Part 13 (2/2)

Chase, at all events, made no attempt to avoid the interview. As the hands of the clock marked eleven, and the rooms emptied, he came at once to Warrisden.

”We can go now,” he said; and unlocking a drawer, to Warrisden's perplexity he filled his pockets with racket-b.a.l.l.s. The motive for that proceeding became apparent as they walked to the house where Chase lodged. Their way lay through alleys, and as they walked the children cl.u.s.tered about them, and Chase's pockets were emptied.

”We keep this house because men from the Universities come down and put in a week now and then at the mission. My rooms are upstairs.”

Chase's sitting-room was in the strangest contrast to the bareness of the mission and the squalor of the streets. It was furnished with luxury, but the luxury was that of a man of taste and knowledge. There was hardly a piece of furniture which had not an interesting history; the engravings and the bra.s.s ornaments upon the walls had been picked up here and there in Italy. A bright fire blazed upon the hearth.

”What will you drink?” Chase asked, and brought from a cupboard bottle after bottle of liqueurs. It seemed to Warrisden that the procession of bottles would never end--some held liqueurs of which he had never even heard the name; but concerning all of them Mr. Chase discoursed with great knowledge and infinite appreciation.

”I can recommend this,” he said tentatively, as he took up one fat round bottle and held it up to the light. ”It is difficult perhaps to say definitely which is the best, but--yes, I can recommend this.”

”Can't I have a whiskey and soda?” asked Warrisden, plaintively.

Mr. Chase looked at his companion with a stare.

”Of course you can,” he replied. But his voice was one of disappointment, and with an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders he fetched a Tantalus and a siphon of seltzer.

”Help yourself,” he said; and lighting a gold-tipped cigarette he drew up a chair and began to talk. And so Warrisden came at last to understand how Tony Stretton had gained his great faith in Mr. Chase.

Chase was a talker of a rare quality. He sat stooping over the fire with his thin hands outspread to the blaze, and for half an hour Warrisden was enchained. All that had repelled him in the man, all that had aroused his curiosity, was soon lost to sight. He yielded himself up as if to some magician. Chase talked not at all of his work or of the many strange incidents which he must needs have witnessed in its discharge. He spoke of other climates and bright towns with a scholars.h.i.+p which had nothing of pedantry, and an observation human as it was keen. Chase, with the help of his Livy, had traced Hannibal's road across the Alps and had followed it on foot; he spoke of another march across snow mountains of which Warrisden had never till this moment heard--the hundred days of a dead Sultan of Morocco on the Pa.s.ses of the Atlas, during which he led his forces back from Tafilet to Rabat. Chase knew nothing of this retreat but what he had read. Yet he made it real to Warrisden, so vividly did his imagination fill up the outlines of the written history. He knew his Paris, his Constantinople. He had bathed from the Lido and dreamed on the Grand Ca.n.a.l. He spoke of the peeling frescoes in the Villa of Countess Guiccioli above Leghorn, of the outlook from the terrace over the vines and the olive trees to the sea where Sh.e.l.ley was drowned; and where Byron's brig used to round into the wind and with its sails flapping drop anchor under the hill. For half an hour Warrisden wandered through Europe in the pleasantest companions.h.i.+p, and then Chase stopped abruptly and leaned back in his chair.

”I was forgetting,” he said, ”that you had come upon a particular errand. It sometimes happens that I see no one outside the mission people for a good while, and during those periods when I get an occasion I am apt to talk too much. What can I do for you?”

The spirit had gone from his voice, his face. He leaned back in his chair, a man tired out. Warrisden looked at the liqueur bottles crowded on the table, with Chase's conversation still fresh in his mind. Was Chase a man at war with himself, he wondered, who was living a life for which he had no taste that he might the more completely escape a life which his conscience disapproved? Or was he deliberately both hedonist and Puritan, giving to each side of his strange nature, in turn, its outlet and gratification?

”You have something to say to me,” Chase continued. ”I know quite well what it is about.”

”Stretton,” said Warrisden.

”Yes; you mentioned him in the billiard-room. Well?”

Chase was not looking at Warrisden. He sat with his eyes half-closed, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his finger-tips joined under his chain, and his head thrown back. There was no expression upon his face but one of weariness. Would he answer? Could he answer? Warrisden was in doubt, indeed in fear. He led to his question warily.

”It was you who recommended Stretton to try horse-breeding in Kentucky.”

”Yes,” said Chase; and he added, ”after he had decided of his own accord to go away.”

”He failed.”

”Yes.”

”And he has disappeared.”

Chase opened his eyes, but did not turn them to his companion.

”I did not advise his disappearance,” he said. ”That, like his departure, was his own doing.”

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