The Weavers, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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"Eglington hasn't far to go, if that's the truth."
"Well, well, when it comes, we must help him--we must help him up again."
The Duchess nervously adjusted her wig, with ludicrously tiny fingers for
one so ample, and said petulantly: "You are incomprehensible. He has been
a traitor to you and to your party, he has thrown mud at you, he has
played with principles as my terrier plays with his rubber ball, and yet
you'll run and pick him up when he falls, and--"
"'And kiss the spot to make it well,'" he laughed softly, then added with
a sigh: "Able men in public life are few; 'far too few, for half our
tasks; we can spare not one.' Besides, my dear Betty, there is his pretty
lass o' London."
The Duchess was mollified at once. "I wish she had been my girl," she
said, in a voice a little tremulous. "She never needed looking after.
Look at the position she has made for herself. Her father wouldn't go
into society, her mother knew a mere handful of people, and--"
"She knew you, Betty."
"Well, suppose I did help her a little--I was only a kind of reference.
She did the rest. She's set a half-dozen fashions herself--pure genius.
She was born to lead. Her turnouts were always a little smarter, her
horses travelled a little faster, than other people's. She took risks,
too, but she didn't play a game; she only wanted to do things well. We
all gasped when she brought Adelaide to recite from 'Romeo and Juliet' at
an evening party, but all London did the same the week after."
"She discovered, and the Duchess of Snowdon applied the science. Ah,
Betty, don't think I don't agree. She has the gift. She has temperament.
No woman should have temperament. She hasn't scope enough to wear it out
in some passion for a cause. Men are saved in spite of themselves by the
law of work. Forty comes to a man of temperament, and then a passion for
a cause seizes him, and he is safe. A woman of temperament at forty is
apt to cut across the bows of iron-clad convention and go down. She has
temperament, has my lady yonder, and I don't like the look of her eyes
sometimes. There's dark fire smouldering in them. She should have a
cause; but a cause to a woman now-a-days means 'too little of pleasure,
too much of pain,' for others."
"What was your real cause, Windlehurst? You had one, I suppose, for
you've never had a fall."
"My cause? You ask that? Behold the barren figtree! A lifetime in my
country's service, and you who have driven me home from the House in your
own brougham, and told me that you understood--oh, Betty!"
She laughed. "You'll say something funny as you're dying, Windlehurst."
"Perhaps. But it will be funny to know that presently I'll have a secret
that none of you know, who watch me 'launch my pinnace into the dark.'
But causes? There are hundreds, and all worth while. I've come here
to-night for a cause--no, don't start, it's not you, Betty, though you
are worth any sacrifice. I've come here to-night to see a modern Paladin,
a real crusader:
"'Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims
into his ken.'"
"Yes, that's poetry, Windlehurst, and you know I love it-I've always kept
yours. But who's the man--the planet?"
"Egyptian Claridge."
"Ah, he is in England?"
"He will be here to-night; you shall see him."
"Really! What is his origin?"
He told her briefly, adding: "I've watched the rise of Claridge Pasha.
I've watched his cause grow, and now I shall see the man--ah, but here
comes our lass o' London!"
The eyes of both brightened, and a whimsical pleasure came to the
mask-like face of Lord Windlehurst. There was an eager and delighted look
in Hylda's face also as she quickly came to them, her cavaliers
following.
The five years that had passed since that tragic night in Cairo had been
more than kind to her. She was lissome, radiant, and dignified, her face
was alive with expression, and a delicate grace was in every movement.
The dark lashes seemed to have grown longer, the brown hair fuller, the
smile softer and more alluring.
"She is an invaluable asset to the Government," Lord Windlehurst murmured
as she came. "No wonder the party helped the marriage on. London
conspired for it, her feet got tangled in the web--and he gave her no
time to think. Thinking had saved her till he came."
By instinct Lord Windlehurst knew. During the first year after the
catastrophe at Kaid's Palace Hylda could scarcely endure the advances
made by her many admirers, the greatly eligible and the eager ineligible,
all with as real an appreciation of her wealth as of her personal
attributes. But she took her place in London life with more than the old
will to make for herself, with the help of her aunt Conyngham, an
individual position.
The second year after her visit to Egypt she was less haunted by the dark
episode of the Palace, memory tortured her less; she came to think of
David and the part he had played with less agitation. At first the
thought of him had moved her alternately to sympathy and to revolt. His
chivalry had filled her with admiration, with a sense of confidence, of
dependence, of touching and vital obligation; but there was, too, another
overmastering feeling. He had seen her life naked, as it were, stripped
of all independence, with the knowledge of a dangerous indiscretion
which, to say the least, was a deformity; and she inwardly resented it,
as one would resent the exposure of a long-hidden physical deformity,
even by the surgeon who saved one's life. It was not a very lofty
attitude of mind, but it was human--and feminine.
These moods had been always dissipated, however, when she recalled, as
she did so often, David as he stood before Nahoum Pasha, his soul
fighting in him to make of his enemy--of the man whose brother he had
killed--a fellow-worker in the path of altruism he had mapped out for
himself. David's name had been continually mentioned in telegraphic
reports and journalistic correspondence from Egypt; and from this source
she had learned that Nahoum Pasha was again high in the service of Prince
Kaid. When the news of David's southern expedition to the revolting
slave-dealing tribes began to appear, she was deeply roused. Her
agitation was the more intense because she never permitted herself to
talk of him to others, even when his name was discussed at dinner-tables,
accompanied by strange legends of his origin and stranger romances
regarding his call to power by Kaid.
She had surrounded him with romance; he seemed more a hero of history
than of her own real and living world, a being apart. Even when there
came rumblings of disaster, dark dangers to be conquered by the Quaker
crusader, it all was still as of another life. True it was, that when his
safe return to Cairo was announced she had cried with joy and relief; but
there was nothing emotional or passionate in her feeling; it was the love
of the lower for the higher, the hero-worship of an idealist in
passionate gratitude.
And, amid it all, her mind scarcely realised that they would surely meet
again. At the end of the second year the thought had receded into an
almost indefinite past. She was beginning to feel that she had lived two
lives, and that this life had no direct or vital bearing upon her
previous existence, in which David had moved. Yet now and then the
perfume of the Egyptian garden, through which she had fled to escape from
tragedy, swept over her senses, clouded her eyes in the daytime, made
them burn at night.
At last she had come to meet and know Eglington. From the first moment
they met he had directed his course towards marriage. He was the man of
the moment. His ambition seemed but patriotism, his ardent and
overwhelming courtship the impulse of a powerful nature. As Lord
Windlehurst had said, he carried her off her feet, and, on a wave of
devotion and popular encouragement, he had swept her to the altar.
The Duchess held both her hands for a moment, admiring her, and,
presently, with a playful remark upon her unselfishness, left her alone
with Lord Windlehurst.
As they talked, his mask-like face became lighted from the brilliant fire
in the inquisitorial eyes, his lips played with topics of the moment in a
mordant fashion, which drew from her flashing replies. Looking at her, he
was conscious of the mingled qualities of three races in her--English,
Welsh, and American-Dutch of the Knickerbocker strain; and he contrasted
her keen perception and her exquisite sensitiveness with the purebred
Englishwomen round him, stately, kindly, handsome, and monotonously
intelligent.
"Now I often wonder," he said, conscious of, but indifferent to, the
knowledge that he and the brilliant person beside him were objects of
general attention--"I often wonder, when I look at a gathering like this,
how many undiscovered crimes there are playing about among us. They never
do tell--or shall I say, we never do tell?"
All day, she knew not why, Hylda had been nervous and excited. Without
reason his words startled her. Now there flashed before her eyes a room
in a Palace at Cairo, and a man lying dead before her. The light slowly
faded out of her eyes, leaving them almost lustreless, but her face was
calm, and the smile on her lips stayed. She fanned herself slowly, and
answered nonchalantly: "Crime is a word of many meanings. I read in the
papers of political crimes--it is a common phrase; yet the criminals
appear to go unpunished."
"There you are wrong," he answered cynically. "The punishment is, that
political virtue goes unrewarded, and in due course crime is the only
refuge to most. Yet in politics the temptation to be virtuous is great."
She laughed now with a sense of relief. The intellectual stimulant had
brought back the light to her face. "How is it, then, with
you--inveterate habit or the strain of the ages? For they say you have
not had your due reward."
He smiled grimly. "Ah, no, with me virtue is the act of an inquiring
mind--to discover where it will lead me. I began with political crime--I
was understood! I practise political virtue: it embarrasses the world, it
fogs them, it seems original, because so unnecessary. Mine is the
scientific life. Experiment in old substances gives new--well, say, new
precipitations. But you are scientific, too. You have a laboratory, and
have much to do--with retorts."
"No, you are thinking of my husband. The laboratory is his."
"But the retorts are yours."
"The precipitations are his."
"Ah, well, at least you help him to fuse the constituents! . . . But now,
be quite confidential to an old man who has experimented too. Is your
husband really an amateur scientist, or is he a scientific amateur? Is it
a pose or a taste? I fiddled once--and wrote sonnets; one was a pose, the
other a taste."
It was mere persiflage, but it was a jest which made an unintended wound.
Hylda became conscious of a sudden sharp inquiry going on in her mind.
There flashed into it the question, Does Eglington's heart ever really
throb for love of any object or any cause? Even in moments of greatest
intimacy, soon after marriage, when he was most demonstrative towards
her, he had seemed preoccupied, except when speaking about himself and
what he meant to do. Then he made her heart throb in response to his
confident, ardent words--concerning himself. But his own heart, did it
throb? Or was it only his brain that throbbed?
Suddenly, with an exclamation, she involuntarily laid a hand upon
Windlehurst's arm. She was looking down the room straight before her to a
group of people towards which other groups were now converging, attracted
by one who seemed to be a centre of interest.
Presently the eager onlookers drew aside, and Lord Windlehurst observed
moving up the room a figure he had never seen before. The new-comer was
dressed in a grey and blue official dress, unrelieved save by silver
braid at the collar and at the wrists. There was no decoration, but on
the head was a red fez, which gave prominence to the white, broad
forehead, with the dark hair waving away behind the ears. Lord
Windlehurst held his eye-glass to his eye in interested scrutiny. "H'm,"
he said, with lips pursed out, "a most notable figure, a most remarkable
face! My dear, there's a fortune in that face. It's a national asset."
He saw the flush, the dumb amazement, the poignant look in Lady
Eglington's face, and registered it in his mind. "Poor thing," he said to
himself, "I wonder what it is all about--I wonder. I thought she had no
unregulated moments. She gave promise of better things." The Foreign
Minister was bringing his guest towards them. The new-comer did not look
at them till within a few steps of where they stood. Then his eyes met
those of Lady Eglington. For an instant his steps were arrested. A swift
light came into his face, softening its quiet austerity and strength.
It was David.
CHAPTER XIX
SHARPER THAN A SWORD
A glance of the eye was the only sign of recognition between David and
Hylda; nothing that others saw could have suggested that they had ever
met before. Lord Windlehurst at once engaged David in conversation.
At first when Hylda had come back from Egypt, those five years ago, she
had often wondered what she would think or do if she ever were to see
this man again; whether, indeed, she could bear it. Well, the moment and
the man had come. Her eyes had gone blind for an instant; it had seemed
for one sharp, crucial moment as though she could not bear it; then the
gulf of agitation was passed, and she had herself in hand.
While her mind was engaged subconsciously with what Lord Windlehurst and
David said, comprehending it all, and, when Lord Windlehurst appealed to
her, offering by a word contribution to the 'pourparler', she was
studying David as steadily as her heated senses would permit her.
He seemed to her to have put on twenty years in the steady force of his
personality--in the composure of his bearing, in the self-reliance of his
look, though his face and form were singularly youthful. The face was
handsome and alight, the look was that of one who weighed things; yet she
was conscious of a great change. The old delicate quality of the features
was not so marked, though there was nothing material in the look, and the
head had not a sordid line, while the hand that he now and again raised,
brushing his forehead meditatively, had gained much in strength and
force. Yet there was something--something different, that brought a
slight cloud into her eyes. It came to her now, a certain melancholy in
the bearing of the figure, erect and well-balanced as it was. Once the
feeling came, the certainty grew. And presently she found a strange
sadness in the eyes, something that lurked behind all that he did and all
that he was, some shadow over the spirit. It was even more apparent when
he smiled.
As she was conscious of this new reading of him, a motion arrested her
glance, a quick lifting of the head to one side, as though the mind had
suddenly been struck by an idea, the glance flying upward in abstracted
questioning. This she had seen in her husband, too, the same brisk
lifting of the head, the same quick smiling. Yet this face, unlike
Eglington's, expressed a perfect single-mindedness; it wore the look of a
self-effacing man of luminous force, a concentrated battery of energy.
Since she had last seen him every sign of the provincial had vanished. He
was now the well-modulated man of affairs, elegant in his simplicity of
dress, with the dignified air of the intellectual, yet with the decision
of a man who knew his mind.
Lord Windlehurst was leaving. Now David and she were alone. Without a
word they moved on together through the throng, the eyes of all following
them, until they reached a quiet room at one end of the salon, where were
only a few people watching the crowd pass the doorway.
"You will be glad to sit," he said, motioning her to a chair beside some
palms. Then, with a change of tone, he added: "Thee is not sorry I am
come?"
Thee--the old-fashioned simple Quaker word! She put her fingers to her
eyes. Her senses were swimming with a distant memory. The East was in her
brain, the glow of the skies, the gleam of the desert, the swish of the
Nile, the cry of the sweet-seller, the song of the dance-girl, the strain
of the darabukkeh, the call of the skis. She saw again the ghiassas
drifting down the great river, laden with dourha; she saw the mosque of
the blue tiles with its placid fountain, and its handful of worshippers
praying by the olive-tree. She watched the moon rise above the immobile
Sphinx, she looked down on the banqueters in the Palace, David among
them, and Foorgat Bey beside her. She saw Foorgat Bey again lying dead at
her feet. She heard the stir of the leaves; she caught the smell of the
lime-trees in the Palace garden as she fled. She recalled her reckless
return to Cairo from Alexandria. She remembered the little room where she
and David, Nahoum and Mizraim, crossed a bridge over a chasm, and stood
upon ground which had held good till now--till this hour, when the man
who had played a most vital part in her life had come again out of a land
which, by some forced obliquity of mind and stubbornness of will, she had
assured herself she would never see again.
She withdrew her hand from her eyes, and saw him looking at her calmly,
though his face was alight. "Thee is fatigued," he said. "This is labour
which wears away the strength." He made a motion towards the crowd.
She smiled a very little, and said: "You do not care for such things as
this, I know. Your life has its share of it, however, I suppose."
He looked out over the throng before he answered. "It seems an eddy of
purposeless waters. Yet there is great depth beneath, or there were no
eddy; and where there is depth and the eddy there is danger--always." As
he spoke she became almost herself again. "You think that deep natures
have most perils?"
"Thee knows it is so. Human nature is like the earth: the deeper the
plough goes into the soil unploughed before, the more evil substance is
turned up--evil that becomes alive as soon as the sun and the air fall
upon it."
"Then, women like me who pursue a flippant life, who ride in this
merry-go-round"--she made a gesture towards the crowd beyond--"who have
no depth, we are safest, we live upon the surface." Her gaiety was
forced; her words were feigned.
"Thee has passed the point of danger, thee is safe," he answered
meaningly.
"Is that because I am not deep, or because the plough has been at work?"
she asked. "In neither case I am not sure you are right."
"Thee is happily married," he said reflectively; "and the prospect is
fair."
"I think you know my husband," she said in answer, and yet not in answer.
"I was born in Hamley where he has a place--thee has been there?" he
asked eagerly.
"Not yet. We are to go next Sunday, for the first time to the Cloistered
House. I had not heard that my husband knew you, until I saw in the paper
a few days ago that your home was in Hamley. Then I asked Eglington, and
he told me that your family and his had been neighbours for generations."
"His father was a Quaker," David rejoined, "but he forsook the faith."
"I did not know," she answered, with some hesitation. There was no reason
why, when she and Eglington had talked of Hamley, he should not have said
his own father had once been a Quaker; yet she had dwelt so upon the fact
that she herself had Quaker blood, and he had laughed so much over it,
with the amusement of the superior person, that his silence on this one
point struck her now with a sense of confusion.
"You are going to Hamley--we shall meet there?" she continued.
"To-day I should have gone, but I have business at the Foreign Office
to-morrow. One needs time to learn that all 'private interests and
partial affections' must be sacrificed to public duty."
"But you are going soon? You will be there on Sunday?"
"I shall be there to-morrow night, and Sunday, and for one long week at
least. Hamley is the centre of the world, the axle of the universe--you
shall see. You doubt it?" he added, with a whimsical smile.
"I shall dispute most of what you say, and all that you think, if you do
not continue to use the Quaker 'thee' and 'thou'--ungrammatical as you
are so often."
"Thee is now the only person in London, or in England, with whom I use
'thee' and 'thou.' I am no longer my own master, I am a public servant,
and so I must follow custom."
"It is destructive of personality. The 'thee' and 'thou' belong to you. I
wonder if the people of Hamley will say 'thee' and 'thou' to me. I hope,
I do hope they will."
"Thee may be sure they will. They are no respecters of persons there.
They called your husband's father Robert--his name was Robert. Friend
Robert they called him, and afterwards they called him Robert Denton till
he died."
"Will they call me Hylda?" she asked, with a smile. "More like they will
call thee Friend Hylda; it sounds simple and strong," he replied.
"As they call Claridge Pasha Friend David," she answered, with a smile.
"David is a good name for a strong man."
"That David threw a stone from a sling and smote a giant in the forehead.
The stone from this David's sling falls into the ocean and is lost
beneath the surface."
His voice had taken on a somewhat sombre tone, his eyes looked away into
the distance; yet he smiled too, and a hand upon his knee suddenly closed
in sympathy with an inward determination.
A light of understanding came into her face. They had been keeping things
upon the surface, and, while it lasted, he seemed a lesser man than she
had thought him these past years. But now--now there was the old
unschooled simplicity, the unique and lonely personality, the homely soul
and body bending to one root-idea, losing themselves in a wave of duty.
Again he was to her, once more, the dreamer, the worker, the
conqueror--the conqueror of her own imagination. She had in herself the
soul of altruism, the heart of the crusader. Touched by the fire of a
great idea, she was of those who could have gone out into the world
without wallet or scrip, to work passionately for some great end.
And she had married the Earl of Eglington!
She leaned towards David, and said eagerly: "But you are satisfied--you
are satisfied with your work for poor Egypt?"
"Thee says 'poor Egypt,'" he answered, "and thee says well. Even now she
is not far from the day of Rameses and Joseph. Thee thinks perhaps thee
knows Egypt--none knows her."
"You know her--now?"
He shook his head slowly. "It is like putting one's ear to the mouth of
the Sphinx. Yet sometimes, almost in despair, when I have lain down in
the desert beside my camel, set about with enemies, I have got a message
from the barren desert, the wide silence, and the stars." He paused.
"What is the message that comes?" she asked softly. "It is always the
same: Work on! Seek not to know too much, nor think that what you do is
of vast value. Work, because it is yours to be adjusting the machinery in
your own little workshop of life to the wide mechanism of the universe
and time. One wheel set right, one flying belt adjusted, and there is a
step forward to the final harmony--ah, but how I preach!" he added
hastily.
His eyes were fixed on hers with a great sincerity, and they were clear
and shining, yet his lips were smiling--what a trick they had of smiling!
He looked as though he should apologise for such words in such a place.
She rose to her feet with a great suspiration, with a light in her eyes
and a trembling smile.
"But no, no, no, you inspire one. Thee inspires me," she said, with a
little laugh, in which there was a note of sadness. "I may use 'thee,'
may I not, when I will? I am a little a Quaker also, am I not? My people
came from Derbyshire, my American people, that is--and only forty years
ago. Almost thee persuades me to be a Quaker now," she added. "And
perhaps I shall be, too," she went on, her eyes fixed on the crowd
passing by, Eglington among them.
David saw Eglington also, and moved forward with her.
"We shall meet in Hamley," she said composedly, as she saw her husband
leave the crush and come towards her. As Eglington noticed David, a
curious enigmatical glance flashed from his eyes. He came forward,
however, with outstretched hand.
"I am sorry I was not at the Foreign Office when you called to-day.
Welcome back to England, home--and beauty." He laughed in a rather
mirthless way, but with a certain empressement, conscious, as he always
was, of the onlookers. "You have had a busy time in Egypt?" he continued
cheerfully, and laughed again.
David laughed slightly, also, and Hylda noticed that it had a certain
resemblance in its quick naturalness to that of her husband.
"I am not sure that we are so busy there as we ought to be," David
answered. "I have no real standards. I am but an amateur, and have known
nothing of public life. But you should come and see."
"It has been in my mind. An ounce of eyesight is worth a ton of print. My
lady was there once, I believe"--he turned towards her--"but before your
time, I think. Or did you meet there, perhaps?" He glanced at both
curiously. He scarcely knew why a thought flashed into his mind--as
though by some telepathic sense; for it had never been there before, and
there was no reason for its being there now.