Part 46 (1/2)
”Then you won't come?” asked the Captain.
”Declined with thanks, sir,” bowed Big Todd.
Heseltine rode back and delivered the reply. An angry flush crossed Lord Eynesford's face.
”Very well,” he said shortly, and turned to the Colonel. ”Colonel,” he said, ”I want your men to scatter that crowd and bring Todd here. Don't fire without asking me again. Use the flat of the sword unless the crowd use knives or shoot; if they do, use the edge. I can't come with you, I wish I could.”
”May I go, sir?” broke simultaneously from d.i.c.k and Heseltine.
”No,” answered Lord Eynesford shortly.
”What a d.a.m.ned shame!” grumbled d.i.c.k.
The Colonel had spoken to the captains of his two companies, Kilshaw and another, and they in their turn had briefly communicated the Governor's orders to their men. Everything was ready, and the Colonel turned a last inquiring glance towards the Governor.
”Yes,” said Lord Eynesford; but at the same moment a loud cheer rang out from the defenders of the gaol--
”Three cheers for Jimmy Medland!” they cried.
The Governor turned and saw the ex-Premier leaping from a cab and hurrying towards them.
”Stop!” cried Medland. ”Stop!”
CHAPTER XXIX.
A BEATEN MAN'S THOUGHTS.
On reaching his home, Medland had found that Norburn had arrived before him, and was engaged in the task of consoling Daisy for the untoward issue of the fight. Daisy, on her part, was full of praise for the valour of Big Todd, and delighted to hear of the sort of fiasco that had waited on the military display at the station. Safe from the eyes of all save those who loved him, Medland did not maintain the indifferent air that he had displayed in public. In vain they reminded him of the swift reactions in political affairs, of the st.u.r.dy band that still owned his leaders.h.i.+p, and of the devotion of all Kirton to him, or bade him think that he was himself almost a young man, and that this defeat was but a check and not an end to his career. For the moment the buoyancy was out of him; he did not care to discuss hopes or projects, and sat silent in his chair, while Norburn sketched new campaigns and energetic raids on Sir Robert's position. Daisy knew her father: these hours of despondency were the penalty he paid for the glowing confidence and rebounding hope that had made him the man and the power he was.
”Let him alone a little while,” she whispered to her lover. ”Something will rouse him soon, and he'll be himself again.”
She put his letters by him, and the two left him to solitude in his study. He was vaguely surprised that no crowd had a.s.sembled to escort him to his house, and that the street was so quiet; he supposed that his adherents felt much as he did, too discouraged to make a parade, or try to hide their wounds under the pretence of a brave show; yet he was sensitive enough to every breath of popular sentiment to be hurt at the first sign of neglect. Perhaps they had had enough of him, perhaps they were looking for a new leader. No; that could hardly be, or they would not have elected all his friends. It was just that they felt as he did, beaten, soundly beaten, and had fled to their dens to lick their sores.
He listlessly stretched out his hand towards the letters and began to open them. Here were belated requests for help or advice, calculations of majorities and prophecies of victory, written at the last moment in unquenchable faith, to be read now with a weary smile of irony. Here too were honest, admiring condolences. ”Better luck next time”--”Never despair,” and so forth--side by side with anonymous and scurrilous gloatings over his fall. Once he laughed out loud: a zealous student compared him at length and in detail to Cleon, and ended with an ode of triumph which, he said, would appear in the press the next day or so.
Medland pushed the heap away with an impatient sigh, but one note remained under his hand and he took it up, for it seemed different from the rest. He undid the envelope and glanced at the signature; then he sat up in sudden interest, for it was signed ”Alicia Derosne.”
”You will be surprised,” she said, ”that I should write; but I doubted if you understood the other night, and I can't be misunderstood by you.
If you were what I once thought you, I would do all you ask, whatever it cost me, but I can't now. It's all different now. That thing makes it all different. You will think it a poor reason and a strange idea--I know you will; but your thinking it strange is just what makes it strongest to me. You may not understand--I'm afraid you won't--but you must believe that that is the only thing. Please don't try to see me, but send one line to say you believe me.--ALICIA DEROSNE. Good-bye.”
At first he thought of what he read only as a fresh defeat, another drop of bitterness in a br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup, and he let the letter fall, despising himself for caring about such a matter. But he took it up again and re-read it, and the ”Good-bye” at the end--the stifled cry of pain--touched him; she had finished the letter before she wrote that, for its ink was paler; the rest had dried, that had been hastily blotted; it was an after-impulse, a hint of the struggle with which she left her tenderness unexpressed. He pictured so well how she looked writing it, making her sacrifice at the altar of what she held holy in herself. Whether she were right or wrong seemed now to his softer mood to be of little moment. He could not think that she was right, and yet it suited her so well to be wrong on such a point that he could hardly wish her to have been what to his mind seemed right. With the strange feeling of the end of things, of finality, that his defeat and despondency had brought to him, her decision fitted well. She would not come to him, but the ideal of her rested beautiful in the delicate pride and fastidiousness of her scruples and her purity. The sort of life he must lead, no less than that he had led, must needs have soiled the image and stained its spotless white. He was conscious that his reception of what she said was half the outcome of the moment in which her decision reached him; but yet he could not look before him, and the idea of himself, restored to his former mind, scornfully mocking what now claimed reverence, angrily fighting against a merely fanciful hindrance, failed to dress itself like reality, though experience, half-smothered, protested that it would prove real. Now he was very sorry for her and for himself; but it was the sorrow of acquiescence, the pain of a vision that never could have had fulfilment not the fierce disappointment of well-grounded hope. Though she were pa.s.sing out of his life, yet she would always be in it and of it, and their unhappiness seemed to him a tie as close as could have been knit between them by any union.
He was interrupted by the entrance of his daughter and Norburn. They were troubled, as a glance at their happy faces told him, by no sense of the end of things; they were at the beginning, and he was amused to find that, while they deplored his defeat sincerely and resented it hotly, it yet had a bright side to them. It set Jack Norburn at liberty; he had now no official ties and there would be a lull in politics. How should two young people use such an interval better than in getting married?
”How indeed?” said Mr. Medland, smiling.
”Then when we're comfortably married,” said Daisy, ”and you've had a little rest, we'll have at Sir Robert again, father! Oh, and I'm so glad those tiresome Eynesfords are going--except Alicia, I mean; I like her.
I do hope the next people won't be quite so--” And Daisy's gesture indicated the inhuman exclusiveness and pride supposed to be harboured at Government House.