Army and Navy reception. Routledge repaired to his old lodgings in
Bookstalls Road and sat down before his grate-fire in the midst of
old trophies and treasures. Bookstalls was a crowded part of London,
rushing with many small businesses, and convenient to vast tracts of
unbroken undesirability. It was a gorge that boomed continual clamor.
Even at night, when the protest from the cobble-stones should have
sunk to its stillest, the neighboring fire-department was wont to
burst open at intervals like the door of a cuckoo-clock and pour forth
tons of clangorous polished metal. Whistles from the far river whipped
the smoky air when the small factories were at peace; night-shifts
of workmen kept the pavements continually animate. There was an
iron-tongued guard in the belfry of Old Timothy’s Church that never let
an hour go by without brutally hammering it flat, and then bisecting
it; and on Sundays and Saints’ days, the same bell sent a continual
crashing through the gorge with a hurting, tangible vibration, like a
train in a subway.
Bookstalls had been decadent for decades. When grandfathers were little
boys it had been a goodly place of residence, but small factories had
long been smoking it out. Indeed, it sat in venerable decrepitude by
the fires of its shops. Certain _habitués_ lived on, nor noted the
progress of decay, more than an old rat perceives the rotting mould
sink deeper into his confining walls, or the crumble of his domestic
plasters.
Routledge in London was one of the _habitués_. The place was associated
to him with dim beginnings--a store-room of sentiments and war-relics
kept by the year. Before this fire he had written his first views of
London for an American newspaper, and here he had brought various
reminders of travel. To Bookstalls he returned from his first journey
to India--returned with the old brown Mother’s mystic whisperings in
his brain, her mystic winds filling the sails of his soul. Gazing at
this same grate-fire, tranced as by the heart of crystal, he had sunk
into his first meditations, murmuring the star-reaching OM--until the
boy within him, crude with Europe, broke the spell in fright, lest his
divided bodies join together no more. Those days he had drunk deep of
the Vedas; and the Bhagavad Gita was one with him according to his
light. Out of these he came to see and feel the great Wheel of Births
and Deaths and Re-Births moving true and eternal in the cogs of Karma.
And, having once sensed and discovered this, the little problems of the
earth’s day and generation are but gentle calisthenics for the mind.
Routledge looked back upon those pure days wistfully now. It is given
a man but once in this life to follow the Way. When manhood is fresh
and sensitive, retaining all its delicate bloom and unhurt power;
and when, full of a hunger that never falls below the diaphragm, the
young man turns for Truth to the masters and sages--this is the time
to choose between the world and the stars! This is the time that the
world gives battle to detain the searching soul. “Look, yonder is a
Joseph climbing to God!” cries the old Flesh-mother; and, gathering her
minions of enchantment and her dragons of fear, she scorns the lower
cities, all safely swarming to her tribute, to pluck at the skirts of
the Heaven-called.... What red flowers of passion she strews before
him on the rocky, upland way; what songs of conquest she summons from
the lower groves; with what romances does she stir his rest, all
fragrant-lipped and splendor-eyed; what a Zion she rears of cloud and
clay to hold his eyes from the Heights--are not all these written, aye,
burned, into the history of Man?
Who goes beyond? A valiant few.... If the enchantments fail to hold
him, and if his clear eyes penetrate the illusions of sense; lo, the
path grows steep and dark before him, and there are dragons in the way!
The faith of the youth must be as Daniel’s now, which is tetanus for
lions and palsy for every monster. He has not lingered with the lusts.
Will he not falter before the fears?
The many tarry in the tinsel gardens of sense; the few turn back before
the roar of the Furies; the One--but who can tell how the bay-tree
blooms for him, where glory waits?...
The saddest part of all is, that those who are called and turn back,
learn in the coolness of years how treacherous are the enchantments,
and that never a dragon of the dark harmed a hair of Strongheart; but
the way shines not so clear for a second journey, and the soul is
hardened with skepticisms past responding to the Inner Voice. The man
must be born again.
Routledge sat in his old leathern chair and looked back a little
sorrowfully upon the boy of twelve years ago, all clean from the dust
of the world’s trails, uncalloused by war, sensitive to the spirit,
stirring in the chrysalis of flesh, all lit with star-stuff!... If only
he had known Noreen Cardinegh then!... He could look deeply within. He
did not love the manner of man he saw in himself--a wanderer striding
over the East; sitting down often for a year, in the places white men
choose most ardently to avoid, and devoting himself (who dared look
back wistfully now upon those beginnings of spiritual life) to the
reddest ructions of Matter--war, red war.
He shook his head bitterly, rose, and went to the window, looking down
upon thronging Bookstalls with unseeing eyes. Out of it all came this
at last:
“No, Routledge-san, you have given your reddest blood and whitest fire
to old Mother Asia. Would it be fair and clean of you to yoke the
remnant--and such an earthy remnant--with the lofty purity of Noreen
Cardinegh?”
Long he stood there in the depths of thinking, until startled by the
softly uttered name:
“Routledge-san.”
He was sure his own lips had not formed the syllables. He wondered if
it had winged across the city from Cheer Street.... His glance fell
to the road. Below, and a little to the right he perceived the White
Mustache. Routledge seized his hat and descended quickly, but the
stranger was gone. For a half-hour he tried to trap the other into a
meeting, but in vain. It was after mid-day and raining. He had intended
to go to the _Review_ office, but the old leathern chair and the
friendly lodging lured him back. To-morrow would do for the _Review_.
To-night, the Army and Navy reception. Everybody he knew would be
there.... She had asked him to come to Cheer Street, but he could not
bring himself to break in upon old Jerry’s home-coming. He stirred the
fire and fell to musing again in the glow.
FIFTH CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE STEPS OUT SPIRITEDLY IN THE FOG TO FIND HIS FRIENDS AND
ENCOUNTERS THE HATE OF LONDON
Routledge left his lodgings a little before nine that night, and
breasted the February fog in his great frieze coat. He was minded
to hail a cab when he wearied of walking, but the time and distance
were put behind with a glow and a gradually quickening pace. It was
a good four miles from Bookstalls to Trafalgar Square and the Armory
where the Army and Navy reception was held. He skirted Hyde Park, now
in the zenith of its season, and glimpsed Piccadilly again. Its full
electric bloom was a ghastly sheen in the fog. London, the old and
blackened brick Mammoth, was sweet to him, even now vaporing in her
night-sweat.... He had thought of these shops, clubs, lights, smells,
and monuments in the long, heaven-clear Indian nights. Afar in the
Himalayas, where the old Earth-mother strains hungrily toward the
stars (as does the soul of man who broods in those austere heights),
he had thought hard upon these stirring pavements and yearned for them
in red moments of memory. In the rice-lands of Rangoon; in the cotton
country Bombayward; in the bazaars of Lahore; overlooking the plains
from Simla; in the under-world of Calcutta, and the house-tops of
Benares--he had mapped these streets in reflection and colored certain
land-marks with desire.
Here, in his own world-yard again, walking for an hour through the
centre of London, and not a human had hailed him. The strokes of ten
boomed down from some spire lost in the muffling mists.
“One would have to carry a lantern, like the old prophet of the
barrel-house, to find his playmates in a night like this. Besides,” he
added, “most of my playmates by this time are bathing in the vanities
across the Square.”
There was a herd of carriages at the entrance to the famous ball-room;
and under the awnings he encountered the quick, natty figure of
the much-liked Finacune--seized the shoulders of the little man
affectionately.
“Hello, old heart--my first glimpse of a white man in the Home-zone----”
Finacune turned in an abrupt, unnerved way. “Why, how d’ do,
Routledge?” he mumbled throatily. His right hand had jerked toward the
other from habit, but was withdrawn without the clasp. “How d’ do?
Comin’ in, I s’pose?”
With this astonishing greeting, the _Word_ man leaped up the stone
steps and left his “mystic of the wars” beneath the dripping
canopy, not a little perturbed. The rather intent regard of the
cab-starter pulled Routledge from his reflecting after a moment,
and he followed Finacune into the Hall, being shown at once to the
gentlemen’s coat-room. Apparently Finacune had shed his outer garment
with incredible speed, for he was not there; nor any other guests.
Routledge’s first thought was that a joke was being perpetrated at his
expense, Finacune’s action merely preparing the way, but he could
not hold fast to this. His whole nature was sensitive at once to a
formidable disorder.
His name trembled above the sense-stirring music as he stepped upon
the floor of the brilliant hall. It was a distinguished company of
admirals, generals, civilian campaigners, and exalted representatives
of the Home, Foreign, and Colonial Departments; the bravest men of
the kingdom, perhaps; certainly some of the fairest women. The throng
moved about in a slow, suppressed way; and the faces turned toward him
not gladly, not pointedly, but in a quick, secretive, on-the-defensive
fashion, as upon some huge agent of menace and craft.
With difficulty, Routledge controlled the muscles of his face. The
public speaker knows the moment. Here is straightforward testimony of
the power of mind over matter. That first volume of abhorrence and
distrust which his eyes had ever met, seemed to rub out his features
and weave its own image upon the flesh. He never forgot the sensation.
Women craned their heads behind the shoulders of the men. A steward
passed before him, fell into the current of hatred, and his face
altered visibly. Routledge summoned all his resistance and smiled. He
understood instantly that only a few of the men, the most valued tools
of the kingdom, knew the specific allegation, and that by the others he
was charged with some dreadful generality. Finacune had disappeared.
Jerry Cardinegh had not arrived. Trollope, that goodly bullock of a
man, most slow of all to be blown in a gale of popular opinion, stood
nearest to Routledge. The two faced each other fixedly.
“I say, brother, what’s up?” Routledge inquired lightly.
“I was thinking of interviewing you on the matter--not for publication,
of course, but for my own curiosity,” was the puzzling answer.
Routledge quickly stepped forward, but Trollope turned away.
Burling-Forster, an artillery chieftain, whose valor, years before at
Quetta, had vividly been placed before the British people by Routledge,
the only civilian detached with him at the time, took the place of
Trollope now and stared with steady, stony insolence, an accomplishment
of Englishmen only, at the man who had made him famous. He did not move
to take the hand which Routledge was careless enough to offer him.
However, Burling-Forster uttered a sentence which showed that he quite
forgot that there were women in the room.
There was not a shade of change now in the brown hue of Routledge’s
face, nor in the pleasure of his smile.
“Colonel, I once saw your temper working to better effect,” he said
courteously.... “Feeney,” he remarked, turning to the grim visage of
the old man, “perhaps you may tell me--am I out of order to inquire
what this game is?”
“It appears to me,” Feeney answered gloomily, “that you are out of
order anywhere.”
“Thank you--I didn’t know.”
It was now the turn of Dartmore, the editor of the _Review_. As has
been related, it had been the recent vocation of Routledge to make this
newspaper important in and between wars. To be insulted by Dartmore was
like being thrown from a horse into a hedge of Spanish-bayonets.
“I am glad that you were crafty enough not to call at the _Review_
office to-day, though you’ve got hell’s own audacity to come here.
Don’t go to the _Review_ for your cheque. I will see to it that it
is brought to the Rubicon Buffet within an hour. I advise you to buy
something with it to kill yourself.”
A tall figure in evening wear brushed by Routledge now, rather roughly
and without apology. It was Bingley, of the _Thames_. For an instant
Routledge was blinded--the Hindus name it well--by the red mists of
passion. He had drilled himself to bear the words, had listened coldly,
curiously, for the past few moments, but the actual physical contact
unleashed his rage.
“I shouldn’t advise him to kill himself until he is well clear of the
shores of England, Dartmore--the taint, you know!” Bingley said with a
brassy smile.
The face of a woman hurrying toward him through the breathless groups
in the great reception hall pulled Routledge out of delirium.
“Bingley,” he remarked, shutting his eyelids forcibly, as if to expel
the rheum of anger, “I’ll bear in mind your suggestion.”
The editor turned his back upon his prince of servants, as routine
men frequently dare to do. A butler stood by Routledge with the great
frieze coat. The air became electric with whisperings. The whole
company was intent upon a matter, the nature of which only a handful
knew. But the others discussed it in awed, hungry eagerness--in that
deplorable, hungerish way of lesser folk who are enabled to forget
their own limitations by the spectacle of one of the mighty fallen.
Routledge swung into his outer garment, smiling strangely....
Then the ladies of the kingdom gasped and the valiants stared. A
lady broke in through the narrowing circle and ran to the outcast--a
wondrous Irish lady of red-gold hair and pale gold silk. Her hand fell
upon the sleeve of his great-coat, and her face, the masterpiece from
the famous gallery of Erin, was upturned proudly but pitifully to his.
“They won’t tell me--they speak of treachery, but no one dares to tell
me--what is this horrid mistake?” she demanded.
The sudden look of tenderness in Routledge’s eyes gave way to fear and
pain. The others had stepped back.
“Run away, you blessed girl,” he whispered. “Something big is wrong. I
seem to understand it least of all--but its plain I’m bad medicine here
now. It will all come out. Meanwhile, don’t be seen with me, Noreen!”
He added in the shadow of a whisper, “Your father----”
“Father will be here to-night. He brought me to the door, promising
to be back within an hour. I think he went to find you. Oh, he’s
changed--more than I feared! But you, Routledge-san----”
“Please leave me. You are assailing your position by talking with me.
That hurts worse than anything these people might say. I shall go out
and think it over.... Good-night, Noreen, my dear friend.”
But she clung to his arm. “What do I care what _they_ think of me? I
want _you_ to know--you must know when you are alone--that there is one
woman who will stand by you, through all things!”
Her words were not lost to the periphery of the crowd. He drew back
stoutly, but his heart sank when she added even more loudly: “Remember,
you have one friend--even though all your brave companions fail!”
His lips moved with the words: “Dear Noreen--say no more.”
“_Remember me!_” came back to him.
For an instant she watched as he turned to the door--lineage to
Plantagenet and stuff of angels warm in her heart. The other women
fathomed his attempt to shield her from them and from her own
impulsiveness. What they thought of his gallantry they did not tell;
but what they thought of Noreen Cardinegh was revealed in jewelled
combs and in the elaborate artistry of back-hair which met her eyes
when she turned once more to the hall.
“Mighty brave of you, I’m sure, Miss Cardinegh,” said Bingley, stepping
to her side. “I should like to have a friend so loyal. But you’re wrong
this time, really----”
“Even so, Mr. Bingley, I shall trust to my own judgment,” she answered,
moving swiftly into the throng, where he did not essay to follow.
Routledge had not missed the attitude of the Hall toward her. The
tempest of abhorrence, though a new and very wonderful brand of battle,
did not shatter his philosophy, but the slight which his champion was
enduring for his sake--this was grim hell in his heart.
Outside he fought it, the roar of dripping London in his ears. A cab
drove up to the reception-canopy, and her father, Jerry Cardinegh,
stepped out--incredibly shrunken, altered, and uncertain of step. Far
different had he left London for India less than a year before, a hard,
weathered, full-blooded man. Routledge hungered now for his friend of
friends, but he did not call.
In the Rubicon Buffet, across the Square, the _Review’s_ cheque
was handed him presently by a messenger. The outcast signed the
receipt, and sat down dazedly, forgetting to drink. An hour later,
Burling-Forster entered the buffet with some friends from the Armory.
The artilleryman saw Routledge at a far table and backed out.
“We will go on,” said he. “I perceive that this is no place for us.”
The manager’s quick eye had seen Burling-Forster’s glance rest upon the
solitary figure at the distant table, and he stared doubtfully now at
Routledge. The latter rose and approached him. “Forgive me,” he said,
quitting the place. “Not for fortunes would I impair the popularity of
your excellent buffet.”
London had changed in an hour; it was pitiless, alien. Yet he could
laugh at London. The thought that made him writhe had to do with
the gorgeous woman who had cast herself into the débris of his
fortunes--the woman who had meant so much to him in the silences of
service.... He moved about in the fog; passed the _Review_ office,
glanced up at the fourth floor, the blazing lights just a pale glimmer
now. Friends were there, putting their best of brain and hand into the
maw of the morning paper. The cutting sentences of Dartmore returned,
and he did not go upstairs. In the little press-club around the corner,
the day men were in festival. Routledge winced--and passed by. There
was time still to catch a night-train for Paris, but he couldn’t let
the mystery beat him, not even for the glisten of Paris--not for New
Jerusalem! He would wait and ask no questions. A broad, low building
very lavish with its music, lights, and laughter appeared at length
upon the right of way. Routledge inquired of a policeman what was
going on within.
“It’s the cab-drivers’ annual ’op, sir,” the officer said.
“May one enter who is not a cab-driver at present?” Routledge asked.
“’Avin’ the price, sir.”
All things to all men, Routledge fell gladly into the gathering,
buying seas of beer and continents of cake. Within a half-hour he
had telephoned to Rupley’s for a ten-story confection, and presently
many couples, shining-faced, were preening and pirouetting for the
possession of it. Had he been the King’s groom, he could not have
mounted higher in the estimate of the guests. His heart grew warm with
the fun. It was after midnight when the new social stratum tumbled
about his ears. The hard-headed little master of ceremonies approached,
very white and sorrowful:
“I regrets hexceedingly to say, sir, that one as ’as been dismissed
from the Harmy’s and the Noivy’s ’op, sir, cawn’t rightly be expected
to find a boith ’ere.”
Routledge had a large view of the world, and a compressed notion of the
personal equation, but his humor did not save him now from being stung
hard and deep.
“You are quite right, of course,” he said. “I’m very sorry to have
intruded, and very thankful for the good time up to now. Good-night.”
There was a murmur of sorrow from many feminine quarters when the
great frieze coat was brought, but it was quickly silenced by the
undertone of intelligence which spread like poison through the hall.
The butler at the Army and Navy reception had told one of the drivers,
who, turning up later at the celebration of his own guild, found the
outcast there. Thus have empires fallen.
Routledge walked the full distance to his lodgings. Sometimes he
smiled; sometimes he found himself striding forward with mad swiftness;
then he would smile again, and pull up to the pace of a leisurely
gentleman enjoying the night air. Entering his stairway in Bookstalls,
he just avoided stumbling over a little figure curled up asleep. His
heart went out to the street-waif. Here was one, at least, in London
who had no hate nor insult for him. The impulse came to carry the
little one up into the warmth. Without waking, the child was placed
in a big chair before the grate-fire in the lodgings upstairs. Then
Routledge sat down to meditate.
“This is a merry old trail--God knows I love it!” he muttered. “I
have had what the good gray poet would call a night of ‘richness and
variety.’... Perhaps I would be less happy did I know the breed of
incubus which has fallen upon me.... I shall probably be turned out
of here in the morning--perhaps be cast into stone and steel. It is
strange, strange, that I, Routledge, whose business it is to tell the
world the gossip of inner courts and the issue of open fields--that
the point of my own fate should be buried in me before I get a look at
it!... And that wondrous girl! Why did I not know her when the dust
of the world had not fallen upon me; when I had not looked upon the
world’s red wines--because they were red!... Routledge, old wanderer,
how often has some woman arisen to save you from death--and now a woman
arises to save you from your friends!”
A watcher would have thought, for a long time afterward, that
Routledge dozed, with the stem of a _nargileh_ between his teeth,
except for the soft bubbling in the bottle and the tiny puffs of smoke
at long intervals. The dawn came in, graduated from gloomy gray to the
dead-white of a sunless morning.... The bell aroused him. He arose and
opened the door. Jerry Cardinegh was on the stairs.
SIXTH CHAPTER
A GRIM AND TERRIBLE TRADITION IS TOUCHED UPON FOR THE RELATION IT BEARS
TO THE TREACHERY IN INDIA
Routledge stepped back from the open door. He was afraid to extend his
hand, lest it be repelled. When the old man rushed across the landing
and gripped him, he felt a rather novel kindling of gladness.
“God, son!” Cardinegh muttered, sinking into a chair. “I thought you
had slipped London. This is the third time I’ve been here the last ten
hours.”
“It must have been three this morning when I came in, Jerry, and I left
about nine last night.”
“I was here between nine and ten, and again at midnight.”
“Then you didn’t stay long at the Armory? You don’t mean to say that
the boys gave you an ovation--of my kind? Miss Noreen must have told
you.”
“Routledge,” the other said slowly, struggling to get a tight rein upon
a herd of flying faculties, “they welcomed me in the old way, but the
place was disordered. You had been gone only a moment or two. Noreen
was waiting for me in the ladies’ room--ready for the street. She would
have gone home alone had I not arrived just then. Hurrying me away, she
told me how you had been received. After that, she insisted upon coming
here with me, though I told her I wanted to talk with you alone. Give
me some whiskey.”
Routledge was startled by the shaking avidity with which Cardinegh
carried the raw spirit to his lips.
“We came here direct from the Armory--Noreen and I,” he said
breathlessly. “When we did not find you, we drove back to Cheer
Street--and tossed the rest of the night. God pity her--I couldn’t tell
her! Routledge, I didn’t dare to tell her!... She begged me to assure
you again and again of her faith. She will see you to-day----”