Married life could not have begun more hopefully for John and Helen.
They started housekeeping in a tiny but charming house in Brompton
Square, the lease of which they had been able to acquire on reasonable
terms. It was great fun assembling their modest household gods. These
had to accord strictly with their means; therefore, a case for taste
and discretion. But these were happy days. A high faith in each other
had been confirmed by the ordeal through which they had just passed.
Reputation was in a measure theirs before the Blackhampton election;
but it was now enhanced, consolidated by a resounding victory which
filled the mouth of the world.
It was glorious to be young, to be strong, to be one in dedication to a
great task. Much would be demanded of them. They must prepare to live
laboriously. Yet a vista had opened before their eyes. Inspiration came
to them hour by hour. During the first few weeks of marriage it seemed
to John Endor that God was in His Heaven after all.
For both this was a time of growth. And yet, as always, somewhere in
the mind of Endor lurked a pre-vision of things to come. A dark shadow
was seldom absent from his thoughts. Had it been possible, he would
have blotted from his life some recent, brief, but horribly poignant
passages. To none, however, is it given to undo the past. In a moment
of weakness he had sunk to the level of an unclean foe. He was pledged
now to return felon stroke for felon stroke. If he could but efface
that hour of moral failure what would he not give!
He dare not tell Helen his secret. By locking away deep in his heart
the memory of a tragic lapse he tried to stifle it. But he was never
allowed to forget that it was there. Well he knew that the enemy would
not yield to dictation from anybody. Saul Hartz, upheld by the power
that had carried him so far, would dare the Council of Seven to its
worst.
John Endor saw all that with fatal clearness. And soon there fell on
him a black despair. “O ye of little faith!” was the cry torn from him
in secret as each morning he opened his letters. The recoil of a famous
victory was far-reaching, as each day’s post brought evidence. On every
side, from quarters diverse and unexpected, squires came forth with a
demand for this bold knight to lead them out to battle with the grisly
monster in whose toils the country groaned.
The hour was ripe. One of his power, his inward vision, might lead them
anywhere. He was beginning to make all the world see, as a Bright or a
Gladstone would have done, to what a pass the nation had been brought.
He had underrated the moral fiber of his countrymen. In a moment of
blindness he had allowed himself to despair of the State--of that State
in which he so fully believed that he was ready to make almost any
sacrifice, in order to serve it.
What should he do? Saul Hartz was still Saul Hartz, a being of volcanic
will. And that will had now become a creative force which seemed to
transcend that of men. In the mind of John Endor it was a symbol. Here
for one wrought upon by the fires of imagination was the embodiment
of the spirit that denied. But if there was a God in the world, and
the first weeks of marriage, a time of rare happiness and sanity, had
taught him that surely there must be, He must be left to deal with
this monster in His own way, at His own time. If Endor himself and the
secret society to which he was pledged usurped terrible functions which
his conscience could never approve, they, too, must sink to the level
of the thing they sought to destroy.
John Endor knew now that he was on the horns of an inescapable dilemma.
The body of fanatics and visionaries whose will he had sworn to do
would not be in the least likely to release him from his vows. It was
not the way of such a camarilla. Once a member, always a member. Before
God he would have to assume full responsibility for its acts. And that
knowledge was a viper in his breast. How could he hope to keep every
nerve braced for the fight with such a horror eating out his very life!
A little consideration of a state of affairs which hardly bore thinking
about brought home to John Endor that there could be only one course
for him now. At all costs, he must cut loose from this _Vehmgericht_.
Likely enough it could only be done at the price of life itself. But
done it must be.