CHAPTER II.
Two or three minutes later, Wharton was walking down a side streettowards Piccadilly. After all the flattering incidents of the evening,the chance meeting with which it concluded had jarred unpleasantly.Confound the fellow! Was he the first man in the world who had beenthrown over by a girl because he had been discovered to be a tiresomepedant? For even supposing Miss Boyce had described that little scene inthe library at Mellor to her _fiance_ at the moment of giving him hisdismissal--and the year before, by the help of all the news that reachedhim about the broken engagement, by the help still more of the look, orrather the entire absence of look wherewith Raeburn had walked past hisgreeting and his outstretched hand in a corridor of the House, on thefirst occasion of their meeting after the news had become publicproperty, Wharton was inclined to think she _had_--what then? No doubtthe stern moralist might have something to say on the subject of takingadvantage of a guest's position to tamper with another man's betrothed.If so, the stern moralist would only show his usual incapacity to graspthe actual facts of flesh and blood. What chance would he or any oneelse have had with Marcella Boyce, if she had happened to be in lovewith the man she had promised to marry? That little trifle had been leftout in the arrangement. It might have worked through perfectly wellwithout; as it happened it had broken down. _Realities_ had broken itdown. Small blame to them!
"I stood for _truth_!" he said to himself with a kind of rage--"thatmoment when I held her in the library, she _lived_.--Raeburn offered hera platform, a position; _I_ made her think, and feel. I helped her toknow herself. Our relation was not passion; it stood on thethreshold--but it was real--a true relation so far as it went. That itwent no farther was due again to circumstances--realities--of anotherkind. That _he_ should scorn and resent my performance at Mellor isnatural enough. If we were in France he would call me out and I shouldgive him satisfaction with all the pleasure in life. But what am _I_about? Are his ways mine? I should have nothing left but to shoot myselfto-morrow if they were!"
He walked on swiftly, angrily rating himself for those symptoms of amerely false and conventional conscience which were apt to be roused inhim by contact with Aldous Raeburn.
"Has he not interfered with my freedom--stamped his pedantic foot onme--ever since we were boys together! I have owed him one for manyyears--now I have paid it. Let him take the chances of war!"
Then, driven on by an irritation not to be quieted, he began against hiswill to think of those various occasions on which he and Aldous Raeburnhad crossed each other in the past--of that incident in particular whichMiss Raeburn had roughly recalled to Lady Winterbourne's reluctantmemory.
Well, and what of it? It had occurred when Wharton was a lad oftwenty-one, and during an interval of some months when Aldous Raeburn,who had left Cambridge some three years before, and was already the manof importance, had shown a decided disposition to take up the brilliant,unmanageable boy, whom the Levens, among other relations, had alreadywashed their hands of.
"What did he do it for?" thought Wharton. "Philanthropic motives ofcourse. He is one of the men who must always be saving their souls, andthe black sheep of the world come in handy for the purpose. I remember Iwas flattered then. It takes one some time to understand the workings ofthe Hebraistic conscience!"
Yes--as it galled him to recollect--he had shown great plasticity for atime. He was then in the middle of his Oxford years, and Raeburn'sletters and Raeburn's influence had certainly pulled him through variousscrapes that might have been disastrous. Then--a little later--he couldsee the shooting lodge on the moors above Loch Etive, where he andRaeburn, Lord Maxwell, Miss Raeburn, and a small party had spent theAugust of his twenty-first birthday. Well--that surly keeper, and hispretty wife who had been Miss Raeburn's maid--could anything be moreinevitable? A hard and jealous husband, and one of the softest, mostsensuous natures that ever idleness made love to. The thing was in theair!--in the summer, in the blood--as little to be resisted as theimpulse to eat when you are hungry, or drink when you thirst. Besides,what particular harm had been done, what particular harm _could_ havebeen done with such a Cerberus of a husband? As to the outcry which hadfollowed one special incident, nothing could have been more uncalledfor, more superfluous. Aldous had demanded contrition, had said strongthings with the flashing eyes, the set mouth of a Cato. And the culprithad turned obstinate--would repent nothing--not for the asking.Everything was arguable, and Renan's doubt as to whether he or TheophileGautier were in the right of it, would remain a doubt to all time--thatwas all Raeburn could get out of him. After which the Hebraist friend ofcourse had turned his back on the offender, and there was an end of it.
That incident, however, had belonged to a stage in his past life, astage marked by a certain prolonged tumult of the senses, on which henow looked back with great composure. That tumult had found vent inother adventures more emphatic a good deal than the adventure of thekeeper's wife. He believed that one or two of them had been not unknownto Raeburn.
Well, that was done with! His mother's death--that wanton stupidity onthe part of fate--and the shock it had somehow caused him, had firstdrawn him out of the slough of a cheap and facile pleasure on which henow looked back with contempt. Afterwards, his two years of travel, andthe joys at once virile and pure they had brought with them, joys ofadventure, bodily endurance, discovery, together with the intellectualstimulus which comes of perpetual change, of new heavens, new seas, newsocieties, had loosened the yoke of the flesh and saved him fromhimself. The deliverance so begun had been completed at home, by thevarious chances and opportunities which had since opened to him a solidand tempting career in that Labour movement his mother had linked himwith, without indeed ever understanding either its objects or its men.The attack on capital now developing on all sides, the planning of thevast campaign, and the handling of its industrial troops, these thingshad made the pursuit of women look insipid, coupled as they were withthe thrill of increasing personal success. Passion would require topresent itself in new forms, if it was now to take possession of himagain.
As to his relation to Raeburn, he well remembered that when, after thatlong break in his life, he and Aldous had met casually again, in Londonor elsewhere, Aldous had shown a certain disposition to forget the oldquarrel, and to behave with civility, though not with friendliness. Asto Wharton he was quite willing, though at the same time he had gonedown to contest West Brookshire, and, above all, had found himself inthe same house as Aldous Raeburn's betrothed, with an even liveliersense than usual of the excitement to be got out of mere living.
No doubt when Raeburn heard that story of the library--if he had heardit--he recognised in it the man and the character he had known of old,and had shrunk from the connection of both with Marcella Boyce in bitterand insurmountable disgust. A mere Hebraist's mistake!
"That girl's attraction for me was not an attraction of thesenses--except so far that for every normal man and woman charm ischarm, and ginger is hot in the mouth and always will be! What I playedfor with her was _power_--power over a nature that piqued and yet bynatural affinity belonged to me. I could not have retained that power,as it happened, by any bait of passion. Even without the Hurd affair, ifI had gone on to approach her so, her whole moral nature would haverisen against me and her own treachery. I knew that perfectly well, andtook the line I did because for the moment the game was too exciting,too interesting, to give up. For the moment! then a few days,--a fewweeks later--Good Lord! what stuff we mortals be!"
And he raised his shoulders, mocking, yet by no means disliking his ownidiosyncrasies. It had been strange, indeed, that complete change ofmental emphasis, that alteration of spiritual axis that had befallen himwithin the first weeks of his parliamentary life, nay, even before theHurd agitation was over. That agitation had brought him vigorously andprofitably into public notice at a convenient moment. But what hadoriginally sprung from the impulse to retain a hold over a woman, becamein the end the instrument of a new and quite other situation. Whartonhad no s
ooner entered the House of Commons than he felt himselfstrangely at home there. He had the instinct for debate, the instinctfor management, together with a sensitive and contriving ambition. Hefound himself possessed for the moment of powers of nervous endurancethat astonished him--a patience of boredom besides, a capacity fordrudgery, and for making the best of dull men. The omens were allfavourable, sometimes startlingly so. He was no longer hampered by theill-will of a county or a family connection. Here in this new world,every man counted strictly for what, in the parliamentary sense, he wasworth. Wharton saw that, owing to his public appearances during the twopreceding years, he was noticed, listened to, talked about in the House,from the first; and that his position in the newly-formed though stillloosely-bound Labour party was one of indefinite promise. The anxietiesand pitfalls of the position only made it the more absorbing.
The quick, elastic nature adjusted itself at once. To some kinds ofsuccess, nothing is so important as the ability to forget--to sweep themind free of everything irrelevant and superfluous. Marcella Boyce, andall connected with her, passed clean out of Wharton's consciousness.Except that once or twice he said to himself with a passing smile thatit was a good thing he had not got himself into a worse scrape atMellor. Good heavens! in what plight would a man stand--a man with hiscareer to make--who had given Marcella Boyce claims upon him! As wellentangle oneself with the Tragic Muse at once as with that stormy,unmanageable soul!
So much for a year ago. To-night, however, the past had been thrust backupon him, both by Lady Selina's talk and by the meeting with Raeburn. Tosmart indeed once more under that old ascendency of Raeburn's, was tobe provoked into thinking of Raeburn's old love.
Where was Miss Boyce? Surely her year of hospital training must be up bynow?
He turned into St. James Street, stopped at a door not far from thePalace end, let himself in, and groped his way to the second floor. Asleepy man-servant turned out of his room, and finding that his masterwas not inclined to go to bed, brought lights and mineral water. Whartonwas practically a teetotaller. He had taken a whim that way as a boy,and a few experiments in drunkenness which he had made at college hadonly confirmed what had been originally perhaps a piece ofnotoriety-hunting. He had, as a rule, flawless health; and theunaccustomed headaches and nausea which followed these occasionalexcesses had disgusted and deterred him. He shook himself easily free ofa habit which had never gained a hold upon him, and had ever since foundhis abstinence a source both of vanity and of distinction. Nothingannoyed him more than to hear it put down to any ethical motive. "If Iliked the beastly stuff, I should swim in it to-morrow," he would saywith an angry eye when certain acquaintance--not those he made at LabourCongresses--goaded him on the point. "As it is, why should I make it, orchloral, or morphia, or any other poison, my master! What's theinducement--eh, you fellows?"
_En revanche_ he smoked inordinately.
"Is that all, sir," said his servant, pausing behind his chair, aftercandles, matches, cigarettes, and Apollinaris had been supplied inabundance.
"Yes; go to bed, Williams, but don't lock up. Good-night."
The man departed, and Wharton, going to the window which opened on abalcony looking over St. James Street, threw it wide, and smoked acigarette leaning against the wall. It was on the whole a fine night andwarm, though the nip of the east wind was not yet out of the air. In thestreet below there was still a good deal of movement, for it was onlyjust past midnight and the clubs were not yet empty. To his right theturreted gate-house of the Palace with its clock rose dark against a skycovered with light, windy cloud. Beyond it his eye sought instinctivelyfor the Clock Tower, which stood to-night dull and beaconless--like someone in a stupid silence. That light of the sitting House had become tohim one of the standing pleasures of life. He had never yet beenhonestly glad of its extinction.
"I'm a precious raw hand," he confessed to himself with a shake of thehead as he stood there smoking. "And it can't last--nothing does."
Presently he laid down his cigarette a moment on the edge of thebalcony, and, coming back into the room, opened a drawer, searched alittle, and finally took out a letter. He stooped over the lamp to readit. It was the letter which Marcella Boyce had written him some two orthree days after the breach of her engagement. That fact was barelymentioned at the beginning of it, without explanation or comment of anykind. Then the letter continued:
"I have never yet thanked you as I ought for all that you have done andattempted through these many weeks. But for them it must have been plainto us both that we could never rightly meet again. I am very destitutejust now--and I cling to self-respect as though it were the only thingleft me. But that scene in the past, which put us both wrong withhonour and conscience, has surely been wiped out--_thought--suffered_away. I feel that I dare now say to you, as I would to any otherco-worker and co-thinker--if in the future you ever want my work, if youcan set me, with others, to any task that wants doing and that I coulddo--ask me, and I am not likely to refuse.
"But for the present I am going quite away into another world. I havebeen more ill than I have ever been in my life this last few days, andthey are all, even my father, ready to agree with me that I must go. Assoon as I am a little stronger I am to have a year's training at aLondon hospital, and then I shall probably live for a while in town andnurse. This scheme occurred to me as I came back with the wife fromseeing Hurd the day before the execution. I knew then that all was overfor me at Mellor.
"As for the wretched break-down of everything--of all my schemes andfriendships here--I had better not speak of it. I feel that I have giventhese village-folk, whom I had promised to help, one more reason todespair of life. It is not pleasant to carry such a thought away withone. But if the tool breaks and blunts, how can the task be done? It canbe of no use till it has been re-set.
"I should like to know how your plans prosper. But I shall see yourpaper and follow what goes on in Parliament. For the present I wantneither to write nor get letters. They tell me that as a probationer Ishall spend my time at first in washing glasses, and polishingbath-taps, on which my mind rests!
"If you come across my friends of whom I have spoken to you--Louis,Anthony, and Edith Craven--and could make any use of Louis for the_Labour Clarion_, I should be grateful. I hear they have had bad timesof late, and Louis has engaged himself, and wants to be married. Youremember I told you how we worked at the South Kensington classestogether, and how they made me a Venturist?
"Yours very truly,
"MARCELLA BOYCE."
Wharton laid down the letter, making a wry mouth over some of itsphrases.
"'_Put us both wrong with honour and conscience.' 'One more reason fordespair of life'--'All was over for me at Mellor_'--dear! dear!--howwomen like the big words--the emphatic pose. All those little odds andends of charities--that absurd straw-plaiting scheme! Well, perhaps onecould hardly expect her to show a sense of humour just then. But whydoes nature so often leave it out in these splendid creatures?"
"Hullo!" he added, as he bent over the table to look for a pen; "whydidn't that idiot give me these?"
For there, under an evening paper which he had not touched, lay a pileof unopened letters. His servant had forgotten to point them out to him.On the top was a letter on which Wharton pounced at once. It wasaddressed in a bold inky hand, and he took it to be from NehemiahWilkins, M.P., his former colleague at the Birmingham Labour Congress,of late a member of the _Labour Clarion_ staff, and as such a dailyincreasing plague and anxiety to the _Clarion's_ proprietor.
However, the letter was not from Wilkins. It was from the secretary ofa Midland trades-union, with whom Wharton had already been incommunication. The union was recent, and represented the as yet feebleorganisation of a metal industry in process of transition from thehome-workshop to the full factory, or Great Industry stage. Theconditions of work were extremely bad, and grievances many; wages werelow, and local distress very great. The secretary, a young man ofability and enthusiasm, wrote to Wharton to say that
certain alterationsin the local "payment lists" lately made by the employers amounted to areduction of wages; that the workers, beginning to feel the hearteningeffects of their union, were determined not to submit; that bitter andeven desperate agitation was spreading fast, and that a far-reachingstrike was imminent. Could they count on the support of the _Clarion_?The _Clarion_ had already published certain letters on the industry froma Special Commissioner--letters which had drawn public attention, andhad been eagerly read in the district itself. Would the _Clarion_ now"go in" for them? Would Mr. Wharton personally support them, in or outof Parliament, and get his friends to do the same? To which questions,couched in terms extremely flattering to the power of the _Clarion_ andits owner, the secretary appended a long and technical statement of thesituation.
Wharton looked up from the letter with a kindling eye. He foresaw anextremely effective case, both for the newspaper and the House ofCommons. One of the chief capitalists involved was a man called Denny,who had been long in the House, for whom the owner of the _Clarion_entertained a strong personal dislike. Denny had thwarted himvexatiously--had perhaps even made him ridiculous--on one or twooccasions; and Wharton saw no reason whatever for forgiving one'senemies until, like Narvaez, one had "shot them all." There would bemuch satisfaction in making Denny understand who were his masters. Andwith these motives there mingled a perfectly genuine sympathy with the"poor devils" in question, and a desire to see them righted.
"Somebody must be sent down at once," he said to himself. "I suppose,"he added, with discontent, "it must be Wilkins."
For the man who had written the articles for the _Labour Clarion_, asSpecial Commissioner, had some three weeks before left England to takecommand of a colonial newspaper.
Still pondering, he took up the other letters, turned themover--childishly pleased for the thousandth time by the M.P. on eachenvelope and the number and variety of his correspondence--and eagerlychose out three--one from his bankers, one from his Lincolnshire agent,and one from the _Clarion_ office, undoubtedly this time in Wilkins'shand.
He read them, grew a little pale, swore under his breath, and, angrilyflinging the letters away from him, he took up his cigarette again andthought.
The letter from his bankers asked his attention in stiff terms to alargely overdrawn account, and entirely declined to advance a sum ofmoney for which he had applied to them without the guarantee of twosubstantial names in addition to his own. The letter from his agentwarned him that the extraordinary drought of the past six weeks,together with the general agricultural depression, would certainly meana large remission of rents at the June quarter day, and also informedhim that the holders of his co-operative farm would not be able to paytheir half-yearly interest on the capital advanced to them by thelandlord.
As to the third letter, it was in truth much more serious than the twoothers. Wilkins, the passionate and suspicious workman, of great naturalability, who had been in many ways a thorn in Wharton's side since thebeginning of his public career, was now member for a miningconstituency. His means of support were extremely scanty, and at theopening of the new Parliament Wharton had offered him well-paid work onthe _Clarion_ newspaper. It had seemed to the proprietor of the_Clarion_ a way of attaching a dangerous man to himself, perhaps also ofcontrolling him. Wilkins had grudgingly accepted, understandingperfectly well what was meant.
Since then the relation between the two men had been one of perpetualfriction. Wilkins's irritable pride would yield nothing, either in theHouse or in the _Clarion_ office, to Wharton's university education andclass advantages, while Wharton watched with alarm the growing influenceof this insubordinate and hostile member of his own staff on thoselabour circles from which the _Clarion_ drew its chief support.
In the letter he had just read Wilkins announced to the proprietor ofthe _Clarion_ that in consequence of the "scandalous mismanagement" ofthat paper's handling of a certain trade arbitration which had justclosed, he, Wilkins, could no longer continue to write for it, andbegged to terminate his engagement at once, there being no formalagreement between himself and Wharton as to length of notice on eitherside. A lively attack on the present management and future prospects ofthe _Clarion_ followed, together with the threat that the writer woulddo what in him lay henceforward to promote the cause of a certain rivalorgan lately started, among such working men as he might be able toinfluence.
"_Brute_! jealous, impracticable brute!" exclaimed Wharton aloud, as hestood chafing and smoking by the window. All the difficulties which thisopen breach was likely to sow in his path stood out before him in clearrelief.
"_Personal_ leadership, there is the whole problem," he said to himselfin moody despair. "Can I--like Parnell--make a party and keep ittogether? Can I through the _Clarion_--and through influence _outside_the House--coerce the men _in_ the House? If so, we can do something,and Lady Cradock will no longer throw me her smiles. If not the game isup, both for me and for them. They have no cohesion, no commoninformation, no real power. Without leaders they are a mere set ofhalf-educated firebrands whom the trained mind of the country humoursbecause it must, and so far as they have brute force behind them.Without _leadership_, _I_ am a mere unit of the weakest group in the House.Yet, by Jove! it looks as though I had not the gifts."
And he looked back with passionate chagrin on the whole course of hisconnection with Wilkins, his unavailing concessions and smallhumiliations, his belief in his own tact and success, all the time thatthe man dealt with was really slipping out of his hands.
"Damn the fellow!" he said at last, flinging his cigarette away. "Well,that's done with. All the same, he would have liked that Midland job! Hehas been hankering after a strike there for some time, and might haveranted as he pleased. I shall have the satisfaction of informing him hehas lost his opportunity. Now then--who to send? By Jove! what aboutMiss Boyce's friend?"
He stood a moment twisting the quill-pen he had taken up, then hehastily found a sheet of paper and wrote:
"Dear Miss Boyce,--It is more than a year since I have heard of you, andI have been wondering with much interest lately whether you have reallytaken up a nursing life. You remember speaking to me of your friends theCravens? I come across them sometimes at the Venturist meetings, andhave always admired their ability. Last year I could do nothingpractical to meet your wishes. This year, however, there is an openingon the _Clarion_, and I should like to discuss it with you. Are you intown or to be found? I could come any afternoon next week, _early_--I godown to the House at four--or on Saturdays. But I should like it to beTuesday or Wednesday, that I might try and persuade you to come to ourEight Hours debate on Friday night. It would interest you, and I think Icould get you a seat. We Labour members are like the Irishmen--we canalways get our friends in.
"I must send this round by Mellor, so it may not reach you till Tuesday.Perhaps you will kindly telegraph. The _Clarion_ matter is pressing.
"Yours sincerely,
"H.S. WHARTON."
When he had finished he lingered a moment over the letter, the play ofconflicting motives and memories bringing a vague smile to the lips.
Reverie, however, was soon dispersed. He recollected his othercorrespondents, and springing up he began to pace his room, gloomilythinking over his money difficulties, which were many. He and his motherhad always been in want of money ever since he could remember. LadyMildred would spend huge sums on her various crotchets and campaigns,and then subside for six months into wretched lodgings in a back streetof Southsea or Worthing, while the Suffolk house was let, and her sonmostly went abroad. This perpetual worry of needy circumstances hadalways, indeed, sat lightly on Wharton. He was unmarried, and so farscarcity had generally passed into temporary comfort before he had timeto find it intolerable. But now the whole situation was becoming moreserious. In the first place, his subscriptions and obligations as amember of Parliament, and as one of the few propertied persons in amoneyless movement, were considerable. Whatever Socialism might make ofmoney in the future, he was well
aware that money in the present was noless useful to a Socialist politician than to any one else. In the nextplace, the starting and pushing of the _Clarion_ newspaper--originallypurchased by the help of a small legacy from an uncle--had enormouslyincreased the scale of his money transactions and the risks of life.
How was it that, with all his efforts, the _Clarion_ was not making, butlosing money? During the three years he had possessed it he had raisedit from the position of a small and foul-mouthed print, indifferentlynourished on a series of small scandals, to that of a Labour organ ofsome importance. He had written a weekly signed article for it, whichhad served from the beginning to bring both him and the paper intonotice; he had taken pains with the organisation and improvement of thestaff; above all, he had spent a great deal more money upon it, in theway of premises and appliances, than he had been, as it turned out, inany way justified in spending.
Hence, indeed, these tears. Rather more than a year before, while the_Clarion_ was still enjoying a first spurt of success and notoriety, hehad, with a certain recklessness which belonged to his character,invested in new and costly machinery, and had transferred the paper tolarger offices. All this had been done on borrowed money.
Then, for some reason or other, the _Clarion_ had ceased to answer tothe spur--had, indeed, during the past eight months been flaggingheavily. The outside world was beginning to regard the _Clarion_ as animportant paper. Wharton knew all the time that its advertisements werefalling off, and its circulation declining. Why? Who can say? If it istrue that books have their fates, it is still more true of newspapers.Was it that a collectivist paper--the rival organ mentioned byWilkins--recently started by a group of young and outrageously cleverVenturists and more closely in touch than the _Clarion_ with two orthree of the great unions, had filched the _Clarion's_ ground? Or was itsimply that, as Wharton put it to himself in moments of rage anddespondency, the majority of working men "are either sots orblock-heads, and will read and support _nothing_ but the low racing orpolice-court news, which is all their intelligences deserve?" Few peoplehad at the bottom of their souls a more scornful distrust of the"masses" than the man whose one ambition at the present moment was to bethe accepted leader of English labour.
Finally, his private expenditure had always been luxurious; and he wasliable, it will be seen, to a kind of debt that is not easily keptwaiting. On the whole, his bankers had behaved to him with greatindulgence.
He fretted and fumed, turning over plan after plan as he walked, hiscurly head sunk in his shoulders, his hands behind his back. Presentlyhe stopped--absently--in front of the inner wall of the room, where,above a heavy rosewood bookcase, brought from his Lincolnshire house, anumber of large framed photographs were hung close together.
His eye caught one and brightened. With an impatient gesture, like thatof a reckless boy, he flung his thoughts away from him.
"If ever the game becomes too tiresome here, why, the next steamer willtake me out of it! What a _gorgeous_ time we had on that glacier!"
He stood looking at a splendid photograph of a glacier in the ThibetanHimalayas, where, in the year following his mother's death, he had spentfour months with an exploring party. The plate had caught the very grainand glisten of the snow, the very sheen and tint of the ice. He could_feel_ the azure of the sky, the breath of the mountain wind. The manseated on the ladder over that bottomless crevasse was himself. Andthere were the guides, two from Chamounix, one from Grindelwald, andthat fine young fellow, the son of the elder Chamounix guide, whom theyhad lost by a stone-shower on that nameless peak towering to the left ofthe glacier. Ah, those had been years of _life_, those _Wanderjahre_! Heran over the photographs with a kind of greed, his mind meanwhile losingitself in covetous memories of foamy seas, of long, low, tropical shoreswith their scattered palms, of superb rivers sweeping with sound andfury round innumerable islands, of great buildings ivory white amid thewealth of creepers which had pulled them into ruin, vacant now for everof the voice of man, and ringed by untrodden forests.
"'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay,'" he thought."Ah! but how much did the man who wrote that know about Cathay?"
And with his hands thrust into his pockets, he stood lost awhile in aflying dream that defied civilisation and its cares. How well, howindispensable to remember, that beyond these sweltering streets where wechoke and swarm, Cathay stands always waiting! _Somewhere_, while wetoil in the gloom and the crowd, there is _air_, there is _sea_, the joyof the sun, the life of the body, so good, so satisfying! Thisinterminable ethical or economical battle, these struggles selfish oraltruistic, in which we shout ourselves hoarse to no purpose--why! theycould be shaken off at a moment's notice!
"However"--he turned on his heel--"suppose we try a few other triflesfirst. What time? those fellows won't have gone to bed yet!"
He took out his watch, then extinguished his candles, and made his wayto the street. A hundred yards or so away from his own door he stoppedbefore a well-known fashionable club, extremely small, and extremelyselect, where his mother's brother, the peer of the family, hadintroduced him when he was young and tender, and his mother's relationsstill cherished hopes of snatching him as a brand from the burning.
The front rooms of the club were tolerably full still. He passed on tothe back. A door-keeper stationed in the passage stepped back andsilently opened a door. It closed instantly behind him, and Whartonfound himself in a room with some twenty other young fellows playingbaccarat, piles of shining money on the tables, the electric lamps hungover each, lighting every detail of the scene with the same searchingdisenchanting glare.
"I say!" cried a young dark-haired fellow, like a dishevelled LordByron. "Here comes the Labour leader--make room!"
And amid laughter and chaffing he was drawn down to the baccarat table,where a new deal was just beginning. He felt in his pockets for money;his eyes, intent and shining, followed every motion of the dealer'shand. For three years now, ever since his return from his travels, thegambler's passion had been stealing on him. Already this season he hadlost and won--on the whole lost--large sums. And the fact was--sofar--absolutely unknown except to the men with whom he played in thisroom.