The Masquerader Part 46

The knowledge broke sharply through her dulled senses; and, confronted by the closeness of her ordeal, she paused, her head lifted, her hand still nervously grasping the banister. Her lips parted as if in sudden demand for aid; but in the nervous expectation, the pained apprehension, of the moment no sound escaped them. Loder, resolutely crossing the landing, knew nothing of the silent appeal.

For a second she stood hesitating; then her own weakness, her own shrinking dismay, were submerged in the interest of his movements.

Slowly mounting the remaining steps, she followed him as if fascinated towards the door that showed dingily conspicuous in the light of an unshaded gas-jet.

Almost at the moment that she reached his side he extended his hand towards the door. The action was decisive and hurried, as though he feared to trust himself.

For a s.p.a.ce he fumbled with the lock. And Eve, standing close behind him, heard the handle creak and turn under his pressure. Then he shook the door.

At last, slowly, almost reluctantly, he turned round. "I'm afraid things aren't quite quite right," he said, in a low voice. "The door is locked and I can see no light."

She raised her eyes quickly. "But you have a key?" she whispered.

"Haven't you got a key?" It was obvious that, to both, the unexpected check to their designs was fraught with danger.

"Yes, but--" He looked towards the door. "Yes--I have a key. Yes, you're right!" he added, quickly. "I'll use it. Wait, while I go inside."

Filled with a new nervousness, oppressed by the loneliness, the silence about her, Eve drew back obediently. The sense of mystery conveyed by the closed door weighed upon her. Her susceptibilities were tensely alert as she watched Loder search for his key and insert it in the lock.

With mingled dread and curiosity she saw the door yield, and gape open like a black gash in the dingy wall; and with a sudden sense of desertion she saw him pa.s.s through the aperture and heard him strike a match.

The wait that followed seemed extraordinarily long. Listening intently, she heard him move softly from one room to the other. And at last, to her acutely nervous susceptibilities, it seemed that he paused in absolute silence. In the intensity of listening, she heard her own faint, irregular breathing, and the sound filled her with panic.

The quiet, the solitude, the vague, instinctive apprehension, became suddenly unendurable. Then all at once the tension was relieved.. Loder reappeared.

He paused for a second in the shadowy door-way; then he turned unsteadily, drew the door to, and locked; it.

Eve stepped forward. Her glimpse of him had been momentary--and she had not heard his voice--yet the consciousness of his bearing filled her with instinctive alarm. Abruptly, and without reason, their hands turned cold, her heart began to beat violently. "John--" she said below her breath.

For answer, he moved towards her. His face was bereft of color; there was a look of consternation in his eyes. "Come!" he said. "Come at once!

I must take you home." He spoke in a shaken, uneven voice.

Eve, looking up at him, caught his hand. "Why? Why?" she questioned. Her tone was low and scared.

Without replying, he drew her imperatively towards the stairs. "Go very softly," he commanded. "No one must see you here."

In the first moment she obeyed him instinctively; then, reaching the head of the stairs, she stopped. With one hand still clasping his, the other clinging nervously to the banister, she refused to descend.

"John," she whispered, "I'm not a child. What is it? What has happened?

I must know."

For a moment Loder looked at her uncertainly; then, reading the expression in her eyes, he yielded to her demand.

"He's dead," he said, in a very low voice. "Chilcote is dead."

x.x.xIV

To fully appreciate a great announcement we must have time at our disposal. At the moment of Loder's disclosure time was denied to Eve; for scarcely had the words left his lips before the thought that dominated him a.s.serted its prior claim. Blind to the incredulity in her eyes, he drew her swiftly forward, and--half impelling, half supporting her--forced her to descend the stairs.

Never in after-life could he obliterate the remembrance of that descent.

Fear, such as he could never experience in his own concerns, possessed him. One desire overrode all others--the desire that Eve's reputation, which he himself had so nearly imperilled, should remain unimperilled.

In the shadow of that urgent duty, the despair of the past hours, the appalling fact so lately realized, the future with its possible trials, became dark to his imagination. In his new victory over self, the question of her protection predominated.

Moving under this compulsion, he guided her hastily and silently down the deserted stairs, drawing a breath of deep relief as, one after another, the landings were successively pa.s.sed; and still actuated by the suppressed need of haste, he pa.s.sed through the door-way that they had entered under such different conditions only a few minutes before.

To leave the quiet court, to gain the Strand, to hail a belated hansom was the work of a moment. By an odd contrivance of circ.u.mstance, the luck that had attended every phase of his dual life was again exerted in his behalf. No one had noticed their entry into Clifford's Inn; no one was moved to curiosity by their exit. With an involuntary thrill of feeling he gave expression to his relief.

"Thank G.o.d, it's over!" he said, as a cab drew up. "You don't know what the strain has been."

Moving as if in a dream, Eve stepped into the cab. As yet the terrible denouement to their enterprise had made no clear impression upon her mind. For the moment all that she was conscious of, all that she instinctively acknowledged, was the fact that Loder was still beside her.

In quiet obedience she took her place, drawing aside her skirts to make room for him; and in the same subdued manner, he stepped into the vehicle. Then, with the strange sensation of reliving their earlier drive, they were aware of the tightened rein and of the horse's first forward movement.

For several seconds neither spoke. Eve, shutting out all other thoughts, sat close to Loder, clinging tenaciously to the momentary comforting sense of protection; Loder, striving to marshal his ideas, hesitated before the ordeal of speech. At last, realizing his responsibility, he turned to her slowly.

"Eve," he said, in a low voice and with some hesitation, "I want you to know that in all this--from the moment I saw him--from the moment I understood--I have had you in my thoughts--you and no one else."

She raised her eyes to his face.

"Do you realize--?" he began afresh. "Do you know what this--this thing means?"

Still she remained silent.

"It means that after to-night there will be no such person in London as John Loder. To-morrow the man who was known by that name will be found in his rooms; his body will be removed, and at the post-modern examination it will be stated that he died of an overdose of morphia.

His charwoman will identify him as a solitary man who lived respectably for years and then suddenly went down-hill with remarkable speed. It will be quite a common case. Nothing of interest will be found in his rooms; no relation will claim his body; after the usual time he will be given the usual burial of his cla.s.s. These details are horrible; but there are times when we must look at the horrible side of life--because life is incomplete without it.

"These things I speak of are the things that will meet the casual eye; but in our sight they will have a very different meaning.

"Eve," he said, more vehemently, "a whole chapter in my life has been closed to-night, and my first instinct is to shut the book and throw it away. But I'm thinking of you. Remember, I'm thinking of you! Whatever the trial, whatever the difficulty, no harm shall come to you. You have my word for that!

"I'll return with you now to Grosvenor Square; I'll remain there till a reasonable excuse can be given for Chilcote's going abroad; I will avoid Fraide, I will cut politics--whatever the cost; then, at the first reasonable moment, I will do what I would do now, to-night if it were possible. I'll go away, start afresh; do in another country what I have done in this."

There was a long silence; then Eve turned to him. The apathy of a moment before had left her face. "In another country?" she repeated. "In another country?"

"Yes; a fresh career in a fresh country. Something clean to offer you.

I'm not too old to do what other men have done."

He paused, and for a moment Eve looked ahead at the gleaming chain of lamps; then, still very slowly, she brought her glance back again. "No,"

she said very slowly. "You are not too old. But there are times when age--and things like age--are not the real consideration. It seems to me that your own inclination, your own individual sense of right and wrong, has nothing to do with the present moment. The question is whether you are justified in going away"--she paused, her eyes fixed steadily upon his--"whether you are free to go away, and make a new life--whether it is ever justifiable to follow a phantom light when--when there's a lantern waiting to be carried." Her breath caught; she drew away from him, frightened and elated by her own words.

Loder turned to her sharply. "Eve!" he exclaimed; then his tone changed.

"You don't know what you're saying," he added, quickly; "you don't understand what you're saying."

Eve leaned forward again. "Yes," she said, slowly, "I do understand."

Her voice was controlled, her manner convinced. She was no longer the girl conquered by strength greater than her own: she was the woman strenuously demanding her right to individual happiness.

"I understand it all," she repeated. "I understand every point. It was not Chance that made you change your ident.i.ty, that made you care for me, that brought about--his death. I don't believe it was Chance; I believe it was something much higher. You are not meant to go away!"

As Loder watched her the remembrance of his first days as Chilcote rose again; the remembrance of how he had been dimly filled with the belief that below her self-possession lay a strength--a depth--uncommon in woman. As he studied her now, the instinctive belief flamed into conviction. "Eve!" he said involuntarily.