Well, isn't it truth?

She shook her head.

"I can't pretend to say. Do any of us really know, I wonder, what we would do under any given circ.u.mstances? I wish you would tell me exactly what your friend complained of in my treatment of him."

"He spoke--not only of himself," Douglas answered. "There was a man called Silverton."

"What?"

He looked across at her in swift surprise. It seemed to him that her anger had suddenly changed into a wonderful and speechless terror. Her left hand was buried in the sofa cushions, the pupils of her eyes were dilated, she was bloodless to the lips. When she spoke it was hard to recognise her voice.

"What of him? What did he know? What did he tell you--of him?"

Douglas's expression of blank surprise seemed an immense relief to her.

"Only--something like what he told me of himself. He also was foolish enough to fall in love with you, and--"

She rose suddenly and held out her hand.

"Come, my friend," she said, "I have had enough of this. Take me out to my carriage. I think you are very wise to avoid such a dangerous person."

She swept out of the room before him, and down the broad stairs. A footman stood by the side of her victoria until she had settled herself in the most comfortable corner. Then he mounted the box, and she leaned for a moment forward.

"You won't come?" she asked, with a slight gesture of invitation towards the vacant seat.

But Douglas, to whom the invitation seemed, in a sense, allegorical, shook his head. He pointed eastwards.

"The taste of the lotus is sweet," he said, "but one must live."

CHAPTER XIX

A MAN WITHOUT A PAST

Whether Rice's point of view and judgment upon Emily de Reuss were prejudiced or not, Douglas certainly pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude 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_, b.u.t.tonholed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sers-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.

CHAPTER XX

CICELY ASKS A QUESTION

After all, it was the woman who sought him who pa.s.sed him by, her unwilling companion who recognised him at once, in spite of his altered dress and bearing. They were swallowed up in the crowd before Douglas had recovered himself. Something in Cicely's terrified gaze had instantly checked his first instinct which prompted him to accost them.

They were gone, leaving him alike speechless and bewildered. He staggered into a small restaurant, and sitting at an unoccupied table, called for a bottle of wine.

With the first draught his courage returned, his mental perspective commenced to rearrange itself. Cicely and Joan were in London, Cicely had seen him, Joan had not. From the first he had realised that there was danger to him in this encounter. Cicely had seen him, but she had made no motion of recognition, she had obviously refrained from telling her sister of his near presence. From this he concluded that whilst she believed in him and was still his friend, Joan was his enemy. He rolled a cigarette with nervous fingers, and lighted it. Did Joan suspect that he was still alive? and was she looking for him? To the world in general Douglas Guest was dead. How was it with these two girls? There were various small reasons why they might be inclined to doubt what to other people would seem obvious. He recalled Joan's face, grim and forbidding enough, almost a tragical figure in her black garb, as severe and sombre as a country dressmaker could fashion it. He must get to know these things. He must find Cicely. He walked thoughtfully back to the offices of the Courier, where he found some work, which, for the time, completely engrossed him.

The next morning the following advertis.e.m.e.nt appeared in most of the London newspapers.