Part 59 (1/2)

It was not a theme on which it was wise to permit one's thoughts to linger,-and particularly was it clear that it was one from which Lessingham's thoughts should have been kept as far as possible away.

'Come, Mr Lessingham, neither you nor I will do himself any good by permitting his reflections to flow in a morbid channel. Let us talk of something else. By the way, weren't you due to speak in the House to-night?'

'Due!-Yes, I was due,-but what does it matter?'

'But have you acquainted no one with the cause of your non- attendance?'

'Acquaint!-whom should I acquaint?'

'My good sir! Listen to me, Mr Lessingham. Let me entreat you very earnestly, to follow my advice. Call another cab,-or take this! and go at once to the House. It is not too late. Play the man, deliver the speech you have undertaken to deliver, perform your political duties. By coming with me you will be a hindrance rather than a help, and you may do your reputation an injury from which it never may recover. Do as I counsel you, and I will undertake to do my very utmost to let you have good news by the time your speech is finished.'

He turned on me with a bitterness for which I was unprepared.

'If I were to go down to the House, and try to speak in the state in which I am now, they would laugh at me, I should be ruined.'

'Do you not run an equally great risk of being ruined by staying away?'

He gripped me by the arm.

'Mr Champnell, do you know that I am on the verge of madness? Do you know that as I am sitting here by your side I am living in a dual world? I am going on and on to catch that-that fiend, and I am back again in that Egyptian den, upon that couch of rugs, with the Woman of the Songs beside me, and Marjorie is being torn and tortured, and burnt before my eyes! G.o.d help me! Her shrieks are ringing in my ears!'

He did not speak loudly, but his voice was none the less impressive on that account. I endeavoured my hardest to be stern.

'I confess that you disappoint me, Mr Lessingham. I have always understood that you were a man of unusual strength; you appear instead, to be a man of extraordinary weakness; with an imagination so ill-governed that its ebullitions remind me of nothing so much as feminine hysterics, Your wild language is not warranted by circ.u.mstances. I repeat that I think it quite possible that by to-morrow morning she will be returned to you.'

'Yes,-but how? as the Marjorie I have known, as I saw her last,- or how?'

That was the question which I had already asked myself, in what condition would she be when we had succeeded in s.n.a.t.c.hing her from her captor's grip? It was a question to which I had refused to supply an answer. To him I lied by implication.

'Let us hope that, with the exception of being a trifle scared, she will be as sound and hale and hearty as even in her life.'

'Do you yourself believe that she'll be like that,-untouched, unchanged, unstained?'

Then I lied right out,-it seemed to me necessary to calm his growing excitement.

'I do.'

'You don't!'

'Mr Lessingham!'

'Do you think that I can't see your face and read in it the same thoughts which trouble me? As a man of honour do you care to deny that when Marjorie Lindon is restored to me,-if she ever is!-you fear she will be but the mere soiled husk of the Marjorie whom I knew and loved?'

'Even supposing that there may be a modic.u.m of truth in what you say,-which I am far from being disposed to admit-what good purpose do you propose to serve by talking in such a strain?'

'None,-no good purpose,-unless it be the desire of looking the truth in the face. For, Mr Champnell, you must not seek to play with me the hypocrite, nor try to hide things from me as if I were a child. If my life is ruined-it is ruined,-let me know it, and look the knowledge in the face. That, to me, is to play the man.'

I was silent.

The wild tale he had told me of that Cairene inferno, oddly enough-yet why oddly, for the world is all coincidence!-had thrown a flood of light on certain events which had happened some three years previously and which ever since had remained shrouded in mystery. The conduct of the business afterwards came into my hands,-and briefly, what had occurred was this: