Part 92 (1/2)

She shook hands unconsciously with him and with Louis. The two Cravens turned to the door. Wharton advanced into the room, and let them pa.s.s.

”You have been in a hurry to tell your story!” he said, as Louis walked by him.

Contemptuous hate breathed from every feature, but he was perfectly self-controlled.

”Yes--” said Craven, calmly--”Now it is your turn.”

The door was no sooner shut than Wharton strode forward and caught her hand.

”They have told you everything? Ah!--”

His eye fell upon the evening paper. Letting her go, he felt for a chair and dropped into it. Throwing himself back, his hands behind his head, he drew a long breath and his eyes closed. For the first time in his life or hers she saw him weak and spent like other men. Even his nerve had been worn down by the excitement of these five fighting hours. The eyes were lined and hollow--the brow contracted; the young roundness of the cheek was lost in the general pallor and patchiness of the skin; the lower part of the face seemed to have sharpened and lengthened,--and over the whole had pa.s.sed a breath of something aging and withering the traces of which sent a s.h.i.+ver through Marcella. She sat down near him, still in her nurse's cloak, one trembling hand upon her lap.

”Will you tell me what made you do this?” she asked, not being able to think of anything else to say.

He opened his eyes with a start.

In that instant's quiet the scene he had just lived through had been rus.h.i.+ng before him again--the long table in the panelled committee-room, the keen angry faces gathered about it. Bennett, in his blue tie and shabby black coat, the clear moist eyes vexed and miserable--Molloy, small and wiry, business-like in the midst of confusion, cool in the midst of tumult--and Wilkins, a black, hectoring leviathan, thundering on the table as he flung his broad Yorks.h.i.+re across it, or mouthing out Denny's letter in the midst of the sudden electrical silence of some thirty amazed and incredulous hearers.

”_Spies,_ yo call us?” with a finger like a dart, threatening the enemy--”Aye; an' yo're aboot reet! I and my friends--we _have_ been trackin' and spyin' for weeks past. We _knew_ those men, those starvin'

women and bairns, were bein' _sold_, but we couldn't prove it. Now we've come at the how and the why of it! And we'll make it harder for men like you to _sell 'em again_! Yo call it infamy?--well, _we_ call it detection.”

Then rattling on the inner ear came the phrases of the attack which followed on the director of ”The People's Banking a.s.sociation,” the injured innocent of as mean a job, as unsavoury a bit of vulturous finance, as had cropped into publicity for many a year--and finally the last dramatic cry:

”But it's noa matter, yo say! Mester Wharton has n.o.bbut played his party and the workin' man a dirty trick or two--_an' yo mun have a gentleman!_ Noa--the workin' man isn't fit _himself_ to speak wi' his own enemies i'

th' gate--_yo mun have a gentleman_!--an' Mester Wharton, he says he'll tak' the post, an' dea his best for yo--an', remember, _yo mun have a gentleman_! Soa now--Yes! or No!--wull yo?--or _woan't yo_?”

And at that, the precipitation of the great unwieldy form half across the table towards Wharton's seat--the roar of the speaker's immediate supporters thrown up against the dead silence of the rest!

As to his own speech--he thought of it with a soreness, a disgust which penetrated to bones and marrow. He had been too desperately taken by surprise--had lost his nerve--missed the right tone throughout. Cool defiance, free self-justification, might have carried him through.

Instead of which--faugh!

All this was the phantom-show of a few seconds' thought. He roused himself from a miserable reaction of mind and body to attend to Marcella's question.

”Why did I do it?” he repeated; ”why--”

He broke off, pressing both his hands upon his brow. Then he suddenly sat up and pulled himself together.

”Is that tea?” he said, touching the tray. ”Will you give me some?”

Marcella went into the back kitchen and called Minta. While the boiling water was brought and the tea was made, Wharton sat forward with his face on his hands and saw nothing. Marcella whispered a word in Minta's ear as she came in. The woman paused, looked at Wharton, whom she had not recognised before in the dark--grew pale--and Marcella saw her hands shaking as she set the tray in order. Wharton knew nothing and thought nothing of Kurd's widow, but to Marcella the juxtaposition of the two figures brought a wave of complex emotion.

Wharton forced himself to eat and drink, hardly speaking the while.

Then, when the tremor of sheer exhaustion had to some extent abated, he suddenly realised who this was that was sitting opposite to him ministering to him.

She felt his hand--his quick powerful hand--on hers.

”To _you_ I owe the whole truth--let me tell it!”