IX. THE APPIAN WAY…

IX. THE APPIAN WAY

"Cape to Cairo be damned!"

The words were almost spat out. The man to whom they were addressed slowly drew himself up from a half-recumbent position in his desk-chair, from which he had been dreamily talking into the ceiling, as it were, while his visitor leaned against a row of bookshelves and beat the floor impatiently with his foot.

At the rude exclamation, Byng straightened himself, and looked fixedly at his visitor. He had been dreaming out loud again the dream which Rhodes had chanted in the ears of all those who shared with him the pioneer enterprises of South Africa. The outburst which had broken in on his monologue was so unexpected that for a moment he could scarcely realize the situation. It was not often, in these strenuous and perilous days--and for himself less often than ever before, so had London and London life worked upon him--that he, or those who shared with him the vast financial responsibilities of the Rand, indulged in dreams or prophecies; and he resented the contemptuous phrase just uttered, and the tone of the speaker even more.

Byng's blank amazement served only to incense his visitor further. "Yes, be damned to it, Byng!" he continued. "I'm sick of the British Empire and the All Red, and the 'immense future.' What I want is the present. It's about big enough for you and me and the rest of us. I want to hold our own in Johannesburg. I want to pull thirty-five millions a year out of the eighty miles of reef, and get enough native labour to do it. I want to run the Rand like a business concern, with Kruger gone to Holland; and Leyds gone to blazes. That's what I want to see, Mr. Invincible Rudyard Byng."

The reply to this tirade was deliberate and murderously bitter. "That's what you want to see, is it, Mr. Blasphemous Barry Whalen? Well, you can want it with a little less blither and a little more manners."

A hard and ugly look was now come into the big clean-shaven face which had become sleeker with good living, and yet had indefinably coarsened in the three years gone since the Jameson raid; and a gloomy anger looked out of the deep-blue eyes as he slowly went on:

"It doesn't matter what you want--not a great deal, if the others agree generally on what ought to be done; and I don't know that it matters much in any case. What have you come to see me about?"

"I know I'm not welcome here, Byng. It isn't the same as it used to be. It isn't--"

Byng jerked quickly to his feet and lunged forward as though he would do his visitor violence; but he got hold of himself in time, and, with a sudden and whimsical toss of the head, characteristic of him, he burst into a laugh.

"Well, I've been stung by a good many kinds of flies in my time, and I oughtn't to mind, I suppose," he growled.... "Oh, well, there," he broke off; "you say you're not welcome here? If you really feel that, you'd better try to see me at my chambers--or at the office in London Wall. It can't be pleasant inhaling air that chills or stifles you. You take my advice, Barry, and save yourself annoyance. But let me say in passing that you are as welcome here as anywhere, neither more nor less. You are as welcome as you were in the days when we trekked from the Veal to Pietersburg and on into Bechuanaland, and both slept in the cape-wagon under one blanket. I don't think any more of you than I did then, and I don't think any less, and I don't want to see you any more or any fewer. But, Barry"--his voice changed, grew warmer, kinder--" circumstances are circumstances. The daily lives of all of us are shaped differently--yours as well as mine--here in this pudding-faced civilization and in the iron conventions of London town; and we must adapt ourselves accordingly. We used to flop down on our Louis Quinze furniture on the Vaal with our muddy boots on--in our front drawing-room. We don't do it in Thamesfontein, my noble buccaneer--not even in Barry Whalen's mansion in Ladbroke Square, where Barry Whalen, Esq., puts his silk hat on the hall table, and-- and, 'If you please, sir, your bath is ready'! . . . Don't be an idiot-child, Barry, and don't spoil my best sentences when I let myself go. I don't do it often these days--not since Jameson spilt the milk and the can went trundling down the area. It's little time we get for dreaming, these sodden days, but it's only dreams that do the world's work and our own work in the end. It's dreams that do it, Barry; it's dreams that drive us on, that make us see beyond the present and the stupefying, deadening grind of the day. So it'll be Cape to Cairo in good time, dear lad, and no damnation, if you please.... Why, what's got into you? And again, what have you come to see me about, anyhow? You knew we were to meet at dinner at Wallstein's to-night. Is there anything that's skulking at our heels to hurt us?"

The scowl on Barry Whalen's dissipated face cleared a little. He came over, rested both hands on the table and leaned forward as he spoke, Byng resuming his seat meanwhile.

Barry's voice was a little thick with excitement, but he weighed his words too. "Byng, I wanted you to know beforehand what Fleming intends to bring up to-night--a nice kind of reunion, isn't it, with war ahead as sure as guns, and the danger of everything going to smash, in spite of Milner and Jo?"

A set look came into Byng's face. He caught the lapels of his big, loose, double-breasted jacket, and spread his feet a little, till he looked as though squaring himself to resist attack.

"Go on with your story," he interposed. "What is Fleming going to say--or bring up, you call it?"

"He's going to say that some one is betraying us--all we do that's of any importance and most we say that counts--to Kruger and Leyds. He's going to say that the traitor is some one inside our circle."

Byng started, and his hands clutched at the chairback, then he became quiet and watchful. "And whom does Fleming--or you--suspect?" he asked, with lowering eyelids and a slumbering malice in his eyes.

Barry straightened himself and looked Byng rather hesitatingly in the face; then he said, slowly:

"I don't know much about Fleming's suspicions. Mine, though, are at least three years old, and you know them.

"Krool?"

"Krool--for sure."

"What would be Krool's object in betraying us, even if he knew all we say and do?"

"Blood is thicker than water, Byng, and double pay to a poor man is a consideration."

"Krool would do nothing that injured me, Barry. I know men. What sort of thing has been given away to Brother Boer?"

Barry took from his pocket a paper and passed it over. Byng scanned it very carefully and slowly, and his face darkened as he read; for there were certain things set down of which only he and Wallstein and one or two others knew; which only he and one high in authority in England knew, besides Wallstein. His face slowly reddened with anger. London life, and its excitements multiplied by his wife and not avoided by himself, had worn on him, had affected his once sunny and even temper, had given him greater bulk, with a touch of flabbiness under the chin and at the neck, and had slackened the firmness of the muscles. Presently he got up, went over to a table, and helped himself to brandy and soda, motioning to Barry to do the same. There were two or three minutes' silence, and then he said:

"There's something wrong, certainly, but it isn't Krool. No, it isn't Krool."

"Nevertheless, if you're wise you'll ship him back beyond the Vaal, my friend."

"It isn't Krool. I'll stake my life on that. He's as true to me as I am to myself; and, anyhow, there are things in this Krool couldn't know." He tossed the paper into the fire and watched it burn.

He had talked over many, if not all, of these things with Jasmine, and with no one else; but Jasmine would not gossip. He had never known her to do so. Indeed, she had counselled extreme caution so often to himself that she would, in any case, be innocent of having babbled. But certainly there had been leakage--there had been leakage regarding most critical affairs. They were momentous enough to cause him to say reflectively now, as he watched the paper burn:

"You might as well carry dynamite in your pocket as that."

"You don't mind my coming to see you?" Barry asked, in an anxious tone.

He could not afford to antagonize Byng; in any case, his heart was against doing so; though, like an Irishman, he had risked everything by his maladroit and ill-mannered attack a little while ago.

"I wanted to warn you, so's you could be ready when Fleming jumped in," Barry continued.

"No; I'm much obliged, Barry," was Byng's reply, in a voice where trouble was well marked, however. "Wait a minute," he continued, as his visitor prepared to leave. "Go into the other room"--he pointed. "Glue your ear to the door first, then to the wall, and tell me if you can hear anything--any word I say."

Barry did as he was bidden. Presently Byng spoke in a tone rather louder than in ordinary conversation to an imaginary interlocutor for some minutes. Then Barry Whalen came back into the room.

"Well?" Byng asked. "Heard anything?"

"Not a word--scarcely a murmur."

"Quite so. The walls are thick, and those big mahogany doors fit like a glove. Nothing could leak through. Let's try the other door, leading into the hall." They went over to it. "You see, here's an inside baize-door as well. There's not room for a person to stand between the two. I'll go out now, and you stay. Talk fairly loud."

The test produced the same result.

"Maybe I talk in my sleep," remarked Byng, with a troubled, ironical laugh.

Suddenly there shot into Barry Whalen's mind a thought which startled him, which brought the colour to his face with a rush. For years he had suspected Krool, had considered him a danger. For years he had regarded Byng as culpable, for keeping as his servant one whom the Partners all believed to be a spy; but now another, a terrible thought came to him, too terrible to put into words--even in his own mind.

There were two other people besides Krool who were very close to Byng. There was Mrs. Byng for one; there was also Adrian Fellowes, who had been for a long time a kind of handy-man of the great house, doing the hundred things which only a private secretary, who was also a kind of master-of-ceremonies and lord-in-waiting, as it were, could do. Yes, there was Adrian Fellowes, the private secretary; and there was Mrs. Byng, who knew so much of what her husband knew! And the private secretary and the wife necessarily saw much of each other. What came to Barry's mind now stunned him, and he mumbled out some words of good-bye with an almost hang-dog look to his face; for he had a chivalrous heart and mind, and he was not prone to be malicious.

"We'll meet at eight, then?" said Byng, taking out his watch. "It's a quarter past seven now. Don't fuss, Barry. We'll nose out the spy, whoever he is, or wherever to be found. But we won't find him here, I think--not here, my friend."

Suddenly Barry Whalen turned at the door. "Oh, let's go back to the veld and the Rand!" he burst out, passionately. "This is no place for us, Byng--not for either of us. You are getting flabby, and I'm spoiling my temper and my manners. Let's get out of this infernal jack-pot. Let's go where we'll be in the thick of the broiling when it comes. You've got a political head, and you've done more than any one else could do to put things right and keep them right; but it's no good. Nothing'll be got except where the red runs. And the red will run, in spite of all Jo or Milner or you can do. And when it comes, you and I will be sick if we're not there--yes, even you with your millions, Byng."

With moist eyes Byng grasped the hand of the rough-hewn comrade of the veld, and shook it warmly.

"England has got on your nerves, Barry," he said, gently." But we're all right in London. The key-board of the big instrument is here."

"But the organ is out there, Byng, and it's the organ that makes the music, not the keys. We're all going to pieces here, every one of us. I see it. Herr Gott, I see it plain enough! We're in the wrong shop. We're not buying or selling; we're being sold. Baas--big Baas, let's go where there's room to sling a stone; where we can see what's going on round us; where there's the long sight and the strong sight; where you can sell or get sold in the open, not in the alleyways; where you can have a run for your money."

Byng smiled benevolently. Yet something was stirring his senses strangely. The smell of the karoo was in his nostrils. "You're not ending up as you began, Barry," he replied. "You started off like an Israelite on the make, and you're winding up like Moody and Sankey."

"Well, I'm right now in the wind-up. I'm no better, I'm no worse, than the rest of our fellows, but I'm Irish--I can see. The Celt can always see, even if he can't act. And I see dark days coming for this old land. England is wallowing. It's all guzzle and feed and finery, and nobody cares a copper about anything that matters--"

"About Cape to Cairo, eh?"

"Byng, that was one of my idiocies. But you think over what I say, just the same. I'm right. We're rotten cotton stuff now in these isles. We've got fatty degeneration of the heart, and in all the rest of the organs too."

Again Byng shook him by the hand warmly. "Well, Wallstein will give us a fat dinner to-night, and you can moralize with lime-light effects after the foie gras, Barry."

Closing the door slowly behind his friend, whom he had passed into the hands of the dark-browed Krool, Byng turned again to his desk. As he did so he caught sight of his face in the mirror over the mantel-piece. A shadow swept over it; his lips tightened.

"Barry was right," he murmured, scrutinizing himself. "I've degenerated. We've all degenerated. What's the matter, anyhow? What is the matter? I've got everything--everything--everything."

Hearing the door open behind him, he turned to see Jasmine in evening dress smiling at him. She held up a pink finger in reproof.

"Naughty boy," she said. "What's this I hear--that you have thrown me over--me--to go and dine with the Wallstein! It's nonsense! You can't go. Ian Stafford is coming to dine, as I told you."

His eyes beamed protectingly, affectionately, and yet, somehow, a little anxiously, on her "But I must go, Jasmine. It's the first time we've all been together since the Raid, and it's good we should be in the full circle once again. There's work to do--more than ever there was. There's a storm coming up on the veld, a real jagged lightning business, and men will get hurt, hosts beyond recovery. We must commune together, all of us. If there's the communion of saints, there's also the communion of sinners. Fleming is back, and Wolff is back, and Melville and Reuter and Hungerford are back, but only for a few days, and we all must meet and map things out. I forgot about the dinner. As soon as I remembered it I left a note on your dressing-table."

With sudden emotion he drew her to him, and buried his face in her soft golden hair. "My darling, my little jasmine-flower," he whispered, softly, "I hate leaving you, but--"

"But it's impossible, Ruddy, my man. How can I send Ian Stafford away? It's too late to put him off."

"There's no need to put him off or to send him away--such old friends as you are. Why shouldn't he dine with you a deux? I'm the only person that's got anything to say about that."

She expressed no surprise, she really felt none. He had forgotten that, coming up from Scotland, he had told her of this dinner with his friends, and at the moment she asked Ian Stafford to dine she had forgotten it also; but she remembered it immediately afterwards, and she had said nothing, done nothing.

As Byng spoke, however, a curious expression emerged from the far depths of her eyes--emerged, and was instantly gone again to the obscurity whence it came. She had foreseen that he would insist on Stafford dining with her; but, while showing no surprise--and no perplexity--there was a touch of demureness in her expression as she answered:

"I don't want to seem too conventional, but--"

"There should be a little latitude in all social rules," he rejoined. "What nonsense! You are prudish, Jasmine. Allow yourself some latitude."

"Latitude, not license," she returned. Having deftly laid on him the responsibility for this evening's episode, this excursion into the dangerous fields of past memory and sentiment and perjured faith, she closed the book of her own debit and credit with a smile of satisfaction.

"Let me look at you," he said, standing her off from him.

Holding her hand, he turned her round like a child to be inspected. "Well, you're a dream," he added, as she released herself and swept into a curtsey, coquetting with her eyes as she did so. "You're wonderful in blue--a flower in the azure," he added. "I seem to remember that gown before--years ago--"

She uttered an exclamation of horror. "Good gracious, you wild and ruthless ruffian! A gown--this gown--years ago! My bonny boy, do you think I wear my gowns for years?"

"I wear my suits for years. Some I've had seven years. I've got a frock-coat I bought for my brother Jim's wedding, ten years ago, and it looks all right--a little small now, but otherwise 'most as good as new."

"What a lamb, what a babe, you are, Ruddy! Like none that ever lived. Why, no woman wears her gowns two seasons, and some of them rather hate wearing them two times."

"Then what do they do with them--after the two times?"

"Well, for a while, perhaps, they keep them to look at and gloat over, if they like them; then, perhaps, they give them away to their poor cousins or their particular friends--"

"Their particular friends--?"

"Why, every woman has some friends poorer than herself who love her very much, and she is good to them. Or there's the Mart--"

"Wait. What's 'the Mart'?"

"The place where ladies can get rid of fine clothes at a wicked discount."

"And what becomes of them then?"

"They are bought by ladies less fortunate."

"Ladies who wear them?"

"Why, what else would they do? Wear them--of course, dear child."

Byng made a gesture of disgust. "Well, I call it sickening. To me there's something so personal and intimate about clothes. I think I could kill any woman that I saw wearing clothes of yours--of yours."

She laughed mockingly. "My beloved, you've seen them often enough, but you haven't known they were mine; that's all."

"I didn't recognize them, because no one could wear your clothes like you. It would be a caricature. That's a fact, Jasmine."

She reached up and swept his cheek with a kiss. "What a darling you are, little big man! Yet you never make very definite remarks about my clothes."

He put his hands on his hips and looked her up and down approvingly. "Because I only see a general effect, but I always remember colour. Tell me, have you ever sold your clothes to the Mart, or whatever the miserable coffin-shop is called?"

"Well, not directly."

"What do you mean by 'not directly'?"

"Well, I didn't sell them, but they were sold for me." She hesitated, then went on hurriedly. "Adrian Fellowes knew of a very sad case--a girl in the opera who had had misfortune, illness, and bad luck; and he suggested it. He said he didn't like to ask for a cheque, because we were always giving, but selling my old wardrobe would be a sort of lucky find--that's what he called it."

Byng nodded, with a half-frown, however. "That was ingenious of Fellowes, and thoughtful, too. Now, what does a gown cost, one like that you have on?"

"This--let me see. Why, fifty pounds, perhaps. It's not a ball gown, of course."

He laughed mockingly. "Why, 'of course,' And what does a ball gown cost--perhaps?" There was a cynical kind of humour in his eye.

"Anything from fifty to a hundred and fifty--maybe," she replied, with a little burst of merriment.

"And how much did you get for the garments you had worn twice, and then seen them suddenly grow aged in their extreme youth?"

"Ruddy, do not be nasty--or scornful. I've always worn my gowns more than twice--some of them a great many times, except when I detested them. And anyhow, the premature death of a gown is very, very good for trade. That influences many ladies, of course."

He burst out laughing, but there was a satirical note in the gaiety, or something still harsher.

"'We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,'" he answered. "It's all such a hollow make-believe."

"What is?"

She gazed at him inquiringly, for this mood was new to her. She was vaguely conscious of some sort of change in him--not exactly toward her, but a change, nevertheless.

"The life we rich people lead is a hollow make-believe, Jasmine," he said, with sudden earnestness. "I don't know what's the matter, but we're not getting out of life all we ought to get; and we're not putting into it all we ought to put in. There's a sense of emptiness--of famine somewhere."

He caught the reflection of his face in the glass again, and his brow contracted. "We get sordid and sodden, and we lose the proportions of life. I wanted Dick Wilberforce to do something with me the other day, and he declined. 'Why, my dear fellow,' I said, 'you know you want to do it?' 'Of course I do,' he answered, 'but I can't afford that kind of thing, and you know it.' Well, I did know it, but I had forgotten. I was only thinking of what I myself could afford to do. I was setting up my own financial standard, and was forgetting the other fellows who hadn't my standard. What's the result? We drift apart, Wilberforce and I--well, I mean Wilberforce as a type. We drift into sets of people who can afford to do certain things, and we leave such a lot of people behind that we ought to have clung to, and that we would have clung to, if we hadn't been so much thinking of ourselves, or been so soddenly selfish."

A rippling laugh rang through the room. "Boanerges--oh, Boanerges Byng! 'Owever can you be so heloquent!"

Jasmine put both hands on his shoulders and looked up at him with that look which had fascinated him--and so many others--in their day. The perfume which had intoxicated him in the first days of his love of her, and steeped his senses in the sap of youth and Eden, smote them again, here on the verge of the desert before him. He suddenly caught her in his arms and pressed her to him almost roughly.

"You exquisite siren--you siren of all time," he said, with a note of joy in which there was, too, a stark cry of the soul. He held her face back from him.... "If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers, Jasmine. Perhaps you did--who knows! And now you come down through the centuries purified by Time, to be my jasmine-flower."

His lip trembled a little. There was a strange melancholy in his eyes, belying the passion and rapture of his words.

In all their days together she had never seen him in this mood. She had heard him storm about things at times, had watched his big impulses working; had drawn the thunder from his clouds; but there was something moving in him now which she had never seen before. Perhaps it was only a passing phase, even a moment's mood, but it made a strange impression on her. It was remembered by them both long after, when life had scattered its vicissitudes before their stumbling feet and they had passed through flood and fire.

She drew back and looked at him steadily, reflectively, and with an element of surprise in her searching look. She had never thought him gifted with perception or insight, though he had eloquence and an eye for broad effects. She had thought him curiously ignorant of human nature, born to be deceived, full of child-like illusions, never understanding the real facts of life, save in the way of business--and politics. Women he never seemed by a single phrase or word to understand, and yet now he startled her with a sudden revelation and insight of which she had not thought him capable.

"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers. Perhaps you did--who knows! . . . And now you come down through the centuries purified by Time--"

The words slowly repeated themselves in her brain. Many and many a time she had imagined herself as having lived centuries ago, and again and again in her sleep these imaginings had reflected themselves in wild dreams of her far past--once as a priestess of Isis, once as a Slavonian queen, once as a peasant in Syria, and many times as a courtezan of Alexandria or Athens--many times as that: one of the gifted, beautiful, wonderful women whose houses were the centres of culture, influence, and power. She had imagined herself, against her will, as one of these women, such as Cleopatra, for whom the world were well lost; and who, at last, having squeezed the orange dry, but while yet the sun was coming towards noon, in scorn of Life and Time had left the precincts of the cheerful day without a lingering look.... Often and often such dreams, to her anger and confusion, had haunted her, even before she was married; and she had been alternately humiliated and fascinated by them. Years ago she had told Ian Stafford of one of the dreams of a past life--that she was a slave in Athens who saved her people by singing to the Tyrant; and Ian had made her sing to him, in a voice quite in keeping with her personality, delicate and fine and wonderfully high in its range, bird-like in its quality, with trills like a lark--a little meretricious but captivating. He had also written for her two verses which were as sharp and clear in her mind as the letter he wrote when she had thrown him over so dishonourably:

"Your voice I knew, its cadences and trill; It stilled the tumult and the overthrow When Athens trembled to the people's will; I knew it--'twas a thousand years ago.

"I see the fountains, and the gardens where You sang the fury from the Satrap's brow; I feel the quiver of the raptured air I heard you in the Athenian grove--I hear you now."

As the words flashed into her mind now she looked at her husband steadfastly. Were there, then, some unexplored regions in his nature, where things dwelt, of which she had no glimmering of knowledge? Did he understand more of women than she thought? Could she then really talk to him of a thousand things of the mind which she had ever ruled out of any commerce between them, one half of her being never opened up to his sight? Not that he was deficient in intellect, but, to her thought, his was a purely objective mind; or was it objective because it had not been trained or developed subjectively? Had she ever really tried to find a region in his big nature where the fine allusiveness and subjectivity of the human mind could have free life and untrammelled exercise, could gambol in green fields of imagination and adventure upon strange seas of discovery? A shiver of pain, of remorse, went through her frame now, as he held her at arm's length and looked at her.... Had she started right? Had she ever given their natures a chance to discover each other? Warmth and passion and youth and excitement and variety--oh, infinite variety there had been!--but had the start been a fair one, had she, with a whole mind and a full soul of desire, gone to him first and last? What had been the governing influence in their marriage where she was concerned?

Three years of constant motion, and never an hour's peace; three years of agitated waters, and never in all that time three days alone together. What was there to show for the three years? That for which he had longed with a great longing had been denied him; for he had come of a large family, and had the simple primitive mind and heart. Even in his faults he had ever been primitively simple and obvious. She had been energetic, helping great charities, aiding in philanthropic enterprises, with more than a little shrewdness preventing him from being robbed right and left by adventurers of all descriptions; and yet--and yet it was all so general, so soulless, her activity in good causes. Was there a single afflicted person, one forlorn soul whom she had directly and personally helped, or sheltered from the storm for a moment, one bereaved being whose eyes she had dried by her own direct personal sympathy?

Was it this which had been more or less vaguely working in his mind a little while before when she had noticed a change in him; or was it that he was disappointed that they were two and no more--always two, and no more? Was it that which was working in his mind, and making him say hard things about their own two commendable selves?

"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers.... And now you come down through the centuries purlfied by Time, to be my jasmine-flower"--

She did not break the silence for some time, but at last she said: "And what were you a thousand years ago, my man?"

He drew a hot hand across a troubled brow. "I? I was the Satrap whose fury you soothed away, or I was the Antony you lured from fighting Caesar."

It was as though he had read those lines written by Ian Stafford long ago.

Again that perfume of hers caught his senses, and his look softened wonderfully. A certain unconscious but underlying discontent appeared to vanish from his eyes, and he said, abruptly: "I have it--I have it. This dress is like the one you wore the first night that we met. It's the same kind of stuff, it's just the same colour and the same style. Why, I see it all as plain as can be--there at the opera. And you wore blue the day I tried to propose to you and couldn't, and asked you down to Wales instead. Lord, how I funked it!" He laughed, happily almost. "Yes, you wore blue the first time we met--like this."

"It was the same skirt, and a different bodice, of course both those first times," she answered. Then she stepped back and daintily smoothed out the gown she was wearing, smiling at him as she did that day three years ago. She had put on this particular gown, remembering that Ian Stafford had said charming things about that other blue gown just before he bade her good-bye three years ago. That was why she wore blue this night--to recall to Ian what it appeared he had forgotten. And presently she would dine alone with Ian in her husband's house--and with her husband's blessing. Pique and pride were in her heart, and she meant Ian Stafford to remember. No man was adamantine; at least she had never met one--not one, neither bishop nor octogenarian.

"Come, Ruddy, you must dress, or you'll be late," she continued, lightly, touching his cheek with her fingers; "and you'll come down and apologize, and put me right with Ian Stafford, won't you?"

"Certainly. I won't be five minutes. I'll--"

There was a tap at the door and a footman, entering, announced that Mr. Stafford was in the drawing-room.

"Show him into my sitting-room," she said. "The drawing-room, indeed," she added to her husband--"it is so big, and I am so small. I feel sometimes as though I wanted to live in a tiny, tiny house."

Her words brought a strange light to his eyes. Suddenly he caught her arm.

"Jasmine," he said, hurriedly, "let us have a good talk over things--over everything. I want to see if we can't get more out of life than we do. There's something wrong. What is it? I don't know; but perhaps we could find out if we put our heads together--eh?" There was a strange, troubled longing in his look.

She nodded and smiled. "Certainly--to-night when you get back," she said. "We'll open the machine and find what's wrong with it." She laughed, and so did he.

As she went down the staircase she mused to herself and there was a shadow in her eyes and over her face.

"Poor Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said.

Once again before she entered the sitting-room, as she turned and looked back, she said:

"Poor boy . . . Yet he knew about a thousand years ago!" she added with a nervous little laugh, and with an air of sprightly eagerness she entered to Ian Stafford.

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X. AN ARROW FINDS A BREAST

As he entered the new sphere of Jasmine's influence, charm, and existence, Ian Stafford's mind became flooded by new impressions. He was not easily moved by vastness or splendour. His ducal grandfather's houses were palaces, the estates were a fair slice of two counties, and many of his relatives had sumptuous homes stored with priceless legacies of art. He had approached the great house which Byng had built for himself with some trepidation; for though Byng came of people whose names counted for a good deal in the north of England, still, in newly acquired fortunes made suddenly in new lands there was something that coarsened taste--an unmodulated, if not a garish, elegance which "hit you in the eye," as he had put it to himself. He asked himself why Byng had not been content to buy one of the great mansions which could always be had in London for a price, where time had softened all the outlines, had given that subdued harmony in architecture which only belongs to age. Byng could not buy with any money those wonderful Adam's mantels, over-mantels and ceilings which had a glory quite their own. There must, therefore, be an air of newness in the new mansion, which was too much in keeping with the new money, the gold as yet not worn smooth by handling, the staring, brand-new sovereigns looking like impostors.

As he came upon the great house, however, in the soft light of evening, he was conscious of no violence done to his artistic sense. It was a big building, severely simple in design, yet with the rich grace, spacious solidity, and decorative relief of an Italian palace: compact, generous, traditionally genuine and wonderfully proportionate.

"Egad, Byng, you had a good architect--and good sense!" he said to himself. "It's the real thing; and he did it before Jasmine came on the scene too."

The outside of the house was Byng's, but the inside would, in the essentials, of course, be hers; and he would see what he would see.

When the door opened, it came to him instantly that the inside and outside were in harmony. How complete was that harmony remained to be seen, but an apparently unstudied and delightful reticence was noticeable at once. The newness had been rubbed off the gold somehow, and the old furniture--Italian, Spanish--which relieved the spaciousness of the entrance gave an air of Time and Time's eloquence to this three-year-old product of modern architectural skill.

As he passed on, he had more than a glimpse of the ball-room, which maintained the dignity and the refined beauty of the staircase and the hallways; and only in the insistent audacity and intemperate colouring of some Rubens pictures did he find anything of that inherent tendency to exaggeration and Oriental magnificence behind the really delicate artistic faculties possessed by Jasmine.

The drawing-room was charming. It was not quite perfect, however. It was too manifestly and studiously arranged, and it had the finnicking exactness of the favourite gallery of some connoisseur. For its nobility of form, its deft and wise softness of colouring, its half-smothered Italian joyousness of design in ceiling and cornice, the arrangement of choice and exquisite furniture was too careful, too much like the stage. He smiled at the sight of it, for he saw and knew that Jasmine had had his playful criticism of her occasionally flamboyant taste in mind, and that she had over-revised, as it were. She had, like a literary artist, polished and refined and stippled the effect, till something of personal touch had gone, and there remained classic elegance without the sting of life and the idiosyncrasy of its creator's imperfections. No, the drawing-room would not quite do, though it was near the perfect thing. His judgment was not yet complete, however. When he was shown into Jasmine's sitting-room his breath came a little quicker, for here would be the real test; and curiosity was stirring greatly in him.

Yes, here was the woman herself, wilful, original, delightful, with a flower-like delicacy joined to a determined and gorgeous audacity. Luxury was heaped on luxury, in soft lights from Indian lamps and lanterns, in the great divan, the deep lounge, the piled-up cushions, the piano littered with incongruous if artistic bijouterie; but everywhere, everywhere, books in those appealing bindings and with that paper so dear to every lover of literature. Instinctively he picked them up one by one, and most of them were affectionately marked by marginal notes of criticism, approval, or reference; and all showing the eager, ardent mind of one who loved books. He noticed, however, that most of the books he had seen before, and some of them he had read with her in the days which were gone forever. Indeed, in one of them he found some of his own pencilled marginal notes, beneath which she had written her insistent opinions, sometimes with amazing point. There were few new books, and they were mostly novels; and it was borne in on him that not many of these annotated books belonged to the past three years. The millions had come, the power and the place; but something had gone with their coming.

He was turning over the pages of a volume of Browning when she entered; and she had an instant to note the grace and manly dignity of his figure, the poise of the intellectual head--the type of a perfect, well-bred animal, with the accomplishment of a man of purpose and executive design. A little frown of trouble came to her forehead, but she drove it away with a merry laugh, as he turned at the rustle of her skirts and came forward.

He noted her blue dress, he guessed the reason she had put it on; and he made an inward comment of scorn. It was the same blue, and it was near the same style of the dress she wore the last time he saw her. She watched to see whether it made any impression on him, and was piqued to observe that he who had in that far past always swept her with an admiring, discriminating, and deferential glance, now only gave her deference of a courteous but perfunctory kind. It made the note to all she said and did that evening--the daring, the brilliance, the light allusion to past scenes and happenings, the skilful comment on the present, the joyous dominance of a position made supreme by beauty and by gold; behind which were anger and bitterness, and wild and desperate revolt.

For, if love was dead in him, and respect, and all that makes man's association with woman worth while, humiliation and the sting of punishment and penalty were alive in her, flaying her spirit, rousing that mad streak which was in her grandfather, who had had many a combat, the outcome of wild elements of passion in him. She was not happy; she had never been happy since she married Rudyard Byng; yet she had said to herself so often that she might have been at peace, in a sense, had it not been for the letter which Ian Stafford had written her, when she turned from him to the man she married.

The passionate resolve to compel him to reproach himself in soul for his merciless, if subtle, indictment of her to bring him to the old place where he had knelt in spirit so long ago--ah, it was so long!--came to her. Self-indulgent and pitifully mean as she had been, still this man had influenced her more than any other in the world--in that region where the best of herself lay, the place to which her eyes had turned always when she wanted a consoling hour. He belonged to her realm of the imagination, of thought, of insight, of intellectual passions and the desires of the soul. Far above any physical attraction Ian had ever possessed for her was the deep conviction that he gave her mind what no one else gave it, that he was the being who knew the song her spirit sang.... He should not go forever from her and with so cynical a completeness. He should return; he should not triumph in his self-righteousness, be a living reproach to her always by his careless indifference to everything that had ever been between them. If he treated her so because of what she had done to him, with what savagery might not she be treated, if all that had happened in the last three years were open as a book before him!

Her husband--she had not thought of that. So much had happened in the past three years; there had been so much adulation and worship and daring assault upon her heart--or emotions--from quarters of unusual distinction, that the finest sense of her was blunted, and true proportions were lost. Rudyard ought never to have made that five months' visit to South Africa a year before, leaving her alone to make the fight against the forces round her. Those five months had brought a change in her, had made her indignant at times against Rudyard.

"Why did he go to South Africa? Why did he not take me with him? Why did he leave me here alone?" she had asked herself. She did not realize that there would have been no fighting at all, that all the forces contending against her purity and devotion would never have gathered at her feet and washed against the shores of her resolution, if she had loved Rudyard Byng when she married him as she might have loved him, ought to have loved him.

The faithful love unconsciously announces its fidelity, and men instinctively are aware of it, and leave it unassailed. It is the imperfect love which subtly invites the siege, which makes the call upon human interest, selfishness, or sympathy, so often without intended unscrupulousness at first. She had escaped the suspicion, if not the censure, of the world--or so she thought; and in the main she was right. But she was now embarked on an enterprise which never would have been begun, if she had not gambled with her heart and soul three years ago; if she had not dragged away the veil from her inner self, putting her at the mercy of one who could say, "I know you--what you are."

Just before they went to the dining-room Byng came in and cheerily greeted Stafford, apologizing for having forgotten his engagement to dine with Wallstein.

"But you and Jasmine will have much to talk about," he said--"such old friends as you are; and fond of books and art and music and all that kind of thing.... Glad to see you looking so well, Stafford," he continued. "They say you are the coming man. Well, au revoir. I hope Jasmine will give you a good dinner." Presently he was gone--in a heavy movement of good-nature and magnanimity.

"Changed--greatly changed, and not for the better," said Ian Stafford to himself." This life has told on him. The bronze of the veld has vanished, and other things are disappearing."

At the table with the lights and the flowers and the exquisite appointments, with appetite flattered and tempted by a dinner of rare simplicity and perfect cooking, Jasmine was radiant, amusing, and stimulating in her old way. She had never seemed to him so much a mistress of delicate satire and allusiveness. He rose to the combat with an alacrity made more agile by considerable abstinence, for clever women were few, and real talk was the rarest occurrence in his life, save with men in his own profession chiefly.

But later, in her sitting-room, after the coffee had come, there was a change, and the transition was made with much skill and sensitiveness. Into Jasmine's voice there came another and more reflective note, and the drift of the conversation changed. Books brought the new current; and soon she had him moving almost unconsciously among old scenes, recalling old contests of ideas, and venturing on bold reproductions of past intellectual ideals. But though they were in this dangerous field of the past, he did not once betray a sign of feeling, not even when, poring over Coventry Patmore's poems, her hand touched his, and she read the lines which they had read together so long ago, with no thought of any significance to themselves:

"With all my will, but much against my heart, We two now part. My very Dear, Our solace is the sad road lies so clear. . . Go thou to East, I West. We will not say There's any hope, it is so far away. . ."

He read the verses with a smile of quiet enjoyment, saying, when he had finished:

"A really moving and intimate piece of work. I wonder what their story was--a hopeless love, of course. An affaire--an 'episode'--London ladies now call such things."

"You find London has changed much since you went away--in three years only?" she asked.

"Three years--why, it's an eternity, or a minute, as you are obliged to live it. In penal servitude it is centuries, in the Appian Way of pleasure it is a sunrise moment. Actual time has nothing to do with the clock."

She looked up to the little gold-lacquered clock on the mantel-piece. "See, it is going to strike," she said. As she spoke, the little silver hammer softly struck. "That is the clock-time, but what time is it really--for you, for instance?"

"In Elysium there is no time," he murmured with a gallantry so intentionally obvious and artificial that her pulses beat with anger.

"It is wonderful, then, how you managed the dinner-hour so exactly. You did not miss it by a fraction."

"It is only when you enter Elysium that there is no time. It was eight o'clock when I arrived--by the world's time. Since then I have been dead to time--and the world."

"You do not suggest that you are in heaven?" she asked, ironically.

"Nothing so extreme as that. All extremes are violent."

"Ah, the middle place--then you are in purgatory?"

"But what should you be doing in purgatory? Or have you only come with a drop of water to cool the tongue of Dives?" His voice trailed along so coolly that it incensed her further.

"Certainly Dives' tongue is blistering," she said with great effort to still the raging tumult within her. "Yet I would not cool it if I could."

Suddenly the anger seemed to die out of her, and she looked at him as she did in the days before Rudyard Byng came across her path--eagerly, childishly, eloquently, inquiringly. He was the one man who satisfied the intellectual and temperamental side of her; and he had taught her more than any one else in the world. She realized that she had "Tossed him violently like a ball into a far country," and that she had not now a vestige of power over him--either of his senses or his mind; that he was master of the situation. But was it so that there was a man whose senses could not be touched when all else failed? She was very woman, eager for the power which she had lost, and power was hard to get--by what devious ways had she travelled to find it!

As they leaned over a book of coloured prints of Gainsborough, Romney, and Vandyke, her soft, warm breast touched his arm and shoulder, a strand of her cobweb, golden hair swept his cheek, and a sigh came from her lips, so like those of that lass who caught and held her Nelson to the end, and died at last in poverty, friendless, homeless, and alone. Did he fancy that he heard a word breathing through her sigh--his name, Ian? For one instant the wild, cynical desire came over him to turn and clasp her in his arms, to press those lips which never but once he had kissed, and that was when she had plighted her secret troth to him, and had broken it for three million pounds. Why not? She was a woman, she was beautiful, she was a siren who had lured him and used him and tossed him by. Why not? All her art was now used, the art of the born coquette which had been exquisitely cultivated since she was a child, to bring him back to her feet--to the feet of the wife of Rudyard Byng. Why not? For an instant he had the dark impulse to treat her as she deserved, and take a kiss "as long as my exile, as sweet as my revenge"; but then the bitter memory came that this was the woman to whom he had given the best of which he was capable and the promise of that other best which time and love and life truly lived might accomplish; and the wild thing died in him.

The fever fled, and his senses became as cold as the statue of Andromeda on the pedestal at his hand. He looked at her. He did not for the moment realize that she was in reality only a girl, a child in so much; wilful, capricious, unregulated in some ways, with the hereditary taint of a distorted moral sense, and yet able, intuitive and wise, in so many aspects of life and conversation. Looking, he determined that she should never have that absolution which any outward or inward renewal of devotion would give her. Scorn was too deep--that arrogant, cruel, adventitious attribute of the sinner who has not committed the same sin as the person he despises--

"Sweet is the refuge of scorn."

His scorn was too sweet; and for the relish of it on his tongue, the price must be paid one way or another. The sin of broken faith she had sinned had been the fruit of a great temptation, meaning more to a woman, a hundred times, than to a man. For a man there is always present the chance of winning a vast fortune and the power that it brings; but it can seldom come to a woman except through marriage. It ill became him to be self-righteous, for his life had not been impeccable--

"The shaft of slander shot Missed only the right blot!"

Something of this came to him suddenly now as she drew away from him with a sense of humiliation, and a tear came unbidden to her eye.

She wiped the tear away, hastily, as there came a slight tapping at the door, and Krool entered, his glance enveloping them both in one lightning survey--like the instinct of the dweller in wild places of the earth, who feels danger where all is most quiet, and ever scans the veld or bush with the involuntary vigilance belonging to the life. His look rested on Jasmine for a moment before he spoke, and Stafford inwardly observed that here was an enemy to the young wife whose hatred was deep. He was conscious, too, that Jasmine realized the antipathy. Indeed, she had done so from the first days she had seen Krool, and had endeavoured, without success, to induce Byng to send the man back to South Africa, and to leave him there last year when he went again to Johannesburg. It was the only thing in which Byng had proved invulnerable, and Krool had remained a menace which she vaguely felt and tried to conquer, which, in vain, Adrian Fellowes had endeavoured to remove. For in the years in which Fellowes had been Byng's secretary his relations with Krool seemed amiable and he had made light of Jasmine's prejudices.

"The butler is out and they come me," Krool said. "Mr. Stafford's servant is here. There is a girl for to see him, if he will let. The boy, Jigger, his name. Something happens."

Stafford frowned, then turned to Jasmine. He told her who Jigger was, and of the incident the day before, adding that he had no idea of the reason for the visit; but it must be important, or nothing would have induced his servant to fetch the girl.

"I will come," he said to Krool, but Jasmine's curiosity was roused.

"Won't you see her here?" she asked.

Stafford nodded assent, and presently Krool showed the girl into the room.

For an instant she stood embarrassed and confused, then she addressed herself to Stafford. "I'm Lou--Jigger's sister," she said, with white lips. "I come to ask if you'd go to him. 'E's been hurt bad--knocked down by a fire-engine, and the doctor says 'e can't live. 'E made yer a promise, and 'e wanted me to tell yer that 'e meant to keep it; but if so be as you'd come, and wouldn't mind a-comin', 'e'd tell yer himself. 'E made that free becos 'e had brekfis wiv ye. 'E's all right--the best as ever--the top best." Suddenly the tears flooded her eyes and streamed down her pale cheeks. "Oh, 'e was the best--my Gawd, 'e was the best! If it 'd make 'im die happy, you'd come, y'r gryce, wouldn't y'r?"

Child of the slums as she was, she was exceedingly comely and was simply and respectably dressed. Her eyes were big and brown like Stafford's; her face was a delicate oval, and her hair was a deep black, waving freely over a strong, broad forehead. It was her speech that betrayed her; otherwise she was little like the flower-girl that Adrian Fellowes had introduced to Al'mah, who had got her a place in the chorus of the opera and had also given her personal care and friendly help.

"Where is he? In the hospital?" Stafford asked.

"It was just beside our own 'ome it 'appened. We got two rooms now, Jigger and me. 'E was took in there. The doctor come, but 'e says it ain't no use. 'E didn't seem to care much, and 'e didn't give no 'ope, not even when I said I'd give him all me wages for a year."

Jasmine was beside her now, wiping her tears and holding her hand, her impulsive nature stirred, her heart throbbing with desire to help. Suddenly she remembered what Rudyard had said up-stairs three hours ago, that there wasn't a single person in the world to whom they had done an act which was truly and purely personal during the past three years: and she had a tremulous desire to help this crude, mothering, passionately pitiful girl.

"What will you do?" Jasmine said to Stafford.

"I will go at once. Tell my servant to have up a cab," he said to Krool, who stood outside the door.

"Truly, 'e will be glad," the girl exclaimed. "'E told me about the suvring, and Sunday-week for brekfis," she murmured. "You'll never miss the time, y'r gryce. Gawd knows you'll not miss it--an' 'e ain't got much left."

"I will go, too--if you will let me," said Jasmine to Stafford. "You must let me go. I want to help--so much."

"No, you must not come," he replied. "I will pick up a surgeon in Harley Street, and we'll see if it is as hopeless as she says. But you must not come to-night. To-morrow, certainly, to-morrow, if you will. Perhaps you can do some good then. I will let you know."

He held out his hand to say good-bye, as the girl passed out with Jasmine's kiss on her cheek and a comforting assurance of help.

Jasmine did not press her request. First there was the fact that Rudyard did not know, and might strongly disapprove; and secondly, somehow, she had got nearer to Stafford in the last few minutes than in all the previous hours since they had met again. Nowhere, by all her art, had she herself touched him, or opened up in his nature one tiny stream of feeling; but this girl's story and this piteous incident had softened him, had broken down the barriers which had checked and baffled her. There was something almost gentle in his smile as he said good-bye, and she thought she detected warmth in the clasp of his hand.

Left alone, she sat in the silence, pondering as she had not pondered in the past three years. These few days in town, out of the season, were sandwiched between social functions from which their lives were never free. They had ever passed from event to event like minor royalties with endless little ceremonies and hospitalities; and there had been so little time to meditate--had there even been the wish?

The house was very still, and the far-off, muffled rumble of omnibuses and cabs gave a background of dignity to this interior peace and luxurious quiet. For long she sat unmoving--nearly two hours--alone with her inmost thoughts. Then she went to the little piano in the corner where stood the statue of Andromeda, and began to play softly. Her fingers crept over the keys, playing snatches of things she knew years before, improvising soft, passionate little movements. She took no note of time. At last the clock struck twelve, and still she sat there playing. Then she began to sing a song which Alice Tynemouth had written and set to music two years before. It was simply yet passionately written, and the wail of anguished disappointment, of wasted chances was in it--

"Once in the twilight of the Austrian hills, A word came to me, beautiful and good; If I had spoken it, that message of the stars, Love would have filled thy blood: Love would have sent thee pulsing to my arms, Thy heart a nestling bird; A moment fled--it passed: I seek in vain For that forgotten word."

In the last notes the voice rose in passionate pain, and died away into an aching silence.

She leaned her arms on the piano in front of her and laid her forehead on them.

"When will it all end--what will become of me!" she cried in pain that strangled her heart. "I am so bad--so bad. I was doomed from the beginning. I always felt it so--always, even when things were brightest. I am the child of black Destiny. For me--there is nothing, nothing, for me. The straight path was before me, and I would not walk in it."

With a gesture of despair, and a sudden faintness, she got up and went over to the tray of spirits and liqueurs which had been brought in with the coffee. Pouring out a liqueur-glass of brandy, she was about to drink it, when her ear became attracted by a noise without, a curious stumbling, shuffling sound. She put down the glass, went to the door that opened into the hall, and looked out and down. One light was still burning below, and she could see distinctly. A man was clumsily, heavily, ascending the staircase, holding on to the balustrade. He was singing to himself, breaking into the maudlin harmony with an occasional laugh--

"For this is the way we do it on the veld, When the band begins to play; With one bottle on the table and one below the belt, When the band begins to play--"

It was Rudyard, and he was drunk--almost helplessly drunk.

A cry of pain rose to her lips, but her trembling hand stopped it. With a shudder she turned back to her sitting-room. Throwing herself on the divan where she had sat with Ian Stafford, she buried her face in her arms. The hours went by.

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XI. IN WALES, WHERE JIGGER PLAYS HIS PART

"Really, the unnecessary violence with which people take their own lives, or the lives of others, is amazing. They did it better in olden days in Italy and the East. No waste or anything--all scientifically measured."

With a confident and satisfied smile Mr. Mappin, the celebrated surgeon, looked round the little group of which he was the centre at Glencader, Rudyard Byng's castle in Wales.

Rudyard blinked at him for a moment with ironical amusement, then remarked: "When you want to die, does it matter much whether you kill yourself with a bludgeon or a pin, take gas from a tap or cyanide of potassium, jump in front of a railway train or use the revolting razor? You are dead neither less nor more, and the shock to the world is the same. It's only the housemaid or the undertaker that notices any difference. I knew a man at Vleifontein who killed himself by jumping into the machinery of a mill. It gave a lot of trouble to all concerned. That was what he wanted--to end his own life and exasperate the foreman."

"Rudyard, what a horrible tale!" exclaimed his wife, turning again to the surgeon, eagerly. "It is most interesting, and I see what you mean. It is, that if we only really knew, we could take our own lives or other people's with such ease and skill that it would be hard to detect it?"

The surgeon nodded. "Exactly, Mrs. Byng. I don't say that the expert couldn't find what the cause of death was, if suspicion was aroused; but it could be managed so that 'heart failure' or some such silly verdict would be given, because there was no sign of violence, or of injury artificially inflicted."

"It is fortunate the world doesn't know these ways to euthanasia," interposed Stafford. "I fancy that murders would be more numerous than suicides, however. Suicide enthusiasts would still pursue their melodramatic indulgences--disfiguring themselves unnecessarily."

Adrian Fellowes, the amiable, ever-present secretary and "chamberlain" of Rudyard's household, as Jasmine teasingly called him, whose handsome, unintellectual face had lighted with amusement at the conversation, now interposed. "Couldn't you give us some idea how it can be done, this smooth passage of the Styx?" he asked. "We'll promise not to use it."

The surgeon looked round the little group reflectively. His eyes passed from Adrian to Jasmine, who stood beside him, to Byng, and to Ian Stafford, and stimulated by their interest, he gave a pleased smile of gratified vanity. He was young, and had only within the past three years got to the top of the tree at a bound, by a certain successful operation in royal circles.

Drawing out of his pocket a small case, he took from it a needle and held it up. "Now that doesn't look very dangerous, does it?" he asked. "Yet a firm pressure of its point could take a life, and there would be little possibility of finding how the ghastly trick was done except by the aroused expert."

"If you will allow me," he said, taking Jasmine's hand and poising the needle above her palm. "Now, one tiny thrust of this steel point, which has been dipped in a certain acid, would kill Mrs. Byng as surely as though she had been shot through the heart. Yet it would leave scarcely the faintest sign. No blood, no wound, just a tiny pin-prick, as it were; and who would be the wiser? Imagine an average coroner's jury and the average examination of the village doctor, who would die rather than expose his ignorance, and therefore gives 'heart failure' as the cause of death."

Jasmine withdrew her hand with a shudder. "Please, I don't like being so near the point," she said.

"Woman-like," interjected Byng ironically.

"How does it happen you carry this murdering asp about with you, Mr. Mappin?" asked Stafford.

The surgeon smiled. "For an experiment to-morrow. Don't start. I have a favorite collie which must die. I am testing the poison with the minimum. If it kills the dog it will kill two men."

He was about to put the needle back into the case when Adrian Fellowes held out a hand for it. "Let me look at it," he said. Turning the needle over in his palm, he examined it carefully. "So near and yet so far," he remarked. "There are a good many people who would pay a high price for the little risk and the dead certainty. You wouldn't, perhaps, tell us what the poison is, Mr. Mappin? We are all very reliable people here, who have no enemies, and who want to keep their friends alive. We should then be a little syndicate of five, holding a great secret, and saving numberless lives every day by not giving the thing away. We should all be entitled to monuments in Parliament Square."

The surgeon restored the needle to the case. "I think one monument will be sufficient," he said. "Immortality by syndicate is too modern, and this is an ancient art." He tapped the case." Turkey and the Mongol lands have kept the old cult going. In England, it's only for the dog!" He laughed freely but noiselessly at his own joke.

This talk had followed the news brought by Krool to the Baas, that the sub-manager of the great mine, whose chimneys could be seen from the hill behind the house, had thrown himself down the shaft and been smashed to a pulp. None of them except Byng had known him, and the dark news had brought no personal shock.

They had all gathered in the library, after paying an afternoon visit to Jigger, who had been brought down from London in a special carriage, and was housed near the servants' quarters with a nurse. On the night of Jigger's accident Ian Stafford on his way from Jasmine's house had caught Mr. Mappin, and the surgeon had operated at once, saving the lad's life. As it was necessary to move him in any case, it was almost as easy, and no more dangerous, to bring him to Glencader than to take him to a London hospital.

Under the surgeon's instructions Jasmine had arranged it all, and Jigger had travelled like royalty from Paddington into Wales, and there had captured the household, as he had captured Stafford at breakfast in St. James's Street.

Thinking that perhaps this was only a whim of Jasmine's, and merely done because it gave a new interest to a restless temperament, Stafford had at first rejected the proposal. When, however, the surgeon said that if the journey was successfully made, the after-results would be all to the good, Stafford had assented, and had allowed himself to be included in the house-party at Glencader.

It was a triumph for Jasmine, for otherwise Stafford would not have gone. Whether she would have insisted on Jigger going to Glencader if it had not meant that Ian would go also, it would be hard to say. Her motives were not unmixed, though there had been a real impulse to do all she could. In any case, she had lessened the distance between Ian and herself, and that gave her wilful mind a rather painful pleasure. Also, the responsibility for Jigger's well-being, together with her duties as hostess, had prevented her from dwelling on that scene in the silent house at midnight which had shocked her so--her husband reeling up the staircase, singing a ribald song.

The fullest significance of this incident had not yet come home to her. She had fought against dwelling on it, and she was glad that every moment since they had come to Glencader had been full; that Rudyard had been much away with the shooters, and occupied in trying to settle a struggle between the miners and the proprietors of the mine itself, of whom he was one. Still, things that Rudyard had said before he left the house to dine with Wallstein, leaving her with Stafford, persistently recurred to her mind.

"What's the matter?" had been Rudyard's troubled cry. "We've got everything--everything, and yet--!" Her eyes were not opened. She had had a shock, but it had not stirred the inner, smothered life; there had been no real revelation. She was agitated and disturbed--no more. She did not see that the man she had married to love and to cherish was slowly changing--was the change only a slow one now?--before her eyes; losing that brave freshness which had so appealed to London when he first came back to civilization. Something had been subtracted from his personality which left it poorer, something had been added which made it less appealing. Something had given way in him. There had been a subsidence of moral energy, and force had inwardly declined, though to all outward seeming he had played a powerful and notable part in the history of the last three years, gaining influence in many directions, without suffering excessive notoriety.

On the day Rudyard married Jasmine he would have cut off his hand rather than imagine that he would enter his wife's room helpless from drink and singing a song which belonged to loose nights on the Limpopo and the Vaal.

As the little group drew back, their curiosity satisfied, Mr. Mappin, putting the case carefully into his pocket again, said to Jasmine:

"The boy is going on so well that I am not needed longer. Mr. Wharton, my locum tenens, will give him every care."

"When did you think of going?" Jasmine asked him, as they all moved on towards the hall, where the other guests were assembled.

"To-morrow morning early, if I may. No night travel for me, if I can help it."

"I am glad you are not going to-night," she answered, graciously. "Al'mah is arriving this afternoon, and she sings for us this evening. Is it not thrilling?"

There was a general murmur of pleasure, vaguely joined by Adrian Fellowes, who glanced quickly round the little group, and met an enigmatical glance from Byng's eye. Byng was remembering what Barry Whalen had told him three years ago, and he wondered if Jasmine was cognizant of it all. He thought not; for otherwise she would scarcely bring Al'mah to Glencader and play Fellowes' game for him.

Jasmine, in fact, had not heard. Days before she had wondered that Adrian had tried to discourage her invitation to Al'mah. While it was an invitation, it was also an engagement, on terms which would have been adequate for Patti in her best days. It would, if repeated a few times, reimburse Al'mah for the sums she had placed in Byng's hands at the time of the Raid, and also, later still, to buy the life of her husband from Oom Paul. It had been insufficient, not because of the value of the article for sale, but because of the rapacity of the vender. She had paid half the cruel balance demanded; Byng and his friends had paid the rest without her knowledge; and her husband had been set free.

Byng had only seen Al'mah twice since the day when she first came to his rooms, and not at all during the past two years, save at the opera, where she tightened the cords of captivity to her gifts around her admirers. Al'mah had never met Mrs. Byng since the day after that first production of "Manassa," when Rudyard rescued her, though she had seen her at the opera again and again. She cared nothing for society or for social patronage or approval, and the life that Jasmine led had no charms for her. The only interest she had in it was that it suited Adrian from every standpoint. He loved the splendid social environment of which Jasmine was the centre, and his services were well rewarded.

When she received Jasmine's proposal to sing at Glencader she had hesitated to accept it, for society had no charms for her; but at length three considerations induced her to do so. She wanted to see Rudyard Byng, for South Africa and its shadow was ever present with her; and she dreaded she knew not what. Blantyre was still her husband, and he might return--and return still less a man than when he deserted her those sad long years ago. Also, she wanted to see Jigger, because of his sister Lou, whose friendless beauty, so primitively set, whose transparent honesty appealed to her quick, generous impulses. Last of all she wanted to see Adrian in the surroundings and influences where his days had been constantly spent during the past three years.

Never before had she had the curiosity to do so. Adrian had, however, deftly but clearly tried to dissuade her from coming to Glencader, and his reasons were so new and unconvincing that, for the first time,--she had a nature of strange trustfulness once her faith was given--a vague suspicion concerning Adrian perplexed and troubled her. His letter had arrived some hours after Jasmine's, and then her answer was immediate--she would accept. Adrian heard of the acceptance first through Jasmine, to whom he had spoken of his long "acquaintance" with the great singer.

From Byng's look, as they moved towards the hall, Adrian gathered that rumour had reached a quarter where he had much at stake; but it did not occur to him that this would be to his disadvantage. Byng was a man of the world. Besides, he had his own reasons for feeling no particular fear where Byng was concerned. His glance ran from Byng's face to that of Jasmine; but, though her eyes met his, there was nothing behind her glance which had to do with Al'mah.

In the great hall whose windows looked out on a lovely, sunny valley still as green as summer, the rest of the house-party were gathered, and Jigger's visitors were at once surrounded.

Among the visitors were Alice, Countess of Tynemouth, also the Slavonian ambassador, whose extremely pale face, stooping shoulders, and bald head with the hair carefully brushed over from each side in a vain attempt to cover the baldness, made him seem older than he really was. Count Landrassy had lived his life in many capitals up to the limit of his vitality, and was still covetous of notice from the sex who had, in a checkered career, given him much pleasure, and had provided him with far more anxiety. But he was almost uncannily able and astute, as every man found who entered the arena of diplomacy to treat with him or circumvent him. Suavity, with an attendant mordant wit, and a mastery of tactics unfamiliar to the minds and capacities of Englishmen, made him a great factor in the wide world of haute politique; but it also drew upon him a wealth of secret hatred and outward attention. His follies were lashed by the tongues of virtue and of slander; but his abilities gave him a commanding place in the arena of international politics.

As Byng and his party approached, the eyes of the ambassador and of Lady Tynemouth were directed towards Ian Stafford. The glance of the former was ironical and a little sardonic. He had lately been deeply engaged in checkmating the singularly skilful and cleverly devised negotiations by which England was to gain a powerful advantage in Europe, the full significance of which even he had not yet pierced. This he knew, but what he apprehended with the instinct of an almost scientific sense became unduly important to his mind. The author of the profoundly planned international scheme was this young man, who had already made the chancelleries of Europe sit up and look about them in dismay; for its activities were like those of underground wires; and every area of diplomacy, the nearest, the most remote, was mined and primed, so that each embassy played its part with almost startling effect. Tibet and Persia were not too far, and France was not too near to prevent the incalculably smooth working of a striking and far-reaching political move. It was the kind of thing that England's Prime Minister, with his extraordinary frankness, with his equally extraordinary secretiveness, insight and immobility, delighted in; and Slavonia and its ambassador knew, as an American high in place had colloquially said, "that they were up against a proposition which would take some moving."

The scheme had taken some moving. But it had not yet succeeded; and if M. Mennaval, the ambassador of Moravia, influenced by Count Landrassy, pursued his present tactics on behalf of his government, Ian Stafford's coup would never be made, and he would have to rise to fame in diplomacy by slower processes. It was the daily business of the Slavonian ambassador to see that M. Mennaval of Moravia was not captured either by tactics, by smooth words, or all those arts which lay beneath the outward simplicity of Ian Stafford and of those who worked with him.

With England on the verge of war, the outcome of the negotiations was a matter of vital importance. It might mean the very question of England's existence as an empire. England in a conflict with South Africa, the hour long desired by more than one country, in which she would be occupied to the limit of her capacity, with resources taxed to the utmost, army inadequate, and military affairs in confusion, would come, and with it the opportunity to bring the Titan to her knees. This diplomatic scheme of Ian Stafford, however, would prevent the worst in any case, and even in the disasters of war, would be working out advantages which, after the war was done, would give England many friends and fewer enemies, give her treaties and new territory, and set her higher than she was now by a political metre.

Count Landrassy had thought at first, when Ian Stafford came to Glencader, that this meeting had been purposely arranged; but through Byng's frankness and ingenuous explanations he saw that he was mistaken. The two subtle and combating diplomats had not yet conversed save in a general way by the smoking-room fire.

Lady Tynemouth's eyes fell on Ian with a different meaning. His coming to Glencader had been a surprise to her. He had accepted an invitation to visit her in another week, and she had only come to know later of the chance meeting of Ian and Jasmine in London, and the subsequent accident to Jigger which had brought Ian down to Wales. The man who had saved her life on her wedding journey, and whose walls were still garish with the red parasol which had nearly been her death, had a place quite his own in her consideration. She had, of course, known of his old infatuation for Jasmine, though she did not know all; and she knew also that he had put Jasmine out of his life completely when she married Byng; which was not a source of regret to her. She had written him about Jasmine, again and again,--of what she did and what the world said--and his replies had been as casual and as careless as the most jealous woman could desire; though she was not consciously jealous, and, of course, had no right to be.

She saw no harm in having a man as a friend on a basis of intimacy which drew the line at any possibility of divorce-court proceedings. Inside this line she frankly insisted on latitude, and Tynemouth gave it to her without thought or anxiety. He was too fond of outdoor life, of racing and hunting and shooting and polo and travel, to have his eye unnerved by any such foolishness as jealousy.

"Play the game--play the game, Alice, and so will I, and the rest of the world be hanged!" was what Tynemouth had said to his wife; and it would not have occurred to him to suspect Stafford, or to read one of his letters to Lady Tynemouth. He had no literary gifts; in truth, he had no "culture," and he looked upon his wife's and Stafford's interest in literature and art as a game of mystery he had never learned. Inconsequent he thought it in his secret mind, but played by nice, clever, possible, "livable" people; and, therefore, not to be pooh-poohed openly or kicked out of the way. Besides, it "gave Alice something to do, and prevented her from being lonely--and all that kind of thing."

Thus it was that Lady Tynemouth, who had played the game all round according to her lights, and thought no harm of what she did, or of her weakness for Ian Stafford--of her open and rather gushing friendship for him--had an almost honest dislike to seeing him brought into close relations again with the woman who had dishonourably treated him. Perhaps she wanted his friendship wholly for herself; but that selfish consideration did not overshadow the feeling that Jasmine had cheated at cards, as it were; and that Ian ought not to be compelled to play with her again.

"But men, even the strongest, are so weak," she had said to Tynemouth concerning it, and he had said in reply, "And the weakest are so strong--sometimes."

At which she had pulled his shoulder, and had said with a delighted laugh, "Tynie, if you say clever things like that I'll fall in love with you."

To which he had replied: "Now, don't take advantage of a moment's aberration, Alice; and for Heaven's sake don't fall in love wiv me" (he made a v of a th, like Jigger). "I couldn't go to Uganda if you did."

To which she had responded, "Dear me, are you going to Uganda?" and was told with a nod that next month he would be gone. This conversation had occurred on the day of their arrival at Glencader; and henceforth Alice had forcibly monopolized Stafford whenever and wherever possible. So far, it had not been difficult, because Jasmine had, not ostentatiously, avoided being often with Stafford. It seemed to Jasmine that she must not see much of him alone. Still there was some new cause to provoke his interest and draw him to herself. The Jigger episode had done much, had altered the latitudes of their association, but the perihelion of their natures was still far off; and she was apprehensive, watchful, and anxious.

This afternoon, however, she felt that she must talk with him. Waiting and watching were a new discipline for her, and she was not yet the child of self-denial. Fate, if there be such a thing, favoured her, however, for as they drew near to the fireplace where the ambassador and Alice Tynemouth and her husband stood, Krool entered, came forward to Byng, and spoke in a low tone to him.

A minute afterward, Byng said to them all: "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid we can't carry out our plans for the afternoon. There's trouble again at the mine, and I am needed, or they think I am. So I must go there--and alone, I'm sorry to say; not with you all, as I had hoped. Jasmine, you must plan the afternoon. The carriages are ready. There's the Glen o' Smiling, well worth seeing, and the Murderer's Leap, and Lover's Land--something for all tastes," he added, with a dry note to his voice.

"Take care of yourself, Ruddy man," Jasmine said, as he left them hurriedly, with an affectionate pinch of her arm. "I don't like these mining troubles," she added to the others, and proceeded to arrange the afternoon.

She did it so deftly that she and Ian and Adrian Fellowes were the only ones left behind out of a party of twelve. She had found it impossible to go on any of the excursions, because she must stay and welcome Al'mah. She meant to drive to the station herself, she said. Adrian stayed behind because he must superintend the arrangements of the ball-room for the evening, or so he said; and Ian Stafford stayed because he had letters to write--ostensibly; for he actually meant to go and sit with Jigger, and to send a code message to the Prime Minister, from whom he had had inquiries that morning.

When the others had gone, the three stood for a moment silent in the hall, then Adrian said to Jasmine, "Will you give me a moment in the ball-room about those arrangements?"

Jasmine glanced out of the corner of her eye at Ian. He showed no sign that he wanted her to remain. A shadow crossed her face, but she laughingly asked him if he would come also.

"If you don't mind--!" he said, shaking his head in negation; but he walked with them part of the way to the ball-room, and left them at the corridor leading to his own little sitting-room.

A few minutes later, as Jasmine stood alone at a window looking down into the great stone quadrangle, she saw him crossing toward the servants' quarters.

"He is going to Jigger," she said, her heart beating faster. "Oh, but he is 'the best ever,'" she added, repeating Lou's words--"the best ever!"

Her eye brightened with intention. She ran down the corridor, and presently made her way to the housekeeper's room.

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XII. THE KEY IN THE LOCK

A quarter of an hour later Jasmine softly opened the door of the room where Jigger lay, and looked in. The nurse stood at the foot of the bed, listening to talk between Jigger and Ian, the like of which she had never heard. She was smiling, for Jigger was original, to say the least of it, and he had a strange, innocent, yet wise philosophy. Ian sat with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, leaning towards the gallant little sufferer, talking like a boy to a boy, and getting revelations of life of which he had never even dreamed.

Jasmine entered with a little tray in one hand, bearing a bowl of delicate broth, while under an arm was a puzzle-box, which was one of the relics of a certain house-party in which a great many smart people played at the simple life, and sought to find a new sensation in making believe they were the village rector's brood of innocents. She was dressed in a gown almost as simple in make as that of the nurse, but of exquisite material--the soft green velvet which she had worn when she met Ian in the sweetshop in Regent Street. Her hair was a perfect gold, wavy and glistening and prettily fine, and her eyes were shining--so blue, so deep, so alluring.

The boy saw her first, and his eyes grew bigger with welcome and interest.

"It's her--me lydy," he said with a happy gasp, for she seemed to him like a being from another sphere. When she came near him the faint, delicious perfume exhaling from her garments was like those flower-gardens and scented fields to which he had once been sent for a holiday by some philanthropic society.

Ian rose as the nurse came forward quickly to relieve Jasmine of the tray and the box. His first glance was enigmatical--almost suspicious--then, as he saw the radiance in her face and the burden she carried, a new light came into his eyes. In this episode of Jigger she had shown all that gentle charm, sympathy, and human feeling which he had once believed belonged so much to her. It seemed to him in the old days that at heart she was simple, generous, and capable of the best feelings of woman, and of living up to them; and there began to grow at the back of his mind now the thought that she had been carried away by a great temptation--the glitter and show of power and all that gold can buy, and a large circle for the skirts of woman's pride and vanity. If she had married him instead of Byng, they would now be living in a small house in Curzon Street, or some such fashionable quarter, with just enough to enable them to keep their end up with people who had five thousand a year--with no box at the opera, or house in the country, or any of the great luxuries, and with a thriving nursery which would be a promise of future expense--if she had married him! . . . A kinder, gentler spirit was suddenly awake in him, and he did not despise her quite so much. On her part, she saw him coming nearer, as, standing in the door of a cottage in a valley, one sees trailing over the distant hills, with the light behind, a welcome and beloved figure with face turned towards the home in the green glade.

A smile came to his lips, as suspicion stole away ashamed, and he said: "This will not do. Jigger will be spoiled. We shall have to see Mr. Mappin about it."

As she yielded to him the puzzle-box, which she had refused to the nurse, she said: "And pray who sets the example? I am a very imitative person. Besides, I asked Mr. Mappin about the broth, so it's all right; and Jigger will want the puzzle-box when you are not here," she added, quizzically.

"Diversion or continuity?" he asked, with a laugh, as she held the bowl of soup to Jigger's lips. At this point the nurse had discreetly left the room.

"Continuity, of course," she replied. "All diplomatists are puzzles, some without solution."

"Who said I was a diplomatist?" he asked, lightly.

"Don't think that I'm guilty of the slander," she rejoined. "It was the Moravian ambassador who first suggested that what you were by profession you were by nature."

Jasmine felt Ian hold his breath for a moment, then he said in a low tone, "M. Mennaval--you know him well?"

She did not look towards him, but she was conscious that he was eying her intently. She put aside the bowl, and began to adjust Jigger's pillow with deft fingers, while the lad watched her with a worship worth any money to one attacked by ennui and stale with purchased pleasures.

"I know him well--yes, quite well," she replied. "He comes sometimes of an afternoon, and if he had more time--or if I had--he would no doubt come oftener. But time is the most valuable thing I have, and I have less of it than anything else."

"A diminishing capital, too," he returned with a laugh; while his mind was suddenly alert to an idea which had flown into his vision, though its full significance did not possess him yet.

"The Moravian ambassador is not very busy," he added with an undertone of meaning.

"Perhaps; but I am," she answered with like meaning, and looked him in the eyes, steadily, serenely, determinedly. All at once there had opened out before her a great possibility. Both from the Count Landrassy and from the Moravian ambassador she had had hints of some deep, international scheme of which Ian Stafford was the engineer-in-chief, though she did not know definitely what it was. Both ambassadors had paid their court to her, each in a different way, and M. Mennaval would have been as pertinacious as he was vain and somewhat weak (albeit secretive, too, with the feminine instinct so strong in him) if she had not checked him at all points. From what Count Landrassy had said, it would appear that Ian Stafford's future hung in the balance--dependent upon the success of his great diplomatic scheme.

Could she help Ian? Could she help him? Had the time come when she could pay her debt, the price of ransom from the captivity in which he held her true and secret character? It had been vaguely in her mind before; but now, standing beside Jigger's bed, with the lad's feverish hand in hers, there spread out before her a vision of a lien lifted, of an ugly debt redeemed, of freedom from this man's scorn. If she could do some great service for him, would not that wipe out the unsettled claim? If she could help to give him success, would not that, in the end, be more to him than herself? For she would soon fade, the dust would soon gather over her perished youth and beauty; but his success would live on, ever freshening in his sight, rising through long years to a great height, and remaining fixed and exalted. With a great belief she believed in him and what he could do. He was a Sisyphus who could and would roll the-huge stone to the top of the hill--and ever with easier power.

The old touch of romance and imagination which had been the governing forces of her grandfather's life, the passion of an idea, however essentially false and meretricious and perilous to all that was worth while keeping in life, set her pulses beating now. As a child her pulses used to beat so when she had planned with her good-for-nothing brother some small escapade looming immense in the horizon of her enjoyment. She had ever distorted or inflamed the facts of life by an overheated fancy, by the spirit of romance, by a gift--or curse--of imagination, which had given her also dark visions of a miserable end, of a clouded and piteous close to her brief journey. "I am doomed--doomed," had been her agonized cry that day before Ian Stafford went away three years ago, and the echo of that cry was often in her heart, waking and sleeping. It had come upon her the night when Rudyard reeled, intoxicated, up the staircase. She had the penalties of her temperament shadowing her footsteps always, dimming the radiance which broke forth for long periods, and made her so rare and wonderful a figure in her world. She was so young, and so exquisite, that Fate seemed harsh and cruel in darkening her vision, making pitfalls for her feet.

Could she help him? Had her moment come when she could force him to smother his scorn and wait at her door for bounty? She would make the effort to know.

"But, yes, I am very busy," she repeated. "I have little interest in Moravia--which is fortunate; for I could not find the time to study it."

"If you had interest in Moravia, you would find the time with little difficulty," he answered, lightly, yet thinking ironically that he himself had given much time and study to Moravia, and so far had not got much return out of it. Moravia was the crux of his diplomacy. Everything depended on it; but Landrassy, the Slavonian ambassador, had checkmated him at every move towards the final victory.

"It is not a study I would undertake con amore," she said, smiling down at Jigger, who watched her with sharp yet docile eyes. Then, suddenly turning towards him again, she said:

"But you are interested in Moravia--do you find it worth the time?"

"Did Count Landrassy tell you that?" he asked.

"And also the ambassador for Moravia; but only in the vaguest and least consequential way," she replied.

She regarded him steadfastly. "It is only just now--is it a kind of telepathy'--that I seem to get a message from what we used to call the power-house, that you are deeply interested in Moravia and Slavonia. Little things which have been said seem to have new meaning now, and I feel"--she smiled significantly--"that I am standing on the brink of some great happening, and only a big secret, like a cloud, prevents me from seeing it, realizing it. Is it so?" she added, in a low voice.

He regarded her intently. His look held hers. It would seem as though he tried to read the depths of her soul; as though he was asking if what had once proved so false could in the end prove true; for it came to him with sudden force, with sure conviction, that she could help him as no one else could; that at this critical moment, when he was trembling between success and failure, her secret influence might be the one reinforcement necessary to conduct him to victory. Greater and better men than himself had used women to further their vast purposes; could one despise any human agency, so long as it was not dishonourable, in the carrying out of great schemes?

It was for Britain--for her ultimate good, for the honour and glory of the Empire, for the betterment of the position of all men of his race in all the world, their prestige, their prosperity, their patriotism; and no agency should be despised. He knew so well what powers of intrigue had been used against him, by the embassy of Slavonia and those of other countries. His own methods had been simple and direct; only the scheme itself being intricate, complicated, and reaching further than any diplomatist, except his own Prime Minister, had dreamed. If carried, it would recast the international position in the Orient, necessitating new adjustments in Europe, with cession of territory and gifts for gifts in the way of commercial treaties and the settlement of outstanding difficulties.

His key, if it could be made to turn in the lock, would open the door to possibilities of prodigious consequence.

He had been three years at work, and the end must come soon. The crisis was near. A game can only be played for a given time, then it works itself out, and a new one must take its place. His top was spinning hard, but already the force of the gyration was failing, and he must presently make his exit with what the Prime Minister called his Patent, or turn the key in the lock and enter upon his kingdom. In three months--in two months--in one month--it might be too late, for war was coming; and war would destroy his plans, if they were not furfilled now. Everything must be done before war came, or be forever abandoned.

This beautiful being before him could help him. She had brains, she was skilful, inventive, supple, ardent, yet intellectually discreet. She had as much as told him that the ambassador of Moravia had paid her the compliment of admiring her with some ardour. It would not grieve him to see her make a fool and a tool of the impressionable yet adroit diplomatist, whose vanity was matched by his unreliability, and who had a passion for philandering--unlike Count Landrassy, who had no inclination to philander, who carried his citadels by direct attack in great force. Yes, Jasmine could help him, and, as in the dead years when it seemed that she would be the courier star of his existence, they understood each other without words.

"It is so," he said at last, in a low voice, his eyes still regarding her with almost painful intensity.

"Do you trust me--now--again?" she asked, a tremor in her voice and her small hand clasping ever and ever tighter the fingers of the lad, whose eyes watched her with such dog-like adoration.

A mournful smile stole to his lips--and stayed. "Come where we can be quiet and I will tell you all," he said. "You can help me, maybe."

"I will help you," she said, firmly, as the nurse entered the room again and, approaching the bed, said, "I think he ought to sleep now"; and forthwith proceeded to make Jigger comfortable.

When Stafford bade Jigger good-bye, the lad said: "I wish I could 'ear the singing to-night, y'r gryce. I mean the primmer donner. Lou says she's a fair wonder."

"We will open your window," Jasmine said, gently. "The ball-room is just across the quadrangle, and you will be able to hear perfectly."

"Thank you, me lydy," he answered, gratefully, and his eyes closed.

"Come," said Jasmine to Stafford. "I will take you where we can talk undisturbed."

They passed out, and both were silent as they threaded the corridors and hallways; but in Jasmine's face was a light of exaltation and of secret triumph.

"We must give Jigger a good start in life," she said, softly, as they entered her sitting-room. Jigger had broken down many barriers between her and the man who, a week ago, had been eternities distant from her.

"He's worth a lot of thought," Ian answered, as the pleasant room enveloped him, and they seated themselves on a big couch before the fire.

Again there was a long silence; then, not looking at her, but gazing into the fire, Ian Stafford slowly unfolded the wide and wonderful enterprise of diplomacy in which his genius was employed. She listened with strained attention, but without moving. Her eyes were fixed on his face, and once, as the proposed meaning of the scheme was made dear by the turn of one illuminating phrase, she gave a low exclamation of wonder and delight. That was all until, at last, turning to her as though from some vision that had chained him, he saw the glow in her eyes, the profound interest, which was like the passion of a spirit moved to heroic undertaking. Once again it was as in the years gone by--he trusted her, in spite of himself; in spite of himself he had now given his very life into her hands, was making her privy to great designs which belonged to the inner chambers of the chancelleries of Europe.

Almost timorously, as it seemed, she put out her hand and touched his shoulder. "It is wonderful--wonderful," she said. "I can, I will help you. Will let you let me win back your trust--Ian?"

"I want your help, Jasmine," he replied, and stood up. "It is the last turn of the wheel. It may be life or death to me professionally."

"It shall be life," she said, softly.

He turned slowly from her and went towards the door.

"Shall we not go for a walk," she intervened--"before I drive to the station for Al'mah?"

He nodded, and a moment afterward they were passing along the corridors. Suddenly, as they passed a window, Ian stopped. "I thought Mr. Mappin went with the others to the Glen?" he said.

"He did," was the reply.

"Who is that leaving his room?" he continued, as she followed his glance across the quadrangle. "Surely, it's Fellowes," he added.

"Yes, it looked like Mr. Fellowes," she said, with a slight frown of wonder.

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Chapter XIII

"I WILL NOT SING"

"I will not sing--it's no use, I will not." Al'mah's eyes were vivid with anger, and her lips, so much the resort of humour, were set in determination. Her words came with low vehemence.

Adrian Fellowes' hand nervously appealed to her. His voice was coaxing and gentle.

"Al'mah, must I tell Mrs. Byng that?" he asked. "There are a hundred people in the ball-room. Some of them have driven thirty miles to hear you. Besides, you are bound in honour to keep your engagement."

"I am bound to keep nothing that I don't wish to keep--you understand!" she replied, with a passionate gesture. "I am free to do what I please with my voice and with myself. I will leave here in the morning. I sang before dinner. That pays my board and a little over," she added, with bitterness. "I prefer to be a paying guest. Mrs. Byng shall not be my paying hostess."

Fellowes shrugged his shoulders, but his lips twitched with excitement. "I don't know what has come over you, Al'mah," he said helplessly and with an anxiety he could not disguise. "You can't do that kind of thing. It isn't fair, it isn't straight business; from a social standpoint, it isn't well-bred."

"Well-bred!" she retorted with a scornful laugh and a look of angry disdain. "You once said I had the manners of Madame Sans Gene, the washer-woman--a sickly joke, it was. Are you going to be my guide in manners? Does breeding only consist in having clothes made in Savile Row and eating strawberries out of season at a pound a basket?"

"I get my clothes from the Stores now, as you can see," he said, in a desperate attempt to be humorous, for she was in a dangerous mood. Only once before had he seen her so, and he could feel the air charged with catastrophe. "And I'm eating humble pie in season now at nothing a dish," he added. "I really am; and it gives me shocking indigestion."

Her face relaxed a little, for she could seldom resist any touch of humour, but the stubborn and wilful light in her eyes remained.

"That sounds like last year's pantomime," she said, sharply, and, with a jerk of her shoulders, turned away.

"For God's sake wait a minute, Al'mah!" he urged, desperately. "What has upset you? What has happened? Before dinner you were yourself; now--" he threw up his hands in despair--"Ah, my dearest, my star--"

She turned upon him savagely, and it seemed as though a storm of passion would break upon him; but all at once she changed, came up close to him, and looked him steadily in the eyes.

"I do not think I trust you," she said, quite quietly.

His eyes could not meet hers fairly. He felt them shrinking from her inquisition. "You have always trusted me till now. What has happened?" he asked, apprehensively and with husky voice.

"Nothing has happened," she replied in a low, steady voice. "Nothing. But I seem to realize you to-night. It came to me suddenly, at dinner, as I listened to you, as I saw you talk--I had never before seen you in surroundings like these. But I realized you then: I had a revelation. You need not ask me what it was. I do not know quite. I cannot tell. It is all vague, but it is startling, and it has gone through my heart like a knife. I tell you this, and I tell you quite calmly, that if you prove to be what, for the first time, I have a vision you are, I shall never look upon your face again if I can help it. If I come to know that you are false in nature and in act, that all you have said to me is not true, that you have degraded me--Oh," she fiercely added, breaking off and speaking with infinite anger and scorn--"it was only love, honest and true, however mistaken, which could make what has been between us endurable in my eyes! What I have thought was true love, and its true passion, helped me to forget the degradation and the secret shame--only the absolute honesty of that love could make me forget. But suppose I find it only imitation; suppose I see that it is only selfishness, only horrible, ugly self-indulgence; suppose you are a man who plays with a human soul! If I find that to be so, I tell you I shall hate you; and I shall hate myself; but I shall hate you more--a thousand times more."

She paused with agony and appealing, with confusion and vague horror in her face. Her look was direct and absorbing, her eyes like wells of sullen fire.

"Al'mah," he replied with fluttered eagerness, "let us talk of this later--not now--later. I will answer anything--everything. I can and I will prove to you that this is only a mad idea of yours, that--"

"No, no, no, not mad," she interrupted. "There is no madness in it. I had a premonition before I came. It was like a cloud on my soul. It left me when we met here, when I heard your voice again; and for a moment I was happy. That was why I sang before dinner that song of Lassen's, 'Thine Eyes So Blue and Tender.' But it has come back. Something deep within me says, 'He is not true.' Something whispers, 'He is false by nature; it is not in him to be true to anything or anybody.'"

He made an effort to carry off the situation lightly. With a great sense of humour, she had also an infinite capacity for taking things seriously--with an almost sensational gravity. Yet she had always responded to his cheerful raillery when he had declined to be tragical. He essayed the old way now.

"This is just absurd, old girl;"--she shrank--"you really are mad. Your home is Colney Hatch or thereabouts. Why, I'm just what I always was to you--your constant slave, your everlasting lover, and your friend. I'll talk it all over with you later. It's impossible now. They're ready for you in the ball-room. The accompanist is waiting. Do, do, do be reasonable. I will see you--afterwards--late."

A determined poignant look came into her eyes. She drew still farther away from him. "You will not, you shall not, see me 'afterwards--late.' No, no, no; I will trust my instinct now. I am natural, I am true, I hide nothing. I take my courage in both hands. I do not hide my head in the sands. I have given, because I chose to give, and I made and make no presences to myself. I answer to myself, and I do not play false with the world or with you. Whatever I am the world can know, for I deceive no one, and I have no fears. But you--oh, why, why is it I feel now, suddenly, that you have the strain of the coward in you! Why it comes to me now I do not know; but it is here"--she pressed her hand tremblingly to her heart--"and I will not act as though it wasn't here. I'm not of this world."

She waved a hand towards the ball-room. "I am not of the world that lives in terror of itself. Mine is a world apart, where one acts and lives and sings the passion and sorrows and joys of others--all unreal, unreal. The one chance of happiness we artists have is not to act in our own lives, but to be true--real and true. For one's own life as well as one's work to be all grease-paint--no, no, no. I have hid all that has been between us, because of things that have nothing to do with fear or courage, and for your sake; but I haven't acted, or pretended. I have not flaunted my private life, my wretched sin--"

"The sin of an angel--"

She shrank from the blatant insincerity of the words, and still more from the tone. Why had it not all seemed insincere before?

"But I was true in all I did, and I believed you were," she continued.

"And you don't believe it now?"

"To-night I do not. What I shall feel to-morrow I cannot tell. Maybe I shall go blind again, for women are never two days alike in their minds or bodies." She threw up her hands with a despairing helplessness. "But we shall not meet till to-morrow, and then I go back to London. I am going to my room now. You may tell Mrs. Byng that I am not well enough to sing--and indeed I am not well," she added, huskily. "I am sick at heart with I don't know what; but I am wretched and angry and dangerous--and bad."

Her eyes fastened his with a fateful bitterness and gloom. "Where is Mr. Byng?" she added, sharply. "Why was he not at dinner?"

He hailed the change of idea gladly. He spoke quickly, eagerly. "He was kept at the mine. There's trouble--a strike. He was needed. He has great influence with the men, and the masters, too. You heard Mrs. Byng say why he had not returned."

"No; I was thinking of other things. But I wanted--I want to see him. When will he be back?"

"At any moment, I should think. But, Al'mah, no matter what you feel about me, you must keep your engagement to sing here. The people in there, a hundred of the best people of the county--"

"The best people of the county--such abject snobbery!" she retorted, sharply. "Do you think that would influence me? You ought to know me well enough--but that's just it, you do not know me. I realize it at last. Listen now. I will not sing to-night, and you will go and tell Mrs. Byng so."

Once again she turned away, but her exit was arrested by another voice, a pleasant voice, which said:

"But just one minute, please. Mr. Fellowes is quite right.... Fellowes, won't you go and say that Madame Al'mah will be there in five minutes?"

It was Ian Stafford. He had come at Jasmine's request to bring Al'mah, and he had overheard her last words. He saw that there had been a scene, and conceived that it was the kind of quarrel which could be better arranged by a third disinterested person.

After a moment's hesitation, with an anxious yet hopeful look, Fellowes disappeared, Al'mah's brown eyes following him with dark inquisition. Presently she looked at Ian Stafford with a flash of malice. Did this elegant and diplomatic person think that all he had to do was to speak, and she would succumb to his blandishment? He should see.

He smiled, and courteously motioned her to a chair.

"You said to Mr. Fellowes that I should sing in five minutes," she remarked maliciously and stubbornly, but she moved forward to the chair, nevertheless.

"Yes, but there is no reason why we should not sit for three out of the five minutes. Energy should be conserved in a tiring world."

"I have some energy to spare--the overflow," she returned with a protesting flash of the eyes, as, however, she slowly seated herself.

"We call it power and magnetism in your case," he answered in that low, soothing voice which had helped to quiet storms in more than one chancellerie of Europe. . . . "What are you going to sing to-night?" he added.

"I am not going to sing," she answered, nervously. "You heard what I said to Mr. Fellowes."

"I was an unwilling eavesdropper; I heard your last words. But surely you would not be so unoriginal, so cliche, as to say the same thing to me that you said to Mr. Fellowes!"

His smile was winning and his humour came from a deep well. On the instant she knew it to be real, and his easy confidence, his assumption of dominancy had its advantage.

"I'll say it in a different way to you, but it will be the same thing. I shall not sing to-night," she retorted, obstinately.

"Then a hundred people will go hungry to bed," he rejoined. "Hunger is a dreadful thing--and there are only three minutes left out of the five," he added, looking at his watch.

"I am not the baker or the butler," she replied with a smile, but her firm lips did not soften.

He changed his tactics with adroitness. If he failed now, it would be final. He thought he knew where she might be really vulnerable.

"Byng will be disappointed and surprised when he hears of the famine that the prima donna has left behind her. Byng is one of the best that ever was. He is trying to do his fellow-creatures a good turn down there at the mine. He never did any harm that I ever heard of--and this is his house, and these are his guests. He would, I'll stake my life, do Al'mah a good turn if he could, even if it cost him something quite big. He is that kind of a man. He would be hurt to know that you had let the best people of the county be parched, when you could give them drink."

"You said they were hungry a moment ago," she rejoined, her resolution slowly breaking under the one influence which could have softened her.

"They would be both hungry and thirsty," he urged. "But, between ourselves, would you like Byng to come home from a hard day's work, as it were, and feel that things had gone wrong here while he was away on humanity's business? Just try to imagine him having done you a service--"

"He has done me more than one service," she interjected. "You know it as well as I do. You were there at the opera, three years ago, when he saved me from the flames, and since then--"

Stafford looked at his watch again with a smile. "Besides, there's a far more important reason why you should sing to-night. I promised some one who's been hurt badly, and who never heard you sing, that he should hear you to-night. He is lying there now, and--"

"Jigger?" she asked, a new light in her eyes, something fleeing from her face and leaving a strange softness behind it.

"Quite so," he replied. "That's a lad really worth singing for. He's an original, if ever there was one. He worships you for what you have done for his sister, Lou. I'd undergo almost any humiliation not to disappoint Jigger. Byng would probably get over his disappointment--he'd only feel that he hadn't been used fairly, and he's used to that; but Jigger wouldn't sleep to-night, and it's essential that he should. Think of how much happiness and how much pain you can give, just by trilling a simple little song with your little voice oh, madame la cantatrice?"

Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She brushed them away hastily. "I've been upset and angry and disturbed--and I don't know what," she said, abruptly. "One of my black moods was on me. They only come once in a blue moon; but they almost kill me when they do." . . . She stopped and looked at him steadily for a moment, the tears still in her eyes. "You are very understanding and gentle--and sensible," she added, with brusque frankness and cordiality. "Yes, I will sing for Rudyard Byng and for Jigger; and a little too for a very clever diplomatist." She gave a spasmodic laugh.

"Only half a minute left," he rejoined with gay raillery. "I said you'd sing to them in five minutes, and you must. This way."

He offered her his arm, she took it, and in cheerful silence he hurried her to the ball-room.

Before her first song he showed her the window which looked across to that out of which Jigger gazed with trembling eagerness. The blinds and curtains were up at these windows, and Jigger could see her as she sang.

Never in all her wonderful career had Al'mah sung so well--with so much feeling and an artist's genius--not even that night of all when she made her debut. The misery, the gloom, the bitterness of the past hour had stirred every fibre of her being, and her voice told with thrilling power the story of a soul.

Once after an outburst of applause from the brilliant audience, there came a tiny echo of it from across the courtyard. It was Jigger, enraptured by a vision of heaven and the sounds of it. Al'mah turned towards the window with a shining face, and waved a kiss out of the light and glory where she was, to the sufferer in the darkness. Then, after a whispered word to the accompanist she began singing Gounod's memorable song, "There is a Green Hill Far Away." It was not what the audience expected; it was in strangest contrast to all that had gone before; it brought a hush like a benediction upon the great chamber. Her voice seemed to ache with the plaintive depth of the song, and the soft night filled its soul with melody.

A wonderful and deep solemnity was suddenly diffused upon the assembly of world-worn people, to most of whom the things that mattered were those which gave them diversion. They were wont to swim with the tide of indolence, extravagance, self-seeking, and sordid pleasure now flowing through the hardy isles, from which had come much of the strength of the Old World and the vision and spirit of the New World.

Why had she chosen this song? Because, all at once, as she thought of Jigger lying there in the dark room, she had a vision of her own child lying near to death in the grasp of pneumonia five years ago; and the misery of that time swept over her--its rebellion, its hideous fear, its bitter loneliness. She recalled how a woman, once a great singer, now grown old in years as in sorrow, had sung this very song to her then, in the hour of her direst apprehension. She sang it now to her own dead child, and to Jigger. When she ceased, there was not a sound save of some woman gently sobbing. Others were vainly trying to choke back their tears.

Presently, as Al'mah stood still in the hush which was infinitely more grateful to her than any applause, she saw Krool advancing hurriedly up the centre aisle. He was drawn and haggard, and his eyes were sunken and wild. Turning at the platform, he said in a strange, hollow voice:

"At the mine--an accident. The Baas he go down to save--he not come up."

With a cry Jasmine staggered to her feet. Ian Stafford was beside her in an instant.

"The Baas--the Baas!" said Krool, insistently, painfully. "I have the horses--come."

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XIV. THE BAAS

There had been an explosion in the Glencader Mine, and twenty men had been imprisoned in the stark solitude of the underground world. Or was it that they lay dead in that vast womb of mother-earth which takes all men of all time as they go, and absorbs them into her fruitful body, to produce other men who will in due days return to the same great mother to rest and be still? It mattered little whether malevolence had planned the outrage in the mine, or whether accident alone had been responsible; the results were the same. Wailing, woebegone women wrung their hands, and haggard, determined men stood by with bowed heads, ready to offer their lives to save those other lives far down below, if so be it were possible.

The night was serene and quiet, clear and cold, with glimmering stars and no moon, and the wide circle of the hills was drowsy with night and darkness. All was at peace in the outer circle, but at the centre was travail and storm and outrage and death. What nature had made beautiful, man had made ugly by energy and all the harsh necessities of progress. In the very heart of this exquisite and picturesque country-side the ugly, grim life of the miner had established itself, and had then turned an unlovely field of industrial activity into a cock-pit of struggle between capital and labour. First, discontent, fed by paid agitators and scarcely steadied by responsible and level-headed labour agents and leaders; then active disturbance and threatening; then partial strike, then minor outrages, then some foolishness on the part of manager or man, and now tragedy darkening the field, adding bitterness profound to the discontent and strife.

Rudyard Byng had arrived on the scene in the later stages of the struggle, when a general strike with all its attendant miseries, its dangers and provocations, was hovering. Many men in his own mine in South Africa had come from this very district, and he was known to be the most popular of all the capitalists on the Rand. His generosity to the sick and poor of the Glencader Mine had been great, and he had given them a hospital and a club with adequate endowment. Also, he had been known to take part in the rough sports of the miners, and had afterwards sat and drunk beer with them--as much as any, and carying it better than any.

If there was any one who could stay the strike and bring about a settlement it was he; and it is probable he would have stayed it, had it not been for a collision between a government official and a miners' leader. Things had grown worse, until the day of catastrophe, when Byng had been sent for by the leaders of both parties to the quarrel. He had laboured hours after hour in the midst of grave unrest and threats of violence, for some of the men had taken to drinking heavily--but without success. Still he had stayed on, going here and there, mostly among the men themselves, talking to them in little groups, arguing simply with them, patiently dealing with facts and figures, quietly showing them the economic injustice which lay behind their full demands, and suggesting compromises.

He was received with good feeling, but in the workers' view it was "class against class--labour against capital, the man against the master." In their view Byng represented class, capital and master, not man; his interests were not identical with theirs; and though some were disposed to cheer him, the majority said he was "as good a sort as that sort can be," but shrugged their shoulders and remained obstinate. The most that he did during the long afternoon and evening was to prevent the worst; until, as he sat eating a slice of ham in a miner's kitchen, there came the explosion: the accident or crime--which, like the lances in an angry tumour, let out the fury, enmity, and rebellion, and gave human nature its chance again. The shock of the explosion had been heard at Glencader, but nothing was thought of it, as there had been much blasting in the district for days.

"There's twenty men below," said the grimy manager who had brought the news to Byng. Together they sped towards the mine, little groups running beside them, muttering those dark sayings which, either as curses or laments, are painful comments on the relations of life on the lower levels with life on the higher plateaux.

Among the volunteers to go below, Byng was of the first, and against the appeal of the mine-manager, and of others who tried to dissuade him, he took his place with two miners with the words:

"I know this pit better than most; and I'd rather be down there knowing the worst, than waiting to learn it up here. I'm going; so lower away, lads."

He had disappeared, and for a long time there was no sign; but at last there came to the surface three of the imprisoned miners and two dead bodies, and these were followed by others still alive; but Byng did not come up. He remained below, leading the search, the first in the places of danger and exploration, the last to retreat from any peril of falling timbers or from fresh explosion. Twelve of the twenty men were rescued. Six were dead, and their bodies were brought to the surface and to the arms of women whose breadwinners were gone; whose husbands or sons or brothers had been struck out into darkness without time to strip themselves of the impedimenta of the soul. Two were left below, and these were brothers who had married but three months before. They were strong, buoyant men of twenty-five, with life just begun, and home still welcome and alluring--warm-faced, bonny women to meet them at the door, and lay the cloth, and comfort their beds, and cheer them away to work in the morning. These four lovers had been the target for the good-natured and half-affectionate scoffing of the whole field; for the twins, Jabez and Jacob, were as alike as two peas, and their wives were cousins, and were of a type in mind, body, and estate. These twin toilers were left below, with Rudyard Byng forcing his way to the place where they had worked. With him was one other miner of great courage and knowledge, who had gone with other rescue parties in other catastrophes.

It was this man who was carried to the surface when another small explosion occurred. He brought the terrible news that Byng, the rescuer of so many, was himself caught by falling timbers and imprisoned near a spot where Jabez and Jacob Holyhoke were entombed.

Word had gone to Glencader, and within an hour and a half Jasmine, Al'mah, Stafford, Lord Tynemouth, the Slavonian Ambassador, Adrian Fellowes, Mr. Tudor Tempest and others were at the pit's mouth, stricken by the same tragedy which had made so many widows and orphans that night. Already two attempts had been made to descend, but they had not been successful. Now came forward a burly and dour-looking miner, called Brengyn, who had been down before, and had been in command. His look was forbidding, but his face was that of a man on whom you could rely; and his eyes had a dogged, indomitable expression. Behind him were a dozen men, sullen and haggard, their faces showing nothing of that pity in their hearts which drove them to risk all to save the lives of their fellow-workers. Was it all pity and humanity? Was there also something of that perdurable cohesion of class against class; the powerful if often unlovely unity of faction, the shoulder-to-shoulder combination of war; the tribal fanaticism which makes brave men out of unpromising material? Maybe something of this element entered into the heroism which had been displayed; but whatever the impulse or the motive, the act and the end were the same--men's lives were in peril, and they were risking their own to rescue them.

When Jasmine and her friends arrived, Ian Stafford addressed himself to the groups of men at the pit's mouth, asking for news. Seeing Brengyn approach Jasmine, he hurried over, recognizing in the stalwart miner a leader of men.

"It's a chance in a thousand," he heard Brengyn say to Jasmine, whose white face showed no trace of tears, and who held herself with courage. There was something akin in the expression of her face and that of other groups of women, silent, rigid and bitter, who stood apart, some with children's hands clasped in theirs, facing the worst with regnant resolution. All had that horrible quietness of despair so much more poignant than tears and wailing. Their faces showed the weariness of labour and an ill-nourished daily life, but there was the same look in them as in Jasmine's. There was no class in this communion of suffering and danger.

"Not one chance in a thousand," Brengyn added, heavily. "I know where they are, but--"

"You think they are--dead?" Jasmine asked in a hollow voice.

"I think, alive or dead, it's all against them as goes down to bring them out. It's more lives to be wasted."

Stafford heard, and he stepped forward. "If there's a chance in a thousand, it's good enough for a try," he said. "If you were there, Mr. Byng would take the chance in the thousand for you."

Brengyn looked Stafford up and down slowly. "What is it you've got to say?" he asked, gloomily.

"I am going down, if there's anybody will lead," Stafford replied. "I was brought up in a mining country. I know as much as most of you about mines, and I'll make one to follow you, if you'll lead--you've been down, I know."

Brengyn's face changed. "Mr. Byng isn't our class, he's with capital," he said, "but he's a man. He went down to help save men of my class, and to any of us he's worth the risk. But how many of his own class is taking it on?"

"I, for one," said Lord Tynemouth, stepping forward.

"I--I," answered three other men of the house-party.

Al'mah, who was standing just below Jasmine, had her eyes fixed on Adrian Fellowes, and when Brengyn called for volunteers, her heart almost stood still in suspense. Would Adrian volunteer?

Brengyn's look rested on Adrian for an instant, but Adrian's eyes dropped. Brengyn had said one chance in a thousand, and Adrian said to himself that he had never been lucky--never in all his life. At games of chance he had always lost. Adrian was for the sure thing always.

Al'mah's face flushed with anger and shame at the thing she saw, and a weakness came over her, as though the springs of life had been suddenly emptied.

Brengyn once again fastened the group from Glencader with his eyes. "There's a gentleman in danger," he said, grimly, again. "How many gentlemen volunteer to go down--ay, there's five!" he added, as Stafford and Tynemouth and the others once again responded.

Jasmine saw, but at first did not fully realize what was happening. But presently she understood that there was one near, owing everything to her husband, who had not volunteered to help to save him--on the thousandth chance. She was stunned and stricken.

"Oh, for God's sake, go!" she said, brokenly, but not looking at Adrian Fellowes, and with a heart torn by misery and shame.

Brengyn turned to the men behind him, the dark, determined toilers who sustained the immortal spirit of courage and humanity on thirty shillings a week and nine hours' work a day. "Who's for it, mates?" he asked, roughly. "Who's going wi' me?"

Every man answered hoarsely, "Ay," and every hand went up. Brengyn's back was on Fellowes, Al'mah, and Jasmine now. There was that which filled the cup of trembling for Al'mah in the way he nodded to the men.

"Right, lads," he said with a stern joy in his voice. "But there's only one of you can go, and I'll pick him. Here, Jim," he added to a small, wiry fellow not more than five feet four in height--"here, Jim Gawley, you're comin' wi' me, an' that's all o' you as can come. No, no," he added, as there was loud muttering and dissent. "Jim's got no missis, nor mother, and he's tough as leather and can squeeze in small places, and he's all right, too, in tight corners." Now he turned to Stafford and Tynemouth and the others. "You'll come wi' me," he said to Stafford--" if you want. It's a bad look-out, but we'll have a try. You'll do what I say?" he sharply asked Stafford, whose face was set.

"You know the place," Stafford answered. "I'll do what you say."

"My word goes?"

"Right. Your word goes. Let's get on."

Jasmine took a step forward with a smothered cry, but Alice Tynemouth laid a hand on her arm.

"He'll bring Rudyard back, if it can be done," she whispered.

Stafford did not turn round. He said something in an undertone to Tynemouth, and then, without a glance behind, strode away beside Brengyn and Jim Gawley to the pit's mouth.

Adrian Fellowes stepped up to Tynemouth. "What do you think the chances are?" he asked in a low tone.

"Go to--bed!" was the gruff reply of the irate peer, to whom cowardice was the worst crime on earth, and who was enraged at being left behind. Also he was furious because so many working-men had responded to Brengyn's call for volunteers and Adrian Fellowes had shown the white feather. In the obvious appeal to the comparative courage of class his own class had suffered.

"Or go and talk to the women," he added to Fellowes. "Make 'em comfortable. You've got a gift that way."

Turning on his heel, Lord Tynemouth hastened to the mouth of the pit and watched the preparations for the descent.

Never was night so still; never was a sky so deeply blue, nor stars so bright and serene. It was as though Peace had made its habitation on the wooded hills, and a second summer had come upon the land, though wintertime was near. Nature seemed brooding, and the generous odour of ripened harvests came over the uplands to the watchers in the valley. All was dark and quiet in the sky and on the hills; but in the valley were twinkling lights and the stir and murmur of troubled life--that sinister muttering of angry and sullen men which has struck terror to the hearts of so many helpless victims of revolution, when it has been the mutterings of thousands and not of a few rough, discontented toilers. As Al'mah sat near to the entrance of the mine, wrapped in a warm cloak, and apart from the others who watched and waited also, she seemed to realize the agony of the problem which was being worked out in these labour-centres where, between capital and the work of men's hands, there was so apparent a gulf of disproportionate return.

The stillness of the night was broken now by the hoarse calls of the men, now by the wailing of women, and Al'mah's eyes kept turning to those places where lights were shining, which, as she knew, were houses of death or pain. For hours she and Jasmine and Lady Tynemouth had gone from cottage to cottage where the dead and wounded were, and had left everywhere gifts, and the promises of gifts, in the attempt to soften the cruelty of the blow to those whose whole life depended on the weekly wage. Help and the pledge of help had lightened many a dark corner that night; and an unexplainable antipathy which had suddenly grown up in Al'mah's mind against Jasmine after her arrival at Glencader was dissipated as the hours wore on.

Pale of face, but courageous and solicitous, Jasmine, accompanied by Al'mah, moved among the dead and dying and the bitter and bereaved living, with a gentle smile and a soft word or touch of the hand. Men near to death, or suffering torture, looked gratefully at her or tried to smile; and more than once Mr. Mappin, whose hands were kept busy and whose skill saved more than a handful of lives that night, looked at her in wonder.

Jasmine already had a reputation in the great social world for being of a vain lightness, having nothing of that devotion to good works which Mr. Mappin had seen so often on those high levels where the rich and the aristocratic lived. There was, then, more than beauty and wit and great social gift, gaiety and charm, in this delicate personality? Yes, there was something good and sound in her, after all. Her husband's life was in infinite danger,--had not Brengyn said that his chances were only one in a thousand?--death stared her savagely in the face; yet she bore herself as calmly as those women who could not afford the luxury of tears or the self-indulgence of a despairing indolence; to whom tragedy was but a whip of scorpions to drive them into action. How well they all behaved, these society butterflies-- Jasmine, Lady Tynemouth, and the others! But what a wonderful motherliness and impulsive sympathy steadied by common sense did Al'mah the singing-woman show!

Her instinct was infallible, her knowledge of how these poor people felt was intuitive, and her great-heartedness was to be seen in every motion, heard in every tone of her voice. If she had not had this work of charity to do, she felt she would have gone shrieking through the valley, as, this very midnight, she had seen a girl with streaming hair and bare breast go crying through the streets, and on up the hills to the deep woods, insane with grief and woe.

Her head throbbed. She felt as though she also could tear the coverings from her own bosom to let out the fever which was there; for in her life she had loved two men who had trampled on her self-respect, had shattered all her pride of life, had made her ashamed to look the world in the face. Blantyre, her husband, had been despicable and cruel, a liar and a deserter; and to-night she had seen the man to whom she had given all that was left of her heart and faith disgrace himself and his class before the world by a cowardice which no woman could forgive.

Adrian Fellowes had gone back to Glencader to do necessary things, to prepare the household for any emergency; and she was grateful for the respite. If she had been thrown with him in the desperate mood of the moment, she would have lost her self-control. Happily, fate had taken him away for a few hours; and who could tell what might not happen in a few hours? Meanwhile, there was humanity's work to be done.

About four o'clock in the morning, when she came out from a cottage where she had assisted Mr. Mappin in a painful and dangerous operation, she stood for a moment in reverie, looking up at the hills, whose peace had been shrilly broken a few hours before by that distracted waif of the world, fleeing from the pain of life.

An ample star of rare brilliancy came stealing up over the trees against the sky-line, twinkling and brimming with light.

"No," she said, as though in reply to an inner voice, "there's nothing for me--nothing. I have missed it all." Her hands clasped her breast in pain, and she threw her face upwards. But the light of the star caught her eyes, and her hands ceased to tremble. A strange quietness stole over her.

"My child, my lost beloved child," she whispered.

Her eyes swam with tears now, the lines of pain at her mouth relaxed, the dark look in her eyes stole away. She watched the star with sorrowful eyes. "How much misery does it see!" she said. Suddenly, she thought of Rudyard Byng. "He saved my life," she murmured. "I owe him--ah, Adrian might have paid the debt!" she cried, in pain. "If he had only been a man to-night--"

At that moment there came a loud noise up the valley from the pit's mouth--a great shouting. An instant later two figures ran past her. One was Jasmine, the other was a heavy-footed miner. Gathering her cloak around her Al'mah sped after them.

A huddled group at the pit's mouth, and men and women running toward it; a sharp voice of command, and the crowd falling back, making way for men who carried limp bodies past; then suddenly, out of wild murmurs and calls, a cry of victory like the call of a muezzin from the tower of a mosque--a resonant monotony, in which a dominant principle cries.

A Welsh preaching hillman, carried away by the triumph of the moment, gave the great tragedy the bugle-note of human joy and pride.

Ian Stafford and Brengyn and Jim Gawley had conquered. The limp bodies carried past Al'mah were not dead. They were living, breathing men whom fresh air and a surgeon's aid would soon restore. Two of them were the young men with the bonny wives who now with murmured endearments grasped their cold hands. Behind these two was carried Rudyard Byng, who could command the less certain concentration of a heart. The men whom Rudyard had gone to save could control a greater wealth, a more precious thing than anything he had. The boundaries of the interests of these workers were limited, but their souls were commingled with other souls bound to them by the formalities; and every minute of their days, every atom of their forces, were moving round one light, the light upon the hearthstone. These men were carried ahead of Byng now, as though by the ritual of nature taking their rightful place in life's procession before him.

Something of what the working-women felt possessed Jasmine, but it was an impulse born of the moment, a flood of feeling begotten by the tragedy. It had in it more of remorse than aught else; it was, in part, the agitation of a soul surprised into revelation. Yet there was, too, a strange, deep, undefined pity welling up in her heart,--pity for Rudyard, and because of what she did not say directly even to her own soul. But pity was there, with also a sense of inevitableness, of the continuance of things which she was too weak to alter.

Like the two women of the people ahead, she held Rudyard's hand, as she walked beside him, till he was carried into the manager's office near by. She was conscious that on the other side of Rudyard was a tall figure that staggered and swayed as it moved on, and that two dark eyes were turned towards her ever and anon.

Into those eyes she had looked but once since the rescue, but all that was necessary of gratitude was said in that one glance: "You have saved Rudyard--you, Ian," it said.

With Al'mah it was different. In the light of the open door of the manager's office, she looked into Ian Stafford's face. "He saved my life, you remember," she said; "and you have saved his. I love you."

"I love you!" Greatness of heart was speaking, not a woman's emotions. The love she meant was of the sort which brings no darkness in its train. Men and women can speak of it without casting down their eyes or feeling a flush in their cheeks.

To him came also the two women whose husbands, Jacob and Jabez, were restored to them.

"Man, we luv ye," one said, and the other laid a hand on his breast and nodded assent, adding, "Ay, we luv ye."

That was all; but greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend--and for his enemies, maybe. Enemies these two rescued men were in one sense--young socialists--enemies to the present social order, with faces set against the capitalist and the aristocrat and the landlord; yet in the crisis of life dipping their hands in the same dish, drinking from the same cup, moved by the same sense of elementary justice, pity, courage, and love.

"Man, we luv ye!" And the women turned away to their own--to their capital, which in the slump of Fate had suffered no loss. It was theirs, complete and paying large dividends.

To the crowd, Brengyn, with gruff sincerity, said, loudly: "Jim Gawley, he done as I knowed he'd do. He done his best, and he done it prime. We couldn't ha' got on wi'out him. But first there was Mr. Byng as had sense and knowledge more than any; an' he couldn't be denied; an' there was Mr. Stafford--him--" pointing to Ian, who, with misty eyes, was watching the women go back to their men. "He done his bit better nor any of us. And Mr. Byng and Jacob and Jabez, they can thank their stars that Mr. Stafford done his bit. Jim's all right an' I done my duty, I hope, but these two that ain't of us, they done more--Mr. Byng and Mr. Stafford. Here's three cheers, lads--no, this ain't a time for cheerin'; but ye all ha' got hands."

His hand caught Ian's with the grip of that brotherhood which is as old as Adam, and the hand of miner after miner did the same.

The strike was over--at a price too big for human calculation; but it might have been bigger still.

Outside the open door of the manager's office Stafford watched and waited till he saw Rudyard, with a little laugh, get slowly to his feet and stretch his limbs heavily. Then he turned away gloomily to the darkness of the hills. In his soul there was a depression as deep as in that of the singing-woman.

"Al'mah had her debt to pay, and I shall have mine," he said, wearily.

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XV. THE WORLD WELL LOST

People were in London in September and October who seldom arrived before November. War was coming. Hundreds of families whose men were in the army came to be within touch of the War Office and Aldershot, and the capital of the Empire was overrun by intriguers, harmless and otherwise. There were ladies who hoped to influence officers in high command in favour of their husbands, brothers, or sons; subalterns of title who wished to be upon the staff of some famous general; colonels of character and courage and scant ability, craving commands; high-placed folk connected with great industrial, shipping, or commercial firms, who were used by these firms to get "their share" of contracts and other things which might be going; and patriotic amateurs who sought to make themselves notorious through some civilian auxiliary to war organization, like a voluntary field hospital or a home of convalescence. But men, too, of the real right sort, longing for chance of work in their profession of arms; ready for anything, good for anything, brave to a miracle: and these made themselves fit by hard riding or walking or rowing, or in some school of physical culture, that they might take a war job on, if, and when, it was going.

Among all these Ian Stafford moved with an undercurrent of agitation and anxiety unseen in his face, step, motion, or gesture. For days he was never near the Foreign Office, and then for days he was there almost continuously; yet there was scarcely a day when he did not see Jasmine. Also there were few days in the week when Jasmine did not see M. Mennaval, the ambassador for Moravia--not always at her own house, but where the ambassador chanced to be of an evening, at a fashionable restaurant, or at some notable function. This situation had not been difficult to establish; and, once established, meetings between the lady and monsieur were arranged with that skill which belongs to woman and to diplomacy.

Once or twice at the beginning Jasmine's chance question concerning the ambassador's engagements made M. Mennaval keen to give information as to his goings and comings. Thus if they met naturally, it was also so constantly that people gossiped; but at first, certainly, not to Jasmine's grave disadvantage, for M. Mennaval was thought to be less dangerous than impressionable.

In that, however, he was somewhat maligned, for his penchant for beautiful and "select" ladies had capacities of development almost unguessed. Previously Jasmine had never shown him any marked preference; and when, at first, he met her in town on her return from Wales he was no more than watchfully courteous and admiring. When, however, he found her in a receptive mood, and evidently taking pleasure in his society, his vanity expanded greatly. He at once became possessed by an absorbing interest in the woman who, of all others in London, had gifts which were not merely physical, but of a kind that stimulate the mind and rouse those sensibilities so easily dulled by dull and material people. Jasmine had her material side; but there was in her the very triumph of the imaginative also; and through it the material became alive, buoyant and magnetic.

Without that magnetic power which belonged to the sensuous part of her she would not have gained control of M. Mennaval's mind, for it was keen, suspicious, almost abnormally acute; and, while lacking real power, it protected itself against the power of others by assembled and well-disciplined adroitness and evasions.

Very soon, however, Jasmine's sensitive beauty, which in her desire to intoxicate him became voluptuousness, enveloped his brain in a mist of rainbow reflections. Under her deft questions and suggestions he allowed her to see the springs of his own diplomacy and the machinery inside the Moravian administration. She caught glimpses of its ambitions, its unscrupulous use of its position in international relations, to gain advantage for itself, even by a dexterity which might easily bear another name, and by sudden disregard of international attachments not unlike treachery.

Rudyard was too busy to notice the more than cavalier attitude of M. Mennaval; and if he had noticed it, there would have been no intervention. Of late a lesion of his higher moral sense made him strangely insensitive to obvious things. He had an inborn chivalry, but the finest, truest chivalry was not his--that which carefully protects a woman from temptation, by keeping her unostentatiously away from it; which remembers that vanity and the need for admiration drive women into pitfalls out of which they climb again maimed for life, if they climb at all.

He trusted Jasmine absolutely, while there was, at the same time, a great unrest in his heart and life--an unrest which the accident at the Glencader Mine, his own share in a great rescue, and her gratitude for his safety did little to remove. It produced no more than a passing effect upon Jasmine or upon himself. The very convention of making light of bravery and danger, which has its value, was in their case an evil, preventing them from facing the inner meaning of it all. If they had been less rich, if their house had been small, if their acquaintances had been fewer, if . . .

It was not by such incidents that they were to be awakened, and with the wild desire to make Stafford grateful to her, and owe her his success, the tragedy yonder must, in the case of Jasmine, have been obscured and robbed of its force. At Glencader Jasmine had not got beyond desire to satisfy a vanity, which was as deep in her as life itself. It was to regain her hold upon a man who had once acknowledged her power and, in a sense, had bowed to her will. But that had changed, and, down beneath all her vanity and wilfulness, there was now a dangerous regard and passion for him which, under happy circumstances, might have transformed her life--and his. Now it all served to twist her soul and darken her footsteps. On every hand she was engaged in a game of dissimulation, made the more dangerous by the thread of sincerity and desire running through it all. Sometimes she started aghast at the deepening intrigue gathering in her path; at the deterioration in her husband; and at the hollow nature of her home life; but the excitement of the game she was playing, the ardour of the chase, was in her veins, and her inherited spirit of great daring kept her gay with vitality and intellectual adventure.

Day after day she had strengthened the cords by which she was drawing Ian to her; and in the confidence begotten of her services to him, of her influence upon M. Mennaval and the progress of her efforts, a new intimacy, different from any they had ever known, grew and thrived. Ian scarcely knew how powerful had become the feeling between them. He only realized that delight which comes from working with another for a cherished cause, the goal of one's life, which has such deeper significance when the partner in the struggle is a woman. They both experienced that most seductive of all influences, a secret knowledge and a pact of mutual silence and purpose.

"You trust me now?" Jasmine asked at last one day, when she had been able to assure Ian that the end was very near, that M. Mennaval had turned his face from Slavonia, and had carried his government with him--almost. In the heir-apparent to the throne of Moravia, whose influence with the Moravian Prime Minister was considerable, there still remained one obdurate element; but Ian's triumph only lacked the removal of this one obstructive factor, and thereafter England would be secure from foreign attack, if war came in South Africa. In that case Ian's career might culminate at the head of the Foreign Office itself, or as representative of the throne in India, if he chose that splendid sphere.

"You do trust me, Ian?" Jasmine repeated, with a wistfulness as near reality as her own deceived soul could permit.

With a sincerity as deep as one can have who embarks on enterprises in which one regrets the means in contemplation of the end, Ian replied:

"Yes, yes, I trust you, Jasmine, as I used to do when I was twenty and you were five. You have brought back the boy in me. All the dreams of youth are in my heart again, all the glow of the distant sky of hope. I feel as though I lived upon a hill-top, under some greenwood tree, and--"

"And 'sported with Amaryllis in the shade,'" she broke in with a little laugh of triumph, her eyes brighter than he had ever seen them. They were glowing with a fire of excitement which was like a fever devouring the spirit, with little dark, flying banners of fate or tragedy behind.

Strange that he caught the inner meaning of it as he looked into her eyes now. In the depths of those eyes, where long ago he had drowned his spirit, it was as though he saw an army of reckless battalions marching to a great battle; but behind all were the black wings of vultures--pinions of sorrow following the gay brigades. Even as he gazed at her, something ominous and threatening caught his heart, and, with the end of his great enterprise in sight, a black premonition smothered him.

But with a smile he said: "Well, it does look as though we are near the end of the journey."

"And 'journeys end in lovers' meeting,'" she whispered softly, lowered her eyes, and then raised them again to his.

The light in them blinded him. Had he not always loved her--before any one came, before Rudyard came, before the world knew her? All that he had ever felt in the vanished days rushed upon him with intolerable force. Through his life-work, through his ambition, through helping him as no one else could have done at the time of crisis, she had reached the farthest confines of his nature. She had woven, thread by thread, the magic carpet of that secret companionship by which the best as the worst of souls are sometimes carried into a land enchanted--for a brief moment, before Fate stoops down and hangs a veil of plague over the scene of beauty, passion, and madness.

Her eyes, full of liquid fire, met his. They half closed as her body swayed slightly towards him.

With a cry, almost rough in its intensity, he caught her in his arms and buried his face in the soft harvest of her hair. "Jasmine--Jasmine, my love!" he murmured.

Suddenly she broke from him. "Oh no--oh no, Ian! The work is not done. I can't take my pay before I have earned it--such pay--such pay."

He caught her hands and held them fast. "Nothing can alter what is. It stands. Whatever the end, whatever happens to the thing I want to do, I--"

He drew her closer.

"You say this before we know what Moravia will do; you--oh, Ian, tell me it is not simply gratitude, and because I tried to help you; not only because--"

He interrupted her with a passionate gesture. "It belonged at first to what you were doing for me. Now it is by itself, that which, for good or ill, was to be between you and me--the foreordained thing."

She drew back her head with a laugh of vanity and pride and bursting joy. "Ah, it doesn't matter now!" she said. "It doesn't matter."

He looked at her questioningly.

"Nothing matters now," she repeated, less enigmatically. She stretched her arms up joyously, radiantly.

"The world well lost!" she cried.

Her reckless mood possessed him also. They breathed that air which intoxicates, before it turns heavy with calamity and stifles the whole being; by which none ever thrived, though many have sought nourishment in daring draughts of it.

"The world well lost!" he repeated; and his lips sought hers.

Her determined patience had triumphed. Hour by hour, by being that to his plans, to his work of life, which no one else could be, she had won back what she had lost when the Rand had emptied into her lap its millions, at the bidding of her material soul. With infinite tact and skill she had accomplished her will. The man she had lost was hers again. What it must mean, what it must do, what price must be paid for this which her spirit willed had never yet been estimated. But her will had been supreme, and she took all out of the moment which was possible to mortal pleasure.

Like the Columbus, however, who plants his flag upon the cliffs of a new land, and then, leaving his vast prize unharvested, retreats upon the sea by which he came, so Ian suddenly realized that here was no abiding-place for his love. It was no home for his faith, for those joys which the sane take gladly, when it is right to take them, and the mad long for and die for when their madness becomes unbearable.

A cloud suddenly passed over him, darkened his eyes, made his bones like water. For, whatever might come, he knew in his heart of hearts that the "old paths" were the only paths which he could tread in peace--or tread at all without the ruin of all he had slowly builded.

Jasmine, however, did not see his look or realize the sudden physical change which passed over him, leaving him cold and numbed; for a servant now entered with a note.

Seeing the handwriting on the envelope, with an exclamation of excitement and surprise, Jasmine tore the letter open. One glance was sufficient.

"Moravia is ours--ours, Ian!" she cried, and thrust the letter into his hands.

"Dearest lady," it ran, "the Crown has intervened successfully. The Heir Apparent has been set aside. The understanding may now be ratified. May I dine with you to-night?

"Yours, M.

"P.S.--You are the first to know, but I have also sent a note to our young friend, Ian Stafford. Mais, he cannot say, 'Alone I did it.'

"M."

"Thank God--thank God, for England!" said Ian solemnly, the greater thing in him deeply stirred. "Now let war come, if it must; for we can do our work without interference."

"Thank God," he repeated, fervently, and the light in his eyes was clearer and burned brighter than the fire which had filled them during the past few moments.

Then he clasped her in his arms again.

As Ian drove swiftly in a hansom to the Foreign Office, his brain putting in array and reviewing the acts which must flow from this international agreement now made possible, the note Mennaval had written Jasmine flashed before his eyes: "Dearest lady.... May I dine with you to-night? . . . M."

His face flushed. There was something exceedingly familiar--more in the tone of the words than the words themselves--which irritated and humiliated him. What she had done for him apparently warranted this intimate, self-assured tone on the part of Mennaval, the philanderer. His pride smarted. His rose of triumph had its thorns.

A letter from Mennaval was at the Foreign Office awaiting him. He carried it to the Prime Minister, who read it with grave satisfaction.

"It is just in time, Stafford," he remarked. "You ran it close. We will clinch it instantly. Let us have the code."

As the Prime Minister turned over the pages of the code, he said, dryly: "I hear from Pretoria, through Mr. Byng, that President Kruger may send the ultimatum tomorrow. I fear he will have the laugh on us, for ours is not ready. We have to make sure of this thing first.... I wonder how Landrassy will take it."

He chuckled deeply. "Landrassy made a good fight, but you made a better one, Stafford. I shouldn't wonder if you got on in diplomacy," he added, with quizzical humour.... "Ah, here is the code! Now to clinch it all before Oom Paul's challenge arrives."

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XVI. THE COMING OF THE BAAS

"The Baas--where the Baas?"

Barry Whalen turned with an angry snort to the figure in the doorway. "Here's the sweet Krool again," he said. "Here's the faithful, loyal offspring of the Vaal and the karoo, the bulwark of the Baas.... For God's sake smile for once in your life!" he growled with an oath, and, snatching up a glass of whiskey and water, threw the contents at the half-caste.

Krool did not stir, and some of the liquid caught him in the face. Slowly he drew out an old yellow handkerchief and wiped his cheeks, his eyes fixed with a kind of impersonal scrutiny on Barry Whalen and the scene before him.

The night was well forward, and an air of recklessness and dissipation pervaded this splendid room in De Lancy Scovel's house. The air was thick with tobacco-smoke, trays were scattered about, laden with stubs of cigars and ashes, and empty and half-filled glasses were everywhere. Some of the party had already gone, their gaming instinct satisfied for the night, their pockets lighter than when they came; and the tables where they had sat were in a state of disorder more suggestive of a "dive" than of the house of one who lived in Grosvenor Square.

No servant came to clear away the things. It was a rule of the establishment that at midnight the household went to bed, and the host and his guests looked after themselves thereafter. The friends of De Lancy Scovel called him "Cupid," because of his cherubic face, but he was more gnome than cherub at heart. Having come into his fortune by being a henchman to abler men than himself, he was almost over-zealous to retain it, knowing that he could never get it again; yet he was hospitable with the income he had to spend. He was the Beau Brummel of that coterie which laid the foundation of prosperity on the Rand; and his house was a marvel of order and crude elegance--save when he had his roulette and poker parties, and then it was the shambles of murdered niceties. Once or twice a week his friends met here; and it was not mendaciously said that small fortunes were lost and won within these walls "between drinks."

The critical nature of things on the Rand did not lessen the gaming or the late hours, the theatrical entertainments and social functions at which Al'mah or another sang at a fabulous fee; or from which a dancer took away a pocketful of gold--partly fee. Only a few of all the group, great and small, kept a quiet pace and cherished their nerves against possible crisis or disaster; and these were consumed by inward anxiety, because all the others looked to them for a lead, for policy, for the wise act and the manoevre that would win.

Rudyard Byng was the one person who seemed equally compacted of both elements. He was a powerful figure in the financial inner circle; but he was one of those who frequented De Lancy Scovel's house; and he had, in his own house, a roulette-table and a card-room like a banqueting-hall. Wallstein, Wolff, Barry Whalen, Fleming, Hungerford, Reuter, and the others of the inner circle he laughed at in a good-natured way for coddling themselves, and called them--not without some truth--valetudinarians. Indeed, the hard life of the Rand in the early days, with the bad liqueur and the high veld air, had brought to most of the Partners inner physical troubles of some kind; and their general abstention was not quite voluntary moral purpose.

Of them all, except De Lancy Scovel, Rudyard was most free from any real disease or physical weakness which could call for the care of a doctor. With a powerful constitution, he had kept his general health fairly, though strange fits of depression had consumed him of late, and the old strong spring and resilience seemed going, if not gone, from his mind and body. He was not that powerful virile animal of the day when he caught Al'mah in his arms and carried her off the stage at Covent Garden. He was vaguely conscious of the great change in him, and Barry Whalen, who, with all his faults, would have gone to the gallows for him, was ever vividly conscious of it, and helplessly resented the change. At the time of the Jameson Raid Rudyard Byng had gripped the situation with skill, decision, and immense resource, giving as much help to the government of the day as to his colleagues and all British folk on the Rand.

But another raid was nearing, a raid upon British territory this time. The Rand would be the centre of a great war; and Rudyard Byng was not the man he had been, in spite of his show of valour and vigour at the Glencader Mine. Indeed, that incident had shown a certain physical degeneracy--he had been too slow in recovering from the few bad hours spent in the death-trap. The government at Whitehall still consulted him, still relied upon his knowledge and his natural tact; but secret as his conferences were with the authorities, they were not so secret that criticism was not viciously at work. Women jealous of Jasmine, financiers envious of Rudyard, Imperial politicians resentful of his influence, did their best to present him in the worst light possible. It was more than whispered that he sat too long over his wine, and that his desire for fiery liquid at other than meal-times was not in keeping with the English climate, but belonged to lands of drier weather and more absorptive air.

"What damned waste!" was De Lancy Scovel's attempt at wit as Krool dried his face and put the yellow handkerchief back into his pocket. The others laughed idly and bethought themselves of their own glasses, and the croupier again set the ball spinning and drew their eyes.

"Faites vos jeux!" the croupier called, monotonously, and the jingle of coins followed.

"The Baas--where the Baas?" came again the harsh voice from the doorway.

"Gone--went an hour ago," said De Lancy Scovel, coming forward. "What is it, Krool?"

"The Baas--"

"The Baas!" mocked Barry Whalen, swinging round again. "The Baas is gone to find a rope to tie Oom Paul to a tree, as Oom Paul tied you at Lichtenburg."

Slowly Krool's eyes went round the room, and then settled on Barry Whalen's face with owl-like gravity. "What the Baas does goes good," he said. "When the Baas ties, Alles zal recht kom."

He turned away now with impudent slowness, then suddenly twisted his body round and made a grimace of animal-hatred at Barry Whalen, his teeth showing like those of a wolf.

"The Baas will live long as he want," he added, "but Oom Paul will have your heart--and plenty more," he added, malevolently, and moved into the darkness without, closing the door behind him.

A shudder passed through the circle, for the uncanny face and the weird utterance had the strange reality of fate. A gloom fell on the gamblers suddenly, and they slowly drew into a group, looking half furtively at one another.

The wheel turned on the roulette-table, the ball clattered.

"Rien ne va plus!" called the croupier; but no coins had fallen on the green cloth, and the wheel stopped spinning for the night, as though by common consent.

"Krool will murder you some day, Barry," said Fleming, with irritation. "What's the sense in saying things like that to a servant?"

"How long ago did Rudyard leave?" asked De Lancy Scovel, curiously. "I didn't see him go. He didn't say good-night to me. Did he to you--to any of you?"

"Yes, he said to me he was going," rejoined Barry Whalen.

"And to me," said Melville, the Pole, who in the early days on the Rand had been a caterer. His name then had been Joseph Sobieski, but this not fitting well with the English language, he had searched the directory of London till he found the impeachably English combination of Clifford Melville. He had then cut his hair and put himself into the hands of a tailor in Conduit Street, and they had turned him into--what he was.

"Yes, Byng thed good-night to me--deah old boy," he repeated. "'I'm so damned thleepy, and I have to be up early in the morning,' he thed to me."

"Byng's example's good enough. I'm off," said Fleming, stretching up his arms and yawning.

"Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning--much earlier," interposed De Lancy Scovel, with a meaning note in his voice.

"Why?" growled out Barry Whalen.

"He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm," was the slow reply.

For a moment a curious silence fell upon the group. It was as though some one had heard what had been said--some one who ought not to have heard.

That is exactly what had happened. Rudyard had not gone home. He had started to do so; but, remembering that he had told Krool to come at twelve o'clock if any cables arrived, that he might go himself to the cable-office, if necessary, and reply, he passed from the hallway into a little room off the card-room, where there was a sofa, and threw himself down to rest and think. He knew that the crisis in South Africa must come within a few hours; that Oom Paul would present an ultimatum before the British government was ready to act; and that preparations must be made on the morrow to meet all chances and consequences. Preparations there had been, but conditions altered from day to day, and what had been arranged yesterday morning required modification this evening.

He was not heedless of his responsibilities because he was at the gaming-table; but these were days when he could not bear to be alone. Yet he could not find pleasure in the dinner-parties arranged by Jasmine, though he liked to be with her--liked so much to be with her, and yet wondered how it was he was not happy when he was beside her. This night, however, he had especially wished to be alone with her, to dine with her a deux, and he had been disappointed to find that she had arranged a little dinner and a theatre-party. With a sigh he had begged her to arrange her party without him, and, in unusual depression, he had joined "the gang," as Jasmine called it, at De Lancy Scovel's house.

Here he moved in a kind of gloom, and had a feeling as though he were walking among pitfalls. A dread seemed to descend upon him and deaden his natural buoyancy. At dinner he was fitful in conversation, yet inclined to be critical of the talk around him. Upon those who talked excitedly of war and its consequences, with perverse spirit he fell like a sledge-hammer, and proved their information or judgment wrong. Then, again, he became amiable and almost sentimental in his attitude toward them all, gripping the hands of two or three with a warmth which more than surprised them. It was as though he was subconsciously aware of some great impending change. It may be there whispered through the clouded space that lies between the dwelling-house of Fate and the place where a man's soul lives the voice of that Other Self, which every man has, warning him of darkness, or red ruin, or a heartbreak coming on.

However that may be, he had played a good deal during the evening, had drunk more than enough brandy and soda, had then grown suddenly heavy-hearted and inert. At last he had said good-night, and had fallen asleep in the little dark room adjoining the card-room.

Was it that Other Self which is allowed to come to us as our trouble or our doom approaches, who called sharply in his ear as De Lancy Scovel said, "Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning--much earlier."

Rudyard wakened upon the words without stirring--just a wide opening of the eyes and a moveless body. He listened with, as it were, a new sense of hearing, so acute, so clear, that it was as though his friends talked loudly in his very ears.

"He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm."

His heart beat so loud that it seemed his friends must hear it, in the moment's silence following these suggestive words.

"Here, there's enough of this," said Barry Whalen, sharply, upon the stillness. "It's nobody's business, anyhow. Let's look after ourselves, and we'll have enough to do, or I don't know any of us."

"But it's no good pretending," said Fleming. "There isn't one of us but 'd put ourselves out a great deal for Byng. It isn't human nature to sit still and do naught, and say naught, when things aren't going right for him in the place where things matter most.

"Can't he see? Doesn't he see--anything?" asked a little wizened lawyer, irritably, one who had never been married, the solicitor of three of their great companies.

"See--of course he doesn't see. If he saw, there'd be hell--at least," replied Barry Whalen, scornfully.

"He's as blind as a bat," sighed Fleming.

"He got into the wrong garden and picked the wrong flower--wrong for him," said another voice. "A passion-flower, not the flower her name is," added De Lancy Scovel, with a reflective cynicism.

"They they there's no doubt about it--she's throwing herself away. Ruddy isn't in it, deah old boy, so they they," interposed Clifford Melville, alias Joseph Sobieski of Posen." Diplomathy is all very well, but thith kind of diplomathy is not good for the thoul." He laughed as only one of his kidney can laugh.

Upon the laugh there came a hoarse growl of anger. Barry Whalen was standing above Mr. Clifford Melville with rage in every fibre, threat in every muscle.

"Shut up--curse you, Sobieski! It's for us, for any and every one, to cut the throats of anybody that says a word against her. We've all got to stand together. Byng forever, is our cry, and Byng's wife is Byng--before the world. We've got to help him--got to help him, I say."

"Well, you've got to tell him first. He's got to know it first," interposed Fleming; "and it's not a job I'm taking on. When Byng's asleep he takes a lot of waking, and he's asleep in this thing."

"And the world's too wide awake," remarked De Lancy Scovel, acidly. "One way or another Byng's got to be waked. It's only him can put it right."

No one spoke for a moment, for all saw that Barry Whalen was about to say something important, coming forward to the table impulsively for the purpose, when a noise from the darkened room beyond fell upon the silence.

De Lancy Scovel heard, Fleming heard, others heard, and turned towards the little room. Sobieski touched Barry Whalen's arm, and they all stood waiting while a hand slowly opened wide the door of the little room, and, white with a mastered agitation, Byng appeared.

For a moment he looked them all full in the face, yet as though he did not see them; and then, without a word, as they stepped aside to make way for him, he passed down the room to the outer hallway.

At the door he turned and looked at them again. Scorn, anger, pride, impregnated with a sense of horror, were in his face. His white lips opened to speak, but closed again, and, turning, he stepped out of their sight.

No one followed. They knew their man.

"My God, how he hates us!" said Barry Whalen, and sank into a chair at the table, with his head between his hands.

The cheeks of the little wizened lawyer glistened with tears, and De Lancy Scovel threw open a window and leaned out, looking into the night remorsefully.

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