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The Survivor

by E. Phillips Oppenheim · English · Gutenberg #17040 · 384,392 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Survivor

Author: E. Phillips Oppenheim


        
Release date: November 10, 2005 [eBook #17040]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17040

Credits: E-text prepared by MRK


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SURVIVOR ***


E-text prepared by MRK



THE SURVIVOR

by

E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM







CONTENTS

           I. THE SERMON THAT WAS NEVER PREACHED
          II. A STRANGE BETROTHAL
         III. THE MAN WHO WAS IN A HURRY
          IV. EXIT MR. DOUGLAS GUEST
           V. HOW THE ADDRESS WAS LOST
          VI. THE YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY HEARS SOME
         VII. A NIGHT IN HELL--AND NEXT DAY
        VIII. THE AUTHOR OF "NO MAN'S LAND"
          IX. THE EDITOR OF THE "IBEX" RECEIVES A STRANGE LETTER
           X. A WOMAN OF WHIMS
          XI. DOUGLAS GUEST GETS HIS "CHANCE"
         XII. THE MAN WHO NEARLY WENT UNDER
        XIII. THE FIRST TASTE OF FAME
         XIV. A VISITOR FROM SCOTLAND YARD
          XV. EMILY DE REUSS TELLS A LIE
         XVI. JOAN STRONG, AVENGER
        XVII. A PLAIN QUESTION AND A WARNING
       XVIII. THE TASTE OF THE LOTUS
         XIX. A MAN WITHOUT A PAST
          XX. CICELY ASKS A QUESTION
         XXI. THE REBELLION OF DREXLEY
        XXII. DREXLEY SPEAKS OUT
       XXIII. CICELY S SECRET
        XXIV. THE COUNTESS, THE COUSIN, AND THE CRITIC
         XXV. A TRAGIC INTERRUPTION
        XXVI. A VISITOR FOR DOUGLAS JESSON
       XXVII. FELLOW-CRIMINALS
      XXVIII. THE LITTLE FIGURE IN BLACK
        XXIX. JOAN STRONG FINDS HER BROTHER
         XXX. DAVID AND JOAN
        XXXI. DREXLEY FORESEES DANGER
       XXXII. A SUPPER AT THE "MILAN," AND A MEETING
      XXXIII. A MISUNDERSTANDING
       XXXIV. THE WOOING OF CICELY
        XXXV. THE NET OF JOAN'S VENGEANCE
       XXXVI. A SCENE AT THE CLUB
      XXXVII. CICELY MAKES HER CHOICE
     XXXVIII. "SHE WAS A WOMAN: I WAS A COWARD"
       XXXIX. A JOURNEY AND A WEDDING
          XL. A CALL BEFORE THE CURTAIN





THE SURVIVOR



CHAPTER I

THE SERMON THAT WAS NEVER PREACHED

A little party of men and women on bicycles were pushing their machines
up the steep ascent which formed the one street of Feldwick village. It
was a Sunday morning, and the place was curiously empty. Their little
scraps of gay conversation and laughter--they were men and women of the
smart world--seemed to strike almost a pagan note in a deep Sabbatical
stillness. They passed the wide open doors of a red brick chapel, and
several of the worshippers within turned their heads. As the last two
of the party went by, the wheezings of a harmonium ceased, and a man's
voice came travelling out to them. The lady rested her hand upon her
host's arm. "Listen," she whispered.

Her host, Lord of the Manor, Lord Lieutenant of the County, and tenth
Earl of Cumberland, paused readily enough and leaned his machine against
a kerbstone. Bicycling was by no means a favourite pursuit of his, and
the morning for the time of year was warm.

"Dear lady," he murmured, "shall we go a little nearer and listen to the
words of grace? Anything for a short rest."

She leaned her own bicycle against the wall. From where she was she
could catch a sideway glimpse of a tall, slight figure standing up
before the handful of people.

"I should like to go inside," she said, indifferently. "Would they
think it an intrusion?"

"Certainly not," he answered, with visions of a chair before him. "As a
matter of fact, I have a special invitation to become a member of that
flock--temporarily, at any rate."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"The land here" he answered, "is not entailed, and they are very anxious
to buy this little bit and own their chapel. I had a letter from a
worthy farmer and elder, Gideon Strong, on the matter yesterday. He
wound up by expressing a wish that I might join them in their service
one morning. This is their service, and here we are. Come!"

They crossed the street, and, to the obvious amazement of the little
congregation, stood in the doorway. A gaunt shepherd, with
weather-marked face and knotted fingers, handed them clumsily a couple
of chairs. Some of the small farmers rose and made a clumsy obeisance
to their temporal lord. Gideon Strong, six feet four, with great unbent
shoulders, and face as hard and rugged as iron, frowned them down, and
showed no signs of noticing his presence. Elsewhere he would have been
one of the first, proud man though he was, to stand bareheaded before
the owner of his farm and half a county, but in the house of God, humble
little building though it was, he reckoned all men equal.

Praying silently before them, on the eve of his first sermon, a young
man was kneeling. He had seen nothing of these newcomers, but of a
sudden as he knelt there, his thoughts and sensations in strange
confusion, himself half in revolt against what lay before him, there
floated up the little aisle an exquisite perfume of crushed violets, and
he heard the soft rustling of a gown which was surely worn by none of
those who were gathered together to listen to him. He opened his eyes
involuntarily, and met the steady gaze of the lady whose whim it had
been to enter the place.

He had never seen her before, nor any one like her. Yet he felt that,
in her presence, the task which lay before him had become immeasurably
more difficult. She was a type to him of all those things, the memory
of which he had been strenuously trying to put away from him, the
beautiful, the worldly, the joyous. As he rose slowly to his feet, he
looked half despairingly around. It was a stern religion which they
loved, this handful of weatherbeaten farmers and their underlings.
Their womenkind were made as unlovely as possible, with flat hair,
sombre and ill-made clothes. Their surroundings were whitewashed and
text-hung walls, and in their hearts was the love for narrow ways. He
gave out his text slowly and with heavy heart. Then he paused, and,
glancing once more round the little building, met again the soft,
languid fire of those full dark eyes. This time he did not look away.
He saw a faint interest, a slight pity, a background of nonchalance.
His cheeks flushed, and the fire of revolt leaped through his veins. He
shut up the Bible and abandoned his carefully prepared discourse, in
which was a mention of hellfire and many gloomy warnings, which would
have brought joy to the heart of Gideon Strong, and to each of which he
would slowly and approvingly have nodded his head. He delivered
instead, with many pauses, but in picturesque and even vivid language, a
long and close account of the miracle with which his text was concerned.
In the midst of it there came from outside the tinkling of many bicycle
bells--the rest of the party had returned in search of their host and
his companion. The Earl looked up with alacrity. He was nicely rested
now, and wanted a cigarette.

"Shall we go?" he whispered.

She nodded and rose. At the door she turned for a moment and looked
backwards. The preacher was in the midst of an elaborate and
painstaking sifting of evidence as to the season of the year during
which this particular miracle might be supposed to have taken place.
Again their eyes met for a moment, and she went out into the sunlight
with a faint smile upon her lips, for she was a woman who loved to feel
herself an influence, and she was swift to understand. To her it was an
episode of the morning's ride, almost forgotten at dinner-time. To him
it marked the boundary line between the old things and the new.



CHAPTER II

A STRANGE BETROTHAL

The room had all the chilly discomfort of the farmhouse parlour, unused,
save on state occasions--a funereal gloom which no sunlight could
pierce, a mustiness which savoured almost of the grave. One by one they
obeyed the stern forefinger of Gideon Strong, and took their seats on
comfortless chairs and the horse-hair sofa. First came John Magee,
factor and agent to the Earl of Cumberland, a great man in the district,
deacon of the chapel, slow and ponderous in his movements. A man of few
words but much piety. After him, with some hesitation as became his
lowlier station, came William Bull, six days in the week his master's
shepherd and faithful servant, but on the seventh an elder of the
chapel, a person of consequence and dignity. Then followed Joan and
Cicely Strong together, sisters in the flesh, but as far apart in kin
and the spirit as the poles of humanity themselves. And lastly, Douglas
Guest. At the head of his shining mahogany table, with a huge Bible
before him on which rested the knuckle of one clenched hand, stood
Gideon Strong, the master of Feldwick Hall Farm. It was at his bidding
that these people had come together; they waited now for him to speak.
His was no common personality. Neat in his dress, precise though local,
with a curious mixture of dialects in his speech, he was feared by every
man in Feldwick, whether he stood over them labouring or prayed amongst
them in the little chapel, where every Sunday he took the principal
place. He was well set-up for all his unusual height and seventy years,
with a face as hard as the ancient rocks which jutted from the
Cumberland hillside, eyes as keen and grey and merciless as though every
scrap of humanity which might ever have lain behind them had long since
died out. Just he reckoned himself and just he may have been, but
neither man nor woman nor child had ever heard a kindly word fall from
his lips. Children ran indoors as he passed, women ceased their
gossiping, men slunk away from a friendly talk as though ashamed. If
ever at harvest or Christmas time the spirit of good fellowship warmed
the hearts of these country folk and loosened their tongues the grim
presence of Gideon Strong was sufficient to check their merriment and
send them silently apart. He had been known to pray that sinners might
meet with the punishment they deserved, both in this world and
hereafter. Such was Gideon Strong.

He cleared his throat and spoke, addressing the young man who sat on the
corner of the horse-hair sofa, where the shadows of the room were
darkest.

"Nephew Douglas," he said, "to-day you ha' come to man's estate, and I
ha' summoned those here who will have to do wi' your future to hear
these few words. The charge of you left on my shoulders by your
shiftless parents has been a heavy one, but to-day I am quit of it. The
deacons of Feldwick chapel have agreed to appoint you their pastor,
provided only that they be satisfied wi' your discourse on the coming
Sabbath. See to it, lad, that 'ee preach the word as these good men and
mysen have ever heard it. Let there be no new-fangled ideas in thy
teachings, and be not vain of thy learning, for therein is vanity and
trouble. Dost understand?" "I understand," the young man answered
slowly, and without enthusiasm.

"Learning and godliness are little akin," said John Magee, in his thin
treble. "See to it, lad, that thou choosest the one which is of most
account."

"Ay, ay," echoed the shepherd thickly. "Ay, ay!" Douglas Guest answered
nothing. A sudden light had flashed in his dark eyes, and his lips had
parted. But almost at the same moment Gideon Strong stretched out his
hand.

"Nephew Douglas," he said. "I am becoming an old man, and to-day I will
release myself from the burden of your affairs once and for all. This
is the woman, my daughter Joan, whom I have chosen to wife for thee.
Take her hand and let thy word be pledged to her."

If silence still reigned in that gloomy apartment, it was because there
were those present whom surprise had deprived of speech. The very image
of her father, Joan looked steadily into her cousin's face without
tremor or nervousness. Her features were shapely enough, but too large
and severe for a woman, her wealth of black hair was brushed fiat back
from her forehead in uncompromising ugliness. Her figure was as
straight as a dart, but without lines or curves, her gown, of homely
stuff and ill-made, completed her unattractiveness. There was neither
blush nor tremor, nor any sign of softening in her cold eyes. Then
Douglas, in whom were already sown the seeds of a passionate discontent
with the narrowing lines of his unlovely life, who on the hillside and
in the sweet night solitudes had taken Shelley to his heart, had lived
with Keats and had felt his pulses beat thickly to the passionate love
music of Tennyson, stood silent and unresponsive. Child of charity he
might be, but the burden of his servitude was fast growing too heavy for
him. So he stood there whilst the old man's eyes flashed like steel,
and Joan's face, in her silent anger, seemed to grow into the likeness
of her father's.

"Dost hear, nephew Douglas? Take her hands in thine and thank thy God
who has sent thee, a pauper and a youth of ill-parentage, a daughter of
mine for wife."

Then the young man found words, though they sounded to him and to the
others faint and unimpressive.

"Uncle," he said, "there has been no word of this nor any thought of it
between Joan and myself. I am not old enough to marry nor have I the
inclination."

Terrible was the look flashed down upon him from those relentless
eyes-fierce, too, the words of his reply, measured and slow although
they were.

"There is no need for words between thee and Joan. Choose between my
bidding and the outside o' my doors this night and for ever."

Even then he might have won his freedom like a man. But the old dread
was too deeply engrafted. The chains of servitude which he and the
whole neighbourhood wore were too heavy to be thrown lightly aside. So
he held out his hand, and Joan's fingers, passive and cold, lay for a
moment in his. The old man watched without any outward sign of
satisfaction.

"Thou ha' chosen well, nephew Douglas," he said, with marvellous but
quite unconscious irony. "I reckon, too, that we ha' chosen well to
elect you our pastor. Thou wilt have two pounds a week and Bailiff
Morrison's cottage. Neighbour Magee, there is a sup o' ale and some tea
in the kitchen."

John Magee and William Bull betrayed the first signs of real interest
they had exhibited in the proceedings. One by one they all filed out of
the room save Douglas Guest and Joan. Cicely had flitted away with the
first. They two were alone. He wondered, with a grim sense of the
humour of the thing, whether she was expecting any love-making to follow
upon so strange an engagement. He looked curiously at her. There was
no change in her face nor any sign of softening.

"I hope you will believe, Joan," he said, taking up a book and looking
for his place, "that I knew nothing of this, and that I am not in any
way responsible for it."

Her face seemed to darken as she rose and moved towards the door.

"I am sure of that," she said, stiffly. "I do not blame you."

              *     *     *     *     *

Up into the purer, finer air of the hills-up with a lightening heart,
though still carrying a bitter burden of despondency. Night rested upon
the hilltops and brooded in the valleys. Below, the shadowy landscape
lay like blurred patchwork-still he climbed upwards till Feldwick lay
silent and sleeping at his feet and a flavour of the sea mingled with
the night wind which cooled his cheeks. Then Douglas Guest threw
himself breathless amongst the bracken and gazed with eager eyes
downwards.

"If she should not come," he murmured. "I must speak to some one or I
shall go mad."

Deeper fell the darkness, until the shape of the houses below was lost,
and only the lights were visible. Such a tiny little circle they
seemed. He watched them with swelling heart. Was this to be the end of
his dreams, then? Bailiff Morrison's cottage, two pounds a week, and
Joan for his wife? He, who had dreamed of fame, of travel in distant
countries, of passing some day into the elect of those who had written
their names large in the book of life. His heart swelled in passionate
revolt. Even though he might be a pauper, though he owed his learning
and the very clothes in which he stood to Gideon Strong, had any man the
right to demand so huge a sacrifice? He had spoken his mind and his
wishes only to be crushed with cold contempt. To-day his answer had
been given. What was it that Gideon Strong had said? "I have fed you
and clothed you and taught you; I have kept you from beggary and made
you what you are. Now, as my right, I claim your future. Thus and thus
shall it be. I have spoken."

He walked restlessly to and fro upon the windy hilltop. A sense of
freedom possessed him always upon these heights. The shackles of Gideon
Strong fell away. Food and clothing and education, these were great
things to owe, but life was surely a greater, and life he owed to no man
living--only to God. Was it a thing which he dared misuse?--fritter
helplessly away in this time-forgotten corner of the earth? Life surely
was a precious loan to be held in trust, to be made as full and deep and
fruitful a thing as a man's energy and talent could make it. To Gideon
Strong he owed much, but it was a debt which surely could be paid in
other ways than this.

He stopped short. A light footstep close at hand startled, then
thrilled him. It was Cicely--hatless, breathless with the climb, and
very fair to see in the faint half-lights. For Cicely, though she was
Gideon Strong's daughter, was not of Feldwick or Feldwick ways, nor were
her gowns simple, though they were fashioned by a village dressmaker.
She had lived all her life with distant relatives near London. Douglas
had never seen her till two months ago, and her coming had been a
curious break in the life at the farm.

He moved quickly to meet her. For a moment their hands met. Then she
drew away.

"How good of you, Cicely," he cried. "I felt that I must talk to some
one or go mad."

She stood for a moment recovering her breath--her bosom rising and
falling quickly under her dark gown, a pink flush in her cheeks. Her
hair, fair and inclined to curliness, had escaped bounds a little, and
she brushed it impatiently back.

"I must only stay for a moment, Douglas," she said, gravely. "Let us go
down the hill by the Beacon. We shall be on the way home."

They walked side by side in silence. Neither of them were wholly at
their ease. A new element had entered into their intercourse. The
wonderfully free spirit of comradeship which had sprung up between them
since her coming, and which had been so sweet a thing to him, was for
the moment, at least, interrupted.

"I want you to tell me, Douglas," she said at last, "exactly how much of
a surprise to-day has been to you."

"It is easily done," he answered. "Last night I went to your father. I
tried to thank him as well as I was able for all that he has done for
me. I then told him that with every respect for his wishes I did not
feel myself prepared at present to enter the ministry. I showed him my
diplomas and told him of my degrees. I told him what I wished--to
become a schoolmaster, for a year or two, at any rate. Well, he
listened to me in fixed silence. When I had finished he asked, 'Is that
all?' I said, 'Yes,' and he turned his back upon me. 'Your future is
already provided for, Douglas,' he said. 'I will speak to you of it
to-morrow.' Then he walked away. That is all the warning I had."

"And what about Joan?"

His face flushed hotly.

"No word from him, nor any hint of such a thing has ever made me think
of Joan in such a connection. I should have been less surprised if the
ceiling had fallen in upon us."

She looked at him and nodded gravely.

"Well," she said, "our oracle has spoken. What are you going to do?"

"I am going to ask for your advice first," he said.

"Then you must tell me just how you feel," she said.

He drew a long breath.

"There are so many things," he said, speaking softly and half to
himself. "Last week, Cicely, I took a compass and a stick and I walked
across the hills to Rydal Mount, where Wordsworth lived. When I came
back I think that I was quite content to spend all my days here. It is
such a beautiful world. Some day when you have lived here longer, you
will know what I mean--the bondage will fall upon you, too. The
mountains with their tops hidden in soft blue mist, the winds blowing
across the waste places, the wild flowers springing up in unexpected
corners, the little streams tearing down the hillside to flow smoothly
like a belt of beautiful ribbon through the pasture land below. The
love which comes for these things, Cicely, is a strange, haunting thing.
You cannot escape from it. It is a sort of bondage. The winds seem to
tune themselves to your thoughts, the sunlight laughs away your
depression. Listen! Do you hear the sheep-bells from behind the hill
there? Isn't that music? Then the twilight and the darkness! If you
are on the hilltop they seem to steal down like a world of soothing
shadows. Everything that is dreary and sad seems to die away;
everywhere is a beautiful effortless peace. Cicely, I came back from
that tramp and I felt content with my lot, content to live amongst these
country folk, speak to them simply once a week of the God of mysteries,
and spend my days wandering about this little corner of the world
beautiful."

"Men have lived such lives," she said quietly, "and found happiness."

"Ay, but there is the other side," he continued, quickly. "Sometimes it
seems as though the love for these things is a beautiful delusion, a
maddening, unreal thing. Then I know that my God is not their God, that
my thoughts would be heresy to them. I feel that I want to cast off the
strange passionate love for the place which holds me here, to go out
into the world and hold my place amongst my fellows. Cicely, surely
where men do great works, where men live and die, that is the proper
place for man? I have no right to fritter away a life in the sensuous
delight of moving amongst beautiful places. I want to come into touch
with my kind, to feel the pulse of humanity, to drink the whole cup of
life with its joys and sorrows. Contemplation should be the end of
life--its evening, not its morning."

"Douglas," she cried, "you are right. You know that you have power.
Out into the world and use it! Oh, if I were you, if I were a man, I
would not hesitate for a moment."

His hand fell upon her shoulder. He pointed downwards.

"How far am I bound," he asked hoarsely, "to do your father's bidding?"

The glow passed from her cheeks. She moved imperceptibly away from him.

"Douglas," she said, "it is of that I came to speak to you to-night.
You know that I have a brother who is eternally banished from home,
whose life I honestly believe my father's severity has ruined. I saw
him in London not long ago, and he sent a message to you. It is very
painful for me to even think of it, Douglas, for I always believed my
father to be a just man. He has let you believe that you were a pauper.
My brother told me that it was not true--that there was plenty of money
for your education, and that there should be some to come to you.
There, I have told you! You must go to my father and ask him for the
truth!"

He was silent for a moment. It was a strange thing to hear.

"If this is true," he said, "it is freedom."

"Freedom," she repeated, and glided away from him whilst he stood there
dreaming.



CHAPTER III

THE MAN WHO WAS IN A HURRY

He lay back in a corner seat of the carriage, panting, white-faced,
exhausted. His clumsy boots, studded with nails, were wet, and his
frayed black trousers were splashed with mud. In his eyes was the light
of vivid fear, his delicate mouth was twitching still with excitement.
In his ears there rang yet the angry cry of the guard, the shouting of
porters, the excitement of that leap through the hastily-opened carriage
door tingled yet in his veins. Before his eyes there was a mist. He
was conscious indeed that the carriage which he had marked out as being
empty was tenanted by a single person, but he had not even glanced
across towards the occupied seat. What mattered it so long as they were
off? Already the fields seemed flying past the window, and the
telegraph posts had commenced their frantic race. Ten, twenty, forty
miles an hour at least-off on that wonderful run, the pride of the
directors and the despair of rival companies. Nothing could stop them
now. All slower traffic stood aside to let them pass, the express with
her two great engines vomiting fire and smoke, crawling across the map,
flying across bridges and through tunnels from the heart of the country
to the great city. Gradually, and with the exhilaration of their ever
increasing speed, the courage of the man revived, and the blood flowed
once more warmly through his veins. He lifted his head and looked
around him.

Shock the first came when he realised that he was in a first-class
carriage; shock the second, when he saw that his solitary companion
was a lady. He took in the details of her appearance and
surroundings--wonderful enough to him who had been brought up in a
cottage, and to whom the ways and resources of luxury were all unknown.
Every seat save the one which he occupied was covered with her
belongings. On one was a half-opened dressing-case filled with
gold-topped bottles and emitting a faint, delicate perfume. On another
was a pile of books and magazines, opposite to him a sable-lined coat,
by his side a luncheon basket and long hunting flask. Then his eyes
were caught by an oblong strip of paper pasted across the carriage
window--he read it backwards--"Engaged." What an intrusion! He looked
towards the woman with stammering words of apology upon his lips--but
the words died away. He was tongue-tied.

He had met the languid gaze of her dark, full eyes, a little
supercilious, a little amused, faintly curious, and his own fell at once
before their calm insolence. She was handsomely dressed. The delicate,
white hand which held her novel was ablaze with many and wonderful
rings. She was evidently tall, without doubt stately. Her black hair,
parted in the middle, drooped a little to the side by her ears, her
complexion, delightfully clear, was of a curious ivory pallor
unassociated with ill-health. She regarded him through a pair of
ivory-handled lorgnettes, which she carelessly closed as he looked
towards her.

"Will you tell me," she asked quietly, "why you have entered my carriage
which is engaged--and in such an extraordinary manner?"

He drew a little breath. He had never heard a voice like it
before--soft, musical, and with the slightest suggestion of a foreign
accent. Then he remembered that she was waiting for an answer. He
began his apology.

"I am sorry--indeed I am very sorry. I had no time to look inside, and
I thought it was an empty carriage--a third-class one, too. It was very
stupid."

"You appeared to be" she remarked, "in a hurry."

The faint note of humour in her tone passed undetected by him.

"I wanted to get away," he said. "I had walked fourteen miles, and
there was no other train. I am very sorry to intrude upon you. The
train was moving when I reached the platform, and I jumped."

She shrugged her shoulders slightly and raised her book once more. But
from over its top she found herself watching very soon this strange
travelling companion of hers. The trousers above his clumsy boots were
frayed and muddy, his black clothes were shiny and antiquated in
cut--these, and his oddly-arranged white tie, somehow suggested the
cleric. But when she reached his face her eyes lingered there. It
puzzled and in a sense attracted her. His features were cleanly cut and
prominent, his complexion was naturally pale, but wind and sun had
combined to stain his cheeks with a slight healthy tan. His eyes were
deep-set, keen and bright, the eyes of a visionary perhaps, but afire
now with the instant excitement of living. A strange face for a man of
his apparently humble origin. Whence had he come, and where was he
going? The vision of his face as he had leaped into the carriage
floated again before her eyes. Surely behind him were evil things,
before him--what? She took up her novel again, but laid it down almost
immediately. "You are going" she asked, "to London?"

"To London," he repeated dreamily. "Yes."

"But your luggage--was that left behind?"

He smiled.

"I have no luggage," he said. "You are going up for the day only?" she
hazarded.

He shook his head. There was a note of triumph almost in his tone.

"I am going for good," he said. "If wishes count for anything I shall
never set foot within this county again."

There was a story, she felt sure, connected with this strange
fellow-passenger of hers. She watched him thoughtfully. A human
document such as this was worth many novels. It was not the first time
that he had excited her interest.

"London" she said, "is a wonderful place for young men."

He turned a rapt face towards her. The fire seemed leaping out of his
eyes.

"Others have found it so," he said. "I go to prove their words."

"You are a stranger there, then?"

"I have never been further south than this in my life," he replied. "I
know only the London of De Quincey and Lamb-London with the halo of
romance around it."

She sighed gently.

"You will find it all so different," she said. "You will be bitterly
disappointed."

He set his lips firmly together.

"I have no fear," he said. "I shall find it possible to live there, at
any rate. If I stayed where I was, I must have gone mad."

"You are going to friends?" she asked.

He laughed softly.

"I have not a friend in the world," he said. "In London I do not know a
soul. What matter? There is life to be lived there, prizes to be won.
There is room for every one."

She half closed her eyes, watching him keenly all the time with an
interest which was certainly not diminished.

"London is a wonderful city," she said, "but she is not always kind to
the stranger. You have spoken of De Quincey who wove fairy fancies
about her, and Lamb, who was an affectionate stay-at-home, a born
dweller in cities. They were dreamers both, these men. What about
Chatterton?"

"An unhappy exception," he said. "If only he had lived a few months
longer his sorrows would have been over."

"To-day," she said, "there are many Chattertons who must die before the
world will listen to them. Are you going to take your place amongst
them?"

He smiled confidently.

"Not I," he answered. "I shall work with my hands if men will have none
of my brains. Indeed," he continued, turning towards her with a swift,
transfiguring smile, "I am not a village prodigy going to London with a
pocketful of manuscripts. Don't think that of me. I am going to London
because I have been stifled and choked--I want room to breathe, to see
men and women who live. Oh, you don't know the sort of place I have
come from--the brain poison of it, the hideous sameness and narrowness
of it all."

"Tell me a little," she said, "and why at last you made up your mind to
leave. It is not so long, you know, since I saw you in somewhat
different guise."

A quick shiver seemed to pass through him; underneath his tanned skin he
was paler, and the blood in his veins was cold. His eyes, fixed upon
the flying landscape, were set in a fixed, unseeing stare--surely the
fields were peopled with evil memories, and faces in the trees were
mocking him. So he remained for several moments as though in the grip
of a nightmare, and the lady watched him. There was a little tragedy,
then, behind.

"There was a man once," he said, "who drew a line through his life, and
said to himself that everything behind it concerned some other
person--not him. So with me. Such memories as I have, I shall
strangle. To-day I commence a new life."

She sighed.

"One's past" she said, "is not always so easily to be disposed of.
There are ghosts which will haunt us, and sometimes the ghosts are
living figures."

"Let them come to me," he murmured, "and my fingers shall be upon their
throats. I want no such legacies."

She shook her head slowly.

"Ghosts" she said, with a faint smile, "are sometimes very difficult
people to deal with."



CHAPTER IV

EXIT MR. DOUGLAS GUEST

Through the heart of England the express tore on--through town and
country, underneath the earth and across high bridges. All the while
the man and the woman talked. To him she was a revelation. Every
moment of his life had been spent in a humdrum seclusion--every moment
of hers seemed to have been lived out to its limit in those worlds of
which he had barely even dreamed. She was older than he had thought
her--thirty, perhaps, or thirty-one--and her speech and gestures every
now and then had a foreign flavour. She talked to him of countries
which he had scarcely dared hope to visit, and of men and women whose
names were as household words. She spoke of them with an ease and
familiarity which betokened close acquaintance--talking to him with a
mixture of kindness and reserve as if he were some strange creature who
had had the good fortune to interest her for the moment, but from whom
at any time she might draw aloof. Every word she spoke he hung upon.
He had come out into the world to seek for adventures--not, indeed, in
the spirit of the modern Don Quixote, tingling only for new sensations
to stimulate; but with the more robust and breezy spirit of his
ancestors, seeking for a fuller life and a healthy excitement, even at
the cost of hard blows and many privations. Surely this was an
auspicious start--an adventure this indeed! During a momentary silence
she looked across at him with genuine curiosity, her eyes half closed,
her brows knitted. What enthusiasm! She was not a vain woman, and she
knew that her personality had little, if anything, to do with the flush
upon his cheeks and the bright light in his eyes. She herself, a much
travelled, a learned, a brilliant, even a famous woman, had become only
lately conscious of a certain jaded weariness in her outlook upon life.
Even the best had begun to pall, the sameness of it had commenced its
fatal work. More than once lately a touch of that heart languor, which
is the fruit of surfeit, had startled her by its numbing and depressing
effect. Here at last was a new type--a man with clean pages before
him--young, emotional, without a doubt intellectual. But for his awful
clothes he was well enough to look upon, he had no affectations, his
instincts were apparently correct. His manners were hoydenish, but
there was nothing of the clown about him. She asked him a direct
question concerning himself.

"Tell me," she said, "what you really are. A worker, a student--or have
you a trade?"

He flushed up to his brows.

"I was brought up" he said, in a low tone, "for the ministry. It was no
choice of mine. I had an uncle and guardian who ruled our household as
he ruled everybody and everything with which he came in contact."

She was puzzled. To her the word sounded political.

"The ministry?"

"Yes. You remember when you first saw me? It was my first appearance.
I was to have been chosen pastor of that church."

"Oh!"

She looked at him now with something like amazement. This, then,
accounted for the sombreness of his clothes and his little strip of
white tie. She had only the vaguest ideas as to the conduct of those
various sects to be met with in English villages, but she had certainly
believed that the post of preacher was filled indifferently by any
member of the congregation, and she had looked upon his presence in the
pulpit on that last Sunday as an accident. To associate him with such
an occupation permanently seemed to her little short of the ridiculous.
She laughed softly, showing, for the first time, her brilliantly white
teeth, and his cheeks were stained with scarlet.

"I do not know why you laugh," he said, with a note of fierceness in his
tone. "It is the part of my life which is behind me. I was brought up
to it, and traditions are hard to break away from. I have been obliged
to live in a little village, to constrain my life between the narrowest
limits, to watch ignorance, and suffer prejudices as deeply rooted as
the hills. But all the same, it is nothing to laugh at. The thing
itself is great and good enough--it is the people who are so hopeless.
No, there is nothing to laugh at," he cried, with a sudden little burst
of excitement, "but may God help the children whose eyes He has opened
and who yet have to pass their lives on the smallest treadmill of the
world."

"You" she whispered, "have escaped."

"I have escaped," he murmured, with a sudden pallor, "but not
scatheless."

There was a silence between them then. She recognised that she had made
a mistake in questioning him about a past which he had already declared
hateful. The terror of an hour or more ago was in his face again. He
was back amongst the shadows whence she had beckoned him. She yawned
and took up her book.

They stopped at a great station, but the man was in a brown study and
scarcely moved his head. An angry guard came hurrying up to the window,
but a few words from the lady and a stealthily opened purse worked
wonders. They were left undisturbed, and the train glided off. She
laid down her book and spoke again.

"Do you mind passing me my luncheon basket?" she said, "and opening that
flask of wine? Are you not hungry, too?"

He shook his head, but when he came to think of it he knew that he was
ravenous. She passed him sandwiches as a matter of course--such
sandwiches as he had never eaten before--and wine which was strange to
him and which ran through his veins like warm magic. Once more the load
of evil memories seemed to pass away from him. He was not so much at
ease eating and drinking with her, but she easily acquired her former
hold upon him. She herself, whose appetite was assumed, watched him,
and wondered more and more.

Suddenly there came an interruption. The shrill whistling of the
engine, the shutting off of steam, the violent application of the brake.
The train came to a standstill. The man put down the window and looked
out.

"What is it?" she asked, with admirable nonchalance, making no effort to
leave her seat.

"I think that there has been an accident to some one," he said. "I will
go and see."

She nodded.

"Come back and tell me," she said. "Myself I shall not look. I am not
fond of horrors."

She took up her book, and he jumped down upon the line and made his way
to where a little group of men were standing in a circle. Some one
turned away with white face as he approached and stopped him.

"Don't look!--for God's sake, don't look!" he said. "It's too awful.
It isn't fit. Fetch a tarpaulin, some one."

"Was he run over?" some one asked. "Threw himself from that carriage,"
the guard answered, moving his head towards a third-class compartment,
of which the door stood open. "He was dragged half a mile, and--there
isn't much left of him, poor devil," he added, with a little break in
his speech.

"Does any one know who he was?" the young man asked.

"No one--nor where he got in."

"No luggage?"

"None."

The young man set his teeth and moved towards the carriage. His hand
stole for a moment to his pocket, then he seemed to pick something up
from the dusty floor.

"Here's a card," he said to the guard, "on the seat where he was."

The man took it and spelt the name out.

"Mr. Douglas Guest," he said. "Well, we shall know who he was, at any
rate. It's lucky you found it, sir. Now we'll get on, if you please."

A tarpaulin-covered burden was carefully deposited in an empty carriage,
and the little troop of people melted away. She looked up from her book
as he entered.

"Well?"

"It was an accident, or a suicide," he said, gravely. "A man threw
himself from an empty carriage in front and was run over. It was a
horrible affair."

"Do they know who he was?" she asked.

"There was a card found near him," he answered. "Mr. Douglas Guest.
That was his name."

Was it his fancy, or did she look at him for a moment more intently
during the momentary silence which followed his speech? It must have
been his fancy. Yet her next words puzzled him.

"You have not told me yet" she said, "your own name. I should like to
know it."

He hesitated for a moment. His own name. A name to be kept--to live
and die under--the hall mark of his new identity. How poor his
imagination was. Never an inspiration, and she was watching him. There
was so much in a name, and he must find one swiftly, for Mr. Douglas
Guest was dead.

"My name is Jesson," he said--"Douglas Jesson."



CHAPTER V

HOW THE ADDRESS WAS LOST

And now the end of that journey, never altogether forgotten by either of
them, was close at hand. Tunnels became more frequent, the green fields
gave way to an interminable waste of houses, the gloom of the autumn
afternoon was deepened. The speed of the train decreased, the heart of
Douglas Jesson beat fast with anticipation. For now indeed he was near
the end of his journey, the beginning of his new life. What matter that
the outlook from where he sat was dreary enough. Beyond, there was a
glow in the sky; beyond was an undiscovered world. He was young, and he
came fresh to the fight. The woman who watched him wondered.

"Will you tell me," she said, "now that you are in London, what will you
do? You have money perhaps, or will you work?"

"Money," he laughed, gaily at first, but with a chill shiver immediately
afterwards. Yes, he had money. For the moment he had forgotten it.

"I have a small sum," he said, "just sufficient to last me until I begin
to earn some."

"And you will earn money--how?"

"With my pen, I hope," he answered simply. "I have sent several stories
to the _Ibex_. One they accepted, but it has not appeared yet."

"To make money by writing in London is very difficult they say," she
remarked.

"Everything in life is difficult," he answered confidently. "I am
prepared for disappointment at first. In the end I have no fears."

She handed him a card from her dressing-case.

"Will you come and see me?" she asked.

"Thank you," he answered hesitatingly. "I will come when I have made a
start."

"I know a great many people who are literary, including the editor of
the _Ibex_," she said. "I think if you came that I could help you."

He shook his head.

"The narrow way for me," he answered smiling. "I am very anxious for
success, but I want to win it myself."

Her face was clouded.

"You are a foolish boy," she said. "Believe me that I am offering you
the surest path to success. London is full of young men with talent,
and most days they go hungry."

He stood up, and, though she was annoyed, the fire in his eyes was good
to look upon.

"I must take my place with them," he said. "Whatever my destiny may be
I shall find it."

The final tunnel, and they were gliding into the station alongside the
platform. A tall footman threw open the door of the carriage, and a
lady's maid, with a jewel case in her hand, stared at him with
undisguised curiosity. The lady bade him goodbye kindly, yet with a
note of final dismissal in her tone. He had occupied her time for an
hour or two, and saved her from absolute boredom. The matter was ended
there. Nevertheless, from a quiet corner of the station he watched her
stand listlessly on the platform while her things were being
collected--a tall, distinguished looking figure, and very noticeable
amongst the motley crowd who were streaming from the train. Once he
fancied that her eyes strayed along the way by which he had left. A
moment later she was accosted by a man who had just driven into the
station. She seemed to greet him without enthusiasm. He, on the other
hand, was obviously welcoming her warmly. He too was tall, carefully
dressed and well groomed, middle aged, a type, he supposed, of the men
of her world. There was a few minutes' conversation, then they moved
across the platform to the carriage, which was drawn up waiting. He
handed her in, lingering hat in hand for a moment as though hoping for
an invitation to follow her, which, however, did not come. The carriage
drove off, passing the spot where Douglas had lingered, and it seemed to
him that her eyes, gazing languidly out of the window, met his, and that
she started forward in her seat as though to call to him. But the
carriage received no summons to stop. It rolled out of the station and
turned westwards. Douglas turned and followed it on foot.

              *     *     *     *     *

He walked at first very much like a man in a dream, quite heedless as to
direction, even without any fixed purpose before him. Here he was,
arrived after all at the first stage in his new life. He was a free
man, a living unit in this streaming horde of humanity. Of his old
life, the most pleasant memory which survived was the loneliness of the
hills and moorland high above his village home. Here he had spent whole
nights with nothing but the wind and the stars and the distant sheep
bells to keep him company. Here he had woven many dreams of this future
which lay now actually within his grasp. He had stolen up the mountain
path whilst the little village lay sleeping, and watched the shadows
pass across the hills, and the darkness steal softly down upon the
landscape stretched out like patchwork below. Then with the night and
the absence of all human sounds had come that sweet and mystical sense
of loneliness which had so often brought him peace at a time when the
smallness of the day's events and the tyranny of his home life had
filled him with bitterness. It was here that courage had come to him to
plan out his emancipation, here that he had fed his brain with sweet but
forbidden fruits. Something of that delicious loneliness was upon him
now. He was a wanderer in a new world. What matter though the streets
were squalid, and the men and women against whom he brushed were, for
the most part, poorly dressed and ill looking? He was free. Even his
identity was gone. Douglas Guest was dead, and with his past Douglas
Jesson had nothing to do.

He wandered on, asking no questions, perfectly content. The great city
expanded before him. Streets became wider, carriages were more
frequent, the faces of the people grew more cheerful. He laughed softly
to himself from sheer lightness of heart. From down a side street he
came into the Strand, and here, for the first time, he noticed that he
himself was attracting some attention. Then he remembered his clothes,
shabby enough, but semi-clerical, and he walked boldly into a large
ready-made clothing establishment, where everything was marked in plain
figures, and where layfigures of gentlemen with waxy faces, attired in
the height of fashion, were gazing blandly out into the world from
behind a huge plate-glass window. He bought a plain blue serge suit,
and begged leave to change in the "trying-on" room. Half an hour later
he walked out again, with his own clothes done up in a bundle, feeling
that his emancipation was now complete.

The lights of Waterloo Bridge attracted him, and he turned down before
them. From one of the parapets he had his first view of the Thames. He
leaned over, gazing with fascinated eyes at the ships below, dimly seen
now through the gathering darkness, at the black waters in which flashed
the reflection of the long row of lamps. The hugeness of the hotels on
the Embankment, all afire with brilliant illuminations, almost took away
his breath. Whilst he lingered there Big Ben boomed out the hour of
six, and he realised with beating heart that those must be the Houses of
Parliament across on the other side. A cold breeze came up and blew in
his face, but he scarcely heeded it. It was the mother river which
flowed beneath him--the greatest of the world's cities into which he had
come, a wanderer, yet at heart one of her sons. Now at last he was in
touch with his kind. Oh, what a welcome present--how gladly he realised
that henceforth he must date his life from that day. He lifted his
parcel cautiously to the ledge and waited for a moment. There was no
one looking. Now was his time. He let it go, and heard the muffled
splash as it fell upon the water. Not until it had slipped from his
fingers and gone beyond recovery did he realise that the card which she
had given him was carefully tucked away in the breast pocket of the
coat. He knew neither her name nor where to look for her.



CHAPTER VI

THE YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY HEARS SOME NEWS

"I say, mister."

Douglas started round, cramped with his long lingering against the stone
wall. A girl was standing by his side. There were roses in her hat and
a suspicion of powder upon her cheeks.

"Were you speaking to me?" he asked hesitatingly.

She laughed shortly.

"No one else within earshot that I know of," she answered. "I saw you
throw that parcel over."

"I was just wishing," he remarked, "that I could get it back."

"Well, you are a mug to chuck it over and then want it back. I guess
it's lost now, anyway, unless the river police find it--and that ain't
likely, is it?"

"I should think not," he answered gravely. "Good evening." He would
have moved away, but she stopped him. "Come, that's not good enough,"
she said, in a harder tone. "You ain't going to bluff me. What was in
that parcel, eh?"

He looked at her in surprise.

"I don't quite see how it concerns you, anyway," he said, "but I don't
know that I mind telling you that it contained a suit of clothes."

"Your own?"

"Yes."

"What have you been up to?"

"I am afraid I don't understand you," he said.

"Oh, rot! People don't sneak their clothes over into the river for
nothing. What are you going to stand me not to tell that bobby, eh?"

"I really don't care whether you do or not," he answered. "I had a
reason for wanting to get rid of my clothes, but I am afraid you
wouldn't understand it."

"Well, we'll try the bobby, then," she said. "There's a horrible murder
this morning on the placards. How do I know that you're not the chap?
It looks suspicious when you come out in a new suit of clothes and throw
the old ones into the river. Anyway, the bobby would want to ask you a
few questions about it."

"Well, you can try him, then," Douglas answered. "I'll wait here while
you fetch him."

The girl laughed--it was not a pleasant sound.

"Where'd you be by the time I'd brought him, I'd like to know?" she
remarked. "Never mind. I see you ain't likely to part with a lot.
Stand us a drink, and I won't tell a soul."

"I would rather not, thanks," Douglas said. "I'll give you the money
for one."

She looked at him angrily.

"Too much of a toff, eh? No, you can keep your money. You'll come
along and have one with me, or I'll tell the bobby."

Douglas hesitated. He thought for a moment of De Quincey's Ann
wandering out of the mists to cross the bridge with weary footsteps, and
turned towards the girl with a courtesy which was almost tenderness.

"I will come with you if you like," he said, "only--"

The girl laughed hardly.

"All right. We'll go to the 'Cross.' The port wine's A1 there. You a
Londoner?" she added, as they turned towards the Strand.

He shook his head.

"I have never been in London before to-day," he answered.

"More fool you to come, then," she said, shortly. "You don't look like
a Cockney. I guess you're a gentleman, aren't you--run away from home
or something?"

"I have come to live in London," he said, evasively. "I have always
wanted to."

She shook her head.

"You'd better have stopped away. You are young, and you look good.
You'll be neither long. Ugh! Here we are."

He stepped aside and let her pass in first through the swing doors. She
led the way into what was called a private bar. They sat in cushioned
chairs, and Douglas gave his order mechanically. A few feet away, with
only a slim partition between them, was the general room full of men.
The tinkle of glasses and hum of conversation grew louder and louder.
It was a cold evening and a busy time. Douglas sipped his wine in
silence. The girl opposite was humming a tune and beating time with her
foot. She was watching him covertly but not unkindly.

"He'll be caught right enough. They even know 'is name. Serve 'im
right, too, for it was an 'orrible murder . . . Douglas Guest."

Douglas started suddenly in his chair, a cry upon his lips, his eyes
almost starting from his head. The girl's gloved hand was pressed
against his mouth and the cry was stifled. Afterwards he remembered all
his life the smell of patchouli or some cheap scent which assailed him
at her near presence.

"Hush!" she whispered. "Don't be a silly fool."

He sat back in his chair, pale to the lips, trembling in every limb.
The mirrors, the rows of glasses, the cushioned seats seemed flying
round, there was a buzzing in his ears. Again she rose and poured wine
down his throat.

"Sit still," she said, hoarsely. "You'll be all right in a moment."

The whole story, in disconnected patches, came floating in to them. He
heard it, gripping all the while the sides of his chair, struggling with
a deadly faintness. She too listened, watching him carefully all the
time lest he should call out. In their corner they were scarcely to be
seen even from the bar, and she had moved her seat a little so as to
wholly shield him. It sounded bad enough. An old man over sixty, a
farmer living in a northern village, had been found in his bedroom dead.
By his side was a rifled cash box. There had been the best part of a
hundred pounds there, all of which was gone. There were no signs of any
one having broken in, but a young man named Douglas Guest, an inmate of
the house and a distant relative, was missing. The thing was clear
enough.

Another voice chimed in--its owner possessed a later edition. Only that
night there had been a violent quarrel between the dead man and this
Douglas Guest concerning money. Guest had been seen to enter the London
train secretly at the nearest large station. His arrest was only a
matter of a few hours. The police knew exactly where to put their hands
upon him. A description followed. The girl and her companion exchanged
stealthy glances.

The buzz of voices continued. Covering Douglas all she could, the girl
called for more wine. The barmaid, seeing his pale face, nodded across
towards him.

"Your friend don't look well," she said.

"Had too much yesterday," the girl answered, promptly. "He was fairly
on 'the do,' and he ain't strong. He'll be all right when he gets a
drop of this inside him."

The barmaid nodded and turned away. The girl made him drink and then
roused him.

"Can you walk?" she said shortly. "We're best away from here."

He nodded.

"Yes."

She rose and paid for the last drinks. He followed her out on to the
pavement and stood there, dazed, almost helpless. She looked at him
critically.

"Come, pull yourself together," she said. "You've had a bit of a knock,
I guess, but you don't want to advertise yourself here. Now listen.
You'd best get some quiet lodging and lie low for a bit. I don't know
anything and I don't want to know anything, but it's pretty clear you're
keeping out of the way. I'm not going to take you down my way. For one
thing, you ain't exactly that sort, I should say, and for another, the
coppers are on to us like hot bricks when any one's wanted. Do you know
London at all?"

"I was never here before this evening," he answered, in a low tone.

She looked at him critically.

"You're a bit of a green 'un," she said, bluntly. "You don't need to go
giving yourself away like that, you know. Come along. I'm going to
take you out to a quiet part that'll do for you as well as anywhere."

He walked by her side passively. Once he stopped and bought an evening
paper, and under the next gas lamp he read a certain paragraph through
carefully. She waited for him without remark. He folded the paper up
after a minute or two and rejoined her. Side by side they threaded
their way along Pall Mall, across the Park and southwards. A walk
which, an hour or two ago, would have filled him with wonder and
delight, he undertook now with purely mechanical movements and unseeing
eyes. When they reached Chelsea she paused.

"Look here," she said, "are you feeling all right now?"

He nodded.

"I am quite myself again," he said, steadily. "I am much obliged to you
for looking after me. You are very kind."

He drew some gold pieces hesitatingly from his pocket. She motioned him
to replace them.

"I don't want any money, thanks," she said. "Now listen. That street
there is all lodging-houses. Go and get a room and lie quiet for a bit.
They're used to odd folk down here, and you look like a painter or a
writer. Say you're an actor out of a job, or anything that comes
handy."

"Thank you," he said. "I understand."

She turned away.

"Good night, then."

"Good night."

He heard something that sounded like a sob, and the quick rustling of
skirts. He turned round. She was by the corner--out of sight already.
At the bottom of the street was the glitter of a gas lamp reflected from
the walk. He walked down and found himself on Chelsea Embankment. He
made his way to the wall with the gold which she had refused still in
his hand, and without hesitation threw the coins far out into the river.
Then he looked around. There was not a soul in sight. He drew a
handful of money from his pocket and flung it away--a little shower of
gold flashing brightly in the gaslight for a moment. He went through
his pockets carefully and found an odd half sovereign and some silver.
Away they went. Then he moved back to a seat and closed his eyes.



CHAPTER VII

A NIGHT IN HELL--AND NEXT DAY

There are few men, Douglas had once read, who have not spent one night
of their lives in hell. When morning came he knew that he at least was
amongst the majority. Sleep had never once touched his eyelids--his
most blessed respite had been a few moments of deadly stupor, when the
red fires had ceased to play before his eyes, and the old man's upturned
face had faded away into the chill mists. Yet when at last he rose he
asked himself, with a sudden passionate eagerness, whether after all it
might not have been a terrible dream. He gazed around eagerly looking
for a latticed window with dimity curtains, a blue papered wall hung
with texts, and a low beamed ceiling. Alas! Before him was a
white-shrouded river, around him a wilderness of houses, and a long row
of faintly-burning lights stretched from where he sat all along the
curving embankment. He was wearing unfamiliar clothes, and a doubled-up
newspaper was in his pockets. It was all true then, the flight across
the moor, the strange ride to town, the wild exhilaration of spirits,
and the dull, crushing blow. The girl with the roses--ah, she had been
with him--had brought him here. He remembered the look in her eyes when
she had refused his money. At least he had ridded himself of that. He
tried to stretch himself. He was stiff and sore all over. His head was
throbbing like a steam engine, and he sank back upon the seat in the
throes of a cold, ghastly sickness. He remembered then that he had not
touched food for hours. He remembered too that he had not a penny in
the world.

For an hour or more he lay there partially unconscious. Physically he
was almost unable to move--his brain, however, was gradually clearing.
After all, perhaps the boldest course was the safest. He would go and
say, "Here am I, Douglas Guest--what do you want with me? It is true
that I took money from the old man, but it was my own. As to his death,
what do I know of that? Who heard me threaten him? Who saw me strike
him? There is no one."

He staggered up to his feet. The morning had come now, and people had
begun to stir. A few market waggons went rumbling by. There were
milk-carts in the streets, and sleepy-looking servants in print dresses
were showing their heads above the area steps. Douglas moved on with
unsteady footsteps. He passed a policeman who looked at him curiously,
and of whom he felt more than half inclined to ask the way to the
nearest police-station, then walked up into the square, where before him
hung a red lamp from a tall, red brick house with barred windows. He
peered in at the window. A fat sergeant was sitting at the table
yawning, the walls were hung with police bills, the room itself was the
quintessence of discomfort. The place repelled him strongly. He did
not like the look of the sergeant nor his possible quarters. After all,
why need he hurry? The day was young, and it was very unlikely that he
would be recognised. He strolled away with his hands in his pockets,
lighter-hearted with every step which took him away from those barred
windows.

Across the square, a fat little man was making strenuous efforts to
remove the shutter from in front of his shop. He looked round as
Douglas appeared, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, and
regarded him doubtfully.

"Will yer lend us a hand, guvnor?" he inquired.

Douglas was willing enough, and between them the job was soon finished.
The little man, who was a confectioner, explained that he had an
assistant who came from a distance, and whose laziness was most
phenomenal. After this morning, however, his services would be
dispensed with. For once he had gone a little too far. Eight o'clock
and no sign of him. It was monstrous! The little man produced a few
coppers and glanced towards Douglas with some hesitation.

Douglas laughed softly.

"I don't want any money, thanks," he said, "but if I could beg a piece
of bread or cake, I'm really hungry."

The little man nodded and hastened into the shop. Douglas followed him.

"If you'd care for a cup of milk," he remarked, taking a tin from the
door handle, "we can manage it. No tea yet, I'm afraid."

"I should enjoy the milk very much if you can spare it."

He made a curious meal. A little hysterical, but stronger at every
mouthful. The little man watched him covertly.

"Like a wash?" he inquired.

"Rather," Douglas answered. After all, it was a good start for the day.

He walked out of the shop a quarter of an hour later a new man, spruce
and clean, smoking a cigarette, and with the terrors of the night far
behind him. The cold water had been like a sweet, keen tonic to him.
The cobwebs had gone from his brain. Memory had returned. What a fool
he had been. There was no such person as Douglas Guest. Douglas Guest
was dead. What need for him to fear?

The greatest desire he had now was for a morning newspaper, but though
he tried every pocket several times over he was absolutely penniless.
Then he thought of the Free Libraries--a sudden and delightful
inspiration. A policeman directed him. He entered a handsome building,
and being early had his choice of the great dailies, neatly cut and
arranged upon rollers for him. One by one he read them through with
feverish interest, and when he set them down he laughed softly to
himself. There was not one of them which did not chronicle the death of
Douglas Guest on the Midland Express, and refer to him as the person
wanted for the Feldwick murder. So he was safe, after all. The press
had made it clearer than ever. Douglas Guest was dead. Henceforth he
need have no fear.

He moved to the tables where the reviews and magazines were, and spent a
pleasant hour or two amongst them. He planned out a new story, saw his
way to a satirical article upon a popular novel, thought of an epigram,
and walked out into the street a few minutes before one with something
of the old exhilaration of spirits dancing through his veins. His
condition of absolute poverty had not yet lost the flavour of novelty.
He even laughed as he realised that again he was hungry and must rely
upon chance for a meal. This time there was no fat confectioner to play
the good Samaritan. But by chance he passed a pawnbroker's shop, and
with a little cry of triumph he dragged a fat, yellow-faced silver watch
from his pocket and stepped blithely inside. He found it valued at much
less than he had expected, but he attempted no bargaining. He walked
out again into the street, a man of means. There were silver coins in
his pocket--enough to last him for a couple of days at least. It was
unexpected fortune.

He bought some tobacco and cigarette papers and rolled himself a
cigarette. Then he stepped out in the direction of the Strand, where he
imagined the restaurants mostly lay. He passed St. James's Palace, up
St. James's Street and into Piccadilly. For a while he forgot his
hunger. There was so much that was marvellous, so much to admire.
Burlington House was pointed out by a friendly policeman; he passed into
the courtyard where the pigeons were feeding, and looked around him with
admiration which was tempered almost with awe. On his way out he again
addressed the policeman.

"I want to have some lunch somewhere," he said. "I can only spend about
two shillings, and I want the best I can get for the money. I wonder
whether you could direct me."

The policeman smiled.

"There's only one place for you, sir," he said, "and it's lucky as I can
direct you there. You go to Spargetti's in Old Compton Street, off Soho
Square. I've heard that there's no West-End place to touch it--and they
do you the whole lot for two bob, including a quarter flask of wine.
I've a brother-in-law as keeps the books there, and I have it from him,
sir, that there ain't such value for money in the whole country. And
there's this about it, sir," he added confidentially, "you can eat
what's set before you. It ain't like some of these nasty, low, foreign
eating-'ouses where you daren't touch rabbit, and the soup don't seem
canny. There's plenty like that, but not Spargetti's. You're all right
there, sir."

Douglas went off, fortified with many directions, and laughing heartily.
He found Spargetti's, and seated himself at a tiny table in a long low
room, blue already with cigarette smoke. They brought him such a
luncheon as he had never eaten before. Grated macaroni in his soup,
watercress and oil with his chicken, a curious salad and a wonderful
cheese. Around him was the constant hum of gay conversation. Every one
save himself seemed to have friends here, and many of them. It was
indeed a very ordinary place, a cosmopolitan eating-house, good of its
sort, and with an excellent connection of lighthearted but impecunious
foreigners, who made up with the lightness of their spirits for the
emptiness of their purses. To Douglas, whose whole upbringing and
subsequent life had been amongst the dreariest of surroundings, there
was something about it all peculiarly fascinating. The air of pleasant
abandonment, the subtle aroma of gaiety allied with irresponsibility,
the strange food and wine, well cooked and stimulating, delighted him.
His sole desire now was for a companion. If only those men--artists, he
was sure they were--would draw him into their conversation. He had
plenty to say. He was ready to be as merry as any of them. A faint
sense of loneliness depressed him for a moment as he looked from one to
another of the long tables. All his life he had been as one removed
from his fellows. He was weary of it. Surely it must be nearly at an
end now. Some of the children of the great mother city would hold out
their hands to him. It was not alms he needed. It was a friend.

"Good morning."

Douglas looked up quickly. A newcomer had taken the vacant place at his
table.



CHAPTER VIII

THE AUTHOR OF "NO MAN'S LAND"

Douglas returned his greeting cordially. His _vis-a-vis_ drew the menu
towards him and studied it with interest. Setting it down he screwed a
single eyeglass into his eye and beamed over at Douglas.

"Is the daily grind O. K.?" he inquired suavely.

Douglas was disconcerted at being unable to answer a question so
pleasantly asked.

"I--beg your pardon," he said, doubtfully. "I'm afraid I don't quite
understand."

The newcomer waved his hand to some acquaintances and smiled cheerfully.

"I see you're a stranger here," he remarked. "There's a _table-d'hote_
luncheon for the modest sum of eighteenpence, which is the cheapest way
to feed, if it's decent. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. I
thought perhaps you might have sampled it."

"I believe I have," Douglas answered. "I told the waiter to bring me
the ordinary lunch, and I thought it was very good indeed."

"Then I will risk it. Henri. Come here, you scamp."

He gave a few orders to the waiter, who treated him with much respect.
Then he turned again to Douglas.

"You have nearly finished," he said. "Please don't hurry. I hate to
eat alone. It is a whim of mine. If I eat alone I read, and if I read
I get dyspepsia. Try the oat biscuits and the Camembert."

Douglas did as the newcomer had suggested.

"I am in no hurry," he said. "I have nothing to do, nor anywhere to
go."

"Lucky man!"

"You speak as though that were unusual," Douglas laughed, "but I was
just thinking that every one here seems to be in the same state. Some
one once told me that London was a city of sadness. Who could watch the
people here and say so?"

The newcomer screwed in his eyeglass and looked deliberately round the
room.

"Well," he said, "this is a resort of the poor, and the poor are seldom
sad. It is the unfortunate West-Enders who carry the burdens of wealth
and the obligation of position, who have earned for us the reproach of
dulness. Here we are on the threshold of Bohemia. Long life and health
to it."

He drank a glass of Chianti with the air of a connoisseur tasting some
rare vintage.

Douglas laughed softly.

"If the people here are poor," he said, "what about me? I pawned my
watch because I had had nothing to eat since yesterday."

His new friend sighed and stuck his fork into an olive.

"What affluence," he sighed, meditatively. "I have not possessed a
watch for a year, and I've only ninepence in my pocket. They give me
tick here. Foolish Spargetti. Long may their confidence last!"

A companion in impecuniosity. Douglas looked at his neat clothes and
the flower in his buttonhole, and wondered.

"But you have the means of making money if you care to."

"Have I?" The eyeglass was carefully removed, the small wizened face
assumed a lugubrious aspect. "My friend," he said, "in a measure it is
true--but such a small measure. A cold-blooded and unappreciative
editor apprises my services at the miserable sum of three pounds a week.
I have heard of people who have lived upon that sum, but I must confess
that I never met one."

"You are a writer, then?" Douglas exclaimed, eagerly.

"I am a sort of hack upon the staff of the _Ibex_. They set me down in
a corner of the office and throw me scraps of work, as you would bones
to a dog. It is not dignified, but one must eat and drink--not to
mention smoking. Permit me, by-the-bye, to offer you a cigarette, and
to recommend the coffee. I taught Spargetti how to make it myself."

Douglas was listening with flushed cheeks. The _Ibex_! What a
coincidence!

"You are really on the staff of the _Ibex_?" he exclaimed.

The other nodded.

"I hold exactly the position," he said, "that I have described to you.
My own impression is, that without me the _Ibex_ would not exist for a
month. That is where the editor and I differ, unfortunately."

"It seems so odd," Douglas said. "Some time ago I sent a story to the
_Ibex_, and it was accepted. I have been looking for it to appear every
week."

The shrewd little eyes twinkled into his.

"What was the title?"

"'No Man's Land.' Douglas Jesson was the name."

The newcomer filled Douglas's glass with Chianti from his own modest
flask.

"Waiter," he said, "bring more wine. My friend, Douglas Jesson, we must
drink together. I remember your story, for I put the blue chalk on it
myself and took it up to Drexley. It is a meeting this, and we must
celebrate. Your story will probably be used next week."

Douglas's eyes were bright and his cheeks were flushed. The flavour of
living was sweet upon his palate. Here he was, who, only twelve hours
ago, had gone skulking in the shadows looking out upon life with
terrified eyes, tempted even to self-destruction, suddenly in touch once
more with the things that were dear to him, realising for the first time
some of the dreams which had filled his brain in those long, sleepless
nights upon the hill-top. He was a wanderer in Bohemia, welcomed by an
older spirit. Surely fortune had commenced at last to smile upon him.

"You are on a visit here?" his new friend asked, "or have you come to
London for good?"

"For good, I trust," Douglas answered, smiling, "for I have burned my
boats behind me."

"My name is Rice, yours I know already," the other said. "By-the-bye, I
noticed that the postmark of your parcel was Feldwick in the Hills,
somewhere in Cumberland, I think. Have you seen the papers during the
last few days?"

Douglas's left hand gripped the table, and the flush of colour, which
the wine and excitement had brought into his cheeks, faded slowly away.
The pleasant hum of voices, the keen joy of living, which, a moment
before, had sent his blood flowing to a new music, left him.
Nevertheless he controlled himself and answered steadily.

"I have had nothing else to do during the last few days but read the
papers."

"You know about the murder, then?"

"Yes."

Mr. Rice was interested. He passed his cigarette case across the table
and called for Kummel.

"I wonder," he said, "did you know the man Guest--Douglas Guest?"

Douglas shook his head.

"Very slightly," he said. "I lived some distance away, and they were
not sociable people."

"Murders as a rule," Rice continued, leaning back in his chair, "do not
interest me. This one did. Why? I don't know. I hate to have reasons
for everything. But to me there were many interesting points about this
one. First, now--"

He rattled on until his voice seemed like a far distant echo to Douglas,
who sat with white face and averted eyes, struggling hard for composure.
From the murder he passed on to the tragedy on the railway train.

"You know," he said, "I cannot help thinking that the police were a
little hasty in assuming that the man was Douglas Guest."

"An envelope was found upon him and a handkerchief with his initials,"
Douglas said, looking up, "besides the card. He was known too to have
taken that train. Surely that was evidence enough?"

"It seems so," Rice answered, "and yet--But never mind. I see that I am
boring you. We will talk of something else, or rather I must talk of
nothing else, for my time is up," he added, glancing at the clock.
"When are you going to look up Drexley?"

"When is the best time to catch him?" Douglas asked.

"Now, as easily as any," Rice answered. "Come along with me, and I will
show you the way and arrange that he sees you."

Douglas stood up and ground his heel into the floor. Perish those
hateful fears--that fainting sense of terror! Douglas Guest was dead.
For Douglas Jesson there was a future never more bright than now.

"Come," he said. "You must drink with me once. Waiter, two more
liqueurs."

"Success," Rice cried, lifting his glass, "to your interview with
Drexley! He's not a bad chap, although he has his humours."

Douglas drained his glass to the dregs--but he drank to a different
toast. The two men left the place together.



CHAPTER IX

THE EDITOR OF THE _IBEX_ RECEIVES A STRANGE LETTER

The editor of the _Ibex_ sat at a long table in his sanctum paying some
perfunctory attentions to a huge pile of letters which had come in by
the afternoon mail. Most of them he threw on one side for his "sub," a
few he opened himself and tossed into a basket for further attention
later on. It was a task which he never entered upon with much
enthusiasm, for he was a man who hated detail. His room itself
disclosed the man. It was a triumph of disorder. Books and magazines
were scattered all over the floor. The proof sketch of a wonderful
poster took up one side of the wall, leaning against the others were
sketches, pictures, golf clubs, and huge piles of books of reference.
His table was a bewilderment, his mantelpiece a nightmare. Only before
him, in a handsome frame of dark wood, was the photograph of a woman
round which a little space had been cleared. There was never so much
chaos but that the picture was turned where the light fell best upon it;
the dirt might lie thick upon every inch in the room, but every morning
a silk handkerchief carefully removed from the glass-mounting every
disfiguring speck. Yet the man himself seemed to have little enough
sentiment about him. His shoulders were broad and his head massive. A
short-cut beard concealed his chin, but his mouth was of iron and his
eyes were hard and keen. He was of no more than the average stature by
reason of his breadth and girth; he seemed even to fall short of it,
which was not however the case. A man not easily led or controlled, a
man of passions and prejudices, emphatically not a man to be trifled
with or ignored.

In the midst of the pile of letters he came upon one at the sight of
which his indifference vanished as though by magic. It was a heavy,
square envelope, a coronet upon the flap, addressed to David Drexley,
Esq., in a handwriting distinctly feminine. He singled it out from the
rest, held it for a moment between his thumb and broad forefinger, and
then turned his chair round, abandoning the rest of his correspondence
as a matter of infinitesimal consequence. A letter from her was by no
means an everyday affair, for she was a woman of caprices, as who should
know better than he? There were weeks during which it was her pleasure
to hold herself aloof from him--and others--when the servants who denied
her shook their heads to all questions, and letters met with no
response. What should he find inside, he wondered? An invitation, or a
reproof. He had tried so hard to see her lately. He was in no hurry
to open it. He had grown to expect very little from her. While it was
unopened there was at least the pleasure of expectancy. He traced the
letters over. There was the same curl of the S, the same finely formed
capitals, the same deliberate and firm dash after the address. Then a
thought came to him. It was Wednesday, the night on which she often saw
her friends. Surely this was a summons. He might see her within a few
hours. He tore open the envelope and read:--

"No. 20, GROSVENOR ST.,

"Wednesday.

"My FRIEND,--SO often I have bidden you find work for the young people
in whom I have interested myself, that my present charge upon your
good-nature will doubtless seem strange to you. Yet I am as much in
earnest now as then, and for the favour of granting what I now ask I
shall be equally grateful. There is a young man named Jesson who has
sent you a story, and who hopes to secure more work from you. It is not
my wish that he should have it at present, and with regard to the work
which you have already accepted, please let its production be delayed as
long as possible, and payment for it made on the smallest possible
scale. You will wonder at this, I know. Never mind. Do as I ask and I
will explain later.

"That reminds me that I have seen nothing of you lately. This evening I
shall be at home from ten to eleven. If your engagements permit of your
coming to see me, I may perhaps be able to take you into my confidence.
If you should come, bring with you the manuscript of this boy's story
that I may judge for myself if the _Ibex_ will be the loser. Yours most
truly,

"EMILY DE REUSS."

Drexley glanced through the letter rapidly, read it again more
carefully, and then turned with a perplexed face to a little telephone
which stood upon his table. He summoned his manager, an untidy-looking
person with crumpled hair and inkstained fingers which he seemed
perpetually attempting to conceal.

"Mr. Warmington, is that Jesson story set up?" the editor inquired.

"Yes, sir. I understand that those were your instructions."

Drexley nodded.

"Well, I shall want it kept back for a bit," he said. "You can take
another story of about the same length from the accepted chest."

The manager stared.

"We've nothing else as good," he remarked. "You said yourself that
Jesson's story was the best bit of work we'd had in for a long time."

Drexley frowned and turned back to his letters.

"Never mind that," he said. "I've good reasons for what I'm telling you
to do. Jesson's story is not to appear until I give the word."

The manager withdrew without a word. Drexley went on with his
correspondence. In a few minutes there was another knock at his door.
He looked up annoyed. Some one else, no doubt, to protest against the
exclusion of Jesson's story. Rice was standing upon the threshold, and
behind him a younger man, tall, with clustering hair and brilliant eyes,
cheeks on which the tan still lingered, ill-clad but personable.

"I've brought Mr. Jesson in to see you, sir," Rice said, breezily. "I
found him at Spargetti's, struck up an acquaintance and brought him
along. I thought you'd like to have a talk with him about some more
work."

Drexley for a moment was as speechless as Douglas was nervous. Rice,
blandly unconscious of anything unusual, wheeled up a chair for the
latter and sauntered towards the door.

"I'd like to have a word with you before you go, Jesson," he said.
"Will you look in at my room?"

Douglas murmured an inarticulate assent, and Rice departed. Then he
looked up at the man who so far had only bidden him a mechanical good
morning, and wondered a little at the heavy frown upon his face.
Perhaps his introduction had been a little unceremonious, but surely he
could not be blamed for that.

Drexley pulled himself together. The thing was awkward, but it must be
faced.

"You have come to see us about your story, I suppose, Mr. Jesson?" he
began. "A very fair story indeed for a beginner, as I suppose you are.
I am hoping that some day we may be able to make use of it for the
_Ibex_."

Douglas looked up quickly.

"I understood Mr. Rice that you were using it in the next issue of the
magazine," he said.

"The next issue!" Drexley shook his head.

"I am afraid that is quite out of the question," he said. "You see our
arrangements are all made a very long time ahead, and we have short
stories enough on hand now to last us nearly two years. Of course if
you care to leave yours with us, I think I can promise you that it shall
appear some time, but exactly when, I should not care to say. It would
be quite impossible to fix a date."

Douglas was bewildered--speechless. He did his best, however, to remain
coherent.

"Mr. Rice certainly told me," he said, "that it was in type and would
appear at once. He seemed to think, too, that if I saw you you might
give me some more work. I am living in London now, and I hoped that it
might be possible for me to make some money by my pen."

Drexley was silent for several moments. For the first time in his life
he glanced across at the photograph which stood upon his table with
something like impatience.

"I am afraid that I cannot offer you much encouragement," he said. "If
ever a market in the world was overcrowded, the literary market of
to-day is in that state. If you like to leave your story it shall
appear some time or other--I cannot promise when--and when we are able
to use it we will pay you according to our usual standard. More I
cannot say at present."

Douglas rose up with a sense of sick disappointment at his heart, but
with a firm determination also to carry himself like a man.

"I am much obliged to you," he said. "I will think the matter over and
let you know."

Drexley watched the struggle. He, too, had been young, and he hated
himself.

"You had better leave us your address," he said. "We will let you know,
then, if we see a chance of using more of your work."

Douglas hesitated.

"When I have an address," he said, "I will write to you. At present I
have not made my arrangements in London."

Drexley let him go, despising himself, with a vague feeling of
irritation, too, against the beautiful face which smiled at him from his
table. Douglas's one idea was to get out of the place. He had no wish
to see Rice or any one. But on the landing he came face to face with
the latter, who had not as yet gone into his room.

"Hullo," he exclaimed. "You're soon off. Have you finished with 'the
chief' already?"

Douglas nodded with tightening lips.

"He hadn't much to say to me," he answered. "Good afternoon."

Rice let his hand fall upon the other's shoulder.

"I don't understand," he said. "Here, come into my room for a minute."

Douglas yielded, and Rice listened to the description of his interview,
his little wizened face puckered up with astonishment. When he had
finished he thrust a box of cigarettes towards his visitor and rose from
his chair.

"Here," he said, "just wait here a moment. I must have a word with the
chief."

He turned out. He was gone for several minutes. When he returned his
face was grave and puzzled.

"Jesson," he said, "I'll be frank with you. Either the chief's gone off
his nut, or you managed to offend him somehow. I can't understand it a
bit, I'll confess. I'm fairly staggered."

"I hadn't a chance to offend him," Douglas said. "He simply sat on me."

Rice walked up and down the room.

"I wish you'd leave me your address," he said. "I'd like to look into
this a bit."

Douglas sighed.

"I can only tell you" he said, "what I told Mr. Drexley. At present I
haven't one. Good afternoon."

Rice walked with him to the door.

"Jesson," he said, "I want you to promise me something."

"Well?"

"You're a bit down on your luck. If things go badly you'll give me a
look up. I can always raise a bit, and I think your word's all right.
I tell you this, on my honour. Only yesterday 'the chief' asked for
the proof of your story himself. It was down to appear without fail
this next week. We've very few manuscripts in hand--never had
fewer--and they've been so short of good fiction. What's gone wrong I
don't know, but you leave it to me and I'll find out. You'll let me
hear from you, eh?"

Douglas nodded drearily.

"Thanks," he said. "I won't forget."

He walked away briskly enough, but without any definite idea as to his
destination. Rice returned to his room and smoked a whole cigarette
before he touched his work.



CHAPTER X

A WOMAN OF WHIMS

Drexley had found his way to her side at last. As usual her rooms were
full, and to-night of people amongst whom he felt himself to some extent
an alien. For Drexley was not of the fashionable world--not even of the
fashionable literary world. At heart he was a Bohemian of the old type.
He loved to spend his days at work, and his evenings at a certain
well-known club, where evening dress was abhorred, and a man might sit,
if he would, in his shirt sleeves. Illimitable though her tact, even
Emily de Reuss, the Queen of London hostesses, never succeeded in making
him feel altogether at home in her magnificent rooms. To-night he felt
more at sea even than usual. Generally she had bidden him come to her
when she entertained the great cosmopolitan world of art-toilers.
To-night she was at home to another world--the strictly exclusive world
of rank and fashion. Drexley wandering about, seeing never a face he
knew, felt ill at ease, conscious of his own deficiency in dress and
deportment, in a world where form was the one material thing, and a
studhole shirt or an ill-cut waistcoat were easy means of acquiring
notoriety. He wandered from room to room, finding nowhere any one to
speak to, conscious of a good deal of indifferent scrutiny, hating
himself for coming, hating, too, the bondage which had made him glad to
come. Then suddenly he came face to face with his hostess, and with a
few graceful words of apology she had left her escort and taken his arm.

"I am afraid you are being bored," she said, quietly. "I am sorry. I
only remembered that people were coming to-night. Janette was out, and
I had quite forgotten who had had cards. I wanted to see you, too."

"I am a little out of place here," he answered. "That is all. Now that
I have seen you, you can explain your note, and I can go away."

She seemed in no hurry.

"I know," she said, "that you are dying for your smoky little club, your
Scotch whiskey and your pipe. Never mind, it is well for you sometimes
to be disciplined."

"At the present moment," he said, "I long for nothing beyond what I
have."

She turned to look at him with an amused smile. The lights flashed on
the diamonds around her throat, and the glittering spangles upon her
black dress. Truly a wonderfully beautiful woman--a divine figure, and
a dress, which scarcely a woman who had looked at it had not envied.

"You are getting wonderfully apt, my grim friend," she said, "at those
speeches which once you affected to despise."

"It was never the speeches I despised," he answered bluntly, "it was the
insincerity."

"And you, I suppose, are the only sincere man who makes them. My
friend, that little speech errs on the other side, does it not?"

He frowned impatiently.

"You have many guests," he said, "who will be looking for you. Let me
know why you made me treat that young man so badly, and then go away.

"Have you treated him badly then?" she asked.

"Very. I recalled my acceptance of his story, and declined to discuss
future work with him. I have deprived the _Ibex_ of a contributor who
might possibly have become a very valuable one, and I have gone back
upon my word. I want to know why."

"I am afraid," she said softly, "that it was for me."

"For you," he answered, "of course. But your letter hinted at an
explanation."

"Explanations" she yawned, "are so tedious."

"Tell me, at least," he said, "how the poor young idiot offended you."

"Offended me! Scarcely that."

"You are not a woman" he said, "to interfere in anything without a
cause."

"I am a woman of whim," she said. "You have told me so many times."

"You are a very wonderful woman," he said softly, "and you know very
well that your will is quite sufficient for me. Yet you are also a
generous woman. I have many a time had to stand godfather to your
literary foundlings. You have never yet exercised the contrary
privilege. I have done a mean thing and an ungenerous thing, and though
I would do it again at your bidding, again and again, I should like an
excuse--if there is any excuse."

"I am so sorry," she said. "There will be no excuse for you. I, too,
have been mean and ungenerous--but I should be the same again. I took
some interest in that young man, and I offered him my help. He coolly
declined it--talked of succeeding by his own exertions. So priggish,
you know, and I felt bound to let him see that the path to literary fame
was not altogether the pleasant highway he seemed to expect."

"That was all?"

"Everything."

"He wounded your vanity; you stoop to retaliate."

She beamed upon him.

"How nice of you to be so candid. I value frankness from my friends
more than anything in the world.

"It is the exact truth!"

"It was unworthy of you," he said shortly.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"You think much too well of me," she said. "You know I am a woman to
the finger tips."

"I don't call that a womanly action," he said.

"Ah! that is because you know nothing of women." There was a moment's
silence. From a distant room, dimly seen through a vista of curved and
pillared archways, a woman's voice came pealing out to them, the
passionate climax of an Italian love song, the voice of a prima donna of
world-wide fame. A storm of applause was echoed through the near rooms,
a buzz of appreciative criticism followed. Drexley rose up from the
seat where he had been sitting.

"Thank you," he said. "I have learned what I wanted to know. I will go
now. Good evening."

She stood by his side--as tall as he--and looked at him curiously. It
was as though she were seeking to discover from his face how much his
opinion of her had altered. But if so, she was disappointed. His face
was inscrutable.

"You are angry with me?"

"I have no right to be that."

"Annoyed?"

"Not with you."

"After all," she said, "there is no harm done. He will come to me, and
then I shall see that his future is properly shaped. If he is what I
have an idea that he may be, I shall be of far greater help to him than
ever you could have been."

But Drexley was silent. He was thinking then of her _proteges_. Had
they, after all, been such brilliant successes? One or two were doing
fairly well, from a pecuniary point of view--but there were others! She
read his thought, and a faint spot of colour burned for a moment on her
cheek. She was very nearly angry. What a bear, a brute!

"I know what you were thinking of," she said coldly. "It is not
generous of you. I did all I could for poor Austin, and as for
Fennel--well, he was mad."

"You are the kind of woman," he said, looking her suddenly full in the
face, "who deals out kindnesses to men which they would often be much
better without. You are generous, great-hearted, sympathetic, else I
would not speak like this to you. But you have a devil's gift
somewhere. You make the most unlikely men your slaves--and you send
them mad with kindness.

"You are neither fair nor reasonable," she answered. "You talk as
though I were Circe behind a bar. Such rubbish."

"I never insinuated that it was wilful," he said sadly. "I believe in
you. I know that you are generous. Only--you are very beautiful, and
at times you are too kind."

"My hateful sex!" she exclaimed dolefully. "Why can't men forget it
sometimes? Isn't it a little hard upon me, my friend? I am, you know,
very rich, and I have influence. Nothing interests me so much as
helping on a little young people who have gifts. Isn't it a little hard
that I should I have to abandon what surely isn't a mischievous thing to
do because one of the young men has been foolish enough to fancy himself
in love with me?"

They were interrupted. She turned to bid him good night.

"At least," she said smiling, "I will be very careful indeed with this
boy."

"If he comes to you!"

"If he comes," she repeated, with an odd little smile at the corner of
her lips.

              *     *     *     *     *

Drexley walked through the crowded streets to his club, where his
appearance in such unwonted garb was hailed with a storm of applause and
a good deal of chaff. He held his own as usual, lighted his pipe, and
played a game of pool. But all the same he was not quite himself.
There was the old restlessness hot in his blood, and a strong sense of
dissatisfaction with himself. Later on, Rice was brought in by a
friend, and he drew him on one side.

"Rice," he said abruptly, "about that young fellow you brought to see me
to-day--"

Rice looked his chief full in the face.

"Well?" he said simply.

"I don't want to altogether lose sight of him. You haven't his address
by any chance, have you?"

"I only wish I had," Rice answered shortly. "May be there by now."

He pointed out of the window to where the Thames, black and sullen, but
lit with a thousand fitful lights, flowed sullenly seaward. Drexley
shuddered.

"Don't talk rot, Rice," he said.

"Oh, I don't know," the younger man answered. "You gave him a knockdown
blow, and an unexpected one.

"I was sorry," Drexley said, awkwardly. "In the conduct of the magazine
I have to sometimes consider other people. I am not wholly my own
master."

Rice, who knew who the "other people" were, muttered a curse between his
teeth. Drexley turned frowning away.

"At any rate, if you hear anything of him," he said, "let me know."

"Does the Countess de Reuss intend to be kind to him?" Rice asked.

"Go to the devil!" Drexley answered savagely.



CHAPTER XI

DOUGLAS GUEST GETS HIS "CHANCE"

There followed a time then when the black waters of nethermost London
closed over Douglas's head. He struggled and fought to the last gasp,
but in the end the great stream carried him away on her bosom, and with
scarcely a sob he watched all those wonderful rose-coloured dreams of
his fade away into empty space. He was one of the flotsam and jetsam of
life. No one would have the work of his brains, and his unskilled hands
failed to earn anything for him save a few dry crusts. He had made
desperate efforts to win a hearing. Whilst his few pence lasted, and
his inkpot was full, he wrote several short stories, and left them here
and there at the offices of various magazines. He had no permanent
address, he would call for the reply, he said; and so he did, till his
coat burst at the seams and his boots gave out. Then he gave it up in
despair. It was his work that was wrong, he told himself. What had
seemed well enough to him amongst the Cumberland hills was crude and
amateurish here. He was a fool ever to have reckoned himself a writer.
It was the _Ibex_ which had misled him. He cursed the _Ibex_, its
editor, and all connected with it. That was at the time when he had
sunk lowest, when it seemed to him, who, only a few days ago, had looked
out upon life a marvellous panorama of life and colour and things
beautiful, that death after all was the one thing to be desired. Yet he
carried himself bravely through those evil days. Every morning he
stripped and swam in the Serpentine, stiff enough often after a night
spent out of doors, but ever with that vigorous desire for personal
cleanliness which never left him even at the worst. As soon as his
clothes fell into rags about him he presented the strange appearance of
a tramp whose face and hands were spotless, and who carried himself even
till towards the end with a sort of easy grace as though he were indeed
only masquerading. But there came a time when the luck of the loafer
went against him. From morning to night he tramped the streets, willing
to work even till his back was broken, but unable to earn a copper. The
gnawings of hunger roused something of the wild beast in him. A fiercer
light burned in his eyes, his thin lips curled into hard, stern lines.
He loitered about the Strand, and the crowds of theatre-goers in their
evening dresses, borne backwards and forwards in cabs and carriages, and
crowding the pavements also, stirred in him a slow, passionate anger.
The bitter inequalities of life, its flagrant and rank injustices, he
seemed for the first time to wholly realise. A Banquo amongst the gay
stream of people who brushed lightly against him every moment. He lost
for the time that admirable gift of sympathetic interest in his fellows
which had once been his chief trait. His outlook upon life was changed.
To the world which had misused him so he showed an altered front. He
scowled at the men, and kept his face turned from the women. What had
they done, these people, that they should be well-dressed and merry,
whilst the aching in his bones grew to madness, and hunger gnawed at his
life strings. One night, with twitching fingers and face drawn white
with pain, he turned away from the crowded streets towards Westminster,
sank into a seat, and, picking up the half of a newspaper, read the smug
little account of a journalist who had spent a few hours a day perhaps
in the slums. As he read he laughed softly to himself, and then,
clutching the paper in his hands, he walked away to the Embankment, up
Northumberland Avenue, and into the Strand. After a few inquiries he
found the offices of the newspaper, and marched boldly inside. A vast
speculation, the enterprise of a millionaire, the _Daily Courier_, though
it sold for a halfpenny, was housed in a palace. In a gothic chamber,
like the hall of a chapel, hung with electric lights and filled with a
crowd of workers and loungers, Douglas stood clutching the fragment of
newspaper still in his hand, looking around for some one to address
himself to--a strange figure in his rags, wan, starving, but something
of personal distinction still clinging to him. A boy looked over a
mahogany partition at him and opened a trap window.

"Well?" he asked sharply. "Do you want papers to sell? This is the
wrong entrance for that, you know."

"I want to see some one in authority," Douglas said; "the sub-editor, if
possible."

It was a democratic undertaking, this newspaper, with its vast
circulation and mighty staff, and visitors of all sorts daily crossed
its threshold. Yet this man's coat hung about him in tatters, and his
boots were almost soleless. The boy hesitated.

"What business?" he asked curtly.

"I will explain it--to him--in a moment," Douglas answered. "If he is
busy, one of the staff will do. I am in no hurry. I can wait."

The boy closed the trapdoor and withdrew. In a few minutes a young man,
smartly dressed, with sparse moustache and a pince-nez, came out of a
door opposite to Douglas.

"Want to see me?" he inquired tersely. "I'm an assistant editor."

Douglas held out the fragment of paper.

"I've just read that," he said. "Picked it up on a seat."

The man glanced at it and nodded.

"Well?"

"It's badly done," Douglas said, bluntly. "The man's only sat down on
the outside of the thing and sketched. It isn't real. It couldn't be.
No one can write of starvation who merely sees it written in the faces
of other people. No one can write of the homeless who is playing at
vagabondage."

The assistant editor looked his visitor up and down, and nodded quietly.

"Well?"

"If this sort of thing is likely to interest your readers," Douglas
said, "give me pen and paper and I will write of the thing as it is. I
am homeless, and I am starving. The loneliness that your man writes of
so prettily, I will set down in black and white. Man, I am starving
now, and I will write it down so that every one who reads shall
understand. I have slept under arches and on seats, I have lain
dreaming with the rain beating in my face, and I have seen strange
things down in the underneath life where hell is. Give me a chance and
I will set down these things for you, as no one has ever set them down
before."

Douglas gave a little lurch, swayed, and recovered himself with an
effort. The sub-editor looked at him with interest.

"Do you drink?" he asked quietly.

"No," Douglas answered. "I'm faint for want of food, that's all. Give
me pen and ink, and if you can use what I write, pay me for it. You
don't stand to lose anything, and I'm--I'm--"

The sub-editor took a small piece of gold from his pocket and
interrupted him.

"That's all right," he said. "We'll see what you can do anyway. But
you must have something to eat first. Let me give you this on account;
now go straight away and get a feed and a glass of wine. I'll have a
room ready for you when you get back."

Douglas drew a little breath. His fingers closed upon the piece of
gold. There was a glare in his eyes which was almost wolfish. He had
dared to let his thoughts rest for a moment upon food. He, who was
fighting the last grim fight against starvation. He spoke in a whisper,
for his voice was almost gone.

"How do you know that I shall come back?"

"I am content to risk it," the sub-editor answered, smiling. "Come back
in an hour's time and ask for Mr. Rawlinson."

Douglas staggered out, speechless. There was a sob sticking in his
throat and a mist of tears before his eyes.



CHAPTER XII

THE MAN WHO NEARLY WENT UNDER

At midnight a man sat writing at a desk in a corner of a great room full
of hanging lights, a hive of industry. All around him was the clicking
of typewriters, the monotonous dictation of reporters, the tinkling of
telephone bells. When they had set him down here, they had asked him
whether the noises would disturb him, but he had only smiled grimly.
They brought him pen and paper and a box of cigarettes--which he
ignored. Then they left him alone, and no sound in the great room was
more constant than the scratching of his pen across the paper.

As the first page fluttered from his fingers he bent for a moment his
head, and his pen was held in nerveless fingers. Since he had come to
London, sanguine, buoyant, light-hearted, this was the first time he had
written a line for which he expected payment. The irony of it was borne
in upon him with swift, unresisting agony. This was the first fruit of
his brain, this passionate rending aside of the curtain, which hung like
a shroud before the grim horrors of that seething lower world of misery.
In his earlier work there had been a certain delicate fancifulness, an
airy grace of diction and description, a very curious heritage of a man
brought up in the narrowest of lines, where every influence had been a
constraint. There was nothing of that in the words which were leaping
now hot from his heart. Yet he knew very well that he was writing as a
man inspired.

That was his only pause. Midnight struck, one and two o'clock, but his
pen only flew the faster. Many curious glances were cast upon him, the
man in rags with the burning eyes, who wrote as though possessed by some
inexorcisable demon. At last Rawlinson came softly to his side and took
up a handful of the wet sheets. He was smoking a cigarette, for his own
labours were nearly over, but as he read it burned out between his
fingers. He beckoned to another man, and silently passed him some of
the sheets. They drew a little on one side.

"Wonderful," the other man whispered, in a tone of rare enthusiasm.
"Who on earth is he?"

Rawlinson shook his head.

"No idea. He came here like that--nearly fainted before my eyes--wanted
to write something in Austin's line--looked as though he could do it
too. I gave him half a sovereign to get something to eat, and told him
to come back. There he's been ever since--nearly three hours. What a
study for one of those lurid sketches of Forbes' as he sits now."

"I never read anything like it," the newcomer said. "He's a magnificent
find. How on earth did a man who can do work like that get into such a
state?"

Rawlinson shrugged his shoulders.

"Who can tell. Not drink, I should say. Laziness perhaps, or ill-luck.
I only know that to-night he has written his way on to the staff of this
paper."

The other man was watching Douglas as though fascinated.

"He has written his way into greater things," he murmured. "It makes
one feel like a hackneyed 'penny-a-liner' to read work like that."

"He's about done up," Rawlinson said. "Do you think I ought to stop
him?"

"Not likely. If there's such a thing in the world as inspiration he's
got it now. Don't miss a line. Let him write till he faints, but have
some one watch him and give him a stiff whiskey and soda directly he
stops."

"I shall stay myself," Rawlinson said. "It's an 'off' day to-morrow,
anyhow. Come and have a drink."

From behind and below came the roar of machinery, rolls of wet proofs
came flooding into the room at every moment. Now and then a hansom set
down a belated reporter, who passed swiftly in to his work, taking off
his coat as he went. Outside the sparrows began to chirp, dawn
lightened the sky, and strange gleams of light stole into the vast room.
Then suddenly from Douglas's desk came a sound.

Rawlinson rushed up too late to save him. Douglas had swayed for a
moment and then fallen over sideways. He lay upon the ground a huddled
heap, white and motionless.

They laid him flat upon his back, undid his clothing, and sent for a
doctor. A window a few yards away was thrown up and a rush of cold,
fresh air streamed into the room. But for all they could do Douglas
never moved, and his face was like the face of a dead man. Rawlinson
stood up, horribly anxious, and gave way to the doctor, who felt his
heart and looked grave. For an hour the pendulum swung backwards and
forwards between life and death. Then the doctor stood up with a sigh
of relief.

"He'll do now," he said; "but it was a narrow squeak."

"Exhaustion?" Rawlinson asked.

"Starvation," the doctor answered grimly. "The man has been sober all
his life, and a careful liver, or he would be dead now. What are you
going to do with him? It'll take him a day or two to pull round."

"Whatever you advise," Rawlinson answered.

"Has he any money?"

"You can treat him as though he were a millionaire," Rawlinson answered.
"Give him every chance. The _Daily Courier_ pays cheerfully."

              *     *     *     *     *

They moved him into the private ward of a great hospital, where patients
with complicated disorders and bottomless purses were sometimes treated,
but where never before a man had come suffering from starvation.
Everything that science and careful nursing could do, was done for him,
and in a few days be astonished them all by sitting up in bed suddenly
and demanding to know what had happened. He listened without emotion,
he heard the generous message from the _Daily Courier_ which, a month ago,
would have set every pulse in his body tingling with excitement, without
comment. He grew rapidly stronger, but side by side with his physical
improvement came a curious mental lassitude, a weariness of mind which
made him content to lie and watch the housetops and the clouds, with
never a desire to move nor to step back once more into life. The old
enthusiasms seemed chilled out of him. They showed him his work in
print, told him that he had stirred millions of his fellow-creatures as
nothing of the sort had ever done before, that everywhere people were
talking of him and his wonderful work. He only smiled faintly and
looked once more at the clouds. They left paper and pens upon his
table. He looked at them without interest, and they remained untouched,
Rawlinson himself called daily to inquire, and one day the doctor sent
for him.

"Your _protege_ is physically all right now," he said. "He is suffering
simply from shock. I should say that he had a fearful time struggling
before he went down, and it will be a matter of time before he's himself
again.

"All right," Rawlinson said. "Do all you can for him."

"I was going to suggest," the doctor said, "that one of us puts it
delicately to him that he's a considerable expense to you. It needs
something like that to stir him up. He could put on his hat and walk
out of the place to-morrow if he liked."

"Not for the world," Rawlinson answered promptly. "If he was costing us
fifty guineas a week instead of ten, we should be perfectly satisfied.
Let him stay till he feels like moving. Then we'll send him to the sea,
if he'll go."

The doctor laughed.

"You're great people, Rawlinson," he said. "Not many philanthropists
like you."

"It's not philanthropy," the sub-editor answered. "If you asked me to
put into L. s. d. what those articles were worth to us, I couldn't tell
you. But I can tell you this. We've paid thousands down more than
once, for an advertisement which wasn't worth half so much as those few
sheets of manuscript. We've an endless purse, but there's a short
supply of what we want to buy--originality. If we come across it we
don't let it go easily, I can tell you."

So Douglas was left undisturbed. Then one morning he woke up to find
his room a bower of roses, roses whose perfume and beauty took his
breath away. The nurse, who had tended a prince, said she had never
seen anything like them before. Douglas looked at them for a while
fascinated, stooped down and bathed his face in the blossoms. When he
spoke there was a change. One sense at least was revived in him--his
love for things beautiful.

"Where did they come from?" he asked.

The nurse smiled.

"A lady heft them yesterday," she said. "She drove up and stayed for
some time with the doctor. I believe that she is coming again to-day."

Douglas made no remark. Only the nurse smiled as she noticed him linger
a little over his dressing, and look for the first time with interest at
the clothes which had been sent in for him. Towards midday he grew
restless. Early in the afternoon there was a soft tap at the door.

"May I come in?"

The nurse opened the door. There was a rustle of draperies, and to
Douglas it seemed as though the room was suddenly full of wonderful
colour. A new life flowed in his veins. It was Emily de Reuss who came
towards him with outstretched hands.



CHAPTER XIII

THE FIRST TASTE OF FAME

At first he scarcely recognised her. He had seen her last in furs,
to-day she seemed like a delicate dream of Springtime. She wore a white
spotless muslin gown, whose exquisite simplicity had been the triumph of
a French artiste. Her hat, large and drooping, was a vision of pink
roses and soft creamy lace. There was a dainty suggestion of colour
about her throat--only the sunlight seemed to discover when she moved
the faint glinting green beneath the transparent folds of her gown.

She came over to Douglas with outstretched hands, and he was bewildered,
for she had not smiled upon him like this once during that long journey
to London.

"So it is I who have had to come to you," she exclaimed, taking his
hands in hers. "May I sit down and talk for a little while? I am so
glad--every one is glad--that you are better."

He laughed, a little oddly.

"Every one? Why I could count on the fingers of one hand the people
with whom I have spoken since I came to London."

She nodded.

"Yes," she said, "but to-day you could not count in an hour the people
who know you. You are very fortunate. You have made a wonderful start.
You have got over all your difficulties so easily."

"So easily?" He smiled again and then shuddered. She looked into his
face, and she too felt like shuddering.

"You do not know," he said. "No one will ever know what it is like--to
go under--to be saved as it were by a miracle."

"You suffered, I know," she murmured, "but you gained a wonderful
experience."

"You do not understand," he said, in a low tone. "No one will ever
understand."

"You could have saved yourself so much," she said regretfully, "if you
had kept your promise to come and see me.

"I could not," he answered. "I lost your address. It went into the
Thames with an old coat the very night I reached London. But for that I
should have come and begged from you."

"You would have made me famous," she answered laughing. "I should have
claimed the merit of discovering you."

He looked puzzled.

"Of course you know," she said, "how every one has been reading those
wonderful articles of yours in the Courier? You are very fortunate.
You have made a reputation at one sitting."

He shook his head.

"A fleeting one, I am afraid. I can understand those articles seeming
lifelike. You see I wrote them almost literally with my blood. It was
my last effort. I was starving, poisoned with horrors, sick to death of
the brutality of life."

"Things had gone so hardly with you then?" she murmured.

He nodded.

"From the first. I came to London as an adventurer, it is true. I knew
no one, and I had no money. But the editor of the _Ibex_ had written me
kindly, had accepted a story and asked for more. Yet when I went to see
him he seemed to have forgotten or repented. He would not give me a
hearing. Even the story he had accepted he told me he could not use for
a long time--and I was relying upon the money for that. That was the
beginning of my ill-luck, and afterwards it never left me."

She sat for a moment with a look in her deep, soft eyes which he could
not understand. Afterwards he thought of it and wondered. It passed
away very soon, and she bent towards him with her face full of sympathy.

"It has left you now," she said softly, "and for ever. Do you know I
have come to take you for a drive? The doctor says that it will do you
good."

With a curious sense of unreality he followed her downstairs, and took
the vacant seat in the victoria. It was all so much like a dream, like
one of those wonderful visions which had come to him at times in the
days of his homeless wanderings. Surely it was an illusion. The
luxurious carriage, the great horses with their silver-mounted harness,
the servants in their smart liveries, and above all, this beautiful
woman, who leaned back at his side, watching him often with a sort of
gentle curiosity. At first he sat still, quite dazed, his senses a
little numbed, the feeling of unreality so strong upon him that he was
almost tongue-tied. But presently the life of the streets awakened him.
It was all so fascinating and alluring. They were in a part of London
of which he had seen little--and that little from the gutters. To-day
in the brilliant sunshine, in clothes better than any he had ever worn
before, and side by side with a woman whom every one seemed honoured to
know, he looked upon it with different eyes. They drove along Bond
Street at a snail's pace and stopped for a few minutes at one of the
smaller galleries, where she took him in to see a wonderful Russian
picture, about which every one was talking. Fancying that he looked
tired she insisted upon tea, and they stopped at some curious little
rooms, and sat together at a tiny table drinking tea with sliced lemons,
and eating strawberries such as he had never seen before. Then on again
to the Park, where they pulled up under the trees, and she waved
constantly away the friends who would have surrounded her carriage. One
or two would not be denied, and to all of them she introduced
Jesson--the young writer--they had seen that wonderful work of his in
the _Daily Courier_, of course? He took no part in any conversation more
than he could help, leaning back amongst the cushions with the white
lace of her parasol close to his cheek, watching the faces of the men
and women who streamed by, and the great banks of rhododendrons dimly
seen lower down through the waving green trees. The murmur of pleasant
conversation fell constantly upon his ears--surely that other world was
part of an evil dream, a relic of his delirium. Heaven and hell could
never exist so close together. But by-and-bye, when they drove off she
herself brought the truth home to him.

"Do you know," she said, "this afternoon I have had an idea? Some day I
hope so much that it may come true. Do you mind if I tell it you? It
concerns yourself."

"Tell me, of course," he said.

"You have written so wonderfully of that terrible world beneath--that
world whose burden we would all give so much to lighten. You have
written so vividly that every one knows that you yourself have been
there. Presently--not now, of course--but some day I would have you
write of life as we see it about us to-day--of the world beautiful--and
I would have you illustrate it as one who has lived in it, drunk of its
joys, even as one of its happiest children. Think what a wealth of
great experiences must lie between the two extremes! It is what you
would wish for--you, to whom the study of your fellow-creatures is the
chosen pursuit of life."

He smiled at her thoughtfully.

"I do not know," he replied, "but I should think very few in this world
are ever permitted to pass behind both canopies. To me it seems
impossible that I should have ceased so suddenly to be a denizen of the
one, and even more impossible that I should ever have caught a glimpse
of the other."

"You will not always say so," she murmured. "You have everything in
your favour now--youth, strength, experience, and reputation."

"Even then," he answered, "I doubt whether I still possess the capacity
for happiness. I feel at times as though what had gone before had
frozen the blood in my veins."

"Your friends" she said, "must make up to you for the past.
Forgetfulness is sometimes hardly won, but it is never an
impossibility."

"My friends? My dear lady, I do not possess one."

She raised her parasol. Her wonderful eyes sought his, her
delicately-gloved hand rested for a moment lightly upon his palm.

"And what am I?" she asked softly.

He was only human, and his heart beat the faster for that gentle touch
and the gleam in her eyes. She was so beautiful, so unlike any other
woman with whom he had ever spoken.

"Have I any right to call you my friend?" he faltered.

"Have you any right," she answered brightly, "to call me anything
else?"

"I wonder what makes you so kind to me," he said.

"I liked you from the moment you jumped into the railway carriage" she
replied, "in those ridiculous clothes, and with a face like a ghost.
Then I liked your independence in refusing to come and be helped along,
and since I have read your--but we won't talk about that, only if you
have really no friends, let me be your first."

No wonder his brain felt a little dizzy. They were driving through the
great squares now, and already he began to wonder with a dull regret how
much longer it was to last. Then at a corner they came face to face
with Drexley. He was walking moodily along, but at the sight of them he
stopped short upon the pavement. Emily de Reuss bowed and smiled.
Drexley returned the salute with a furious glance at her companion. He
felt like a man befooled. Douglas, too, sat forward in the carriage, a
bright spot of colour in his cheeks.

"You know that man?" he said.

She assented quietly.

"Yes, I have met him. He is the editor of the _Ibex_."

Douglas remembered the bitterness of that interview and Rice's
amazement, but he said nothing. He leaned back with half closed eyes.
After all perhaps it had been for the best. Yet Drexley's black look
puzzled him.



CHAPTER XIV

A VISITOR FROM SCOTLAND YARD

The carriage pulled up before one of the handsomest houses in London.
Douglas, brought back suddenly to the present, realised that this
wonderful afternoon was at an end. The stopping of the carriage seemed
to him, in a sense, symbolical. The interlude was over. He must go
back to his brooding land of negatives.

"It has been very kind of you to come and see me, and to take me out,"
he said.

She interrupted the words of farewell which were upon his lips.

"Our little jaunt is not over yet," she remarked, smiling. "We are
going to have dinner together--you and I alone, and afterwards I will
show you that even a town house can sometimes boast of a pleasant
garden. You needn't look at your clothes. We shall be alone, and you
will be very welcome as you are."

They passed in together, and Douglas was inclined to wonder more than
ever whether this were not a dream, only that his imagination could
never have revealed anything like this to him. Outside the
hall-porter's office was a great silver bowl sprinkled all over with the
afternoon's cards and notes. A footman with powdered hair admitted
them, another moved respectfully before them, and threw open the door of
the room to which Emily de Reuss led him. He had only a mixed
impression of pale and beautiful statuary, drooping flowers with strange
perfumes, and the distant rippling of water; then he found himself in a
tiny octagonal chamber draped in yellow and white--a woman's den, cosy,
dainty, cool. She made him sit in an easy-chair, which seemed to sink
below him almost to the ground, and moved herself to a little
writing-table.

"There is just one message I must send" she said, "to a stupid house
where I am half expected to dine. It will not take me half a minute."

He sat still, listening mechanically to the sound of her pen scratching
across the paper. A tiny dachshund jumped into his lap, and with a
little snort of content curled itself up to sleep. He let his hand
wander over its sleek satin coat--the touch of anything living seemed to
inspire him with a more complete confidence as to the permanent and
material nature of his surroundings. Meanwhile, Emily de Reuss wrote
her excuses to a Duchess--a dinner-party of three weeks'
standing--knowing all the while that she was guilty of an unpardonable
social offence. She sealed her letter and touched a bell by her side.
Then she came over to him.

"Now I am free" she announced, "for a whole evening. How delightful!
What shall we do? I am ordering dinner at eight. Would you like to
look at my books, or play billiards, or sit here and talk? The garden I
am going to leave till afterwards. I want you to see it at its best."

"I should like to see your books," he replied.

She rose and moved towards the door.

"I am not certain," she said, "whether you will care for my library.
You will think it perhaps too modern. But there will be books there
that you will like, I am sure of that."

Douglas had never seen or dreamed of anything like it. The room was
ecclesiastical in shape and architecture, fluted pillars supported an
oak-beamed ceiling, and at its upper end was a small organ. But it was
its colour scheme which was so wonderful. The great cases which came
out in wings into the room were white. Everything was white--the rugs,
the raised frescoes on the walls, the chairs and hangings.

She watched his face, and assuming an apologetic attitude, said, "it is
unusual--and untraditional, I know, but I wanted something different,
and mine is essentially a modern library. In this country there is so
much to depress one, and one's surroundings, after all, count for much.
That is my poetry recess. You seem to have found your way there by
instinct."

"I think it is charming," he remarked. "Only at first it takes your
breath away. But what beautiful editions."

He hesitated, with his hand upon a volume. She laughed at him and took
it down herself. Perhaps she knew that her arm was shapely. At least
she let it remain for a moment stretched out as though to reach the next
volume.

"I always buy _editions de luxe_ when they are to be had," she said. "A
beautiful book deserves a beautiful binding and paper. I believe in the
whole effect. It is not fair to Ruskin to read him in paper covers, and
fancy Le Gallienne in an eighteenpenny series."

"You have Pater!" he exclaimed; "and isn't that a volume of De
Maupassant's?"

His fingers shook with eagerness. She put a tiny volume into his hands.
He shook back the hair from his head and forgot that he had ever been
ill, that he had ever suffered, that he had ever despaired. For the
love of books was in his blood, and his tongue was loosened. For the
first time in his life he knew the full delight of a sympathetic
listener. They entered upon a new relationship in those few minutes.

The summons for dinner found them still there. Douglas, with a faint
flush in his cheeks and brilliant eyes; she, too, imbued with a little
of his literary excitement. She handed him over to a manservant, who
offered him dress clothes, and waited upon him with the calm, dexterous
skill of a well-trained valet. He laughed softly to himself as he
passed down the broad stairs. Surely he had wandered through dreamland
into some corner of the Arabian Nights?--else he had passed from one
extreme of life to the other with a strange, almost magical, celerity.

Dinner surprised him by being so pleasantly homely. A single trim
maidservant waited upon them, a man at the sideboard opened the wine,
carved, and vanished early in the repast. Over a great bowl of
clustering roses he could see her within a few feet of him, plainly
dressed in black lace with a band of velvet around her white neck, her
eyes resting often upon him full of gentle sympathy. They talked of the
books they had been looking at, a conversation all the while without
background or foreground. Only once she lifted her glass, which had
just been filled, and looked across to him.

"To the city--beautiful," she said softly. "May the day soon come when
you shall write of it--and forget!"

He drank the toast fervently. But of the future then he found it hard
to think. The transition to this from his days of misery had been too
sudden. As yet his sense of proportion had not had time to adjust
itself. Behind him were nameless horrors--that he had a future at all
was a fact which he had only recognised during the last few hours.

Afterwards they sat in low chairs on a terrace with coffee on a small
round table between them, a fountain playing beneath, beyond, the trees
of the park, the countless lights of the streets, and the gleaming fires
of innumerable hansoms. It was the London of broad streets, opulent,
dignified, afire for pleasure. Women were whirled by, bright-eyed,
bejewelled, softly clad in white feathers and opera cloaks; men hatless,
immaculate as regards shirt-fronts and ties, well-groomed, the best of
their race. Wonderful sight for Douglas, fresh from the farmhouse
amongst the hills, the Scotch college, the poverty-stricken seminary.
Back went his thoughts to that dreary past, and though the night was hot
he shivered. She looked at him curiously.

"You are cold?"

He shook his head.

"I was thinking," he answered.

She laid her fingers upon his arm, a touch so thrilling and yet so
delicate.

"Don't you know," she said, "that of all philosophies the essence is to
command one's thoughts, to brush away the immaterial, the unworthy, the
unhappy. Try and think that life starts with you from to-day. You are
one of those few, those very few people, Douglas Jesson, who have before
them a future. Try and keep yourself master of it."

A servant stepped out on to the balcony and stood respectfully before
them. She looked up frowning.

"What is it, Mason?" she asked. "I told you that I was not seeing any
one at all to-night."

"The person, madame," he answered, "is from Scotland Yard, and he says
that his business is most important. He has called twice before. He
begged me to give you his card, and to say that he will wait until you
can find it convenient to spare him a few minutes." She looked at the
card--

"Mr. Richard Grey,
   from Scotland Yard."

Then she rose regretfully.

"What the man can possibly want with me," she said, "Heaven only knows.
You will smoke a cigarette, my friend, till I return. I shall not be
long."

He stood up to let her pass, untroubled--not sorry for a moment's
solitude. It was not until she had gone that a thought flashed into his
mind, which stopped his heart from beating and brought a deadly
faintness upon him.



CHAPTER XV

EMILY DE REUSS TELLS A LIE

A tall, thin man with grave eyes and pale cheeks rose to meet Emily de
Reuss when she entered the sitting-room into which he had been shown.
She regarded him with faint curiosity. She concluded that he had called
upon her with reference to one of her servants. She had a large
household, and it was possible that some of the members of it had fallen
under police supervision. She only regretted that he had not chosen
some other evening.

"The Countess de Reuss, I believe?"

She assented. A nod was quite sufficient.

"I have been instructed to call and ask you a few questions with
reference to your journey from Accreton on February 10th last," he
continued. "I am sorry to trouble you, but from information which we
have received, it seemed possible that you might be able to help us."

She stood quite still, not a muscle in her colourless face twitched or
moved in any way. She showed little of her surprise, none of her
intense and breathless interest. The man looked at her in admiration.
She was politely interested--also acquiescent.

"I remember my journey from Accreton perfectly well," she said. "But I
cannot see that anything in connection with it can possibly be of
interest to Scotland Yard. Perhaps you will be a little more explicit."

The man bowed.

"You had a travelling companion, we are given to understand. A young
man who entered your carriage at the last moment," he added.

"I had a travelling companion, it is true," she admitted slowly. "It is
also true that he entered my carriage at the last moment. But how that
can possibly concern you, I cannot imagine."

"We should like to know his name," the man said.

Emily de Reuss shook her head slowly.

"I really am afraid," she replied, "that I cannot tell you that."

"He was a stranger, then--you did not know him before?" the man asked
quickly.

"On the contrary," she answered, shaking her head, "he was an old
friend."

The man's face fell. Obviously he was disappointed. She toyed with a
bracelet for a moment and then yawned.

"If he was an old friend," Mr. Grey said, "why will you not give me his
name?"

"If you will show me a sufficient reason why I should," she answered, "I
will not hesitate. But you force me to ask you directly, what possible
concern can it be of yours?"

"Your ladyship may remember," he said, "that there was a shocking
accident upon the train?"

She assented with a little shudder.

"Yes, I remember that."

"A man threw himself from the train and was crushed to death. His body
was quite unrecognisable, but from some papers found upon or near him,
it was concluded that his name was Douglas Guest."

"I remember hearing that, too," she agreed.

"Well, there seems to have been plenty of reason for Mr. Douglas Guest
to have committed suicide, as I daresay you know, if ever you read the
papers."

"I never by any chance open an English one," she said.

"Then you probably didn't hear of a murder in a Cumberland village the
night before. No? Well there was one, and the man who was wanted for
it was--Mr. Douglas Guest."

"The man who threw himself from the carriage window?"

"Apparently, yes. We made searching inquiries into the matter, and we
came to the conclusion that Douglas Guest was the man, and that he had
either committed suicide, or been killed in trying to jump from the
train. We were disposed, therefore, to let the matter drop until a few
days ago, when we had a visit from a Miss Strong, who proved to be the
daughter of the old farmer who was murdered. She seemed to have got
hold of an idea that Douglas Guest had by some means foisted his
identity on to the dead man, and was still alive. She absolutely denied
that a part of the clothing which was preserved had ever belonged to
Douglas Guest, and she worked upon 'the chief' to such an extent that he
told me off to see this through."

"I still do not see," she said, "in what way I am concerned in this."

"It was your fellow-passenger, Countess, not yourself, concerning whom
we were curious. We hoped that you might be able to give us some
information. We understood that he joined the train hurriedly. If you
like I will read you a description of Douglas Guest."

Emily de Reuss looked him in the face and shrugged her shoulders.

"My good man," she said, "it is not necessary. I am not in the least
interested in the young man, and when I tell you that I went to the
trouble and expense of engaging a compartment you will perhaps
understand that I should not for a moment have tolerated any intrusion
on the part of a stranger. The gentleman who accompanied me to London
was one of the house party at Maddenham Priory, and an old friend."

The officer closed his notebook with a little sigh and bowed.

"It only remains for me," he said, "to express to your ladyship my
regrets at having troubled you in the matter. Personally, your
statement confirms my own view of the case. The young lady is
excitable, and has been deceived."

Emily de Reuss inclined her head, and touched the knob of an electric
bell. At the door the officer turned back.

"It would perhaps be as well," he said, "if you would favour us with the
name of the gentleman who was your companion."

She hesitated.

"I think it quite unnecessary," she answered. "I have certain reasons,
not perhaps very serious ones, but still worth consideration, for not
publishing it abroad who my companion was. It must be sufficient for
you that he was one of my fellow-guests at Maddenham Priory, and a
friend for whom I can vouch."

The servant was at the door. Mr. Grey bowed.

"As your ladyship wishes, of course," he said.

              *     *     *     *     *

Emily de Reuss made no immediate movement to rejoin her guest. She was
a woman of nerve and courage, but this had rather taken her breath away.
She had had no time for thought. She had answered as though by
instinct. It was only now that she realised what she had done. She had
lied deliberately, had placed herself, should the truth ever be known,
in an utterly false if not a dangerous position, for the sake of a boy
of whose antecedents she knew nothing, and on whom rested, at any rate,
the shadow of a very ugly suspicion. She had done this, who frankly
owned to an absorbing selfishness, whose conduct of life ever gravitated
from the centre of self. After all, what folly! She had been generous
upon impulse. How ridiculous!

She walked slowly out to where Douglas sat waiting. She came upon him
like a ghost in the dim light, and when the soft rustling of her gown
announced her presence, he started violently, and turned a bloodless
face with twitching lips and eager eyes to hers. The sight of it was a
shock to her. He had been living in fear, then--her falsehoods for his
sake had been necessary.

"Has he gone?" he asked incoherently.

"Yes."

"Was it--about me?"

"Yes."

"You'd better tell me," he begged.

She sat down by his side and glanced around. They were alone and out of
earshot from the windows.

"My visitor," she said, "was a detective--from Scotland Yard. He came
to know if I could give him any information about my fellow--passenger
from Accreton on February 10th."

"Why? Why did he want to know?"

"There was a murder, he said--a Cumberland farmer, and a young man named
Douglas Guest was missing."

"Douglas Guest" he said, hoarsely, "was in that train. He was killed.
It was in the papers."

"So the detective believed," she said, "but a daughter of the murdered
man--"

"Ah!"

"--Has taken up the case and positively refused to identify some of the
clothing belonging to the dead man. There was some talk of a young man,
who answered to the description of Douglas Guest, having forced himself
into my carriage. The man came to ask me about this."

"And you told him--what?"

She adjusted a bracelet carefully, her beautiful eyes fixed upon his
haggard face.

"I told him a lie," she answered. "I told him that my companion was a
fellow-guest at the house where I had been staying."

A little sob of relief broke in his throat. He seized her hand in his
and pressed it to his lips. It seemed to her that the touch was of
fire. She looked at him thoughtfully.

"You are Douglas Guest, then?" she asked, quietly.

"I am," he answered.



CHAPTER XVI

JOAN STRONG, AVENGER

At an attic window, from which stretched a Babylonic wilderness of
slated roofs and cowled chimney pots, two girls were sitting. The tan
of the wind and the sun was upon their cheeks, their clothes lacked the
cheap smartness of the Londoner. They were both in mourning for their
father, Gideon Strong.

"Suicide, nay! I'll never believe that it was Douglas," Joan declared
firmly. "Nay, but I know the lad too well. He was ever pining for
London, for gay places and the stir of life. There was evil in his
blood. It was the books he read, and the strange taste he had for
solitude. What else? But he'd not the pluck of a rabbit. He never
killed himself--not he! He's a living man to-day, and as I'm a living
woman I'll drop my hand upon his shoulder before long."

"God forbid it!" Cicely cried fervently. "Please God if it was Douglas
who sinned so grievously that he may be dead."

Joan rose slowly to her feet. In her sombre garb, fashioned with almost
pitiless severity, her likeness to her father became almost striking.
There were the same high cheek-bones, the heavy eyebrows, the mouth of
iron. The blood of many generations of stern yeomen was in her veins.

"'Tis well for you, Cicely," she said, and her voice, metallic enough at
all times, seemed, for the bitterness of it, to bite the close air like
a rasp. "'Tis well enough for you, Cicely, who had but little to do
with him, but do you forget that I was his affianced wife? I have stood
up in the Meeting House at Feldwick, and we prayed together for grace.
The hypocrite. The abandoned wastrel. That he, who might have been the
pastor of Feldwick, ay, and have been chosen to serve in the towns even,
should have wandered so miserably."

The younger girl was watching a smoke-begrimed sparrow on the sill with
eyes at once vacant and tender. She was slighter and smaller than her
sister, of different complexion, with soft, grey eyes and a broad,
humorous mouth. Her whole expression was kindly. She had a delicate
prettiness of colouring, and a vivacity which seemed to place her
amongst a different order of beings. Never were sisters more like and
unlike in this world.

"Sometimes," she said reflectively, "I have wondered whether Father was
not very hard upon Douglas. He was so different from everybody else
there, so fond of books and pictures, clever people, and busy places.
There was no one in Feldwick with whom he could have had any tastes at
all in common--not a scholar amongst the lot of us."

Joan frowned heavily. Her dark brows contracted, the black eyes
flashed.

"Pictures and books," she muttered. "What has a minister of the gospel
to do with these? Douglas Guest had chosen his path in life."

"Nay," Cicely interrupted eagerly. "It was chosen for him. He was
young, and Father was very stern and obstinate, as who should know
better than ourselves, Joan? Douglas never seemed happy after he came
back from college. His life was not suitable for him."

Joan was slowly getting angry.

"Not suitable for him?" she retorted. "What folly! Who was he, to pick
and choose? It was rare fortune for him that father should have brought
him up as he did. You'll say next that I was forced on him, that he
didna ask me to be his wife--ay, and stand hand in hand with me before
all of them. You've forgotten it, maybe."

But Cicely, to whom that day had been one of agony, marked with a black
stone, never to be forgotten, shook her head with a little shudder.

"I'm sure I never hinted at it, Joan," she said; "but for all you can
say, I believe he's dead."

"Maybe," Joan answered coldly, "but I'm not yet believing it. It's led
astray I believe he was, and heavy's the penalty he'll have to pay.
It's my notion he's alive in this city, and that's why I'm here. It'll
be a day of reckoning when we meet him, but it'll come, Cicely. I've
dreamed of it, and it'll come. I'll never bend the knee at Meeting till
I've found him."

Cicely shuddered.

"It'll never bring poor Father back to life," she murmured. "You'd best
go back to Feldwick, Joan. There's the farm--you and Reuben Smith could
work it well enough. Folks there will think you're out of your mind
staying on here in London."

"Folks may think what they will," she answered savagely. "I'll not go
back till Douglas Guest hangs."

"Then may you never see Feldwick again," Cicely prayed.

"You're but a poor creature yourself," Joan cried, turning upon her with
a sudden passion. "You would have him go unpunished then, robber,
murderer, deceiver. Oh, don't think that I never saw what was in your
mind. I know very well what brings you here now. You want to save him.
I saw it all many a time at Feldwick, but you've none so much to flatter
yourself about. He took little enough notice of me, and none at all of
you. He deceived us all, and as I'm a living woman he shall suffer for
it."

Cicely rose up with pale face.

"Joan," she said, "you are talking of the dead."

But Joan only scoffed. She was a woman whose beliefs once allowed to
take root in the mind were unassailable, proof against probability,
proof against argument. Douglas Guest was alive, and it was her mission
to bid him stand forth before the world. She was the avenger--she
believed in herself. The spirit of the prophetess was in her veins.
She grew more tolerant towards her younger sister. After all she was of
weaker mould. How should she see what had come even to her only as an
inspiration?

"Come, Cicely," she said, "I'm not for bandying words with you. The
world is wide enough for both of us. Let us live at peace towards one
another, at any rate. There's tea coming--poor stuff enough, but it's
city water and city milk. You shall sit down and tell me what has
brought you here, for it's not only to see me, I guess."

The tea was brought; they sat and discussed their plans. Cicely had
followed her sister to London, utterly unable to live any longer in a
place so full of horrible memories. They had a little money--Cicely,
almost enough to live on, but she wanted work. Joan listened, but for
her part she had little to say. Only as the clock drew near seven
o'clock she grew restless. Her attention wandered. She looked often
towards the window.

"You'll stay the night here anyhow, sister?" she said at last.

"Why, I'd counted on it," Cicely admitted.

"Well, that's settled then. This is mostly the time I go out. Are you
going with me, or will you rest a bit?"

Cicely rose up briskly.

"I'll come along," she said. "A walk will do me good. The air's so
cruel close up here."

Joan hesitated.

"I'm a fast walker," she said, "and I go far."

But Cicely, who divined something of the truth, hesitated no longer, not
even for a second.

"I will come," she said.

              *     *     *     *     *

They passed out into the streets, and the younger girl knew from the
first that their walk was a quest. They chose the most frequented
thoroughfares, and where the throng was thickest there only they
lingered. There was a new look in the face of the elder girl, a grim
tightening of the lips, a curious doggedness about the jaws, a light in
the black eyes which made her sister shudder to look upon. For there
were in Joan Strong, daughter of many generations of north country
yeomen, the possibilities of tragedy, a leaven of that passionate
resistless force, which when once kindled is no more to be governed than
the winds. Narrow she was, devoid of imagination, and uneducated, yet,
married to the man whom she had boldly and persistently sought after,
she would have been a faithful housewife, after the fashion of her kind.
But with the tragedy in her home, the desertion of the man whom she had
selected for her husband, another woman had leaped into life. Something
in her nature had been touched which, in an ordinary case, would have
lain dormant for ever. Cicely knew it and was terrified. This was her
sister, and yet a stranger with whom she walked, this steadfast,
untiring figure, ever with her eyes mutely questioning the passing
throngs. They had become a great way removed during these last few
weeks, and, save her sister, there was no one else left in the world.
With aching feet and tears in her eyes, Cicely kept pace as well as she
could with the untiring, relentless figure by her side. Many people
looked at them curiously--the tall, Cassandra-like figure of the elder
woman, and the pretty, slight girl struggling to keep pace with her, her
lips quivering, her eyes so obviously full of fear. The loiterers on
the pavement stared. Joan's fierce, untiring eyes took no more notice
of them than if they had been dumb figures. Cicely was continually
shrinking back from glances half familiar, half challenging. More than
once they were openly accosted, but Joan swept such attempts away with
stony indifference. For hour after hour they walked steadily on--then,
with a little sob of relief, Cicely saw at last that they had reached
their own street. The elder girl produced a key and drew a long sigh.
Then she looked curiously down at her companion.

"You'll go back to Feldwick to-morrow, or maybe Saturday, Cicely," she
said. "You understand now?"

"How long--will this go on?"

Joan drew herself up. The fierceness of the prophetess was in her dark
face.

"Till my hands are upon him," she said. "Till I have dragged him out
from the shadows of this hateful city."



CHAPTER XVII

A PLAIN QUESTION AND A WARNING

Douglas Jesson had his opportunity, accepted it and became one of the
elect. He passed on to the staff of the Courier, where his work was
spasmodic and of a leisurely character, but always valuable and
appreciated. His salary, which was liberal, seemed to him magnificent.
Besides, he had the opportunity of doing other work. All the magazines
were open to him, although he was tied down to write for no other
newspaper. The passionate effort of one night of misery had brought him
out for ever from amongst the purgatory of the unrecognised. For his
work was full of grit, often brilliant, never dull. Even Drexley, who
hated him, admitted it. Emily de Reuss was charmed.

Douglas's first visit was to Rice, whom he dragged out with him to
lunch, ordering such luxuries as were seldom asked for at Spargetti's.
They lingered over their cigarettes and talked much. Yet about Rice
there was a certain restraint, the more noticeable because of his host's
gaiety. Douglas, well-dressed, debonair, with a flower in his
buttonhole, and never a wrinkle upon his handsome face, was in no humour
for reservations. He filled his companion's glass brimful of wine, and
attacked him boldly.

"I want to know," he said, "what ails my philosophic friend. Out with
it, man. Has Drexley been more of a bear than usual, or has Spargetti
ceased his credit?"

"Neither," Rice answered, smiling. "Drexley is always a bear, and
Spargetti's credit is a thing which not one of the chosen has ever seen
the bottom of."

"Then what in the name of all that is unholy," Douglas asked, "ails
you?"

Rice lighted a cigarette, glanced around, and leaned over the table.

"You, my friend and host. You are upon my mind. I will confess."

Douglas nodded and waited. Rice seemed to find it not altogether easy
to continue. He dropped his voice. The question he asked was almost a
whisper.

"Is your name really Douglas Jesson--or is it Douglas Guest?"

Douglas gasped and clutched for a moment at the tablecloth. The room
was suddenly spinning round and round, the faces of the people were
shrouded in mist, his newly-acquired strength was all engrossed in a
desperate struggle against that sickening sensation of fainting. Rice's
voice seemed to come to him from a long way off.

"Drink your wine, man--quick."

Mechanically he obeyed. He set the glass down empty. Once more the
faces in the restaurant were clear, the mists had passed away. But the
keen joy of living no longer throbbed in his pulses.

"How did you know?" he asked, hoarsely.

"From the story you sent us," Rice answered. "At first you wrote on the
title-page Douglas Guest as the author. Then apparently you changed
your mind, crossed it out, and substituted Douglas Jesson, which we took
to be a nom-de-plume, especially as you gave us for your address
initials to a post-office."

"Did any one else see it?"

"Not unless Drexley did. He has never spoken to me about it."

Douglas drank more wine. He was unused to it, and the colour mounted to
his pale cheeks.

"You have asked me a question," he said, "and it is answered. What
else?"

"Nothing," Rice said slowly. "It is no concern of mine.

"You are not anxious, then," Douglas said, "to earn a hundred pounds
reward?"

"I think if I were you," Rice said, "I would get the Courier to send you
abroad. They would do it in a minute."

"Abroad?" Douglas looked across the table questioningly. It was a new
idea to him. "Yes. You could visit odd places and write impressions of
them. Yours is just the style for that sort of thing--quick and
nervous, you know, and lots of colour. People are rabid for anything of
that sort just now. Take my tip. Suggest it to Rawlinson."

"I think I will," Douglas said. "Yes, it is a good idea. I wonder--"

Rice leaned once more across the table.

"You wonder what the Countess de Reuss will say. Is that it?"

Douglas nodded.

"I should consult her, of course."

A rare seriousness fell upon Rice. The nonchalance, which was the most
pronounced of his mannerisms, had fallen away. It was a new man
speaking. One saw, as it were for the first time, that his hair was
grey, and that the lines on his face were deeply engraven.

"My young friend," he said, "I want you to listen to me. I am twice
your age. I have seen very much more of the world than you. Years ago
I had a friend--Silverton. He was about your age--clever, ambitious,
good-looking. He scored a small success--a poem, I think it was--and
some one took him one day to call on Emily de Reuss. I do not know
where he is now, but two months ago I met him in rags, far advanced in
consumption, an utter wreck bodily and mentally. Yet when I spoke one
word of her he struck me across the lips. To-day I suppose he is
dead--pauper's funeral and all that sort of thing, without a doubt. I
have taken his case first because he reminded me of you. He had come
from the north somewhere, and he was about your age. But he is only one
of a score. There is Drexley, a broken man. Once he wrote prose, which
of its sort was the best thing going. To-day he is absolutely
nerveless. He cannot write a line, and he is drinking heavily. That he
has not gone under altogether is simply because as yet he has not
received his final dismissal. He still has his uses, so he is allowed
to hang on a little longer. Now, Douglas Jesson, listen to one who
knows. What you are and who you are--well, no matter. I liked you when
we met here, and you have a splendid opportunity before you. Listen.
Emily de Reuss will care nothing for your safety. She will oppose your
going abroad. You are her latest plaything. She is not weary of you
yet, so she will not let you go. Be a man, and do the sensible thing.
Too many have been her victims. It may make your heart ache a little;
you may fancy yourself a little ungracious. Never mind. You will save
your life and your soul. Go abroad as soon as Rawlinson will send you."

Rice's words were too impressive to be disregarded altogether. They
stirred up in Douglas's mind a vague uneasiness, but his sense of
loyalty to the woman who had befriended him was unshaken. Rice was led
away by his feelings for his friend.

"Rice," he said, "I know you're speaking what you believe. I can't
quite accept it all. Never mind. I'll remember everything you've said.
I'm not quite a boy, you know, and I don't wear my heart upon my
sleeve."

"Hard to convince, as they all are," Rice said, with a wintry smile.
"Never mind. I'll do my best to save you. Listen to this. Do you know
why Drexley behaved so disgracefully to you about your story?"

Douglas looked up eagerly. The thing had always puzzled him.

"No. Why?"

"Because he had orders from Emily de Reuss to do so. She had given you
her address and bidden you go and see her. You never went. So she
wrote Drexley to give you no encouragement. It was your punishment.
You were to go to her."

"I don't believe it," Douglas declared hotly.

"Then you don't believe me," Rice said quietly, "for on my honour I tell
you that I have seen the letter."

Douglas leaned his head upon his hand.

"I'm sorry," he said, wearily. "I believe absolutely in you, but I
believe also in her. There must be some misunderstanding."

Rice rose up. Douglas had paid the bill long ago. A waiter, overcome
with the munificence of his tip, brought them their hats and preceded
them, smiling, to the door. They passed out into the street, and the
fresh air was grateful to them both. Rice passed his arm through his
companion's.

"I want you to give me just an hour," he said--"no more."

Douglas nodded, and they made their way through a maze of squares and
streets southwards. At last Rice stopped before a house in a terrace of
smoke-begrimed tenements, and led the way inside. They mounted flight
after flight of stairs, pausing at last before a door on the topmost
floor. Rice threw it open, and motioned his companion to follow him in.

It was a small chamber, bare and gaunt, without ornament or luxury,
without even comfort. The furniture was the poorest of its sort, the
scrap of carpet was eked out with linoleum from which the pattern had
long been worn. There was only one thing which could be said in its
favour--the room was clean. Rice leaned against the mantelpiece,
watching his companion's face.

"My friend," he said, "I have brought you here because I wanted you to
see my home. Shall I tell you why? Because it is exactly typical of my
life. Bare and empty, comfortless, with never a bright spot nor a ray
of hope. There is nothing here to dazzle you, is there? All that you
can remark in its favour is that it is tolerably clean--all in my life
that I can lay claim to is that I have managed to preserve a moderate
amount of self-respect. This is my life, my present and my future. I
wanted you to see it."

Douglas was puzzled. He scarcely knew what to say, but instinctively he
felt that Rice's purpose in bringing him here had not yet been
explained. So he waited.

"I have told you," Rice continued, "of Drexley and of poor young
Silverton. I have told you that there have been many others. I have
told you that she even tried to do you ill that you might be numbered
amongst her victims. Now I tell you what as yet I have told no man. I,
too, was once the most pitiful of her slaves."

"You?"

A sharp, staccato cry broke from Douglas's lips. He had not expected
this. Rice was suddenly an older man. The careless front he showed to
the world was gone. He was haggard, weary, elderly. It was a rare
moment with him.

"I made a brave start," he continued--"like you. Some one took me to
her house. I made an epigram that pleased her; I passed at once into
the circle of her intimates. She flattered me, dazzled me, fed my
ambition and my passion. I told her of the girl whom I loved, whom I
was engaged to marry. She was on the surface sympathetic; in reality
she never afterwards let pass an opportunity of making some scathing
remark as to the folly of a young man sacrificing a possibly brilliant
future for the commonplace joys of domesticity. I became even as the
rest. My head was turned; my letters to Alice became less frequent;
every penny of the money I was earning went to pay my tailor's bills,
and to keep pace with the life which, as her constant companion, I was
forced to live. All the while the girl who trusted me never complained,
but was breaking her heart. They sent for me--she was unwell. I had
promised to take Emily upon the river, and she declined to let me off.
I think that evening some premonition of the truth came to me. We saw a
child drowned--I watched Emily's face. She looked at the corpse without
a shudder, with frank and brutal curiosity. She had never seen anything
really dead,--it was quite interesting. Well, I hurried back to my
rooms, meaning to catch a night train into Devonshire. On the
mantelpiece was a telegram which had come early in the morning. Alice
was worse--their only hope was in my speedy coming. I dashed into a
hansom, but on the step another telegram was handed to me. Alice was
dead. I had not seen her for ten months, and she was dead."

There was an odd, strained silence. Douglas walked away to the window
and gazed with misty eyes over a wilderness of housetops. Rice's head
had fallen forward upon his arms. It was long before he spoke again.
When he did his tone was changed.

"For days I was stupefied. Then habit conquered. I went to her. I
hoped for sympathy--she laughed at me. It was for the best. Then I
told her truths, and she flung them back at me. I knew then what manner
of woman she was--without heart, vain, callous, soulless. It is the
sport of her life to play with, and cast aside when she is weary of
them, the men whom she thinks it worth while to make her slaves. A
murderess is a queen amongst the angels to her; it is the souls of men
she destroys, and laughs when she sees them sink down into hell. My
eyes were opened, but it was too late. I had lost the girl who loved
me, and whom I loved. I was head over ears in debt, my work had
suffered from constant attendance upon her, I lost my position, and
every chance I ever had in life went with it. I have become an ill-paid
hack, and even to-day I am not free from debt after years of struggling.
Douglas Jesson, I have never spoken of these things to any breathing
man, but every word is the gospel truth."

Then again there was a silence, for dismay had stolen into the heart of
the man who listened. For Douglas knew that the bonds were upon him
too, though they had lain upon his shoulders like silken threads. Rice
came over to him and laid his hand almost affectionately upon his arm.

"Douglas," he said, "you are man enough to strike a blow for your life.
You know that I have spoken truth to you."

"I know it."

"You will be your own man."

Douglas turned upon him with blazing eyes.

"Rice," he cried, "you are a brick. I'll do it. I'll go to her now."

He went out with a brief farewell. Rice sat down upon his one cane
chair, and folded his arms. The room seemed very empty.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE TASTE OF THE LOTUS

Douglas was kept waiting for a minute or two in the long, cool
drawing-room at Grosvenor Square. The effect of Rice's story was still
strong upon him. The perfume of the flowers, the elegance of the room,
and its peculiar atmosphere of taste and luxury irritated rather than
soothed him. Even the deference which the servants had shown him, the
apologetic butler, her ladyship's own maid with a special message,
acquired new significance now, looking at things from Rice's point of
view. There was so much in his own circumstances which had lent weight
to what he had been told. He was earning a good deal of money, but he
was spending more. Emily had insisted upon rooms of her own choosing in
a fashionable neighbourhood, and had herself selected the
furniture--which was not yet paid for. She had insisted gently but
firmly upon his going to the best tailors. The little expeditions in
which he had been permitted to act as her escort, the luncheons and
dinners at restaurants, although they were not many, were expensive.
Yes, Rice was right. To be near Emily de Reuss was to live within a
maze of fascination, but the end to it could only be the end of the
others. Already he was in debt, a trifle behind with his work--a trifle
less keen about it. Already the memory of his sufferings seemed to lie
far back in another world--his realisation of them had grown faint.
There was something paralysing about the atmosphere of pleasure with
which she knew so well how to surround herself.

The door opened and she came in, a dream of spotless muslin and glinting
colours. She came over to him with outstretched hands and a brilliant
smile upon her lips.

"How is it, my friend," she cried, "that you always come exactly when I
want you? You must be a very clever person. I have to go for a minute
or two to the stupidest of garden parties at Surbiton. You shall drive
with me, and afterwards, if you like, we will come back by Richmond and
dine. What do you say?"

"Delightful," he answered, "and if I were an idle man nothing in the
world would give me more pleasure. But this afternoon I must not think
of it. I am behind with my work already. I only came round for a few
minutes' talk with you."

She looked at him curiously. She was not used to be denied.

"Surely," she said, "your work is not so important as all that?"

"I am afraid," he said, "that lately I have been forgetting how
important my work really is. That is precisely what I came to talk to
you about."

She sat down composedly, but he fancied that her long, dark eyes had
narrowed a little, and the smile had gone from her face.

"You will think I am ungrateful, I am afraid," he began, "but, do you
know, I am losing hold upon my work, and I have come to the conclusion
that I am giving a good deal too much of my time to going out. Thanks
to you, I seem to have invitations for almost every day--I go to polo
matches, to river parties, to dinners and dances, I do everything except
work. You know that I have made a fair start, and I feel that I ought
to be making some uses of my opportunities. Besides--I may be quite
frank with you, I know--I am spending a great deal more than I am
earning, and that won't do, will it?"

She came over and sat by his side on the couch. There was not the
slightest sign of disapproval in her manner.

"Do you know, that sounds very sensible, Douglas my friend," she said,
quietly. "I should hate to think that I was selfish in liking to have
you with me so much, and your work is the first thing, of course. Only
you mustn't forget this. Your profession is settled now irrevocably.
You will be a writer, and a famous writer, and one reason why I have
procured all these invitations for you, and encouraged you to accept
them, has been because I want you to grasp life as a whole. You think
that you are idling now. You are not. Every new experience you gain is
of value to you. Hitherto you have only seen life through dun-coloured
spectacles. I want you also to understand the other side. It is your
business to know and grasp it from all points. Can't you see that I
have found it a pleasure to help you to see that side of which you were
ignorant?"

"That is all very true," he answered, "only I have already had more
opportunities than most men. Don't you think yourself that it is almost
time I buckled to and started life more seriously?"

"It is for you to say," she answered quietly. "You know better than I.
If you have work in your brain and you are weary of other things--well,
_au revoir_, and good luck to you. Only you will come and see me now
and then, and tell me how you are getting on, for I shall be a little
lonely just at first."

She looked at him with eyes a trifle dim, and Douglas felt his heart
beat thickly, and the memory of Rice's passionate words seemed suddenly
weak.

"I shall come and see you always," he said, "as often as you would have
me come. You know that."

She shook her head as though but half convinced. Then she rose to her
feet.

"There is just one thing I should like to ask you," she said. "This new
resolution of yours--did you come by it alone, or has any one been
advising you?"

Douglas hesitated.

"I have been talking to a man," he admitted, "who certainly seemed to
think that I was neglecting my work."

"Will you tell me who it was?"

Douglas looked into her face and became suddenly grave. The eyes were
narrower and brighter, a glint of white teeth showed through the
momentarily parted lips. A tiny spot of colour burned in her
cheeks--something of the wild animal seemed suddenly to have leaped up
in her. Yet how beautiful she was!

"I cannot do that," he faltered.

"Then it was some one who spoke to you of me," she continued calmly.
"You need not trouble to contradict me. Hadn't you better hurry away
before I have the chance to do you any harm? There is one young man I
know, of a melodramatic turn of mind, who persists in looking upon me as
a sort of siren, calling my victims on to the rocks. I expect that is
the person with whom you have been talking. Douglas Jesson, I think
that I am a little disappointed in you."

She stood up and smoothed out her skirts thoughtfully.

He was very near at that moment throwing all thoughts of Rice's words to
the winds, and retracting all that he had said. After all, it was she
who had brought him back from death. Whatever his future might be, he
owed it to her. She looked into his eyes and felt that she had
conquered. Yet the very fascination of that smile which parted her lips
was like a chill warning to him.

"I will tell you who it was who has been talking to me," he said. "It
is a clerk of Drexley's, a man named Rice."

She nodded.

"I thought so. Poor boy. He will never forgive me."

"For what?" Douglas asked quickly. That was the crux of the whole
matter.

"For his own folly," she answered quietly. "I was good to him--helped
him in many ways. He tried to make love to me. I had to send him away,
of course. That is the worst of you young men. If a woman tries to
help you, you seem to think it your duty to fall in love with her. What
is she to do then?"

"Can't a woman--always make it clear--if she wants to--that that sort of
thing is not permitted?"

"Do you think that she can? Do you think that she knows what she wishes
herself until the last moment, until it is too late?"

Douglas rose up a little unsteadily.

"Take my own case," he cried, with a sudden little burst of passion.
"You are the most beautiful woman whom I have ever seen, you are kind to
me, you suffer me to be your companion. Yet if I commit the folly of
falling in love with you, you will dismiss me in a moment without a
sigh. I am only an ordinary being. Don't you think that I am wise if I
try to avoid running such a risk?"

She laughed softly.

"What a calculating mortal. Is this all the effect of Mr. Rice's
warning?"

Well, isn't it truth?

She shook her head.

"I can't pretend to say. Do any of us really know, I wonder, what we
would do under any given circumstances? I wish you would tell me
exactly what your friend complained of in my treatment of him."

"He spoke--not only of himself," Douglas answered. "There was a man
called Silverton."

"What?"

He looked across at her in swift surprise. It seemed to him that her
anger had suddenly changed into a wonderful and speechless terror. Her
left hand was buried in the sofa cushions, the pupils of her eyes were
dilated, she was bloodless to the lips. When she spoke it was hard to
recognise her voice.

"What of him? What did he know? What did he tell you--of him?"

Douglas's expression of blank surprise seemed an immense relief to her.

"Only--something like what he told me of himself. He also was foolish
enough to fall in love with you, and--"

She rose suddenly and held out her hand.

"Come, my friend," she said, "I have had enough of this. Take me out to
my carriage. I think you are very wise to avoid such a dangerous
person."

She swept out of the room before him, and down the broad stairs. A
footman stood by the side of her victoria until she had settled herself
in the most comfortable corner. Then he mounted the box, and she leaned
for a moment forward.

"You won't come?" she asked, with a slight gesture of invitation towards
the vacant seat.

But Douglas, to whom the invitation seemed, in a sense, allegorical,
shook his head. He pointed eastwards.

"The taste of the lotus is sweet," he said, "but one must live."



CHAPTER XIX

A MAN WITHOUT A PAST

Whether Rice's point of view and judgment upon Emily de Reuss were
prejudiced or not, Douglas certainly passed from her influence into a
more robust and invigorating literary life. He gave up his expensive
chambers, sold the furniture, reorganised his expenses, and took a
single room in a dull little street off the Strand. Rice, aided by a
few friends, and also by Douglas's own growing reputation, secured his
admission into the same Bohemian club to which he and Drexley belonged.
For the first time, Douglas began to meet those who were, strictly
speaking, his fellows, and the wonderful good comradeship of his
newly-adopted profession was a thing gradually revealed to him. He made
many friends, studied hard, and did some brilliant work. He abandoned,
upon calmer reflection, the idea of going abroad, and was given to
understand that his position on the Courier might be regarded as a
permanency. He saw his future gradually defined in clearer colours--it
became obvious to him that his days of struggling were past and over.
He had won his place within the charmed circle of those who had been
tried and proved. Only there was always at the bottom of his heart a
secret dread, a shadowy terror, most often present when he found himself
alone with Rice or Emily de Reuss. It seemed to him that their eyes
were perpetually questioning him, and there was one subject which both
religiously and fearfully avoided.

He was popular enough amongst the jovial, lighthearted circle of his
fellow-workers and club companions, yet he himself was scarcely of their
disposition. His attitude towards life was still serious, he carried
always with him some suggestions of a past which must ever remain an
ugly and fearsome thing. His sense of humour was unlimited--in repartee
he easily held his own. He was agreeable to everybody, but he never
sought acquaintances, and avoided intimacies. More especially was he
averse to any mention of his earlier days.

Speedwell, sub-editor of the _Minute_, buttonholed him one day at the
club, and led him into a corner.

"You are the very man I wanted to see, Jesson," he exclaimed. "Have a
drink?"

"I've just dined, thanks," Douglas answered. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm giving some space in my rag," Speedwell explained, blandly, "to a
series of memoirs on prominent journalists of the day, and I want to
include you."

"I'm sure you're very kind," Douglas answered, "but you can't be in
earnest. To begin with, I'm not a prominent journalist, and I don't
suppose I ever shall be--"

"Well, you're a bit of a miracle, you know," Speedwell interrupted.
"You've come to the front so quickly, and you've a method of your
own--the staccato, nervous style, you know, with lots of colour and
dashes. I wish I'd a man on the staff who could do it. Still, that's
neither here nor there, and you needn't think I'm hinting, for I tell
you frankly the _Minute_ can't afford large-salaried men. What I want
from you is a photograph, and just a little sketch of your early
life--where you were born, and where you went to school, and that sort
of thing. It mayn't do you much good, but it can't do you any harm, and
I'll be awfully obliged."

Douglas was silent for a moment. The whole panorama of that joyless
youth of his seemed suddenly stretched out before him. He saw himself
as boy, and youth, and man; the village school changed into the
sectarian university, where the great highroad to knowledge was rank
with the weeds of prejudice. He saw himself back again at the
farmhouse, he felt again the vague throbbings of that discontent which
had culminated in a tragedy. He was suddenly white almost to the lips,
a mist seemed to hang about the room, and the cheerful voices of the men
playing pool came to him like a dirge from the far distance. Speedwell,
waiting in vain for his answer, looked at him in surprise.

"Aren't you well, old chap?" he asked. "You look as though you'd seen a
ghost."

Douglas pulled himself together with an effort.

"I'm not quite the thing," he said. "Late, last night, I suppose. I'm
sure it's very good of you to think of me, Speedwell, but I'd rather you
left me out."

"Why?"

"You see I'm really only a novice--quite a beginner, and I don't feel
I've the right to be included."

"That" Speedwell answered, "is our business. You didn't come to us--I
came to you. All you have to do is to answer a few questions, and let
me have that photo."

Douglas shook his head.

"You must please excuse me, Speedwell," he said. "It's very kind of
you, but to tell you the truth, there are certain painful incidents in
connection with my life before I came to London which I am anxious to
forget. I do not choose to have a past at all."

Speedwell shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette. He was none too
well pleased.

"You can't expect," he remarked, "to become famous and remain at the
same time unknown. There is a great and growing weakness on the part of
the public to-day for personalities. I suppose it is the spread of
American methods in journalism which is responsible for it. Some day
your chroniclers will help themselves to your past, whether you will or
not."

Douglas rose up with an uneasy laugh.

"It will be an evil day for them," he said; "perhaps for me. But at
least I will not anticipate it."

He wandered restlessly from room to room of the club, returning the
greetings of his acquaintances with a certain vagueness, lingering
nowhere for more than a moment or two. Finally, he took his hat from
the rack and walked out into the street. Fronting him was the Thames.
He leaned against the iron railing and looked out across the dusty,
sun-baked gardens to where the river flowed down between the bridges.
Something of the despair, which had so nearly broken his heart a short
while since, seemed again to lay tormenting clutches upon him. After
all, was not a man for ever the slave of his past? No present success,
no future triumphs could ever wholly free him from the memory of that
one merciless hour. As a rule his thoughts recoiled shuddering from
even the slightest lingering about it. To-night there swept in upon him
with irresistible force a crowd of vivid memories. He saw the quaint
old village, its grey stone houses dotted about the hillside, the
farmhouse which had been his home--bare, gaunt, everything outside and
in typical of the man who ruled there and over the little neighbourhood,
a tyrant and a despot. The misery of those days laid hold of him, He
turned away from the railings and walked Strandwards, past the door of
his lodgings and round many side streets, grimy and unpretentious. He
walked like a man possessed, but his memories had taken firm hold of
him, shadowy but inexorcisable fiends. It was Cicely now who was
walking by his side, and his heart was beating with something of the old
stir. What a change her coming had made in that strange corner of the
world. Cicely, with her dainty figure and bright, sunny smile,
wonderfully light-hearted, a gleam of brilliant colour thrown across
their grey life. She loved poetry too, the hills, the sunsets, and
those long walks across the purple moorland. It was a wonderful
companionship into which they had drifted. He was her refuge in a life
which she frankly declared to be insupportable. She was a revelation to
him--the first he had had--of delicate femininity, full ever of
suggestions of that wonderful world beyond, of which at that time he had
only dared to dream. It was she who had kindled his ambitions, who had
preached to him silently, but with convincing eloquence, of the glories
of freedom, the heritage of his manhood. And all the while Joan, from
apart, was watching them. No word crossed her lips, yet often on their
return from a day's rambling he caught a look in her eyes which amazed
him. Gideon Strong went his way unseeing, stern, and unbending as ever
even to his younger daughter, but in those days there was thunder always
in the air. Douglas remembered the sensation and shuddered. Once he
had come across Joan and her sister together suddenly, and had found it
hard work to keep from a shriek of terror. There was a light in Joan's
eyes--it seemed to him that he had seen it there often lately. Was
there another Joan whom he did not know?

He walked on, grim, pale, chilled. The time when he would lie awake in
his little oak-beamed chamber and thoughts of Cicely would soothe him to
sleep with pleasant fancies was gone. He thought of her now without
emotion--no longer the memory of those walks thrilled his pulses. He
knew very well that never again would his heart beat the quicker for her
coming, never again, even though the memory of that terrible night could
be swept away, would her coming bring joy to him. Firmly though his
feet were planted upon the ladder, it seemed to him then in that gloomy
mood that every step must take him further away from any chance of that
wonderful happiness, so intangible, yet so sweet an adjunct to life.
For he was following like a doomed creature in the wake of Drexley, and
Rice, and those others. Too late had come his warning. The woman of
whom he never dared to think was surely a sorceress. She was only a
woman--scarcely even beautiful, yet the world of her sex had become to
Douglas Guest as a thing that was not. He turned at last back into the
Strand. He would go to his rooms and work for a while. But as he
walked slowly down, jostled by many passers-by, still not wholly
detached from that phantasmal past, there came upon him a shock so
sudden and so overwhelming that the very pavement seemed to yawn at his
feet. Towards him two women were slowly walking, holding their own in
the press of the crowd, one with horrified eyes already fastened upon
him, the other as yet unconscious of his presence. Nearer and nearer
they came, and although every impulse of his body bade him fly, his
limbs were rigid and every muscle seemed frozen. For the women were
Joan and her sister Cicely.



CHAPTER XX

CICELY ASKS A QUESTION

After all, it was the woman who sought him who passed him by, her
unwilling companion who recognised him at once, in spite of his altered
dress and bearing. They were swallowed up in the crowd before Douglas
had recovered himself. Something in Cicely's terrified gaze had
instantly checked his first instinct which prompted him to accost them.
They were gone, leaving him alike speechless and bewildered. He
staggered into a small restaurant, and sitting at an unoccupied table,
called for a bottle of wine.

With the first draught his courage returned, his mental perspective
commenced to rearrange itself. Cicely and Joan were in London, Cicely
had seen him, Joan had not. From the first he had realised that there
was danger to him in this encounter. Cicely had seen him, but she had
made no motion of recognition, she had obviously refrained from telling
her sister of his near presence. From this he concluded that whilst she
believed in him and was still his friend, Joan was his enemy. He rolled
a cigarette with nervous fingers, and lighted it. Did Joan suspect that
he was still alive? and was she looking for him? To the world in
general Douglas Guest was dead. How was it with these two girls? There
were various small reasons why they might be inclined to doubt what to
other people would seem obvious. He recalled Joan's face, grim and
forbidding enough, almost a tragical figure in her black garb, as severe
and sombre as a country dressmaker could fashion it. He must get to
know these things. He must find Cicely. He walked thoughtfully back to
the offices of the Courier, where he found some work, which, for the
time, completely engrossed him.

The next morning the following advertisement appeared in most of the
London newspapers.

"To C. S. I must see you. British Museum to-day at six."

For three days Douglas watched in vain. On the fourth his heart gave a
great leap, for a sombre little figure stepped out from an omnibus at
the corner of Russell Square and stood hesitatingly upon the pavement,
looking in through the iron bars at the Museum. He came across the
street to her boldly--she turned and saw him. After all, their greeting
approached the conventional. He remembered to raise his hat--she held
out her hand--would have withdrawn it, but found it already clasped in
his.

"Cicely. How good of you. You saw my advertisement?"

"Yes."

"And you saw me in the Strand, but you would not speak to me. Was that
because of Joan?"

"Yes."

"I want to talk to you," he said. "I have so much to say."

She raised her eyes to his, and he saw for the first time how much
thinner she was.

"Douglas," she said, "there is something I must ask you first of all
before I stay with you for a moment. Must I put it into words?"

"I do not think you need, Cicely," he answered. "I went to your
father's room that night beyond a doubt, but I never raised my hand
against him. I should have very hard work to prove it, I fancy, but I
am wholly innocent of his death--innocent, that is to say, so far as any
direct action of mine was concerned."

She drew a long deep breath of relief. Then she looked up to him with a
beautiful smile.

"Douglas," she said, "I was sure of it, yet it is a great weight from my
heart to hear you say so. Now, can you take me somewhere where we can
talk? I am afraid of the streets. I will tell you why afterwards."

He called a hansom and handed her in. After a moment's hesitation he
gave the address of the restaurant where he had first met Rice.

"It is only a shabby little place," he explained to her, apologetically,
"but we can talk there freely."

"Anywhere," she answered; "how strange it seems to be here--in London
with you."

There was a sense of unreality about it to him, but he only laughed.

"Now tell me about Joan."

She hesitated.

"It will not be pleasant."

"I do not deserve that it should be," he answered gravely.

"She has always been quite sure that it was not you who was killed in
the railway accident. She even imbued me with that belief."

"Her instinct there, at any rate, was true enough," he answered.

"She also believes," Cicely continued, more slowly, "that you robbed and
murdered Father."

Douglas shivered. It was hard even now to recall that night unmoved.
"Well?"

"She has made up her mind that you are in London, and that sooner or
later she will find you."

"And if she does?"

"She has been to Scotland Yard. They will arrest you."

The cab pulled up with a jerk, and a commissionaire threw open the
apron. Douglas handed his companion out, and they entered the
restaurant together. In a distant corner they found a table to
themselves, and he ordered dinner.

"Well, we are safe from Joan here for a little time, at any rate," he
said, laughing. "Are you living with her, then?"

Cicely nodded.

"Yes. We have left the farm. There was very little money, you know,
after all, and Joan and I will have to take situations. At present we
are living upon our capital in the most shameful way. I am afraid she
is completely absorbed by one idea--it is horrible."

"It is odd that she should be so vindictive," he said, wearily.

Cicely shrugged her shoulders. She was intensely interested in the
little brown pot of soup which the waiter had brought them.

"Joan is very peculiar," she said. "When I think of her I feel like a
doll. She is as strong as steel. I think that she cared for you,
Douglas, and, putting aside everything else, you behaved shamefully to
her."

"She is not like other women," he answered decidedly. "Her caring for
me was not a matter of sentiment. Her father ordered, and she obeyed.
She knew quite well that it was exactly the same with me. I have never
uttered a word of affection to her in my life. Our engagement was an
utter farce."

"Still I believe she cared," Cicely continued; "and I believe that,
apart from anything else, a sort of slow anger towards you is rankling
in her heart all the time."

"I was a coward," Douglas said decidedly. "Even now I cannot understand
why for a moment I ever accepted such an impossible situation."

Cicely showed all her teeth--she had fine, white teeth--in a brilliant
smile.

"Joan would be quite handsome," she said, "if she were decently
dressed."

"Some people might think so," he answered. "She wouldn't be my style.
I think I agreed, because in those days we all seemed to do exactly what
your Father ordered. Besides, the thing was sprung upon me so suddenly.
It took my breath away.

"That was rather like Father," she remarked. "He liked taking us by
storm. Now I want to hear how you have got on, and what you are doing.
Let us drop the past for a little while, at any rate."

He poured her out a glass of wine, and found time to notice how pretty
she was, with her slightly flushed cheeks and bright eyes.

"I am on a newspaper," he said, "the _Daily Courier_. I got on quite by
chance, and they are going to keep me."

She looked at him with keen interest.

"How delightfully fortunate!" she exclaimed. "It is what you wanted all
your life, isn't it? And the _Ibex_ story?

"Will appear next month. I have lots of orders for others too. The
first thing I wrote for the Courier was quite successful."

She looked at him wistfully. "Couldn't you send it to me?" she asked.

He took out pencil and paper.

"Of course. Give me your address."

She began, but stopped short with a little cry.

"Whatever am I doing!" she exclaimed. "Why, Douglas, you mustn't think
of writing nor of sending anything to me. Joan might see it, and she
would know your handwriting in a moment."

He paused with the pencil in his hand.

"That's rather a nuisance," he said. "Isn't there somewhere else I can
write?"

She shook her head regretfully.

"I'm afraid not."

"It is rather ridiculous," he said frowning. "I don't want to go about
in fear and trembling all my life. Don't you think that if I were to
see her or write to you I could convince--"

She stopped him, horrified.

"Douglas," she said, "you don't understand Joan. I am not sure that
even I, who live with her, do. She reminds me sometimes of those women
of the French revolution. There is a light in her eyes when she speaks
of you, which makes me shiver. Stay in London if you must, but pray
always that chance may not bring you two together."

He answered her with an affectation of lightness, but her words were not
without effect upon him. He paid the bill and she lowered her veil.
Out in the street he would have called a hansom, but she checked him.

"An omnibus, if you please, Douglas!" she exclaimed. "Joan would never
forgive me the extravagance if she saw me in a cab. I can find one at
the corner, and I should feel so much more comfortable if you would
leave me here."

He looked down at her and realised once more the dainty Watteau--like
grace of her oval face and slim, supple figure. He thought of the days
when they had stolen out together on to the hillside, oftenest in the
falling twilight, sometimes even in the grey dawn, and his heart beat
regretfully. How was it that in those days he had never more fully
realised her charms?

"I hate letting you go alone," he said, truthfully; "and I certainly
cannot let you go like this, without any idea as to your whereabouts."

"We are staying in Wensum Street," she said. "I tell you that you may
avoid the neighbourhood. If I am to see you again, it certainly must
not be there."

"Why not here?" he urged; "next Thursday night--say at half-past six. I
must not lose sight of you again--so soon."

She raised her eyes quickly. It was pleasant to her to think that he
cared.

"I think I could manage that," she said, softly.

Douglas went off to his club with a keen sense of having acquired a new
interest in life. He was in that mood when companionship of some sort
is a necessity.



CHAPTER XXI

THE REBELLION OF DREXLEY

"You think," Drexley said, his deep, bass voice trembling with
barely-restrained passion, "that we are all your puppets--that you have
but to touch the string and we dance to your tune. Leave young Jesson
alone, Emily. He has been man enough to strike out a line for himself.
Let him keep to it. Give him a chance."

She shrugged her shoulders and smiled upon him sweetly. She always
preferred Drexley in his less abject moods.

"You have seen him lately, my friend?" she inquired. "He is well, I
hope?"

"Yes, he is well," Drexley answered, bitterly. "Living, like a sensible
man, honestly by the labour of his brain, the friend and companion of
men--not the sycophant of a woman. I envy him."

She pointed lazily towards the door.

"He was man enough to choose for himself," she said; "so may you. To
tell you the truth, my dear friend, when you weary me like this, I feel
inclined to say--go, and when I say go--it is for always."

Then there came into his face something which she had seen there once
before, and which ever since she had recalled with a vague
uneasiness--the look murderous. The veins in his forehead became like
whipcord--there was a red flash in his eyes. Yet his self-control was
marvellous. His voice, when he spoke, seemed scarcely to rise above a
whisper.

"For always?" he surmised--"it would be rest at least. You are not an
easy task-mistress, Emily."

Her momentary fear of him evaporated almost as quickly as it had been
conceived. She stood with her hand on the bell. "I think," she said,
"that you had better go to your club."

He held out a protesting hand--tamed at any rate for the moment.

"You were speaking of Jesson," he said. "Well?"

She moved her finger from the bell, conscious that the crisis was past.
She might yet score a victory.

"Yes, I was speaking of Jesson," she continued, lazily. "As you
remark--none too politely, by-the-bye--he has decided to do without my
help. I have no objection to that. I admire independence in a man.
Yet when he spoke to me from his point of view I am afraid that I was
rude. We parted, at any rate, abruptly. I have been thinking it over
and I am sorry for it. I should like to let him know that on the whole
I approve of his intention."

"Write and tell him to come and see you then," Drexley said, gruffly.
"He can't refuse--poor devil."

The beautifully-shaped eyebrows of the Countess de Reuss were a trifle
uplifted. Yet she smiled faintly.

"No," she said, "he could not refuse. But it is not quite what I want.
If I write to him he will imagine many things."

"What do you want me to do?" he asked brusquely.

"You see him often at the club?"

"Yes."

"Go there to-night. Say that we have spoken of him; hint that this
absolute withdrawal from my house must appear ungrateful--has seemed so
to me. I shall be at home alone a week to-night. Do you understand?"

"I understand, at least, that I am not to come and see you a week
to-night," he answered with a harsh laugh.

"That is quite true, my friend," she said, "but what of it? You have
no special claim, have you, to monopolise my society?--you nor any man.
You are all my friends."

There was a knock at the door--a maid entered.

"Her ladyship will excuse me," she said, "but she is dining at
Dowchester House to-night at eight o'clock."

Emily rose and held out her hand to Drexley.

"Quite right, Marie," she said. "I see that I must hurry. You will
remember, my friend."

"I will remember," he answered quietly.

He walked eastwards across the park, not briskly as a strong man with
the joy of living in his veins, but with slow, dejected footsteps, his
great shoulders bent, his heart heavy. Physically he was sound enough,
yet the springs of life seemed slack, and a curious lassitude, a
weariness of heart and limbs came over him as he passed through the
crowds of well-dressed men, his fellows, yet, to his mind, creatures of
some other world. He sank into an empty seat, and watched them with
lack-lustre eyes. Why had this thing come to him, he wondered, of all
men? He was middle-aged, unimaginative, shrewd and well balanced in his
whole outlook upon life. Three years ago no man in the world would have
appeared less likely to become the wreck he now felt himself--three
years ago he had met Emily de Reuss. With a certain fierce eagerness he
set himself to face his position. Surely he was still a man? Escape
must lie some way. Then he laughed softly and bitterly to himself.
Yes, there was escape--escape through the small blue hole in the
forehead, which more than once he had pictured to himself lately with
horrid reality when fingering his revolver--escape in the arms of the
sea which he still loved, for in his day he had been a mighty swimmer.
There were no other means save such as these. Long ago he had wearied
of asking himself what manner of woman this was, whose lips he had never
touched, yet whose allurements seemed to have that touch of wonderful
magic which ever postpones, never forbids. He only knew 'that she was
to him as she was to those others--only with him the struggle was
fiercer. There were times as now, when his love seemed turned to fury.
She seemed to him then like some beautiful but unclean animal who fed
upon the souls of men. He burned to seize her in his arms, to cover her
face with hot kisses, and then to press his fingers around that delicate
white throat until the music of her death cry should set him free for
ever. But when his thoughts led him hitherwards a cold fear gave him
strength to break away--for with them came the singing in his ears, the
lights before his eyes, the airiness of heart and laughter which go
before madness. He sprang to his feet, steadied himself for a moment,
and walked rapidly onwards. The momentary exhilaration died slowly
away--the old depression settled down upon his spirits. Yet when he
reached the club he was breathless, and the hand which lighted a cigar
in the hall shook.

On the stairs he met an acquaintance.

"Going to dine, Drexley?"

"No, I don't think so," he answered blankly. "Do you know if Jesson is
in the club?"

"Haven't seen him. Come and have a drink. You look a bit shaky."

Drexley shook his head. He wanted to drink, but not with any thoughts
of good fellowship in his heart. His was a fiercer desire--the craving
for mad blood or the waters of Lethe. He chose a quiet corner in the
reading room, and rang for brandy.

Meanwhile Douglas came blithely down the Strand, a smile upon his lips,
a crowd of pleasant thoughts in his brain. To think that little Cicely
should have grown so pretty. How pleased she had been to see him, and
how she had enjoyed their little dinner. Next week would be something
to look forward to. He would look out some of his work which he knew
would interest her. After all, it had been she who had been the first
person in the world to say a word of encouragement to him.

In the hall of the club some one shouted that Drexley had been inquiring
for him. He ordered some coffee and made his way up into the
writing-room. Drexley was there waiting, his head drooped upon his
folded arms. He looked up as Douglas entered.



CHAPTER XXII

DREXLEY SPEAKS OUT

Douglas halted in the middle of the room. He knew Drexley but slightly,
and his appearance was forbidding. Drexley waved him to a chair and
looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, but his tone was steady enough.

"They told me downstairs that you were inquiring for me," Douglas said.

Drexley nodded.

"Yes. Sit down, will you. I have a sort of message, and there is
something I wanted to say."

A waiter brought Douglas his coffee, and being in an extravagant mood he
ordered a liqueur.

"What'll you have?" he asked.

Drexley hesitated, but finally shook his head.

"No more," he said. "A cigar, if you like."

Even then Drexley shrank from his task. Their chairs were close
together and the room empty--yet for the first ten minutes they spoke of
alien subjects, till a suggestive pause from Douglas and a glance at his
watch made postponement no longer possible. Then, blowing out fierce
clouds of tobacco smoke, he plunged into his subject.

"I've come," he said, "from Emily de Reuss. No, don't interrupt me.
I've a sort of message for you which isn't to be delivered as a message
at all. I'm to drop a hint to you that she would like you to go and see
her, that your refusal to do so would be a little ungracious, because
she came and saw you when you were ill. I'm to let you think that she's
feeling a little hurt at your behaviour, and finally to work you up into
going. Do you see?"

"Not altogether," Douglas answered, laughing.

"Well, it isn't altogether a laughing matter," Drexley said, grimly.
"I've got rid of my message. Now I'm going to speak to you on my own
account. You're young and you haven't seen much of life. You are no
more capable of understanding a woman like Emily de Reuss than you are
of talking Hindustanee. For the matter of that neither am I, nor any of
us. Any ordinary words which I could use about her must sound
ridiculous because of their inadequacy. However, to make myself
understood I must try. She is not only a beautiful woman of unlimited
wealth and social position, but she has, when she chooses to use them,
the most extraordinary powers of attracting people to her. She might
exercise these gifts upon men of her own social rank who are, as a rule,
of slighter character, and whose experience of the best of her sex is of
course larger than ours. She prefers, however, to stoop into another
world for her victims--into our world."

"Why victims?" Douglas asked. "Isn't that rather an extreme view of the
case?"

"It is a mild view," Drexley said. "I will justify it afterwards. In
the first place, I believe that she has genuine literary tastes, and a
delight for the original in any shape or form. The men in her own rank
of life would neither afford her any pleasure nor would they be for a
moment content with the return which she is prepared to offer for their
devotion. So she has chosen her victims, or, as you would say, friends,
from amongst our men--at least with a more robust virility and more
limited expectation. You will admit that so far I have spoken w

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