In a large room overlooking St. James's Square a man sat writing. In the shaded light his face showed haggard, and his eyes gleamed with the brilliancy of one whose blood is lit with a fever.
The clocks had just struck nine when he paused in his work, and crossing to the French windows, which opened on a little terrace, looked out at the darkened square. The restless music of London's life played on his tired pulses. He heard the purring of limousines gliding into Pall Mall, and the vibrato of taxi-cabs whipped into action by the piercing blast of club-porters' whistles. The noise of horses' hoofs on the pavement echoed among the roof-tops of the houses, and beneath those outstanding sounds was the quiet staccato of endless passing feet, losing itself in the murmur of the November wind as it searched among the dead leaves lying in the little park.
He had remained there only a few minutes, when, as though he had lost too much time already, the writer returned to the table and resumed his pen.
There was a knock at the door, and he looked up with a start. 'Come in,' he said; and a man-servant entered.
'Will you be wanting anything, Mr. Selwyn?'
'No, Smith.'
'You haven't been out to dinner, sir.'
'I am not hungry.'
'Better let me make you a cup of tea with some toast, and perhaps boil an egg.'
'N—no, thanks, Smith. Well, perhaps you might make some coffee, with a little buttered toast, and just leave them here.'
'Very good, sir.'
Although less than a year had elapsed since Austin Selwyn had first dined at Lady Durwent's home, experience, which is more cruel than time, had marked him as a decade of ordinary life could not have done. His mind had been subjected to a burning ordeal since summer, and his drawn features and shadowed eyes showed the signs of inward conflict.
As he had said of himself, all his previous experiences and education were but a novitiate in preparation for the great moment when truth challenged his consciousness and illuminated a path for him to follow. From an intellectual dilettante, a connoisseur of the many fruits which grace life's highway, he had become a single-purposed man aflame with burning idealism. From the sources of heredity the spirit of the Netherlands fighting against the yoke of Spain, and the instinct of revolt which lies in every Celtic breast, flowed and mingled with his own newly awakened passion for world-freedom.
He had left Roselawn with a formal good-bye taken of the whole family together. He had avoided the eyes of Elise, and she had made no attempt to alter the impersonal nature of the parting. Reaching London, he had been offered these rooms in St. James's Square by an American, resident in London, whose business compelled him to go to New York for an indefinite period. As Selwyn felt the need for absolute aloofness, he had gladly accepted.
Hardly waiting to unpack his 'grips,' he at once began his battle of the written word, his crusade against the origin and the fruits of Ignorance as shown by the war.
Always a writer of sure technique and facile vocabulary, he let the intensity of his spirit focus on the subject. He knew that to make his voice heard above the clamour of war his language must have the transcendent quality of inspiration. No composer searching for themotifof a great moving theme ever approached his instrument with deeper emotional artistry than Selwyn brought to bear on the language which was to ring out his message.
He felt that words were potential jewels which, when once the rays of his mind had played upon them, would be lit with the fire of magic. Words of destiny like blood-hued rubies; words fraught with ominous opal warning; words that glittered with the biting brilliance of diamonds—they were his to link together with thought: he was their master. The necromancy of language was his to conjure with.
Day after day, and into the long hours of the night, he wrote, destroying pages as he read them, refining, changing, rewriting, always striving for results which would show no signs of construction, but only breathe with life. When fatigue sounded its warnings he disregarded them, and spurred himself on with the thought of the thousands dying daily at the front. He saw no one. His former London acquaintances were engrossed in affairs of war, and made no attempt to seek him out. It was his custom to have breakfast and luncheon in his rooms; at dinner-time he would traverse the streets until he found some little-used restaurant, and then, selecting a deserted corner, would eat his meal alone. The walk there and back to his rooms was the only exercise he permitted himself, except occasionally, when, late at night, cramped fingers and bloodshot eyes would no longer obey the lashing of the will, and he would venture out for an hour's stroll through night-shrouded London.
Prowling about from square to square, through deserted alleys, and by slumbering parks, he would feel the cumulative destinies of the millions of sleeping souls bearing on his consciousness. Solitude in a metropolis, unlike that of the country, which merely lulls or tends to the purifying of thought, intensifies the moods of a man like strong liquor. He who lives alone among millions courts all the mad fancies that his brain is heir to. Insanity, perversion, incoherent idealism, fanaticism—these are the offspring of unnatural detachment from one's fellows, and in turn give birth to the black moods of revolt against each and every thing that is.
Living as he did in a sort of ecstasy by reason of his suddenly realised world-citizenship, Selwyn's incipient feeling of godlikeness developed still further under the spell of isolation. The fact that he trod the realm of thought, while all around him men and women grappled with the problems of war, only accentuated this condition of mind.
He suffered—that was true. He missed the companionship of kindred spirits, and sometimes his memory would play truant, recalling the pleasant glitter of sterling silver and conversational electroplate which accompanied his former London dinner-parties. He did not dare to think of Elise at all. She was the intoxicating climax of his past life. She was the blending of his life's melodies into a brief, tender nocturne of love that his heart would never hear again.
In place of all that, he had the spiritual vanity of martyrdom. Few voyagers but have felt the exultation of mid-ocean: that desire of the soul to leap the distance to the skies and claim its kinship to the stars. It comes to men on the Canadian prairies; it throbs in one's blood when the summit of a mountain is reached; it is borne on the wings of the twilight harmonies in a lonely forest.
Unknown to himself, perhaps, that was Selwyn's compensation. From his hermit's seclusion in the great metropolis he felt the thrill of one who challenges the gods.
His man-servant had hardly left the room when the bell in the front hall rang, and Smith reappeared to announce a visitor.
'Who is it?' asked Selwyn.
'A Mr. Watson, sir.'
'I wonder if it can be Doug Watson of Cambridge. Bring him right up.'
A moment later a young man entered the cosily shaded room, and they met with the hearty hand-clasp and the sincere good-feeling which come when a man who is abroad meets a friend who is a fellow-countryman. The new-comer was younger than Selwyn, and though of lighter complexion and hair, was unmistakably American in appearance. Like the author, he was clean-shaven, but there was more repose in the features. His face was broad, and in the poise of his head and thick neck there was the clear impression of great physical and mental driving-power. Although still a student, the mark of the engineer was strongly stamped on him. He was of the type that spans a great river with a bridge; that glories in the overcoming of obstacles by sheer domination of will.
'Well, Doug,' said Selwyn as they drew their chairs up to the fire, 'when did you leave Cambridge?'
'Last week,' said the other. 'I couldn't stand it any longer with every one gone. I don't think that one of the bunch I played around with is there now.'
'That was a bully week-end I had with you at the university.'
'We sure had a good time, didn't we?'
'But how did you know I was here?'
'Jarvis sent me a note that he and his wife were running hack to NewYork, and that you were taking his rooms. Damn fine place, isn't it?There's a woman's touch all over here. But you're looking preciousseedy.'
'I feel all right.'
'You don't look it.'
'I have been very busy, Doug.'
'Glad to hear it. Putting over a killing in the literature game?'
'The biggest thing yet,' said Selwyn, opening a drawer and searching for the cigars. 'I am making a sincere attempt to write something which will sway people. Have one of these?'
'Thanks. I guess I'd better smoke one while I have the chance. It might get the sergeant-major's goat if he found a buck private smoking half-crown cigars.'
'You haven't joined the army?'
'Not yet; but I shall to-morrow. You can do it by graft, old boy. For three weeks I've courted a colonel's daughter so as to get next to the old man, and to-morrow I receive my reward. I am to become a full-fledged Tommy Atkins.'
'And the daughter?'
The younger man grinned and cut off the end of his cigar with a pocket-knife. 'Can you see the colonel's daughter "walking out" with a Tommy? My dear Austin, patriotism excuses much, but the social code must be maintained. I'd render that in Latin if I wasn't so rusty on languages. What are the chances of your coming along with me tomorrow?'
Selwyn reached for an ash-tray and matches.
'America is neutral,' he said quietly.
'America is not neutral,' replied Watson with a decisiveness that one would hardly have suspected to lie beneath the calm exterior and the veneer of good-breeding polished by Cambridge associations—a veneer that made his occasional lapses into crudity of language seem oddly out of place. 'The German-Americans, the Irish-Americans, the Jewish-Americans, the God-knows-who-else-Americans may be neutral, but the America of Washington and Lincoln, the America of Lee and Grant, isn't neutral. Not by a long sight.'
'Doug,' said Selwyn reproachfully, 'you are the last man I thought would be caught by this flag-waving, drum-beating stuff.'
The younger man's brows puckered as he looked through the haze of tobacco-smoke at his host. 'Austin,' he said abruptly, 'you've changed.'
'Yes,' said Selwyn thoughtfully. He was going to say more, but, changing his mind, remained silent.
'I thought you looked different,' went on Watson. 'What's up?'
Selwyn's eyes narrowed and his lips and jaw stiffened resolutely. 'I am writing,' he said, enunciating each word distinctly, 'in the hope of arousing the slumbering conscience of the world against this war.'
'Canute the Second,' commented Watson dryly.
'Doug,' said the other, frowning, 'I deserve better than sarcasm from you.'
'I'm sorry,' said Watson with a laugh, 'but I can't just get this new Austin Selwyn right off the bat. Of course war is wrong—any boob knows that—but what can you hope to do with writing about it?'
Selwyn rose to his feet, and thrusting his hands in his pockets, strode up and down the room. 'What can I hope to do?' he said. 'Remove the scales from the eyes of the blind; recall to life the spirit of universal brotherhood; destroy ignorance instead of destroying life.'
'Some platform!' said Watson, making rings of tobacco-smoke.
'Take yourself, for example,' said Selwyn vehemently, pausing in his walk and pointing towards the younger man. 'You are a man of international experience and university education. On the surface you have the attributes of a man of thought. You are one that the world has a right to expect will take the correct stand on great human questions. Yet the moment the barriers are down and jingoism floods the earth you give up without a struggle and join the great mass of the world's driftwood.'
'H'm,' mused Watson, 'so that's your tack, eh?'
'I tell you, Doug, you have no right to fight in this war.'
'Thanks.'
'You should have the courage to keep out of it. Even assuming that Germany is wholly in the wrong and Britain completely in the right, can't you see that when the Kaiser and his advisers said, "Let there be war," you and I and the millions of men in every country who believe in justice and Christianity should have risen up and answered, "You shall not have war"?'
Watson rose to his feet, and crossing to the fireplace, flicked the ash from his cigar, and leaned lazily against the stone shelf. 'You're a member of the Royal Automobile Club, aren't you?' he drawled.
Selwyn nodded and resumed his nervous walk.
'Take my advice, Austin. Every time you feel that kind of dope mounting to your head, trot across the road to the club and have a swim in their tank. You'd be surprised how it would bring you down to earth.'
'You talk like a child,' said Selwyn angrily.
'Well,' retorted the other, 'that's better than talking like an old woman.'
With an impatient movement of his shoulders the younger man left the fireplace, and walking over to the piano, picked up a Hawaiian ukulele which had been left there by Mrs. Jarvis. Getting the pitch from the piano, while Selwyn continued his restless march up and down the room, he studiously occupied himself with tuning the instrument, then strummed a few chords with his fingers.
'Sorry not to fit in with your peace-brother-peace stuff,' said Watson amiably, strumming a recent rag-time melody with a certain amount of dexterity, 'but I always played you for a real white man at college.'
'Doug,' said Selwyn, stopping his walk and sitting on the arm of a big easy-chair, 'if there is a coward in this room, it's you.'
The haunting music of the ukulele was the only response.
'Here you are at Cambridge—an American,' went on Selwyn. 'Just because the set you know enlists with an accompaniment of tub-thumping'——
'That isn't the way the English do things,' said Watson without pausing in his playing.
'My dear fellow,' said Selwyn, 'don't let the pose of modesty fool you over here. They profess to hold up their hands in horror when we get hold of megaphones and roar about "The Star-Spangled Banner," but what of the phrases, "The Empire on which the sun never sets," "What we have we'll hold," "Mistress of the Seas"? Is there so much difference between the Kaiser's "Ich und Gott" and the Englishman's "God of our far-flung battle-line"? Jingoism! We're amateurs in America compared with the British—and you're caught by it all.'
'Nothing of the sort,' said Watson, putting down the ukulele. 'All I know is that Germany runs amuck and gives a mighty good imitation of hell let loose. I am not discounting the wonderful bravery of France and Belgium, but you know that the hope of everything lies right in this country here. Well, that's good enough for me. I'm a hundred per cent. American, but right now I'm willing to throw over my citizenship in the United States and join this Empire that's got the guts to go to war.'
'Listen, Doug,' said Selwyn, moving over to the younger man and placing his hands on his shoulders; 'can't you see that Germany is not the menace? She is only a symptom of it. War, not Germany, is the real enemy. I admire your pluck: my regret is that you are so blind. The whole world is turning murder loose; it is prostituting Christian civilisation to the war-lust—and you imagine that by slaughter Right may prevail. The tragic fallacy of the ages has been that men, instead of destroying evil, have destroyed each other. If every criminal in the world were executed, would crime end? Then, do you think the annihilation of this or that army will abolish war?'
'I haven't your gift of plausible argument,' said Watson, 'and I suppose that theoretically you are sound in everything you say. Yet, instinctively, I know that I am doing the right thing.'
'A woman's reasoning, Doug.' Selwyn relit his cigar, which had gone out. 'For a few days after the outbreak of war I will admit that I doubted, myself, and wondered if, after all, there was a universal heart-beat. Then came the news of the silent march of those thousands of women down Fifth Avenue, marching to the beat of muffled drums as a protest against war—not against Germany—higher than that. It was a symbol that the cry of Rachel for her children still rings through the centuries. It was the heart of America's women calling to the mothers of France, Germany, and Britain against this butchery of their sons.'
Selwyn sank into a chair, and a look of weariness succeeded the momentary flush of excitement.
'That ended my last doubt,' he went on quietly. 'I knew then that if I could summon the necessary language to express the vision I saw, my message would sound clear above the guns. I completed three articles—"A Fool There Was," "When Hell Laughed," and "Gods of Jingoism." I gave them to my London agent, but you would have thought they held germs of disease. He brought them back to me, and said that no one would dare to publish them in England. In other words, the English couldn't stand the truth. I sent them on to New York. This is my agent's reply.'
He took a letter from a file on the table and handed it to his guest.'Read it,' he said.
With an inscrutable smile the Cambridge-American looked at the paper and read:
'NEW YORK,10th October 1914.
DEAR MR. SELWYN,—You will be pleased to know that I have succeeded in placing your articles "When Hell Laughed," "A Fool There Was," and "Gods of Jingoism" with a prominent newspaper syndicate. The price paid was $800 each, and I herewith remit my cheque for $2160, having deducted the usual commission. I have every reason to believe that any further articles you send will meet with a ready market, especially if they follow along the same lines of exposing the utter futility of war. As a matter of fact, this syndicate is prepared to pay even a higher price if these articles, which will be published all over the United States, meet with the approval they confidently expect.
'Assuring you of my desire to be of service to you, I remain, yours very sincerely,
'Very nice, too,' murmured Watson at the conclusion of the letter.'Who says that high ideals don't pay?'
'What do you mean?' said Selwyn sternly. The younger man got up from his chair and looked at his watch. 'Don't get shirty,' he said. 'I was only thinking that 800 per is a fairly healthy figure for that dope.'
'I don't give a damn for the money,' said Selwyn hotly, 'except that it shows there is a demand in America for the truth. Britain has always been afraid to face facts. Thank God, America isn't.'
'Well,' said Watson with a slight yawn, 'it's quite obvious that we're as far apart as the poles on that question, so I think I'll cut along.'
'Stay and have a cup of coffee. There's some being made; it will be here in a minute.'
'No, thanks. To be brutally frank, Austin, the ozone around here is a little too rarefied for me. I'm going out to a cab-stand somewhere to have a sandwich and a cup of tea with any Cockney who hasn't joined the Citizenship of the World.'
With the shadows under his eyes more pronounced than before, but with the unchanging look of determination, Selwyn helped the younger man on with his coat, and handed him his hat and stick. 'I am sorry you won't stay,' he said calmly, 'for your abuse and sarcasm are nothing to me. When I took this step I foresaw the consequences, and, believe me, I have suffered so much already that the loss of another friend means very little.'
The powerfully built young American twirled his hat uncomfortably between his fingers. 'Look here, Austin,' he said vehemently, 'why in blazes can't you get all that hot air out of your system? Come on—meet me to-morrow, and we'll join up together. It'll be all kinds of experience, you'll get wagon-loads of copy, and when it's all over you'll feel like a man instead of a sissy.'
With a tired, patient smile Selwyn put out his hand. 'Good-night,Doug,' he said. 'I hope you come through all right.'
When he heard the door close downstairs as Watson went out, Selwyn re-entered the room. The light of the electric lamp glaring on his manuscript pained his eyes, and he turned it out, leaving the room in the dim light of the fire. The man-servant entered with a tray.
'Will you have the light on, sir?'
'No, thanks, Smith. Just leave the things on the table.'
'Thank you, sir. Good-night, sir.'
'Good-night, Smith.'
The room was strangely, awesomely quiet. There was no sound from the deserted square; only the windows shook a little in the breeze. He reached for the ukulele, and staring dreamily into the fire, picked softly at the strings until he found four notes that blended harmoniously.
The fire slowly faded from his gaze, and in its place, by memory's alchemy, came the vision ofherface—a changing vision, one moment mocking as when he first met her, turning to a look of pain as when she spoke of Dick, and then resolving into the wistful tenderness that had crept into her eyes that evening by the trout-stream—a tenderness that vanished before the expression of scorn she had shown that fateful August night.
The night stole wearily on, but still Selwyn sat in the shadowy darkness, occasionally strumming the one chord on the strings, like a worshipper keeping vigil at some heathen shrine and offering the incense of soft music.
One slushy night in December Selwyn was returning from a solitary dinner at a modest Holborn restaurant, when a damp sleet began to fall, making the sickly street-lamps darker still, and defying the protection of mufflers and heavy coats. With hat pulled over his eyes and hands immersed in the pockets of his coat, he made his way through the throng, while the raucous voices of news-venders cried out the latest tidings from the front.
To escape the proximity of the crowds and the nerve-shaking noises of traffic, he turned down a wide thoroughfare, and eventually emerged on Fleet Street. Again the seething discontent of rumbling omnibuses and hurrying crowds irritated him, and crossing to Bouverie Street, where Mr. Punch looks out on England with his genial satire, he followed its quiet channel until he reached the Thames.
In contrast to the throbbing arteries of Holborn and Fleet Street, the river soothed his nerves and lent tranquillity to his mind. Following the Embankment, which was shrouded in heavy darkness, he reached the spot where Cleopatra's Needle, which once looked on the majesty of ancient Egypt, stands, a sentinel of incongruity, on the edge of London's river. Giving way to a momentary whim, Selwyn paused, and finding a spot that was sheltered from the sleet, sat down and leaned against the monument.
In the masque of night he could just make out the sketchy forms of a river-barge and two steamers anchored a few yards out. From their masts he could see the dull glow of red where a meagre lamp was hung, and he heard the hoarse voice of a man calling out to some one across the river. As if in answer, the rattle of a chain came from the deck of some unseen craft, like a lonely felon in a floating prison.
The river's mood was so in keeping with his own that Selwyn's senses experienced a numbing pleasure; the ghostly mariners of the night, the motionless ships at their moorings, the eerie hissing of the sleet upon the water, combined to form a drug that left his eyelids heavy with drowsy contentment.
How long he had remained there he could not have stated, when from the steps beneath him, leading towards the water, he heard a man's slovenly voice.
'Are you going to stay the night here?'
As apparently the remark was intended for him, Selwyn leaned forward and peered in the direction from which the voice had come. At the foot of the dripping steps he could just make out a huddled figure.
'If you're putting up here,' went on the speaker, 'we had better pool resources. I've got a cape, and if you have a coat we can make a decent shift of it. Two sleep warmer than one on a night like this.'
In spite of the sluggish manner of speech, Selwyn could detect a faint intonation which bespoke a man of breeding. He tried to discern the features, but they were completely hidden beneath the pall of night.
'Well,' said the voice, 'are you deaf?'
'I am not staying here for the night,' answered Selwyn.
'Then why the devil didn't you say that before?' For a moment the fellow's voice was energised by a touch of brusqueness, but before the last words were finished it had lapsed into the dull heaviness of physical lethargy. 'Tell me,' said the stranger, after a silence of several minutes, 'how is the war going on?'
'You probably know as much as I.'
'Not likely. I've been beating back from China for three months in a more or less derelict tramp. Chased into every blessed little port, losing our way, and cruising for days without water—we were a fine family of blackguards, and no mistake. Grog could be had for the asking, and a scrap for less than that; but I'd as lief not ship on theNancy Hawkinsagain.'
Selwyn leaned back against the obelisk and speculated idly on the strange personality hidden in the dark recess of the descending stairs. It was not difficult to tell that, though he spoke of himself as a sailor, sailoring was not his calling. There was a subtle cadence of refinement in his voice, an arresting lilt on certain words, that remained on the air after the words had ended.
'Did the Germans get to Paris?'
'No,' said Selwyn; 'though they were very near it.'
'Good! How did our chaps do?'
'I believe they fought very bravely, but were pretty well wiped out.'
'I suppose so,' said the other quietly—'wiped out, eh? Tell me—did the Colonies throw in their lot with us?'
'All of them,' said Selwyn, 'even including South Africa.'
'What about Canada?'
'She has over thirty thousand men in England now, ready to cross.'
'Splendid!' muttered the fellow. 'So they're British after all, in spite of the Yankees beside them. . . . The cubs didn't leave the old mother to fight alone, eh? Jove! but it's something to be an Englishman today, isn't it?'
Selwyn made no response, but his brow contracted with the thought that even the flotsam, the dregs thrown up on the river's bank, were imbued with the overwhelming instinct of jingoism. He glanced up from the steps, and saw on either side of the obelisk a sphinx, woman-headed, with the body of a lioness, monuments to the memory of Cleopatra. How little had been accomplished by humanity since the first sphinx had gazed upon the sands of Egypt! It had seen the treachery and the lust of Antony, the slaughter of men by men led blindly to the carnage. . . . Was not the smile, perhaps, its hoarded knowledge of the futility of the ages?
'Can you give me a match?' asked the man from the steps. 'Everything on me is soaked. I'll come up if you have one, but I don't want to shift otherwise.'
'Don't bother,' said Selwyn, getting up and stamping his feet to restore their warmth. 'I'll bring you one, and then I'll have to move along.'
He produced a silver match-box, and feeling his way carefully down the slippery steps, handed it to the stranger. Acknowledging the action with a murmur of thanks, the fellow took it, and making a protection with his cape, struck a match to light his pipe. It flickered for a moment and flared up, illuminating his features grotesquely.
Selwyn uttered a sharp ejaculation of surprise and stepped back a pace.'Durwent!' he cried.
'Eh?' snapped the other, dropping the match on the wet stone, where it went out with a faint splutter. 'What's your game?'
'I could not see you before,' said the American quickly; 'but though I heard your voice only once, there was something about it I remembered.'
The Englishman struck a second match, and with a casual air of indifference lit his pipe.
'Thanks,' he said, handing the box to the American. Selwyn reached forward to take it, when suddenly his wrists were caught in a grip of steel.
'Damn you!' said Dick Durwent hotly, springing to his feet. 'Are you tracking me? I didn't come back to be caught like a rat. Are you a detective? If you are, by George! I'll drown you in the river.'
'Don't be a fool,' said Selwyn, writhing in pain with the other's torture.
'Who are you?'
'My name is Selwyn. I am an American; a friend of your mother and your sister.'
'Where have you seen me before?'
'At the Café Rouge—a year ago.' Beads of perspiration stood out on Selwyn's head, and his body was faint with the pain of his twisted wrists.
'You're not lying?' said Dick Durwent, slowly relaxing his grip, and peering into the American's eyes. 'No. I seem to remember you somewhere with Elise. I'm sorry.' He released the clutch completely, and resumed his seat on the steps. 'I hope I didn't hurt you.'
'No,' said Selwyn, rubbing each wrist in turn to help to restore the circulation.
Durwent laughed grimly. 'It's a wonder I didn't break something,' he said. 'Once more—I'm sorry. But you can understand the risk I am running in returning here with the police wanting me. They're not going to get me if I can help it.'
'Why didn't you stay away?'
'With the Old Country at war! Not likely. Do you think I should ever have gone if I had known what was going to happen?'
'What are your plans?'
'Fight,' said the other briefly. 'Somewhere—somehow. I'll get into a recruiting line about dawn to-morrow. . . . But—what can you tell me about Elise?'
'I have neither seen nor heard of her since August,' said Selwyn, wondering at the calm level of his own voice in spite of tumultuous heart-beats.
'Too bad. Then you don't know anything about the rest?'
'No. I'—— He paused awkwardly. 'I suppose you haven't heard about your brother?'
There was no response, but Selwyn could feel the Englishman's eyes steeled on his face. 'He was killed,' he went on slowly, 'last August.'
Still there was no sound from the younger son, now heir to his father's title and estates. For the first time Selwyn caught the ripple of the river's current eddying about the steps at the bottom. From the great bridges spanning the river there was the distant thunder of lumbering traffic.
'I understand that he died very bravely,' said the American in an attempt to ease the intensity of the silence.
'Yes,' muttered Durwent dreamily, 'he would. . . . So old Malcolm is dead. . . . Somehow, I always looked on his soldiering as a joke. I never thought that those fellows in the Regulars would ever really go to war. . . . Yet, when the time came, he was ready, and I was skulking off to China like a thief in the night.'
The Englishman's voice was so low that it seemed as if he were talking more to himself than to his listener.
'What happened to that swine?' he ejaculated suddenly. 'I mean the oneI almost killed. By any chance, did he die?'
'I saw in a paragraph last week,' said Selwyn, 'that he was out on crutches for the first time. The paper also commented on your complete disappearance.'
'I wish I had killed him,' said the young man grimly. 'If I ever get a chance I'll tell you about him. I was drunk at the time—that's what saved his life. If I had been sober I should have finished him. Well, it's a damp night, my friend, and I won't keep you any longer from a decent billet.'
'Look here, Durwent,' said Selwyn; 'come along to my rooms. You're soaked to the skin, and I could give you a change and a shakedown for the night.'
'Thanks very much; but I'm accustomed to this kind of thing.'
'You won't be seen,' urged Selwyn. 'I have accepted so much from your family that you would do me a kindness in coming.'
'Well, I must say I'm not married to this place. If you don't mind taking in a disreputable wharf-rat'——
'That's the idea,' said Selwyn, helping him to his feet. TheEnglishman shivered slightly.
'You haven't a flask, have you?' he queried. 'I didn't know how cold I was.'
'I haven't anything with me,' said the American; 'but I can give you a whisky and something to eat at my rooms.'
'Right! Thanks very much.'
Tucking the cape under his arm, and shaking his waterproof cap to clear it of water, Dick Durwent followed the American on to the Embankment, where the two sphinxes of Egypt squatted, silent sentinels.
To avoid the crowds as much as possible, the two men followed the Embankment, and had reached the Houses of Parliament, intending to make a detour into St. James's Square, when Selwyn felt a hand upon his shoulder. He turned quickly about, and Durwent moved off to one side to be out of the light of a lamp.
'Sweet son of liberty,' said the new-comer, 'how fares it?'
It was Johnston Smyth, more airily shabby than ever. Over his head he held an umbrella in such disrepair that the material hung from the ribs in shreds. A profuse black tie hid any sign of shirt, and both the legs of his trousers and the sleeves of his coat seemed to have shrunk considerably with the damp.
'How are you?' said Selwyn, shaking hands.
'Temperamentally on tap; artistically beyond question; gastronomically unsatisfied.' At this concise statement of his condition, Smyth took off his hat, gazed at it as if he had been previously unaware of its existence, and replaced it on the very back of his head.
'Things are not going too well, then?' said Selwyn, glancing anxiously towards Durwent, and wondering how he could get rid of the garrulous artist.
'Not going well?' Smyth straightened his right leg and relaxed the left one. 'In the last three weeks a pair of pyjamas, my other coat, two borrowed umbrellas, and a set of cuff-links have gone. If things go much better I shall have to live in a tub like Diogenes. But—do the honours, Selwyn.'
'I beg your pardon,' said the American. 'Mr—Mr. Sherwood,' he went on, taking the first name that came to his lips, 'allow me to introduce Mr. Johnston Smyth.'
'How are you?' said the artist, making an elaborate bow and seizing the other's hand.
'As you may have gathered from my costume and the ventilated condition of my umbrella, I am not in that state of funds which lends tranquillity to the mind and a glow of contentment to the bosom. Yet you see before you a man—if I may be permitted a sporting expression—who has set the pace to the artists of England. I am glad to know you. Our mutual friend from Old Glory has done himself proud.'
With which flourish Smyth left off shaking hands and closed his umbrella, immediately opening it and putting it up again. Dick Durwent replaced his hands in his pockets, and Selwyn heard his quivering breath as he shivered with cold.
'However,' went on the loquacious artist, 'though my art has been heralded as a triumph, though it has filled columns of the press, though my admirers can be found on every page of the directory, I can only say, like our ancient enemy across the Channel after Austerlitz, "Another such victory and I am ruined!" . . . Selwyn, shall we indulge in the erstwhile drop?'
'Have you a flask?' broke in Durwent, his dull eyes lighting greedily.
'I think not,' said Smyth, handing the umbrella to Selwyn, and carefully searching all his pockets. 'I am afraid my valet has neglected that essential part of a gentleman's wardrobe. But what do you say, gentlemen, to a short pilgrimage to Archibald's?'
'No, Smyth,' said the American, putting his hand in Durwent's arm.'For certain reasons, Mr. Sherwood'——
'Ha!' said Smyth, with a dramatic pose of his legs, 'Archibald is the soul of discretion. Compared to him, an Egyptian mummy is a pithy paragrapher.Mes amis, Archibald's is just across the bridge, and I can assure you that the Twilight Tinkle, in which I have the honour to have collaborated, is guaranteed to change the most elongated countenance of glum into a globular surface of blithesome joy.'
'No,' began Selwyn impatiently.
'Let us try it,' said Durwent eagerly. 'I think this chill has got into my blood. I'd give a lot for a shot of rum or brandy.'
'We can have anything in my rooms,' protested the American. 'You want to get your wet things off—and, besides, it's a risk going in there.'
'No risk—no risk,' said Durwent, laughing foolishly and rubbing his hands together.—'Where is this hole, Smyth?'
'Gentlemen,' said the artist, 'after the custom of these military days,I urge you "fall in."'
Getting in the centre and adjusting his hat at a precipitate angle on the extreme left of his head, Smyth took Dick Durwent's arm, and extending the other to Selwyn, marched the pair across the bridge, holding the absurd umbrella over each in turn as if it offered some real resistance to the scurvy downpour.
'This way, gentlemen,' said Smyth, leading them up an alley, across a court, and into a lane. 'Permit me to welcome you to Archibald's.'
They entered a dimly lit tavern, where a dozen or so men sat about the room at little tables. Instead of the usual pictures one sees in such places, pictures of dancers with expressive legs, and race-horses with expressive faces, the walls were hung with dusty signed portraits of authors, artists, and actors, most of whom had attained distinction during the previous half-century. Sir Henry Irving as Othello held the place of honour over the bar, with Garrick as hisvis-à-vison the opposite wall. The divine Sarah cast the spell of her eternal youth on all who gathered there; and Lewis Waller, with eyes intent on his sword-handle, seemed oblivious to the close proximity of Lily Langtry and Ellen Terry, those empresses of the dual realms of Beauty and Intelligence. Without any companion portrait, the puffy sensuality of Oscar Wilde held a prominent place. And between the spectacled face of Rudyard Kipling on one side and the author ofPeter Panon the other, Forbes-Robertson in the garb of the Melancholy Dane looked out with his fine nobility of countenance. The room was heavy with tobacco-smoke, which seemed to have been accumulating for years, and to have darkened the very beams of the ceiling. Over the floor a liberal coating of sawdust was sprinkled.
'Strange place, this,' whispered Johnston Smyth as they took a table in an unfrequented corner. 'It's an understood thing that the habitués of Archibald's are trailers in the race of life. If you have a fancy for human nature, gentlemen, this is the shop to come to. We've got some queer goods on the shelves—newspaper men with no newspapers to write for; authors that think out new plots every night and forget 'em by morning; playwrights that couldn't afford the pit in the Old Vic.—Do you see that old chap over there?'
'The little man,' said Selwyn, 'with the strange smile?'
'That's right. He's been writing a play now for twenty years, but hasn't had time to finish the last act. "There's no hurry," he says; "true art will not permit of haste"—and the joke of it is that he has a cough that'll give him his own curtain long before he ever writes it on his play. There he goes now.'
The old playwright had been seized with a paroxysm of coughing that took his meagre storehouse of breath. Weakly striking at his breast, he shook and quivered in the clutch of the thing, leaning back exhausted when it had passed, but never once losing the odd, whimsical smile.
'What about something to drink?' broke in Dick Durwent hurriedly, his eyes narrowing.
'Directly,' said Smyth, beckoning to the proprietor, a small man, who, in spite of his years and an oblong head undecorated by a single hair, appeared strangely fresh and unworried, as if he had been sleeping for fifty years in a cellar, and had just come up to view the attending changes.
'Archibald,' said Smyth, 'these are my friends the Duke of Arkansas andSir Plumtree Crabapple.'
The extraordinary little man smiled toothlessly and fingered his tray.
'Gentlemen,' said Smyth, 'name your brands.'
'Give me a double brandy,' said Durwent, blowing on his chilled fingers. 'Better make it two doubles in a large glass.'
'Soda, sir?' queried the proprietor in a high-pitched, tranquil voice.
'No,' said Durwent. 'You can bring a little water in a separate glass.'
'What is your pleasure, your Grace?' said Smyth, addressing the American. 'If you will do Archibald and myself the honour of trying the Twilight Tinkle, it would be an event of importance to us both.'
'Anything at all,' said Selwyn, sick at heart as he saw the nervous interlocked fingers of Dick Durwent pressed together with such intensity that they were left white and bloodless.
'This is a little slice of London's life,' said Smyth after he had given the order, crossing his left leg over the right, 'that you visitors would never find. You hear about the chaps who succeed and those who come a cropper, but these are the poor beggars who never had a chance to do either. There's genius in this room, gentlemen, but it's genius that started swimming up-stream with a millstone round its neck.'
With a profound shaking of the head, Smyth straightened his left leg, and after carefully taking in its shape with partially closed eyes, he replaced it on its fellow.
'How do they live?' queried Selwyn.
'Scavengers,' said Smyth laconically. 'Scavengers to success. Do you see that fellow there with the poached eyes and a four-days' beard?'
Selwyn looked to the spot indicated by Smyth, and saw a heavily built man with a pale, dissipated face, who was fingering an empty glass and leering cynically with some odd trend of thought. It was a face that gripped the attention, for written on it was talent—immense talent. It was a face that openly told its tale of massive, misdirected power of mentality, fuddled but not destroyed by alcohol.
'That's Laurence De Foe,' said Smyth; 'a queer case altogether. Barnardo boy—doesn't know who his parents were, but claims direct descent from Charlemagne. He's never really drunk, but no one ever saw him sober. If he wanted to, he could write better than any man in London. Last year, when the critics scored Welland's playSalvagefor its rotten climax, the author himself came to De Foe. All night they sat in his stuffy room, and when Welland went away he had a play that made his name for ever. I could tell you of two of the heavy artillery among the London leader-writers who always bring their big stuff to De Foe before they fire it. Last July, when the war was making its preliminary bow, and Hemphill was thundering those editorials of his that warned the Old Lion he would have to wake up and clean the jungle, Hemphill was simply the errand urchin. There's the man who wrote "To Arms, England!" one day after the Austrian note to Serbia. Hemphill got the credit and the money—but Laurence De Foe did it.'
Smyth's stream of narrative, which carried considerably less impedimenta of caricature and persiflage than was usual with him, came to an end with the arrival of two Twilight Tinkles and a generous-sized tumbler, more than half-full of brandy. After an elaborate search of his coat and trousers pockets to locate a five-pound note, Smyth was forced to allow Selwyn to pay for the refreshment, promising to knock him up before six next morning and repay him.
'Well, gentlemen,' said the conscientious artist, 'here's success to crime!'
Not waiting to honour the misanthropic toast, Dick Durwent had reached greedily for his glass, and poured its contents down his throat. With a heavy sigh of gratification, he leaned back in his chair, and the pallor of his cheeks showing beneath the weather-beaten surface of tan was flecked with patches of colour. For an instant only his eyes went yellow, as on the night at the Café Rouge; but the horrible glare died out, and was succeeded by the calm, blue tranquillity that had reigned before.
'By St. George!' said Smyth admiringly, 'but we have no amateur with us, Selwyn.'
The solitary figure of De Foe, who had been watching them, left his table, and lurching over to them, stood swaying unevenly.
'Bon soir, gentlemen,' he said, speaking with the deep sonorousness which comes of long saturation of the vocal cords with undiluted spirits, 'I think one or two of these faces are new to Archibald's. Am I right?'
'Yes, sir,' said Smyth, rising. 'Permit me, Mr. De Foe, to introduce'——
The writer stopped him with a slow, majestic movement of the hand. 'What care I who they are?' he said heavily. 'Names mean nothing—pretty labels on empty vessels. By what right do these gentlemen invade the sanctity of Archibald's?' He drew a chair near them and sat down sullenly, hanging his arm over the back. 'Do I see aright?' he queried thickly, opening his eyes with difficulty, and revealing their lustreless shade. 'There are three of you? Humph! The one I know—a clumsy dauber in a smudgy world.'
Smyth nodded delightedly to his companions to indicate that the compliment was intended for him.
'Or your friends,' went on the heavy resonant voice, 'one has the face of a dreamer. Come, sir, tell me of these dreams that are keeping you awake of nights. I am descended from Joseph by the line of Charlemagne, and I have it in my power to interpret them. Are you a writer?'
'I am,' said Selwyn calmly.
'You are not English. You haven't the leathery composure of our race.'
'I am an American.'
'I thought as much. You show the smug complacency of your nation. How dare you write, sir? What do you know of life?'
'We have learned something on that subject,' said Selwyn with a slight smile, 'even over there. You see, we have the mistakes of your older countries by which we can profit.'
'Bah!' said the other contemptuously. 'Cant—platitudes—words! Since when have either nations or individuals learned from the mistakes of others? Take you three. Which of you lies closest to life? Which of you has drunk experience to the dregs? The dauber?—You, author-dreamer, fired by the passion of a robin for a cherry?—No, neither of you. . . . That boy there—that youngster with the blue eyes of a girl; he is the one to teach—not you. He has the stamp of failure on him. Welcome, sir—the Prince of Failures welcomes you to Archibald's.'
He lurched forward and extended an unsteady hand to Dick Durwent, who rose slowly from his chair to take it. As Selwyn watched the two men standing with clasped hands over the table, he felt his heart-strings contract with pain.
Although separated by more than thirty years, there was a cruel similarity in the pair—in the half-bravado, half-timorous poise of the head; in the droop of sensuous lips; in the dark hair of each, matted over pallid foreheads. It was as if De Foe had summoned some black art to show the future held in the lap of the gods for the youngest Durwent.
'My boy,' said De Foe drunkenly, but with a moving tenderness, 'life has refused me much, but it has left me the power to read a man's soul in his eyes. The world brands you as a beaten man—and by men's standards it is right. But Laurence De Foe can read beyond those sea-blue eyes of yours; he it is who knows that behind them lies the gallant soul of a gallant gentleman. End your days in a gutter or on the gibbet—what matters it where the actor sleeps when the drama is done?—but to-night you have done great honour to the Prince of Failures by letting him grasp your hand.'
He slowly released the young man's hand, and turned wearily away as Durwent sank into his chair, his eyes staring into filmy space. Moving clumsily across the room, De Foe reached the bar and ordered a drink. When it had been poured out for him he turned about, and, leaning back lazily, looked around the room, with his eyes almost hidden by the close contraction of thick, black eyelashes. Such was the unique power of his personality that the disjointed threads of conversation at the various tables wound to a single end as if by a signal.
'Mes amis,' said De Foe—and his voice was low and sonorous—'I see before me many, like myself, who have left behind them futures where other men left only pasts. I see before me many, like myself, who had the gift of creating exquisite, soul-stirring works of art and literature. But because we were not content to be mere mouthy clowns, with pen or brush, jabbering about the play of life, we have paid the penalty for thinking we could be both subject and painter, author and actor. Because we chose to live, we have failed. The world goes on applauding its successful charlatans, its puny-visioned authors pouring their thoughts of sawdust in the reeking trough of popularity; while we, who know the taste of every bitter herb in all experience—we are thrust aside as failures. . . . But the gift of prophecy is on me to-night. There is a youth here who has a soul capable of scaling heights where none of us could follow—and a soul that could sink to depths that few of us have known. He is one of us, and he has chosen to fight for England. I can see the glory of his death written in his eyes. Gentlemen—you who are adrift with uncharted destinies—drink to the boy of the sea-blue eyes. May he die worthy of himself and of us.'
Throughout the dimly lit room every one rose to his feet, incoherently echoing the last words of the speaker. . . . Still with the filmy wistfulness about his eyes and a tired, weary smile, Dick Durwent sat in his chair beating a listless tattoo on the table with his hand.
From across the room came the sound of the old playwright's hacking cough.
Late that night Selwyn lay in his bed and listened to the softened tones of his two guests conversing in the living-room, Johnston Smyth having conceived such an attachment to his newly found friend that it was quite impossible to persuade him to leave. At his own request, blankets had been spread for Durwent on the floor, and after a hot bath he had rolled up for the night close to the fire. Johnston Smyth had also disdained the offer of a bed and ensconced himself on the couch, where he lay on his back and uttered vagrant philosophies on a vast number of subjects.
Wishing his strangely assorted guests a good night's repose, Selwyn had retired to his own room shortly after midnight, but, tired as he was, sleep refused to come. Like an etcher planning a series of scenes to be depicted, his mind summoned the various incidents of the night in a tedious cycle. The huddled figure at the foot of Cleopatra's steps; the fantastic airiness of Smyth with his shredded umbrella; the smoky atmosphere of Archibald's, with its strange gathering of derelicts; the two chance acquaintances spending the night in the adjoining room—what vivid, disjointed cameos they were! If there was such a thing as Fate, what meaning could there be in their having met? Or was their meeting as purposeless as that of which some poet had once written—two pieces of plank-wood touching in mid-ocean and drifting eternally?
It seemed that the low voices of the others had been going on for more than an hour when the sense of absolute stillness told Selwyn that he must have fallen asleep for an interval. He listened for their voices, but nothing could be heard except the sleet driven against the windows, and a far-away clock striking the hour of two.
Wondering if his visitors were comfortable, he rose from his bed, and creeping softly to the living-room door, opened it enough to look in.
Smyth's heavy breathing, not made any lighter by his having his head completely covered by bed-clothes, indicated that the futurist was in the realm of Morpheus. Durwent was curled up cosily by the fire, the blankets over him rising and subsiding slightly, conforming to his deep, tranquil breaths.
In the light of the fire, and with the warm glow of the skin caused by its heat and the refreshing bath, the pallor of dissipation had left the boy's face. In the musing curve of his full-blooded lips and in the corners of his closed eyes there was just the suggestion of a smile—the smile of a child tired from play. There was such refinement in the delicate nostrils dilating almost imperceptibly with the intake of each breath, and such spiritual smoothness in his brow contrasting with the glowing tincture of his face, that to the man looking down on him he seemed like a youth of some idyl, who could never have known the invasion of one sordid thought.
A feeling of infinite compassion came over Selwyn. He rebelled against the cruelty of vice that could fasten its claws on anything so fine, when there was so much human decay to feed upon.
The eyelids parted a little, and Selwyn stepped back towards the door.
'Hullo, Selwyn, old boy!' murmured Durwent dreamily. 'Is it time to get up?'
'No,' whispered Selwyn. 'I didn't mean to wake you.'
Durwent smiled deprecatingly and reached sleepily for the other's hand.'It's awfully decent of you to take me in like this,' he said.
There was a simplicity in his gesture, a child-like sincerity in his voice, that made Selwyn accept the hand-clasp, unable to utter the words which came to his lips.
'Selwyn,' said Dick, keeping his face turned towards the fire, 'are you likely to see Elise soon?'
'I hardly think so,' said the American, kneeling down and stirring the coals with the poker.
'If you do, please don't tell her I've come back. She thinks I'm in the Orient somewhere, and if she knew I was joining up she would worry. I suppose I shall always be "Boy-blue" to her, and never anything older.'
Selwyn replaced the poker and sat down on a cushion that was on the floor.
'It may be a rotten thing to say,' resumed the younger man, speaking slowly, 'but she was more of a mother to me than my mother was. As far back as I can remember she was the one person who believed in me. The rest never did. When I was a kid at prep. school and brought home bad reports, every one seemed to think me an outsider—that I wasn't conforming—and I began to believe it. Only Elise never changed. She was the one of the whole family who didn't want me to be somebody or something else. You can hardly believe what that meant to me in those days. It was a little world I lived in, but to my youngster's eyes it looked as if everything and every person were on one side, doubting me, and Elise was on the other, believing in me. . . . I'm not whining, Selwyn, or saying that any one's to blame for my life except myself, but I do believe that if Elise and I had been kept together I might not have turned out such a rotter. Sometimes, too, I wonder if it wouldn't have been better for her. She never made many friends—and looking back, I think the poor little girl has had a lonely time of it.'
He relapsed into silence and shifted his head wearily on the pillow. Johnston Smyth murmured something muffled and unintelligible in his sleep. Selwyn placed some new lumps of coal on the fire, the flames licking them eagerly as the sharp crackle of escaping gases punctured the sleep-laden air.
'It does sound rather like whining to say it,' said Durwent without opening his eyes, 'but after I was rusticated at Cambridge I tried to travel straight. If I had gone then to the Colonies I might have made a man of myself, but I hung around too long, and got mixed up with one of the rottenest sets in London. I went awfully low, Selwyn, but booze had me by the neck, and my conscience wasn't working very hard either. And then another woman helped me. She was one of those who aren't admitted among decent people. She came of poor family, and had made a fairly good name for herself on the stage, and was absolutely straight until she met that blackguard Moorewell about three years ago.'
'The man you nearly killed?'
'Yes. At any rate, she and I fell in love with each other. I know it's all damned sordid, but we were both outcasts, and, as that chap said to-night, it's the people who have failed who lie closest to life. Once more a woman believed in me, and I believed in a woman. We planned to get married. We were going away under another name, to make a new world for ourselves. For weeks I never touched a drop, and it seemed at last that I could see—just a little light ahead. You don't know what that means, Selwyn, when a man is absolutely down.'
The smile had died out in the speaker's face and given way to a cold, gray mist of pain.
'Moorewell heard about it,' went on Durwent, 'and though the blackguard had discarded her, he grew jealous, and began his devilry again. She did not tell me, but I know for a long time she was as true to me as I was to her. Then they went to Paris—I believe he promised to marry her there. A week later I got a letter from her, begging forgiveness. He had left her, she said, and she was going away where I should never find her again. My first impulse was to follow her—and then I started to drink. God! what nights those were! I waited my time. I watched Moorewell until one night I knew he was alone. I forced an entrance, and caught him in his library. . . . As I said before, I was drunk; and that's what saved his life. I thought at the time he was dead; and having no money, I caught a late train, and hid all night and next day in the woods at Roselawn. Three times I saw Elise, but she was never alone; but that night I called her with a cry of the night-jar which she had taught me. She came out, and I told her as much as I could; and with her necklace I raised some money and got away.'
Again the murmured words came to a close. Selwyn searched his mind for some comment to make, but none would come. He could not offer sympathy or condolence—Durwent wasn't seeking that. It was impossible to condemn, or to suggest a new start in life, because the young fellow was not trying to justify his actions. Yet it seemed such a tragedy to look helplessly on without one effort to change the floating course of the driftwood.
'Durwent,' he said haltingly, 'it's not too late for you to start over again. If you will go to America, I have friends there who would give you every opening and'——
'You're an awfully decent chap,' said Durwent, once more touching Selwyn's hand with his; 'but I shall not come back from the war. I feltthatthe moment I stepped on shore yesterday. I felt it again when that fellow spoke to me in the tavern. It may come soon, or it may be a long time, but this is the end.'
'No, no,' said Selwyn earnestly; 'all that's the effect of your chill.It has left you depressed.'
'You don't understand,' said the lad, smiling with closed eyes, 'or you wouldn't say that. I said before that it means a lot, when a man's down, to be able to see a little light ahead. . . . I can see that now again. . . . It doesn't matter what I've been or done—I can go out there now, and die like a gentleman. War gives us poor devils that chance. . . . You know what I mean. My life has been no damned use to any one, Selwyn, but they won't care about that in France. To die in the trenches—that's my last chance to do something . . . to do something that counts.'
Selwyn leaned over and patted the lad on his shoulder. 'Dick,' he said, 'wait until the morning, and all these fancies will clear from your mind. We'll discuss everything then together.'
The musing smile lingered again about the boy's lips.
'You're tired out, old man,' went on the American. 'I shouldn't have waked you. Good-night.'
The other stopped him from rising by catching his arm with his hand. 'Do you mind,' said Dick, his eyes opening wide, 'just staying here until I go to sleep? . . . There are all sorts of wild things going through my head to-night . . . waves pounding, pounding, pounding. It never stops, Selwyn. . . . And I seem to hear shouts a long way off—like smugglers landing their stuff in the dark. I'm an awful idiot to talk like this, old boy, but I've lost my courage a bit.'
And so for nearly half-an-hour the American remained watching by the lad as sleep hovered about and gradually settled on him.
As Selwyn quietly stole from the room the City's clocks were striking three.
It was after nine o'clock when Selwyn woke from a deep, refreshing sleep. Hurrying into the other room, he found no sign of his guests.
'When did these gentlemen leave?' he asked of his servant, who had answered his ring.
'It must have been about six o'clock, sir. I heard the door open and shut then.'
'Why didn't you call me?'
'I wasn't wanting to disturb you, sir. It's the first good sleep you've had for a long time.'
It was true. The sinking of himself into the personality of another man had released the fetters of his intensive egotism. For a whole night he had forgotten, or at least neglected, his world-mission in simple solicitude for one who had fallen by the wayside.
After the stimulus of a cold shower and a hearty breakfast, he resumed his crusade against the entrenched forces of Ignorance, but in spite of the utmost effort in concentration, the memory of the lonely figure by the Thames intruded constantly on his mind. It was not only that Dick was the brother of Elise—although Selwyn's longing for her had become a dull pain that was never completely buried beneath his thoughts; nor was it merely the unconscious charm possessed by the boy, a charm that seized on the very heart-strings. To the American the real cruelty of the thing lay in the existence of a Society that could first debase so fine a creature, and then make no effort to retrieve or to atone for its crime.
Putting aside the day's work he had planned, he flung his mind into the arena of England's social conditions. Exerting to the full his gift of mental discipline, he rejected the promptings of prejudice and of sentiment, and brought his sense of analysis to bear on his subject with the cold, callous detachment of a scientist studying some cosmic phenomenon.
For more than an hour his brain skirmished for an opening, until, spreading the blank sheets of paper before him, he wrote: 'THE ISLAND OF DARKNESS.' Tilting his chair back, he surveyed the title critically.
'Yes,' he said aloud, squaring his shoulders resolutely, 'I have generalised long enough. Without malice, but without restraint, I will trace the contribution of Britain towards the world's débâcle.'
With gathering rapidity and intensity he covered page after page with finely worded paragraphs. He summoned the facts of history, and churning them with his conceptions of humanity's duty to humanity, poured out a flood of ideas, from which he chose the best. Infatuated by the richness of the stream, he created such a powerful sequence of facts that the British began to loom up as a reactionary tribe fighting a rearguard action throughout the ages against the advancing hosts of enlightenment. The Island of Britain, the 'Old Country,' as its people called it, began to shape in his eyes like a hundred-taloned monster sprawling over the whole earth. This was the nation which had forced opium on China, ruled India by tyranny, blustered and bullied America into rebellion, conquered South Africa at the behest of business interests. . . . Those and endless others were the counts against Britain in the open court of history.
And if those had been her crimes in the international sphere, what better record could she show in the management of human affairs at home? She had clung to the feudal idea of class distinction, only surrendering a few outposts reluctantly to the imperious onslaught of time; she had maintained a system of public schools which produced first-class snobs and third-rate scholars; she had ignored the rights of women until in very desperation they had resorted to the crudities of violence in order to achieve some outlet for the pent-up uselessness and directionlessness of their sex; she had tolerated vile living conditions for the poor, and had forced men and women to work under conditions which were degrading and an insult to their Maker. . . . One by one these dragons reared their heads and fell to the gleaming Excalibur of the author.