The Masquerader Part 45

Eve kept her head bent. Painful, inaudible sobs were shaking her from head to foot.

"It's something in you--something unconscious--something high and fine, that holds me back--that literally bars the way. Eve, can't you see that I'm fighting--fighting hard?"

After he had spoken there was silence--a long, painful silence--during which Eve waged the battle that so many of her s.e.x have waged before; the battle in which words are useless and tears of no account. She looked very slight, very young, very forlorn, as she stood there. Then, in the oppressive sense of waiting that filled the whole room, she looked up at him.

Her face was stained with tears, her thick, black lashes were still wet with them; but her expression, as her eyes met Loder's, was a strange example of the courage, the firmness, the power of sacrifice that may be hidden in a fragile vessel.

She said nothing, for in such a moment words do not come easily, but with the simplest, most submissive, most eloquent gesture in the world she set his perplexity to rest.

Taking his hand between hers, she lifted it and for a long, silent s.p.a.ce held it against her lips.

x.x.xIII

For a while there was silence; then Loder, bitterly aware that he had conquered, poignantly conscious of the appeal that Eve's att.i.tude made, found further endurance impossible. Gently freeing his hand, he moved away from her to the fireplace, taking up the position that she had first occupied.

"Eve," he said, slowly, "I haven't finished yet. I haven't said everything. I'm going to tax your courage further."

With a touch of pained alarm, Eve lifted her head. "Further?" she said.

Loder shrank from the expression on her face. "Yes," he said, with difficulty. "There's still another point to be faced. The matter doesn't end with my going back. To have the situation fully saved, Chilcote must return--Chilcote must be brought to realize his responsibilities."

Eve's lips parted in dumb dismay.

"It must be done," he went on hurriedly, "and we have got to do it--you and I." He turned and looked at her.

"I? I could do nothing. What could I do?" Her voice failed.

"Everything," he said, "you could do everything. He is morally weak, but he has one sensitive point--the fear of a public exposure. Once make it plain to him that you know his secret, and you can compel him to whatever course of action you select. It was to ask you to do this--to beg you to do this--that I came to you to-night. I know that it's demanding more than a woman's resolution--more than a woman's strength.

But you are like no woman in the world!

"Eve!" he cried, with sudden vehemence, "can't you see that it's imperative--the one thing to save us both?"

He stopped abruptly as he had begun, and again a painful silence filled the room. Then, as before, Eve moved instinctively towards him, but this time her steps were slow and uncertain. Nearing his side, she put out her hand as if for comfort and support; and, feeling his fingers tighten round it, stood for a moment resting in the contact.

"I understand," she said at last, very slowly. "I understand. When will you take me to him?"

For a moment Loder said nothing, not daring to trust his voice; then he answered, low and abruptly. "Now!" he said. "Now, at once! Now, this moment, if I may. And--and remember that I know what it costs you."

As if imbued with fear that his courage might fail him, he suddenly released her hand, and, crossing the room to where a long, dark cloak lay as she had thrown it on her return home, he picked it up, walked to her side, and silently wrapped it about her. Then, still acting automatically, he moved to the door, opened it, and stood aside while she pa.s.sed out into the corridor.

In complete silence they descended the stairs and pa.s.sed to the hall door. There c.r.a.pham, who had returned to his duties since Loder's entrance, came quickly forward with an offer of service.

But Loder dismissed him curtly; and with something of the confusion bred of Chilcote's regime, the man drew back towards the staircase.

With a hasty movement Loder stepped forward, and, opening the door, admitted a breath of chill air. Then on the threshold he paused. It was his first sign of hesitation--the one instant in which nature rebelled against the conscience so tardily awakened. He stood motionless for a moment, and it is doubtful whether even Eve fully fathomed the bitterness of his renunciation--the blackness of the night that stretched before his eyes.

Behind him was everything; before him, nothing. The everything symbolized by the luxurious house, the eagerly attentive servants, the pleasant atmosphere of responsibility; the nothing represented by the broad public thoroughfare, the pa.s.sing figures, each unconscious of and uninterested in his existence. As an interloper he had entered this house; as an interloper--a masquerader--he had played his part, lived his hour, proved himself; as an interloper he was now pa.s.sing back into the dim world of unrealized hopes and unachieved ambitions.

He stood rigidly quiet, his strong figure silhouetted against the lighted hall, his face cold and set; then, with a touch of fatality, Chance cut short his struggle.

An empty hansom wheeled round the corner of the square; the cabman, seeing him, raised his whip in query, and involuntarily he nodded an acquiescence. A moment later he had helped Eve into the cab.

"Middle Temple Lane!" he directed, pausing on the step.

"Middle Temple Lane is opposite to Clifford's Inn," he explained as he took his place beside her. "When we get out there we have only to cross Fleet Street."

Eve bent her head in token that she understood, and the cab moved out into the roadway.

Within a few minutes the neighborhood of Grosvenor Square was exchanged for the noisier and more crowded one of Piccadilly, but either the cabman was overcautious or the horse was below the average, for they made but slow progress through the more crowded streets. To the two sitting in silence the pace was wellnigh unbearable. With every added movement the tension grew. The methodical care with which they moved seemed like the tightening of a string already strained to breaking-point, yet neither spoke--because neither had the courage necessary for words.

Once or twice as they traversed the Strand, Loder made a movement as if to break the silence, but nothing followed it. He continued to lean forward with a certain dogged stiffness, his clasped hands resting on the doors of the cab, his eyes staring straight ahead. Not once, as they threaded their way, did he dare to glance at Eve, though every movement, every stir of her garments, was forced upon his consciousness by his acutely awakened senses.

When at last they drew up before the dark archway of Middle Temple Lane, he descended hastily. And as he mechanically turned to protect Eve's dress from the wheel, he looked at her fully for the first time since their enterprise had been undertaken. As he looked he felt his heart sink. He had expected to see the marks of suffering on her face, but the expression he saw suggested something more than mere mental pain.

All the rich color that usually deepened and softened the charm of her beauty had been erased as if by a long illness; and against the new pallor of her skin her blue eyes, her black hair and eyebrows, seemed startlingly dark. A chill colder than remorse, a chill that bordered upon actual fear, touched Loder in that moment. With the first impulsive gesture he had allowed himself, he touched her arm.

"Eve--" he began, unsteadily; then the word died off his lips.

Without a sound, almost without a movement, she returned his glance, and something in her eyes checked what he might have said. In that one expressive look he understood all she had desired, all she had renounced--the full extent of the ordeal she had consented to, and the motive that had compelled her consent. He drew back with the heavy sense that repentance and pity were equally futile--equally out of place.

Still in silence she stepped to the pavement and stood aside while Loder dismissed the cab. To both there was something symbolic, something prophetic, in the dismissal. Without intention and almost unconsciously they drew closer together as the horse turned, its hoofs clattering on the roadway, its harness jingling; and, still without realization, they looked after the vehicle as it moved away down the long, shadowed thoroughfare towards the lights and the crowds that they had left. At last involuntarily they turned towards each other.

"Come!" Loder said, abruptly. "It's only across the road."

Fleet Street is generally very quiet, once midnight is pa.s.sed; and Eve had no need of guidance or protection as they crossed the pavement, shining like ice in the lamplight. They crossed it slowly, walking apart; for the dread of physical contact that had possessed them in the cab seemed to have fallen on them again.

Inquisitiveness has little place in the region of the city, and they gained the opposite footpath unnoticed by the casual pa.s.ser-by. Then, still holding apart, they reached and entered Clifford's Inn.

Inside the entrance they paused, and Eve shivered involuntarily. "How gray it is!" she said, faintly. "And how cold! Like a graveyard."

Loder turned to her. Far one moment control seemed shaken; his blood surged, his vision clouded; the sense that life and love were still within his reach filled him overwhelmingly. He turned towards Eve; he half extended his hands. Then, stirred by what impulse, moved by what instinct, it was impossible to say, he let them drop to his sides again.

"Come!" he said. "Come! This is the way. Keep close to me. Put your hand on my arm."

He spoke quietly, but his eyes were resolutely averted from her face as they crossed the dim, silent court.

Entering the gloomy door-way that led to his own rooms, he felt her fingers tremble on his arm, then tighten in their pressure as the bare pa.s.sage and cheerless stairs met her view; but he set his lips.

"Come!" he repeated, in the same strained voice. "Come! It isn't far--three or four flights."

With a white face and a curious expression in her eyes, Eve moved forward. She had released Loder's arm as they crossed the hall; and now, reaching the stairs, she put out her hand gropingly and caught the banister. She had a pained, numb sense of submission--of suffering that had sunk to apathy. Moving forward without resistance, she began to mount the stairs.

The ascent was made in silence. Loder went first, his shoulders braced, his head held erect; Eve, mechanically watchful of all his movements, followed a step or two behind. With weary monotony one flight of stairs succeeded another; each, to her unaccustomed eyes, seeming more colorless, more solitary, more desolate than the preceding one.

Then at last, with a sinking sense of apprehension, she realized that their goal was reached.