes were alight with cupidity.
“Who can tell?” he murmured. “It might be two, perhaps three, four thousand English pounds a year. Eh?”
Stephen Hurd laughed scornfully.
“Four thousand a year!” he repeated. “Bah! She fooled you all to some purpose! Her income is—listen—is forty thousand pounds a year! You hear that, my friend? Forty thousand pounds a year!”
The little man’s face was a study in varying expressions. He leaned back in his chair, and then crouched forward over the table. His beady eyes were almost protruding, a spot of deeper colour, an ugly purple patch, burned upon his cheeks. The words seemed frozen upon his lips. Twice he opened his mouth to speak and said nothing.
Stephen Hurd took off his hat and placed it upon the table before him. His listener’s emotion was catching.
“Forty thousand pounds,” he said softly, “livres you call it! It is a great fortune. She has deceived you, too! You must make her pay for it.”
Johnson was recovering himself slowly. Hisvoice when he spoke shook, but it was with the dawn of a vicious anger!
“Yes!” he muttered, speaking as though to himself, “she has deceived us! She must pay! God, how she must pay!”
His fingers twitched upon the table. He was blinking rapidly.
“There is the money,” he said softly, “and there is Jean le Roi!”
It was a night of shocks for him. Again his eyes were dilated. He shrank back in his chair and clutched at Hurd’s sleeve.
“It is himself!” he whispered hoarsely. “It is Jean le Roi! God in Heaven, he will kill us!”
Johnson collapsed for a moment. In his face were all the evidences of an abject fear, and Stephen Hurd was in very nearly as evil a plight. The man who was threading his way through the tables towards them was alarming enough in his appearance and expression to have cowed braver men.
“Jean le Roi—he fears nothing—he cares for nothing, not even for me, his father,” Johnson muttered with chattering teeth. “If he feels like it he will kill us as we sit here.”
Hurd, who was facing the man, watched him with fascinated eyes. He was over six feet high, and magnificently formed. Notwithstanding his ready made clothes, fresh from a French tailor, his brown hat ludicrously too small and the blue stubble of a recently cropped beard, he was almost as impressively handsome as he was repulsive to look at. He walked with the grace of a savage animal in his native woods; there was something indeed not altogetherhuman in the gleam of his white teeth and stealthy, faultless movements. He came straight to where they sat, and his hand fell like a vice upon the shoulder of the shrinking elder man. It was further characteristic of this strange being that when he spoke there was no anger in his tone. His voice indeed was scarcely raised above a whisper.
“What are you doing here, old man?” he asked. “Why did you not meet me? Eh?”
“I will tell you, tell you everything, Jean,” Johnson answered. “Sit down here and drink with us. Everything shall be made quite clear to you. I came for your sake—to get money, Jean. Sit down, my boy.”
Jean le Roi sat down.
“I sit with you,” he said, “and I will drink with you, because I have no money to pay for myself. But we are not friends yet, old man! I will hear first what you have done. And who is this?”
His eyes flashed as he looked upon Hurd. Johnson interposed quickly.
“A friend, a good friend,” he exclaimed. “He will be of service to us, great service. Only a few minutes ago he told me something astounding, something for you also to hear, dear Jean. It is wonderful news.”
Jean le Roi interrupted.
“What I want to hear from you,” he said, in a soft, vicious whisper, “is why, when they let me out of that cursed place, you were not there with money and clothes for me, as I ordered. But for the poor faithful Annette, whom I did not desire to see, Imight have starved on the day of my release.Stop!——”he held up his hand as Johnson was on the point of pouring out a copious explanation, “order me brandy first. Tell them to bring me the bottle. Do not speak till I have drunk.”
They called a waiter and gave the order. They waited in an uneasy silence until it arrived. Jean le Roi drank at first sparingly, but his eyes rested lovingly upon the bottle.
“Now speak,” he commanded.
Johnson told his story with appropriate gestures.
“After it was all over,” he began rapidly, “and one saw that a rescue was impossible, I followed madame! It was a moment of fury, I thought. She will repent, she will pay for lawyers for his defence. So I hung about her hotel, only to find that she had left, stolen away. As you know, she did not appear at the trial! It was a bargain with the police that they should not call her if she betrayed you! She escaped me, Jean, and as you know, I had no money. All, every penny had been spent on your clothes and your horse and carriage, to make you a gentleman.”
Jean le Roi extended his hands. “Money well spent indeed! Let the old man continue!”
“She escaped me, Jean, and it was many months before I found a clue on an old label—just the words ‘Thorpe, England.’ So I wrote there, and the letter did not come back as the others. I waited a little time and I wrote again, this time to receive an answer! It was a stern, angry letter from a man who called himself her father, and signed himself Stephen Hurd. He was what is called here anestate agent, and he had not very much money. He would not send one pound. He said that the marriage was illegal, and if one came to England he threatened the law! I wrote again—humbly, piteously. I spoke of your hardships. I told how all the time you raved of your dear wife, how you repented your madness—how it was for love of her only that you had committed such a crime! There came no answer. I forwarded the letters which you had written to her—I begged, oh! how I begged for just a little money for the small luxuries, the good wine, the tobacco, the newspapers. They sent nothing!”
Jean le Roi drew in his breath with a gasp.
“Oh!” he muttered. “So they sent nothing!”
“Not one sou, Jean—not one sou! And all the while the time of your release was drawing near. What could I do! Well, I raised the money. How I will not tell you, my boy, but I went on a fruit boat from Havre to Southampton, and from there down to Thorpe. I saw the old man Stephen Hurd. It was on a Sunday night that I arrived, and I found him alone. He was as hard, Jean, as his letters. When I pressed him he ordered me out of the house. I would not go. I said that I would see my daughter-in-law. I would remain until I saw her, I said, even if I slept under a hedge. Again he ordered me out of the house. I was firm; I refused. Then he struck me, there was a quarrel, and he fell. I thought at first that he was unconscious, but when I examined him—he was dead.”
Johnson finished his speech in a stealthy whisper,leaning half way across the table. Jean le Roi poured himself out more brandy, but he was unmoved.
“The old trick, I suppose,” he remarked carelessly, making a swift movement with his hand.
“No! no!” Johnson declared earnestly. “I used no weapon! It was an accident, a pure accident. Remember that this is his son. He would not be here if it was not quite certain that it was accident—and accident alone.”
Jean le Roi lifted his head and gazed curiously at Stephen Hurd.
“So you,” he murmured, “are my brother-in-law?”
Johnson leaned once more across the table.
“It is where you, where we all have been deceived,” he said impressively. “Listen. She was never the daughter of Stephen Hurd at all. It was a schoolgirl’s freak to take that name, when she was eluding her chaperon and amusing herself in Paris. Stephen Hurd was her servant.”
“And she?” Jean le Roi asked softly.
Johnson spread out his yellow-stained fingers. His voice trembled, his eyes shone. It was like speaking of something holy.
“She is a great lady,” he said. “She goes to Court, she has houses, and horses and carriages, troops of servants, a yacht, motor-cars. She is rich—fabulously rich, Jean. She has—listen—forty thousand pounds, livres mind, a year.”
“More than that,” Hurd muttered.
“More than that,” Johnson repeated.
Jean le Roi was no longer unmoved. He drew along breath and his teeth seemed to come together with a click.
“There is no mistake?” he asked softly. “An income of forty thousand pounds?”
“There is no mistake,” Stephen Hurd assured him. “I will answer for that.”
Jean le Roi’s face was white and vicious. Yet for a time he said nothing and his two companions watched him anxiously. There was something uncanny about his silence.
“It is a great deal of money,” he said at last. “Often in prison I was hungry, I had no cigarettes. I was forced to drink water. A great deal of money! And she is my wife! Half of what she has belongs to me! That is the law, eh?”
“I don’t know about that,” Stephen Hurd said, “but she has certainly treated you very badly.”
Jean le Roi struck the table with his fist, not violently, and yet somehow with a force which made itself felt.
“It is over—that!” he said. “I am a man who knows when he has been ill-treated; who knows, too, what it is that a wife owes to her husband. Tell me where it is that she lives, old man. Write it down.”
Johnson drew from his pocket a stump of pencil and the back of an envelope. He wrote slowly and with care. Jean le Roi extended the palm of his hand to Stephen Hurd.
“He will warn madame, perhaps,” he suggested. “Why does he sit here with us, this young man? Is it that he, too, wants money?”
“No! no! my son,” Johnson intervened hastily.“Madame treated him badly. He would not be sorry to see her humiliated.”
Jean le Roi smiled.
“It shall be done,” he promised. “But from one of you I must have money. I cannot present myself before my wife so altered. No one would believe my story.”
“How much do you want?” Hurd asked uneasily.
“Twenty pounds English,” Jean le Roi answered. “I cannot resume my appearance as a gentleman on less.”
Hurd took out some notes.
“I will lend you that,” he said slowly.
Jean le Roi’s long fingers took firm hold of the notes. He buttoned them up in his pocket, slapped the place where they were, and poured out more brandy.
“Now,” he said, “I am prepared. Madame shall discover what it means to deceive her fond husband!”
Hurd moved in his seat uneasily. There was something ominous in the villainous curve of the man’s lips—in the utter absence of any direct threats. What was it that was passing in his mind?
“You are not thinking of any violence?” he asked. “Remember she is a proud woman, and you cannot punish her more than by simply appearing and declaring yourself.”
Jean le Roi smiled.
“We shall see,” he declared.
Wilhelmina was resting—and looked in need of it. All the delicate colours and fluttering ribbons of her Doucet dressing-jacket could not hide the pallor of her cheeks, or the hollows under her eyes. Macheson, who came in sternly enough, felt himself moved to a troublous pity. Nothing seemed left of the great lady—or the “poseuse”!
“You are kind,” she murmured, “to come so soon. Sit down, please!”
“Is there any trouble?” he asked. “You look worried.”
She laughed unnaturally.
“No wonder,” she answered. “For five years I have been living more or less on the brink of a volcano. From what I have heard, I fancy that an eruption is about due.”
“Tell me about it,” he asked.
She passed him a telegram. It was from Paris, and it was signed Gilbert Deyes.
“Jean le Roi was free yesterday. Left immediately for England.”
Macheson looked up. He did not understand.
“And who,” he asked, “is Jean le Roi?”
She looked him in the eyes.
“My husband,” she told him quietly. “At least that is what I suppose the law would say that he was.”
Macheson had been prepared for something surprising, but not for this. He looked at her incredulously. He found himself aimlessly repeating her words.
“Your husband?”
“I was married five years ago in Paris,” she said in a dull, emotionless tone. “No one over here knows about it, or has seen him, because he has been in prison all the time. It was I who sent him there.”
“I can’t believe this,” he said, in a low tone. “It is too amazing.”
Then a light broke in upon him and he began to understand.
“He is in England now,” she said, “and I am afraid.”
“Jean le Roi?” he muttered.
“King of the Apaches,” she answered bitterly. “‘The greatest rogue in Paris,’ they said, when they sentenced him.”
“Sentenced him!” he repeated, bewildered.
“He has been in prison since the day we were married,” she continued. “It was I who sent him there.”
He bowed his head. He felt that it was not right to look at her. An infinite wave of tenderness swept through his whole being. He was ashamed of his past thoughts of her, of his hastyjudgments. All the time she had been carrying this in her bosom. Her very pride seemed to him now magnificent. He felt suddenly like a querulous child.
“What can I do to help you?” he asked softly.
She came a little nearer to him.
“I am afraid,” she said, dropping her voice almost to a whisper. “Ever since I heard the story of his life, as it was told in court, I have been afraid. When he was taken, he swore to be revenged. For the last twenty-four hours I have felt somehow that he was near! Read this!”
She passed him a letter. The notepaper was thick and expensive, and headed by a small coronet.