THE CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
For a minute there was a silence. In spite of the fact that Radford
Leicester had instilled his own spirit into the party, there was
something in his cynicism that repelled them as well as fascinated them.
They were not bad young men. Not that they had high ideals, or were
filled with lofty enthusiasms. But they had been reared on conventional
lines, and although neither of them would have admitted it, they were
influenced by the conventions which had surrounded their lives. To them
there was something sordid, something repellent, in the thought of a man
coolly offering to marry any one in order that he might prove the truth
of a cynical statement to which he had given utterance. Nevertheless,
they longed to accept his challenge. Radford Leicester's spirit
possessed them; the man's cool and confident cynicism attracted them.
The very daring of the proposal broke down their conventional ideas.
Besides, in spite of Leicester's confidence, they did not believe that
his opinions were true. Especially was this true of Purvis and Sprague.
They had proposed to Miss Olive Castlemaine and had been refused. Other
very eligible young men had also suffered the same fate. Was it likely,
then, that Leicester, whose reputation was so peculiar, would be more
fortunate than they?
More than all this, both of them felt somewhat bitter towards the woman
who had refused them, and although they would not confess it even to
themselves, they would rejoice if she should suffer something of the
humiliation which they had felt. Such a feeling is natural to weak men.
The sting of disappointment made them eager to fasten on anything which
promised them a kind of revenge. They had a feeling that Miss
Castlemaine was proud of her conquests, and they would rejoice if her
pride could be humbled.
"What do our pattern young men say?" repeated Leicester. He emptied his
glass as he spoke, and then turned towards them. "Why, think, my dear
Moody and Sankey," he went on. "You were longing to save me from the
error of my ways a few minutes ago; now here is your chance. It is true
I only know this young lady by sight, but I have heard of her religious
proclivities. Why, she might convert me. She might snatch the brand from
the burning. She is such a pattern young woman, so high-principled, so
good. Besides, I am told that she belongs to the Nonconforming order of
pious people. She is a Wesleyan, or an Independent, or a Presbyterian, I
don't know which; but being one of them, her principles will be more
pronounced than those who belong to the worldly State Church. Here is
your opportunity, not only of proving your belief in the nobility of
women, but of bringing me under religious influences."
He spoke quietly and composedly, yet no doubt he was influenced by the
whisky he had been drinking.
"Besides," he continued, "here is your chance of proving that the woman
who refused you would also refuse me. Come, now, what do you say?"
"I accept," said Purvis.
"And you, too, Sprague?"
"Miss Castlemaine would not give you a second thought."
"Then you accept my offer? Look here, if I am rejected I give a hundred
pounds to--what shall we say--Guy's Hospital? While if I am accepted you
give the same sum. Is it a bargain?"
"I tell you she would not look at you. If she is not already acquainted
with what those who know you think about you, she would soon become
acquainted, and then--well, you would be driven from the house."
"Exactly; then you agree?"
"Oh yes, if you like."
"Good; as for Winfield, his only part in the business is naming the
lady. Gentlemen, I am really much obliged to you. I have not felt so
interested in life for a long time. You are really benefactors. But
come, now, we must go into this affair in a business-like way, and, 'pon
my word, I'll have another glass in order to drink success to the
enterprise."
He rang the bell and the waiter appeared.
"Four whiskies, waiter," he said.
"I don't like this," said Sprague.
"What, the whisky? I'll complain to the management."
"No, the whole business. It isn't right."
"Not right? Why, it gives me a new interest in life, man. Already my
moral sentiments are being elevated. I see myself going to that
Nonconformist church with a hymn-book and Bible under my arm. I even
see myself a deacon, or an elder, or something of that sort. Not right,
when it is having such a regenerating influence?"
"Stick to your guns, you chaps," remarked Winfield quietly, who had been
the silent member of the party.
"But I must have fair play," said Leicester. "I want a fair field and no
favour. All I demand is that you chaps shall hold your tongues. This
conversation must not go beyond these walls. That's fair, isn't it?"
"That's nothing but just," said Winfield.
"But how are you to get an introduction?" said Sprague. "Old John
Castlemaine is very particular as to whom he has at his house, and
although I have consented to this business, I'll take no part in it."
"Nor I," said Purvis; "and now I come to think about it, I withdraw from
it altogether."
"Except to pay your hundred pounds if I succeed," said Leicester.
"You can't back out from that," remarked Winfield.
"Still, I'll be a party to nothing," he said weakly. "Of course I know
it'll end in nothing. Miss Castlemaine is one of the cleverest women I
know, and she'll see through everything at a glance."
"Then I'm to have fair play?"
"Oh yes, I shall not interfere with you. There will be no need."
"That is to say, not a whisper of this conversation goes outside this
room."
"Of course that is but fair," urged Winfield again.
"Very well," said Purvis, "I shall say nothing; but mind you, I do not
believe in the business. It's wrong, it's not--well, it's not in good
form. But there, it doesn't matter. It'll end in nothing."
"Exactly," said Leicester; but there was a strange light in his eyes.
"And you, Sprague, you'll act straight, too?"
"Oh, certainly," said Sprague. "I shall say nothing; all the same, I
don't like it. But Leicester'll give up the whole idea to-morrow. He'd
never have thought of it to-night if he hadn't been drunk."
"I drunk, my friends! I am as sober as the Nonconforming parson of the
church that Miss Castlemaine attends. I'm as serious as a judge. No, no,
I stand on principle--principle, my friends. I have a theory of life,
and I stand by it, and I am ready to make sacrifices."
"But how are you to get an introduction?" asked Sprague. Evidently he
was uneasy in his mind.
"Leave that to me; I ask you to do nothing but to hold your tongues, and
that you've promised to do. I stand alone. I'm like your Martin Luther
of old times. Against me are arrayed conventions and orthodoxy, pride
and prejudice, thunders temporal and spiritual, but I fear them not.
I--I, a poor solitary cynic, am stronger than you all, because I stand
on the truth, and you stand on sentiment, convention, orthodoxy.
Gentlemen, I drink to you in very mediocre club whisky; nay, I don't
drink to you, I drink to the man who stands on the truth--truth,
gentlemen, truth!"
Again he lifted a glass of whisky to his lips and set it down empty.
"I'm going to bed," said Sprague.
"And I," said Purvis.
"And I, gentlemen," said Leicester, "remain here. Like all men who
undertake great enterprises, I must make my plans. As a champion of
truth I must vindicate it. I live to rid the world of lies, of sham, of
hypocrisy. Good-night, gentlemen, good-night."
The whisky was beginning to show its effects at last, although his voice
was still clear, his hand still steady. An unhealthy flush had come to
his cheeks; the strange look in his eyes had become more pronounced.
And yet had a stranger entered the room at that moment, that stranger
would have been struck by his tall, stalwart figure and his striking
face. For Radford Leicester was no ordinary-looking man. Compared with
him the others were commonplace. Neither was his face a bad face. It
suggested lack of faith and lack of hope, but it did not suggest evil.
Moreover, the well-shaped head, the broad forehead, the finely formed
features, suggested intellectuality and force of character. It also told
of a man whom nothing could daunt when his mind was made up. But it was
not the face of a happy man. No man who is without faith and hope can
be.
Radford Leicester had come into the world handicapped. His father was a
hard drinker before him, and he had inherited the love for alcohol. But
more, he had been educated in a bad school. His mother had died when he
was a child, and thus he became entirely under his father's influence.
His father was a clever man, but a man whom life had embittered. He had
been embittered by the death of his wife; he had been embittered because
he had never obtained the success he had coveted. He saw men who did not
possess half the brains or half the scholarship which he possessed, leap
into fame, while he remained obscure. Perhaps this was because his
theory of life was so utterly hopeless, and his faith in men and women
was so little. Young Radford was naturally influenced by his father's
views and his father's character, and thus by the time he was old enough
to go to a public school he was, like Shelley, an atheist.
Presently his father, who was ambitious for his son's future, sent him
to Oxford. He became a student at Magdalen College, where he obtained,
not only a reputation as a scholar and a debater, but he became
notorious pretty much on the same lines that Shelley became notorious.
He became more and more imbued with the materialistic philosophy which
was accepted by a certain section of the men there; indeed, he became
their leader and spokesman. He professed an utter contempt for life. He
regarded men and women as so many worthless things spawned upon the
shores of time, to be presently swept away into nothingness. He had
little or no faith in the nobility of human nature. Men were mostly
sordid, selfish, and base. Trace men's motives to their source, and they
were in the main selfish. Women were, if possible, worse than men. When
he was about twenty-four he altered his opinion for a time. He fell in
love with a girl who fascinated him by her wit, her beauty, and what he
believed to be her goodness. For a time his love made him cast off his
father's hopeless philosophy. He formed plans for the future. Through
his mother he possessed an income which, while not large, placed him in
a position of affluence. It was large enough to enable him to enter
Parliament, where he believed he could make for himself a brilliant
future.
He proposed to the girl with whom he had become enamoured, and was
accepted. He had barely become a happy accepted lover, however, when a
young barrister who had won a great deal of praise at the Bar, and had
also entered Parliament, where he was spoken of as a man with a great
future, also proposed to her. Without hesitation this girl, Blanche
Bridgetown by name, cast Leicester aside and accepted the man who had
made a reputation, rather than keep her faith with one whose future was
uncertain. In this decision Blanche Bridgetown was largely influenced by
her mother.
Radford Leicester soon recovered from the wound he had received in his
heart, but he did not recover from the blow which was struck at his
faith. All his old cynicism and hopelessness reasserted themselves.
Whenever he spoke of women he spoke bitterly, his outlook on life became
less cheerful than ever.
Then another element entered his life. Up to this time he had not been a
hard drinker; but now the taste which he had inherited grew stronger.
Drink made him forget his wounded pride; and, confident in his boast
that no distilled spirits could ever affect him outwardly, he indulged
in this evil habit more and more freely.
Still, pride was not dead. Professing, as he did, that life was a
miserable sort of affair at the best, he still had ambition. He wanted
to carve out for himself a place of position and power. His party had
found a constituency for him, and he had contested it. At the time of
the contest, however, the political opinions which Radford had adopted
were not popular. His opponent won the seat.
Again he was embittered, again his pride was wounded, and the habit
which had been gaining in strength now seemed to have obtained a
complete mastery over him. Thus Radford Leicester, who had never been
known to be drunk, was a drunkard. He had no faith in man; he had no
faith in God.
There was one power in his life, however--ambition. He wanted to be
renowned. He knew that he possessed unusual abilities; his career in
Oxford had proved it; his friends had admitted it a hundred times in a
hundred ways. Moreover, the vice which had mastered him had not degraded
him in the eyes of men. Only a very few knew that he was a hard drinker.
He always dressed well, spoke clearly, and walked steadily. Of his
cynicism he made no secret, of his repudiation of the Christian story
and of Christian morals he almost boasted; nevertheless, nearly every
one spoke of him as a man who would make a great name.
Besides, to weaker men he had a kind of fascination. He inspired others
with his own recklessness, and many almost admired his scorn of
conventional beliefs. In a way, moreover, he was liked. While
repudiating accepted morality in theory, he was in many respects most
punctilious about points of honour. When he gave his word he never broke
it. In his political speeches he never pandered to popular cries. He did
not say things because they were popular, and even while he declared
that all men had their price, he was never known to sell himself.
At the present time many eyes were turned towards him. He had become a
great favourite in his constituency. The leader of his party had come to
speak at a great gathering, and when, as the accepted candidate, he had
also to address the meeting, the great man had been simply carried away
by his speech. As he remarked afterwards to his colleagues, it was the
speech of a statesman and an orator. It might have been Macaulay, or
Burke, who had come to life again.
At times Leicester pretended to despise all this, but at heart he was
proud of it. Indeed, as I have said before, ambition was the one thing
which kept him from being a wastrel.
No doubt Radford Leicester's story has been repeated many times in many
ways; nevertheless, it is necessary to tell it again, in order to
understand something of the complex character whom I have introduced to
my readers.
The club in which they had met was situated in the region of Pall Mall,
and while not in the strict sense political, it was mostly frequented by
those who were of Leicester's way of thinking. As I have said, it was
not a large club; nevertheless, it provided a limited number of beds.
These young men had come up to listen to a debate at the House of
Commons, and preferred spending the night at the club to going to an
hotel.
"Going to carry this thing through, Leicester?" said Winfield when the
others had gone.
"If only to knock the nonsense out of those prigs," replied the other.
"Marriage is a dear price to pay."
"Then why are fellows so eager for it?"
"I don't know. Men are mostly fools, I suppose."
"Yes; but then it was not a question of marriage. It was only a question
of being accepted as a possible husband."
"The same thing. No man of honour can win a woman's promise to be his
wife and then jilt her."
"A great many do it. Besides, women don't care."
"Don't they? Why do you think so?"
"Because women are women. And it isn't as though this Miss Castlemaine
had fears of being placed on the shelf."
"You are very cool about it, old man."
"Quite the reverse. I am quite excited. Just fancy my scheming to be the
promised husband of a beautiful heiress, a sort of glorified Quakeress,
rich, pious, and high-minded. Winning an election will be a small thing
compared with winning her."
"But surely you'll not try and carry the thing through?"
"Why?"
"Because you don't love her."
Leicester gave a significant whistle.
"Love," he said: "does that come in?"
"It's supposed to."
"It's one of the many illusions which still exist among a certain number
of people. As for its reality----"
He shrugged his shoulders significantly, and then became quiet.
"What are you thinking about?" asked Winfield presently.
"A man's secret thoughts are sacred," replied Leicester mockingly. "Do
you think my pious sentiments are for public utterance?"
Winfield rose and held out his hand.
"Good-night Leicester," he said.
"What, going to bed?"
"Yes, it's past one o'clock."
"Well, what then? You've no wife to regulate your hours."
"No, but I have work to regulate them. A journalist is a slave to the
public."
"Stay half an hour longer."
"What's the good?"
"I can't sleep, and it's horrible to go to bed and lie awake. Besides, I
believe I've a touch of D.T."
"Nonsense. You who boast that your nerves are steel, and that no whisky
can bowl you over."
"That's true, and yet--look here, Winfield, you are not one of these
whining sentimentalists, and one can speak to you plainly. I was never
drunk in my life; that is, I was never in a condition when I couldn't
walk straight, and when I couldn't express my thoughts clearly.
Nevertheless, it tells, my son, it tells. I don't get excited, and I
don't get maudlin. Perhaps it would be better for me if I did."
"Why?"
"Then I should be afraid. As it is, I am afraid of nothing. And yet, I
tell you, I have a bad time when I am alone in the dark. It's hell,
man--it's hell!"
"Then give it up."
"I won't. Because it's all the heaven I have. Besides, I can do nothing
without it. Without whisky my mind's a blank, my brains won't act. With
it--that is, when I take the right quantity--nothing's impossible,
man--nothing. Only----"
"What?"
"The right quantity increases--that's all. Good-night. When I come to
remember, I shan't have the blues to-night."
"Why?"
"Why? Have I not to make my plans for conquest? I must win my wager!"
"Nonsense. You don't mean that?"
"But I do. Good-night, old man. Let me dream."
Radford Leicester remained only a few minutes after Winfield had left
the room. Once he put his hand upon the bell, as if to ring for more
whisky, but he checked himself.
"No," he said aloud, "I have had too much to-night already."
He walked with a steady step across the room, and the waiter, who had
hovered around, prepared to turn out the lights.
"Good-night, Jenkins," said Leicester, as the man opened the door.
"Good-night, sir."
"Every one gone to bed except you?"
"Nearly every one, sir."
"Then I'll leave it to you to arrange for my bath in the morning.
Half-past nine will do."
"Yes, sir. Hot or cold?"
A cold blast of air came along the passage. He was about to say "Cold,"
but he changed his mind.
"Hot, Jenkins," he said. "Good-night."
When he got to his bedroom and turned on the lights he looked at the
mirror, long and steadily.
"Thirty," he said presently, "only thirty, and I'm ordering a hot bath
at half-past nine in the morning. It's telling."
He wandered around the room aimlessly, but with a steady step.
"Yes," he said aloud presently, "I'll do it, if only to have the laugh
out of those puppies. What's the odds? Blanche Bridgewater or Olive
Castlemaine? Women are all alike--mean, selfish, faithless. Well, what
then? I'm in the mood for it."
He threw himself in a chair beside the bed and began to think.
"Yes," he said presently, "that plan will work."