"If anybody inquires about you?"

"I believe you profess to be a very religious man, Jenkins, in spite of your calling. The teetotalers say your calling is to send people to h.e.l.l. Well, I'll not be so explicit. Tell inquirers that I am gone to a region where fires are supposed to be very good."

"But, sir----"

"As I told you before, this seems remarkably like my own business; yours being to send my bill, and get a carriage."

"Yes, sir."

"And, by the way, Jenkins," added Leicester, with a joyless laugh, "excuse me for meddling. I suppose I can tell those whom you have sent to that place where I'm bound for, that you'll be on presently?"

Half an hour later he left the hotel in a close carriage, and drove to West Billington. It seemed to him that his career had ended now. He had left the town in disgrace. He had left by a backway, like a thief.

Arrived at West Billington, he took a ticket for a station twenty miles away, among the Devonshire meadows. But he did not stop there. He did not alight from the train until it had arrived at a little lonely station among the wild moors. There he got out, and looked around. He was the only pa.s.senger who alighted, and the porter eyed him wonderingly.

"Want to git anywhere speshul, zur?" he asked.

"Yes. I want to find some old dame who has a room to spare in her cottage," he said.

"Early fer fishin,' and laate fer shettin,' zur, be'ant 'ee? All th'

zame, I d' knaw a plaace."

"Where?"

"My a'nt, zur, d' live two miles fr'm 'ere, ovver the moors. Purty lill plaace shee've got, ef you doan't mind et bein' quiet. Ef you'll wait ten minnits I'll go ovver weth 'ee. I shaan't be wanted fer a 'our or zo."

An hour later Leicester was sitting in a cottage parlour among the lonely Devonshire moors. The old lady had provided him with a simple meal, and the quietness of the place made him feel better. The day was now drawing to a close, and the evening shadows were falling.

"Will 'ee 'ave a lamp then, zur?" asked the old lady.

"Not yet," said Leicester; "I'm going out for a walk."

For an hour he tramped, until the day had gone.

"I must make up my mind," he said: "the old life is impossible now. What shall I do? Pull down the shutters, or shall I----?"

He entered the cottage again, and was met by the kindly presence of the old lady of the house.

CHAPTER XV

THE CYNIC AND THE COUNTRYWOMAN

Radford Leicester stayed at the cottage among the Devonshire moors for several days. A more lonely place could not be well imagined. The cottage itself stood in a little dell where trees grew, and a moorland stream babbled. Early spring flowers were to be seen there, and the smell of the bursting new life of bracken and heather and willow bush was sweet beyond words; but the view from the cottage was such as one only finds in a moorland district. For miles nothing was to be seen but a wild waste of nearly uninhabited land. The few cottages were occupied by those who had reclaimed strips of waste land, and obtained a scanty living thereon. A month or two later the whole scene would be aglow with the bloom of furze and heather; but now it was grim and grey and, under a cloudy sky, forbidding. But Leicester was not sorry for this. The countryside, the loneliness, fitted in with his mood. He felt that the past was destroyed, and that the things which were once possible to him had come to an end. What had the future for him? What was he to do? That was the question he had to face.

Immediately after he had realised that Olive Castlemaine was lost to him for ever, he had conceived wild schemes of revenge. He wanted to make Olive suffer as he had suffered; he swore that he would humble her pride to the dust, and that he would win the wager which for the present had lost him the woman he had loved. But that was all over now. He had become degraded in the eyes of the nation. He had no respect for the morality of the political world; but however low it might be, there was a kind of moral standard which people demanded in their representatives.

They were not troubled because he had drunk too much, it was that he had become intoxicated at the wrong time. He had actually appeared on a public platform in a state of drunken imbecility. He had given the opponents of his party the whip hand, and he had in all probability lost his party the election. That was his sin, and it would take years for them to forget it.

Besides, he was not the kind of man to go back and plead forgiveness.

His pride forbade him. What? He, Radford Leicester, who had laughed at these clodhoppers, go back cap in hand, and plead with them to take him back! But what could he do? What had the future for him? That was the question he had to face. Hope gone, faith gone, purpose gone, while the old craving for whisky dogged him at every step, what was there for him to do? Life was a mockery, a great haggard failure! Why should he seek to prolong it?

And so he spent his days amidst the loneliness of the moors, thinking and brooding. He saw no newspapers, received no letters, had no visitors. He had told the old lady who kept the cottage that he wanted a week or two's quiet, and freedom from the bustle of the world. Besides, he had a big problem to solve, and he had come there to solve it. He gave his name as Robert Baxter; it was the first that came to his lips, and he spoke of himself as keenly interested in sociology. It happened that old Mrs. Sleeman had not the slightest idea what sociology meant, but she had had several gentlemen in the past who had come to lodge with her; they had called themselves artists, and naturalists, and they had come pretty much in the same way as Leicester had come. They had been easy to please, they had paid her well, and when they had left had promised not only to come again, but to recommend her house to their friends. His advent therefore was quite welcome to her, and as he had no tastes that were difficult to satisfy, she hoped he would stay for a long while.

Mrs. Sleeman was a cheerful old lady who managed her house and her husband with great tact. It was also said that her influence was very great at the little Bible Christian chapel to which she went on Sundays.

John Sleeman, her husband, was but little in evidence. He worked on his little farm patch through the day, and in the evenings spent his time in the little kitchen, which to Leicester was a sealed chamber.

No newspaper was brought into the cottage, and letters came rarely.

Indeed, the postman never came at all. By mutual agreement it was arranged that when a letter came for Mr. Sleeman, it should be left at the house of Mrs. Maddern, who lived close to the high road.

Occasionally Mr. and Mrs. Sleeman harnessed their little horse and drove to the market town, which lay several miles across the moors, but this was only on very rare occasions.

As a consequence, therefore, Leicester's life was completely isolated.

Day after day pa.s.sed without any event happening to break the monotony of life, and he spent his time roaming over the moors trying as best he could to face the problem of his life, and to fight the despair which was gnawing at his heart.

He knew nothing of what was happening in the country; and he asked no questions. He was sick of the world, and sick of life. The great question was, what should he do? Should he commit suicide, and thus put an end to an existence which to him had no meaning or purpose, or should he go somewhere and begin anew? His nature, in spite of his beliefs, rebelled against the former. He could not bring himself, little as he cared for life, to destroy it by his own hand. As for the latter alternative, the old question reiterated itself, where should he go?

what should he do?

He loathed the thought of going back to London, to live the life of a useless parasite amidst clubs and club loungers. The political door was closed against him, and even if it were not, he felt he could not enter it now. He had an income sufficient for all his needs, and as a consequence had no need to work for his living. It would have been better for him if he had. Humanly speaking, there are few better moral tonics than work.

Looming larger than all other questions was this: Had he for ever lost Olive Castlemaine? Had he won her only to lose her? But for the determination which in spite of his despair lay at the back of his mind, I imagine he would have put an end to an existence which at times became almost unbearable.

He was pondering over all these things for the hundredth time one day as he was walking across the moors alone. The clouds hung heavily in the sky, while occasionally gusts of cold wind, accompanied by driving rain, reminded him that winter had not yet come to an end. As he walked and thought, a storm had gathered, and he saw that the sky threatened a downpour of rain.

"What do I care?" he laughed bitterly. "I feel like old King Lear.

Nothing is wanting now but Tom Fool to make the picture complete. 'Blow, blow, thou winter wind!'"

The rain fell in torrents, and in spite of his wild mood, he made his way to a lonely farmhouse in order to find shelter. By the time he reached it, his clothes were soaked with rain.

He stood in a cart-shed, and watched the flood as it fell. The few trees that grew around the farmstead looked drear and forbidding; away in the distance the hills seemed to smoke.

"And this is life," he laughed. "We are born, we suffer, we make fools of ourselves, and we die."

And yet he knew it was not life as it might be. If he could have had Olive Castlemaine by his side, he could have been a happy man. But she had driven him from her presence, she had commanded him never to speak to her again.

"Won't 'ee come in by the vire, zur? You mus' be fine 'n' wet."

"Thank you," said Leicester, in reply to the invitation of the buxom farmer's wife. He entered the large farm kitchen, at one end of which a huge wood fire was burning.

"Why, you be fair streamin'," said the woman. "Zet cloas by the vire, and dry yerzelf. Do 'ee then. You'll catch yer death ef you doan't."

"Well, there'd be one less in the world," said Leicester, "and as the world is sufficiently populated, that would not matter."

"Fer shaame, zur. You be jokin'."

"I never joke," replied Leicester. "Still, if I died, there'd be the trouble of burying me, and that would be a pity."

"Fer shaame, I d' zay," said the kindly woman; "what would your mother zay, ef she 'eerd 'ee?"