Part 74 (1/2)
Since Hal told him, in a few, rather abrupt words, her story, he had scarcely looked at her. When she first entered his room so unexpectedly, his eyes had searched her face as if he would read instantly what she had come for?... what she had learnt?... Before hers, his gaze fell.
”I have come from Lorraine,” she said, and he understood that she knew all.
A dull red crept over his face and neck, and then died away, leaving him of an ashy paleness. He was standing by his desk, and he reached out one hand and rested it on some books, gripping the backs of them with a grip that made his knuckles stand out like white knots. He did not ask Hal to sit down. Commonplace amenities died in the stress of the moment.
She stood in the middle of the room, very straight and very still. In a close-fitting travelling-dress she looked unusually slim, almost boyish, and something about her att.i.tude rather suggested a youthful knight, sword in hand, come with vengeance to the Transgressor. Yet, even in his shame and stunned perplexity, Hermon lost no shred of dignity.
He towered above her, with bend head, rigid, white face, grave, downcast eyes, and in spite of every reproach her att.i.tude seemed to hurl at him, het yet wore the look of n.o.bility that was his birtright.
”When do you think I should go?” he asked at last, with difficulty.
”We ought to cross to-night.”
”To-night! - I - I - have a very important case to-morrow. It will not last long. It matters a great deal.”
”I know,” was the short, uncompromising answer.
He looked up with a swift glance of inquiry. Then he said quietly:
”Do you know that it may wreck my future to leave London to-night?”
”Yes,” said Hal. ”I know.”
”And after all Lorraine did not help me to this hour of success, am I to throw away my chance?”
”Lorraine is dying. Her dying wish is to see you once more. Is it necessary to discuss anything else?”
Again there was silence between them - silence so intense, so poignant, it was like a live thing present in the room. Through the double windows came a far-off, m.u.f.fled sound of the traffic in the Strand, but it seemed to have nothing whatever to do with the life of that quiet room. It dit not disturb the silence, in which one could almost hear pulse-beats. It belonged to another world.
Once Alymer raised his head and looked hard into her face. In his eyes there was an expression of utter hopelessness. She had not spoken any word of reproach or scorn, yet everything about her as she stood there erect and pa.s.sionless, and without one grain of sympathy for his struggle, told him that, just as far as her natural broadness allowed her to condemn any one, she condemned him.
For a moment a sort of savage recklessness seized him. He felt suddenly he was stranded high-and-dry on a barren rock, with nothing at all any more in his world but his profession. He had lost all hope of ever winning Hal, which seemed to be all hope of anything worth having.
Nothing remained but the hollow interest of a great name, and the l.u.s.t of power. He had it in his mind for those brief, pa.s.sionate moments, because he had lost all else, to insist upon taking his chance.
Even one day's grace might save him. The trial would perhaps last not more than two, but in any case, a wire reaching him in the middle, which he could show to Sir Philip, might mean all the difference between success and failure. The wire could be worded to hide what was truly involved, and the plea of a life-and-death urgency would set him free without any awkward questioning.
He glanced up to speak, and once again Hal's att.i.tude arrested him.
She looked so young, so fresh, so true, so vaguely splendid, in spite of the rigid lips that seemed to have closed down tightly upon all she must have suffered in the last fort-eight hours.
She was not looking at him now, but, with her head thrown back a little, she gazed silently and fatefully at the clock on his mantelpiece.
And something about her called to him, with the calling of the great, mysterious things, a calling that shamed and scorned that spirit of savage recklessness; that swift, relentless l.u.s.t of power.
”What is anything in the world,' it seemed to cry, ”compared to being true to one's friend; true to one's word; true to one's love?”
He saw suddenly that in any case success and triumph would bring him little enough to gladden his heart; that whichever way he turned was gloom and darkness; that in that gloom a possible ray of light still linger, if he could keep always the consciousness that, at the most critical hour of his life, he had rung true.