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.