And Loder dined with Lillian Astrupp. We live in an age when society
expects, even exacts, much. He dined, not through bravado and not
through cowardice, but because it seemed the obvious, the only thing to
do. To him a scene of any description was distasteful; to Lillian it was
unknown. In her world people loved or hated, were spiteful or foolish,
were even quixotic or dishonorable, but they seldom made scenes. Loder
tacitly saw and tacitly accepted this.
Possibly they ate extremely little during the course of the dinner, and
talked extraordinarily much on subjects that interested neither; but the
main point at least was gained. They dined. The conventionalities were
appeased; the silent, watchful servants who waited on them were given no
food for comment. The fact that Loder left immediately after dinner,
the fact that he paused on the door-step after the hall door had
closed behind him, and drew a long, deep breath of relief, held only an
individual significance and therefore did not count.
On reaching Chilcote's house he passed at once to the study and
dismissed Greening for the night. But scarcely had he taken advantage
of his solitude by settling into an arm-chair and lighting a cigar, than
Renwick, displaying an unusual amount of haste and importance, entered
the room carrying a letter.
Seeing Loder, he came forward at once. “Mr. Fraide's man brought
this, sir,” he explained. “He was most particular to give it into my
hands--making sure 'twould reach you. He's waiting for an answer, sir.”
Loder rose and took the letter, a quick thrill of speculation and
interest springing across his mind. During his time of banishment he had
followed the political situation with feverish attention, insupportably
chafed by the desire to share in it, apprehensively chilled at
the thought of Chilcote's possible behavior. He knew that in the
comparatively short interval since Parliament had risen no act of
aggression had marked the Russian occupation of Meshed, but he also
knew that Fraide and his followers looked askance at that great power's
amiable attitude, and at sight of his leader's message his intuition
stirred.
Turning to the nearest lamp, he tore the envelope open and scanned
the letter anxiously. It was written in Fraide's own clear, somewhat
old-fashioned writing, and opened with a kindly rebuke for his
desertion of him since the day of his speech; then immediately, and with
characteristic clearness, it opened up the subject nearest the writer's
mind.
Very slowly and attentively Loder read the letter; and with the extreme
quiet that with him invariably covered emotion, he moved to the desk,
wrote a note, and handed it to the waiting servant. As the man turned
towards the door he called him.
“Renwick!” he said, sharply, “when you've given that letter to Mr.
Fraide's servant, ask Mrs. Chilcote if she can spare me five minutes.”
When Renwick had gone and closed the door behind him, Loder paced the
room with feverish activity. In one moment the aspect of life had been
changed. Five minutes since he had been glorying in the risk of a barely
saved situation; now that situation with its merely social complications
had become a matter of small importance.
His long, striding steps had carried him to the fireplace, and his back
was towards the door when at last the handle turned. He wheeled round to
receive Eve's message; then a look of pleased surprise crossed his face.
It was Eve herself who stood in the doorway.
Without hesitation his lips parted. “Eve,” he said, abruptly, “I
have had great news! Russia has shown her teeth at last. Two caravans
belonging to a British trader were yesterday interfered with by a band
of Cossacks. The affair occurred a couple of miles outside Meshed;
the traders remonstrated, but the Russians made summary use of their
advantage. Two Englishmen were wounded and one of them has since died.
Fraide has only now received the news--which cannot be overrated. It
gives the precise lever necessary for the big move at the reassembling.”
He spoke with great earnestness and unusual haste. As he finished he
took a step forward. “But that's not all!” he added. “Fraide wants the
great move set in motion by a great speech--and he has asked me to make
it.”
For a moment Eve waited. She looked at him in silence; and in that
silence he read in her eyes the reflection of his own expression.
“And you?” she asked, in a suppressed voice. “What answer did you give?”
He watched her for an instant, taking a strange pleasure in her flushed
face and brilliantly eager eyes; then the joy of conscious strength,
the sense of opportunity regained, swept all other considerations out of
sight.
“I accepted,” he said, quickly. “Could any man who was merely human have
done otherwise?”
That was Loder's attitude and action on the night of his jeopardy and
his success, and the following day found his mood unchanged. He was one
of those rare individuals who never give a promise overnight and regret
it in the morning. He was slow to move, but when he did the movement
brushed all obstacles aside. In the first days of his usurpation he had
gone cautiously, half fascinated, half distrustful; then the reality,
the extraordinary tangibility of the position had gripped him when,
matching himself for the first time with men of his own caliber, he had
learned his real weight on the day of his protest against the Easter
adjournment. With that knowledge had been born the dominant factor in
his whole scheme--the overwhelming, insistent desire to manifest his
power. That desire that is the salvation or the ruin of every strong man
who has once realized his strength. Supremacy was the note to which his
ambition reached. To trample out Chilcote's footmarks with his own had
been his tacit instinct from the first; now it rose paramount. It was
the whole theory of creation--the survival of the fittest--the deep,
egotistical certainty that he was the better man.
And it was with this conviction that he entered on the vital period of
his dual career. The imminent crisis, and his own share in it, absorbed
him absolutely.
In the weeks that followed his answer to Fraide's proposal he gave
himself ungrudgingly to his work. He wrote, read, and planned with
tireless energy; he frequently forgot to eat, and slept only through
sheer exhaustion; in the fullest sense of the word he lived for the
culminating hour that was to bring him failure or success.
He seldom left Grosvenor Square in the days that followed, except to
confer with his party. All his interest, all his relaxation even, lay in
his work and what pertained to it. His strength was like a solid wall,
his intelligence was sharp and keen as steel. The moment was his; and
by sheer mastery of will he put other considerations out of sight. He
forgot Chilcote and forgot Lillian--not because they escaped his memory,
but because he chose to shut them from it.
Of Eve he saw but little in this time of high pressure. When a man
touches the core of his capacities, puts his best into the work that in
his eyes stands paramount, there is little place for, and no need
of, woman. She comes before--and after. She inspires, compensates, or
completes; but the achievement, the creation, is man's alone. And all
true women understand and yield to this unspoken precept.
Eve watched the progress of his labor, and in the depth of her own heart
the watching came nearer to actual living than any activity she had
known. She was an on-looker--but an on-looker who stood, as it were, on
the steps of the arena, who, by a single forward movement, could feel
the sand under her feet, the breath of the battle on her face; and in
this knowledge she rested satisfied.
There were hours when Loder seemed scarcely conscious of her existence;
but on those occasions she smiled in her serene way--and went on
waiting. She knew that each day, before the afternoon had passed, he
would come into her sitting-room, his face thoughtful, his hands full
of books or papers, and, dropping into one of the comfortable, studious
chairs, would ask laconically for tea. This was her moment of triumph
and recompense--for the very unconsciousness of his coming doubled its
value. He would sit for half an hour with a preoccupied glance, or with
keen, alert eyes fixed on the fire, while his ideas sorted themselves
and fell into line. Sometimes he was silent for the whole half-hour,
sometimes he commented to himself as he scanned his notes; but on other
and rarer occasions he talked, speaking his thoughts and his theories
aloud, with the enjoyment of a man who knows himself fully in his
depth, while Eve sipped her tea or stitched peacefully at a strip of
embroidery.
On these occasions she made a perfect listener. Here and there she
encouraged him with an intelligent remark, but she never interrupted.
She knew when to be silent and when to speak; when to merge her own
individuality and when to make it felt. In these days of stress and
preparation he came to her unconsciously for rest; he treated her as he
might have treated a younger brother--relying on her discretion,
turning to her as by right for sympathy, comprehension, and friendship.
Sometimes, as they sat silent in the richly colored, homelike room, Eve
would pause over her embroidery and let her thoughts spin momentarily
forward--spin towards the point where, the brunt of his ordeal passed,
he must, of necessity, seek something beyond mere rest. But there her
thoughts would inevitably break off and the blood flame quickly into her
cheek.
Meanwhile Loder worked persistently. With each day that brought the
crisis of Fraide's scheme nearer, his activity increased--and with it
an intensifying of the nervous strain. For if he had his hours of
exaltation, he also had his hours of black apprehension. It is all very
well to exorcise a ghost by sheer strength of will, but one has also
to eliminate the idea that gave it existence. Lillian Astrupp, with
her unattested evidence and her ephemeral interest, gave him no real
uneasiness; but Chilcote and Chilcote's possible summons were matters
of graver consideration; and there were times when they loomed very dark
and sinister: What if at the very moment of fulfilment--? But invariably
he snapped the thread of the supposition and turned with fiercer ardor
to his work of preparation.
And so the last morning of his probation dawned, and for the first time
he breathed freely.
He rose early on the day that was to witness his great effort and
dressed slowly. It was a splendid morning; the spirit of the spring
seemed embodied in the air, in the pale-blue sky, in the shafts of cool
sunshine that danced from the mirror to the dressing-table, from the
dressing-table to the pictures on the walls of Chilcote's vast room.
Inconsequently with its dancing rose a memory of the distant past--a
memory of long-forgotten days when, as a child, he had been bidden to
watch the same sun perform the same fantastic evolutions. The sight and
the thought stirred him curiously with an unlooked-for sense of youth.
He drew himself together with an added touch of decision as he passed
out into the corridor; and as he walked down-stairs he whistled a bar or
two of an inspiriting tune.
In the morning-room Eve was already waiting. She looked up, colored, and
smiled as he entered. Her face looked very fresh and young and she wore
a gown of the same pale blue that she had worn on his first coming.
She looked up from an open letter as he came into the room, and the
sun that fell through the window caught her in a shaft of light,
intensifying her blue eyes, her blue gown, and the bunch of violets
fastened in her belt. To Loder, still under the influence of early
memories, she seemed the embodiment of some youthful ideal--something
lost, sought for, and found again. Realization of his feeling for her
almost came to him as he stood there looking at her. It hovered about
him; it tipped him, as it were, with its wings; then it rose again and
soared away. Men like him--men keen to grasp an opening where their
careers are concerned, and tenacious to hold it when once grasped--are
frequently the last to look into their own hearts. He glanced at Eve, he
acknowledged the stir of his feeling, but he made no attempt to define
its cause. He could no more have given reason for his sensations than he
could have told the precise date upon which, coming down-stairs at eight
o'clock, he had first found her waiting breakfast for him. The time when
all such incidents were to stand out, each to a nicety in its appointed
place, had not yet arrived. For the moment his youth had returned to
him; he possessed the knowledge of work done, the sense of present
companionship in a world of agreeable things; above all, the steady,
quiet conviction of his own capacity. All these things came to him in
the moment of his entering the room, greeting Eve, and passing to the
breakfast-table; then, while his eyes still rested contentedly on the
pleasant array of china and silver, while his senses were still alive to
the fresh, earthly scent of Eve's violets, the blow so long dreaded--so
slow in coming fell with accumulated force.