The Masquerader Part 37

"You mustn't!" she said, softly. "Look!"

The carriage had stopped beside one of the small islands that intersect the place; a group of pedestrians were crowded upon it, under the light of the electric lamp--wayfarers who, like themselves, were awaiting a pa.s.sage. Loder took a cursory glance at them, then turned back to Eve.

"What are they, after all, but men and women?" he said. "They'd understand--every one of them." He laughed in his turn; nevertheless he withdrew his arm. Her feminine thought for conventionalities appealed to him. It was an acknowledgment of dependency.

For a while they sat silent, the light of the street lamp flickering through the gla.s.s of the window, the hum of voices and traffic coming to them in a continuous rise and fall of sound. At first the position was interesting; but, as the seconds followed each other, it gradually became irksome. Loder, watching the varying expressions of Eve's face, grew impatient of the delay, grew suddenly eager to be alone again in the fragrant darkness.

Impelled by the desire, he leaned forward and opened the window.

"Let's find the meaning of this," he said. "Is there n.o.body to regulate the traffic?" As he spoke he half rose and leaned out of the window.

There was a touch of imperious annoyance in his manner. Fresh from the realization of power, there was something irksome in this commonplace check to his desires.

"Isn't it possible to get out of this?" Eve heard him call to the coachman. Then she heard no more.

He had leaned out of the carriage with the intention of looking onward towards the cause of the delay; instead, by that magnetic attraction that undoubtedly exists, he looked directly in front of him at the group of people waiting on the little island--at one man who leaned against the lamp-post in an att.i.tude of apathy--a man with a pallid, unshaven face and l.u.s.treless eyes, who wore a cap drawn low over his forehead.

He looked at this man, and the man saw and returned his glance. For a s.p.a.ce that seemed interminable they held each other's eyes; then very slowly Loder drew back into the carriage.

As he dropped into his seat, Eve glanced at him anxiously.

"John," she said, "has anything happened? You look ill."

He turned to her and tried to smile.

"It's nothing," he said. "Nothing to worry about." He spoke quickly, but his voice had suddenly become flat. All the command, all the domination had dropped away from it.

Eve bent close to him, her face lighting up with anxious tenderness. "It was the excitement," she said, "the strain of tonight."

He looked at her; but he made no attempt to press the fingers that clasped his own.

"Yes," he said, slowly. "Yes. It was the excitement of to-night--and the reaction."

XXVI

The next morning at eight o'clock, and again without breakfast, Loder covered the distance between Grosvenor Square and Clifford's Inn. He left Chilcote's house hastily--with a haste that only an urgent motive could have driven him to adopt. His steps were quick and uneven as he traversed the intervening streets; his shoulders lacked their decisive pose, and his pale face was marked with shadows beneath the eyes--shadows that bore witness to the sleepless night spent in pacing Chilcote's vast and lonely room. By the curious effect of circ.u.mstances the likeness between the two men had never been more significantly marked than on that morning of April 19th, when Loder walked along the pavements crowded with early workers and brisk with insistent news-venders already alive to the value of last night's political crisis.

The irony of this last element in the day's concerns came to him fully when one newsboy, more energetic than his fellows, thrust a paper in front of him.

"Sensation in the 'Ouse, sir! Speech by Mr. Chilcote! Government defeat!"

For a moment Loder stopped and his face reddened. The tide of emotions still ran strong. His hand went instinctively to his pocket; then his lips set. He shook his head and walked on.

With the same hard expression about his mouth, he turned into Clifford's Inn, pa.s.sed through his own doorway, and mounted the stairs.

This time there was no milk-can on the threshold of his rooms and the door yielded to his pressure without the need of a key. With a strange sensation of reluctance he walked into the narrow pa.s.sage and paused, uncertain which room to enter first. As he stood hesitating a voice from the sitting-room settled the question.

"Who's there?" it called, irritably. "What do you want?"

Without further ceremony the intruder pushed the door open and entered the room. As he did so he drew a quick breath--whether of disappointment or relief it was impossible to say. Whether he had hoped for or dreaded it, Chilcote was conscious.

As Loder entered he was sitting by the cheerless grate, the ashes of yesterday's fire showing charred and dreary where the sun touched them.

His back was to the light, and about his shoulders was an old plaid rug. Behind him on the table stood a cup, a teapot, and the can of milk; farther off a kettle was set to boil upon a tiny spirit-stove.

In all strong situations we are more or less commonplace. Loder's first remark as he glanced round the disordered room seemed strangely inefficient.

"Where's Robins?" he asked, in a brusque voice. His mind teemed with big considerations, yet this was his first involuntary question.

Chilcote had started at the entrance of his visitor; now he sat staring at him, his hands holding the arms of his chair.

"Where's Robins?" Loder asked again.

"I don't know. She--I--We didn't hit it off. She's gone--went yesterday." He shivered and drew the rug about him.

"Chilcote--" Loder began, sternly; then he paused. There was something in the other's look and att.i.tude that arrested him. A change of expression pa.s.sed over his own face; he turned about with an abrupt gesture, pulled off his coat and threw it on a chair; then crossing deliberately to the fireplace, he began to rake the ashes from the grate.

Within a few minutes he had a fire crackling where the bed of dead cinders had been, and, having finished the task, he rose slowly from his knees, wiped his hands, and crossed to the table. On the small spirit-stove the kettle had boiled and the cover was lifting and falling with a tinkling sound. Blowing out the flame, Loder picked up the teapot, and with hands that were evidently accustomed to the task set about making the tea.

During the whole operation he never spoke, though all the while he was fully conscious of Chilcote's puzzled gaze. The tea ready, he poured it into the cup and carried it across the room.

"Drink this!" he said, laconically. "The fire will be up presently."

Chilcote extended a cold and shaky hand. "You see--" he began.

But Loder checked him almost savagely. "I do--as well as though I had followed you from Piccadilly last night! You've been hanging about, G.o.d knows where, till the small hours of the morning; then you've come back--slunk back, starving for your d.a.m.ned poison and shivering with cold. You've settled the first part of the business, but the cold has still to be reckoned with. Drink the tea. I've something to say to you."

He mastered his vehemence, and, walking to the window, stood looking down into the court. His eyes were blank, his face hard; his ears heard nothing but the faint sound of Chilcote's swallowing, the click of the cup against his teeth.

For a time that seemed interminable he stood motionless; then, when he judged the tea finished, he turned slowly. Chilcote had drawn closer to the fire. He was obviously braced by the warmth; and the apathy that hung about him was to some extent dispelled. Still moving slowly, Loder went towards him, and, relieving him of the empty cup, stood looking down at him.

"Chilcote," he said, very quietly, "I've come to fell you that the thing must end."

After he spoke there was a prolonged pause; then, as if shaken with sudden consciousness, Chilcote rose. The rug dropped from one shoulder and hung down ludicrously; his hand caught the back of the chair for support; his unshaven face looked absurd and repulsive in its sudden expression of scared inquiry. Loder involuntarily turned away.

"I mean it," he said, slowly. "It's over; we've come to the end."

"But why?" Chilcote articulated, blankly. "Why? Why?" In his confusion he could think of no better word.

"Because I throw it up. My side of the bargain's off!"

Again Chilcote's lips parted stammeringly. The apathy caused by physical exhaustion and his recently administered drug was pa.s.sing from him; the hopelessly shattered condition of mind and body was showing through it like a skeleton through a thin covering of flesh.

"But why?" he said again. "Why?"

Still Loder avoided the frightened surprise of his, eyes. "Because I withdraw," he answered, doggedly.

Then suddenly Chilcote's tongue was loosened. "Loder," he cried, excitedly, "you can't do it! G.o.d! man, you can't do it!" To rea.s.sure himself he laughed--a painfully thin echo of his old, sarcastic laugh.