The Masquerader Part 28

In this manner came the news from Persia, and with it Loder's definite call. In the momentary stress of action it was impossible that any thought of Chilcote could obtrude itself. Events had followed each other too rapidly, decisive action had been too much thrust upon him, to allow of hesitation; and it was in this spirit, under this vigorous pressure, that he made his attack upon the government on the day that followed Fraide's luncheon party.

That indefinable attentiveness, that alert sensation of impending storm.

that is so strong an index of the parliamentary atmosphere was very keen on that memorable first of April. It was obvious in the crowded benches on both sides of the House--in the oneness of purpose that insensibly made itself felt through the ranks of the Opposition, and found definite expression in Fraide's stiff figure and tightly shut lips--in the unmistakable uneasiness that lay upon the ministerial benches.

But notwithstanding these indications of battle, the early portion of the proceedings was unmarked by excitement, being tinged with the purposeless lack of vitality that had of late marked all affairs of the Sefborough Ministry; and it was not until the adjournment of the House for the Easter recess had at last been moved that the spirit of activity hovering in the air descended and galvanized the a.s.sembly into life. It was then, amid a stir of interest, that Loder slowly rose.

Many curious incidents have marked the speech-making annals of the House of Commons, but it is doubtful whether it has ever been the lot of a member to hear his own voice raised for the first time on a subject of vital interest to his party, having been denied all initial a.s.sistance of minor questions asked or unimportant amendments made. Of all those gathered together in the great building on that day, only one man appreciated the difficulty of Loder's position--and that man was Loder himself.

He rose slowly and stood silent for a couple of seconds, his body braced, his fingers touching the sheaf of notes that lay in front of him. To the waiting House the silence was effective. It might mean over-a.s.surance, or it might mean a failure of nerve at a critical moment. Either possibility had a tinge of piquancy. Moved by the same impulse, fifty pairs o eyes turned upon him with new interest; but up in the Ladies' Gallery Eve clasped her hands in sudden apprehension; and Fraide, sitting stiffly in his seat, turned and shot one swift glance at the man on whom, against prudence and precedent, he had pinned his faith. The glance was swift but very searching, and with a characteristic movement of his wiry shoulders he resumed his position and his usual grave, attentive att.i.tude. At the same moment Loder lifted his head and began to speak.

Here at the outset his inexperience met him. His voice, pitched too low, only reached those directly near him. It was a moment of great strain.

Eve, listening intently, drew a long breath of suspense and let her fingers drop apart; the sceptical, watchful eyes that faced him, line upon line, seemed to flash and brighten with critical interest; only Fraide made no change of expression. He sat placid, serious, attentive, with the shadow of a smile behind his eyes.

Again Loder paused, but this time the pause was shorter. The ordeal he had dreaded and waited for was pa.s.sed and he saw his way clearly. With the old movement of the shoulders he straightened himself and once more began to speak. This time his voice rang quietly true and commanding across the floor of the House.

No first step can be really great; it must of necessity possess more of prophecy than of achievement; nevertheless it is by the first step that a man marks the value, not only of his cause, but of himself. Following broadly on the lines that tradition has laid down for the Conservative orator, Loder disguised rather than displayed the vein of strong, persuasive eloquence that was his natural gift. The occasion that might possibly justify such a display of individuality might lie with the future, but it had no application to the present. For the moment his duty was to voice his party sentiments with as much lucidity, as much logic, and as much calm conviction as lay within his capacity.

Standing quietly in Chilcote's place, he was conscious with a deep sense of gravity of the peculiarity of his position; and perhaps it was this unconscious and unstudied seriousness that lent him the tone of weight and judgment so essential to the cause he had in hand. It has always been difficult to arouse the interest of the House on matters of British policy in Persia. Once aroused, it may, it is true, reach fever heat with remarkable rapidity, but the introductory stages offer that worst danger to the earnest speaker--the dread of an apathetic audience. But from this consideration Loder, by his sharp consciousness of personal difficulties, was given immunity.

Pitching his voice in that quietly masterful tone that beyond all others compels attention, he took up his subject and dealt with it with dispa.s.sionate force. With great skill he touched on the steady southward advance of Russia into Persian territory from the distant days when, by a curious irony of fate, Russian and British enterprise combined to make entry into the country under the sanction of the Grand-Duke of Moscovy, to the present hour, when this great power of Russia--long since alienated by interests and desires from her former co-operator--had taken a step which in the eyes of every thinking man must possess a deep significance. With quiet persistence he pointed out the peculiar position of Meshed in the distant province of Khorasan; its vast distance from the Persian Gulf, round which British interests and influence centre, and the consequently alarming position of hundreds of traders who, in the security of British sovereignty, are fighting their way upward from India, from Afghanistan, even from England herself.

Following up his point, he dilated on these subjects of the British crown who, cut off from adequate a.s.sistance, can only turn in personal or commercial peril to the protective power of the nearest consulate.

Then, quietly demanding the attention of his hearers, he marshalled fact after fact to demonstrate the isolation and inadequacy of a consulate so situated; the all but arbitrary power of Russia, who in her new occupation of Meshed had only two considerations to withhold her from open aggression--the knowledge of England as a very considerable but also a very distant power; the knowledge of Persia as an imminent but wholly impotent factor in the case.

Having stated his opinions, he reverted to the motive of his speech--his desire to put forward a strong protest against the adjournment of the House without an a.s.surance from the government that immediate measures would be taken to safeguard British interests in Meshed and throughout the province of Khorasan.

The immediate outcome of Loder's speech was all that his party had desired. The effect on the House had been marked; and when, no satisfactory response coming to his demand, he had in still more resolute and insistent terms called for a division on the motion for adjournment, the result had been an appreciable fall in the government majority.

To Loder himself, the realization that he had at last vindicated and justified himself by individual action had a peculiar effect. His position had been altered in one remarkable particular. Before this day he alone had known himself to be strong; now the knowledge was shared by others and he was human enough to be susceptible to the change.

The first appreciation of it came immediately after the excitement of the division, when Fraide, singling him out, took his arm and pressed it affectionately.

"My dear Chilcote," he said, "we are all proud of you!" Then, looking up into his face, he added, in a graver tone, "But keep your mind upon the future; never be blinded by the present--however bright it seems."

At the touch of his hand, at the spontaneous approval of his first words, Loder's pride thrilled, and in a vehement rush of ambition his senses answered to the praise. Then, as Fraide in all unconsciousness added his second sentence, the hot glow of feeling suddenly chilled. In a sweep of intuitive reaction the meaning and the danger of his falsely real position extinguished his excitement and turned his triumph cold.

With an involuntary gesture he withdrew his arm.

"You're very good, sir," he said. "And you're very right. We never should forget that there is--a future."

The old man glanced up, surprised by the tone.

"Quite so, Chilcote," he said, kindly. "But we only advise those in whom we believe to look towards it. Shall we find my wife? I know she will want to bear you home with us."

But Loder's joy in himself and his achievement had dropped from him. He shrank suddenly from Lady Sarah's congratulations and Eve's warm, silent approbation.

"Thanks, sir," he said, "but I don't feel fit for society. A touch of my--nerves, I suppose." He laughed shortly. "But do you mind saying to Eve that I hope I have--satisfied her?" he added this as if in half-reluctant after-thought. Then, with a short pressure of Fraide's hand, he turned, evading the many groups that waited to claim him, and pa.s.sed out of the House alone.

Hailing a cab, he drove to Grosvenor Square. All the exaltation of an hour ago had turned to ashes. His excitement had found its culmination in a sense of futility and premonition.

He met no one in the hall or on the stairs of Chilcote's house, and on entering the study he found that also deserted. Greening had been among the most absorbed of those who had listened to his speech. Pa.s.sing at once into the room, he crossed as if by instinct to the desk, and there halted. On the top of some unopened letters lay the significant yellow envelope of a telegram--the telegram that in an unformed, subconscious way had sprung to his expectation on the moment of Fraide's congratulation.

Very quietly he picked it up, opened and read it, and, with the automatic caution that had become habitual, carried it across the room and dropped it in the fire. This done, he returned to the desk, read the letters that awaited Chilcote, and, scribbling the necessary notes upon the margins, left them in readiness for Greening. Then, moving with the same quiet suppression, he pa.s.sed from the room, down the stairs, and out into the street by the way he had come.

XX

On the fifth day after the momentous 1st of April on which he had recalled Loder and resumed his own life Chilcote left his house and walked towards Bond Street. Though the morning was clear and the air almost warm for the time of year, he was b.u.t.toned into a long overcoat and was wearing a m.u.f.fler and a pair of doeskin gloves. As he pa.s.sed along the street he kept close to the house fronts to avoid the sun that was everywhere stirring the winterbound town, like a suffusion of young blood through old veins. He avoided the warmth because in this instance warmth meant light, but as he moved he s.h.i.+vered slightly from time to time with the haunting, permeating cold that of late had become his persistent shadow.

He was ill at case as he hurried forward. With each succeeding day of the old life the new annoyances, the new obligations became more hampering. Before his compact with Loder this old life had been a net about his feet; now the meshes seemed to have narrowed, the net itself to have spread till it smothered his whole being. His own household--his own rooms, even--offered no sanctuary. The presence of another personality tinged the atmosphere. It was preposterous, but it was undeniable. The lay figure that he had set in his place had proved to be flesh and blood--had usurped his life, his position, his very personality, by sheer right of strength. As he walked along Bond Street in the first suns.h.i.+ne of the year, jostled by the well-dressed crowd, he felt a pariah.

He revolted at the new order of things, but the revolt was a silent one-the iron of expediency had entered into his soul. He dared not jeopardize Loder's position, because he dared not dispense with Loder.

The door that guarded his vice drew him more resistlessly with every indulgence, and Loder's was the voice that called the "Open Sesame!"

He walked on aimlessly. He had been but five days at home, and already the quiet, gra.s.s-grown court of Clifford's Inn, the bare staircase, the comfortless privacy of Loder's rooms seemed a haven of refuge. The speed with which this hunger had returned frightened him.

He walked forward rapidly and without encountering a check. Then, suddenly, the spell was broken. From the slowly moving, brilliantly dressed throng of people some one called him by his name; and turning he saw Lillian Astrupp.

She was stepping from the door of a jeweller's, and as he turned she paused, holding out her hand.

"The very person I would have wished to see!" she exclaimed. "Where have you been these hundred years? I've heard of n.o.body but you since you've turned politician and ceased to be a mere member of Parliament!" She laughed softly. The laugh suited the light spring air, as she herself suited the pleasant, superficial scene.

He took her hand and held it, while his eyes travelled from her delicate face to her pale cloth gown, from her soft furs to the bunch of roses fastened in her m.u.f.f, The sight of her was a curious relief. Her cool, slim fingers were so casual, yet so clinging, her voice and her presence were so redolent of easy, artificial things.

"How well you look!" he said, involuntarily.

Again she laughed. "That's my prerogative," she responded, lightly. "But I was serious in being glad to see you. Sarcastic people are always so intuitive. I'm looking for some one with intuition."

Chilcote glanced up. "Extravagant again?" he said, dryly.

She smiled at him sweetly. "Jack!" she murmured with slow reproach.

Chilcote laughed quickly. "I understand. You've changed your Minister of Finance. I'm wanted in some other direction."

This time her reproach was expressed by a glance. "You are always wanted," she said.

The words seemed to rouse him again to the shadowy self-distrust that the sight of her had lifted.

"It's--it's delightful to meet you like this," he began, "and I wish the meeting wasn't momentary. But I'm--I'm rather pressed for time. You must let me come round one afternoon--or evening, when you're alone." He fumbled for a moment with the collar of his coat, and glanced furtively upward towards Oxford Street.

But again Lillian smiled--this time to herself. If she understood anything on earth it was Chilcote and his moods.

"If one may be careless of anything, Jack," she said, lightly, "surely it's of time. I can imagine being pressed for anything else in the world. If it's an appointment you're worrying about, a motor goes ever so much faster than a cab--" She looked at him tentatively, her head slightly on one side, her m.u.f.f raised till the roses and some of the soft fur touched her cheek.

She looked very charming and very persuasive as Chilcote glanced back.

Again she seemed to represent a respite--something graceful and subtle in a world of oppressive obligations. His eyes strayed from her figure to the smart motor-car drawn up beside the curb.