Read Ebook: The Masquerader by Thurston Katherine Cecil

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Ebook has 2121 lines and 84396 words, and 43 pages

The other repeated his sound of contempt. "Justly so. No man has the right to squander what another would give his soul for. It lessens the general respect for power."

"You are a believer in power?" The tone was sarcastic, but the sarcasm sounded thin.

"Yes. All power is the outcome of individuality, either past or present. I find no sentiment for the man who plays with it."

The quiet contempt of the tone stung Chilcote.

"Do you imagine that Lexington made no fight?" he asked, impulsively. "Can't you picture the man's struggle while the vice that had been slave gradually became master?" He stopped to take breath, and in the cold pause that followed it seemed to him that the other made a murmur of incredulity.

"Perhaps you think of morphia as a pleasure?" he added. "Think of it, instead, as a tyrant--that tortures the mind if held to, and the body if cast off." Urged by the darkness and the silence of his companion, the rein of his speech had loosened. In that moment he was not Chilcote the member for East Wark, whose moods and silences were proverbial, but Chilcote the man whose mind craved the relief of speech.

"You talk as the world talks--out of ignorance and self-righteousness," he went on. "Before you condemn Lexington you should put yourself in his place--"

"As you do?" the other laughed.

Unsuspecting and inoffensive as the laugh was, it startled Chilcote. With a sudden alarm he pulled himself up.

"I--?" He tried to echo the laugh, but the attempt fell flat. "Oh, I merely speak from--from De Quincey. But I believe this fog is shifting--I really believe it is shifting. Can you oblige me with a light? I had almost forgotten that a man may still smoke though he has been deprived of sight." He spoke fast and disjointedly. He was overwhelmed by the idea that he had let himself go, and possessed by the wish to obliterate the consequences. As he talked he fumbled; for his cigarette-case.

His bead was bent as he searched for it nervously. Without looking up, he was conscious that the cloud of fog that held him prisoner was lifting, rolling away, closing back again, preparatory to final disappearance. Having found the case, he put a cigarette between his lips and raised his hand at the moment that the stranger drew a match across his box.

For a second each stared blankly at the other's face, suddenly made visible by the lifting of the fog. The match in the stranger's hand burned down till it scorched his fingers, and, feeling the pain, he laughed and let it drop.

"Of all odd things!" he said. Then he broke off. The circumstance was too novel for ordinary remark.

Of the two, the stranger was the first to regain self-possession. Seeing Chilcote's bewilderment, he came to his rescue with brusque tactfulness.

"The position is decidedly odd," he said. "But after all, why should we be so surprised? Nature can't be eternally original; she must dry up sometimes, and when she gets a good model why shouldn't she use it twice?" He drew back, surveying Chilcote whimsically. "But, pardon me, you are still waiting for that light!"

Chilcote still held the cigarette between his lips. The paper had become dry, and he moistened it as he leaned towards his companion.

"Don't mind me," he said. "I'm rather--rather unstrung to-night, and this thing gave me a jar. To be candid, my imagination took head in the fog, and I got to fancy I was talking to myself--"

"And pulled up to find the fancy in some way real?"

"Yes. Something like that."

Both were silent for a moment. Chilcote pulled hard at his cigarette, then, remembering his obligations, he turned quickly to the other.

"Won't you smoke?" he asked.

The stranger accepted a cigarette from the case held out to him; and as he did so the extraordinary likeness to himself struck Chilcote with added force. Involuntarily he put out his hand and touched the other's arm.

"It's my nerves!" he said, in explanation. "They make me want to feel that you are substantial. Nerves play such beastly tricks!" He laughed awkwardly.

The other glanced up. His expression on the moment was slightly surprised, slightly contemptuous, but he changed it instantly to conventional interest. "I am afraid I am not an authority on nerves," he said.

But Chilcote was preoccupied. His thoughts had turned into another channel.

"How old are you?" he asked, suddenly.

The other did not answer immediately. "My age?" he said at last, slowly. "Oh, I believe I shall be thirty-six to-morrow--to be quite accurate."

Chilcote lifted his head quickly.

"Why do you use that tone?" he asked. "I am six months older than you, and I only wish it was six years. Six years nearer oblivion--"

Again a slight incredulous contempt crossed the other's eyes. "Oblivion?" he said. "Where are your ambitions?"

"They don't exist."

"Don't exist? Yet you voice your country? I concluded that much in the fog."

Chilcote laughed sarcastically.

"When one has voiced one's country for six years one gets hoarse--it's a natural consequence."

The other smiled. "Ah, discontent!" he said. "The modern canker. But we must both be getting under way. Good-night! Shall we shake hands--to prove that we are genuinely material?"

Chilcote had been standing unusually still, following the stranger's words--caught by his self-reliance and impressed by his personality. Now, as he ceased to speak, he moved quickly forward, impelled by a nervous curiosity.

"Why should we just hail each other and pass--like the proverbial ships?" he said, impulsively. "If Nature was careless enough to let the reproduction meet the original, she must abide the consequences."

The other laughed, but his laugh was short. "Oh, I don't know. Our roads lie differently. You would get nothing out of me, and I--" He stopped and again laughed shortly. "No," he said; "I'd be content to pass, if I were you. The unsuccessful man is seldom a profitable study. Shall we say good-night?"

He took Chilcote's hand for an instant; then, crossing the footpath, he passed into the road-way towards the Strand.

It was done in a moment; but with his going a sense of loss fell upon Chilcote. He stood for a space, newly conscious of unfamiliar faces and unfamiliar voices in the stream of passersby; then, suddenly mastered by an impulse, he wheeled rapidly and darted after the tall, lean figure so ridiculously like his own.

Half-way across Trafalgar Square he overtook the stranger. He had paused on one of the small stone islands that break the current of traffic, and was waiting for an opportunity to cross the street. In the glare of light from the lamp above his head, Chilcote saw for the first time that, under a remarkable neatness of appearance, his clothes were well worn--almost shabby. The discovery struck him with something stronger than surprise. The idea of poverty seemed incongruous is connection with the reliance, the reserve, the personality of the man. With a certain embarrassed haste he stepped forward and touched his arm.

"Look here," he said, as the other turned quietly. "I have followed you to exchange cards. It can't injure either of us, and I--I have a wish to know my other self." He laughed nervously as he drew out his card-case.

The stranger watched him in silence. There was the same faint contempt, but also there was a reluctant interest in his glance, as it passed from the fingers fumbling with the case to the pale face with the square jaw, straight mouth, and level eyebrows drawn low over the gray eyes. When at last the card was held out to him he took it without remark and slipped it into his pocket.

Chilcote looked at him eagerly. "Now the exchange?" he said.

For a second the stranger did not respond. Then, almost unexpectedly, he smiled.

"After all, if it amuses you--" he said; and, searching in his waistcoat pocket, he drew out the required card.

"It will leave you quite unenlightened," he added. "The name of a failure never spells anything." With another smile, partly amused, partly ironical, he stepped from the little island and disappeared into the throng of traffic.

Chilcote stood for an instant gazing at the point where he had vanished; then, turning to the lamp, he lifted the card and read the name it bore: "Mr. John Loder, 13 Clifford's Inn."

On the morning following the night of fog Chilcote woke at nine. He woke at the moment that his man Allsopp tiptoed across the room and laid the salver with his early cup of tea on the table beside the bed.

For several seconds he lay with his eyes shut; the effort of opening them on a fresh day--the intimate certainty of what he would see on opening them--seemed to weight his lids. The heavy, half-closed curtains; the blinds severely drawn; the great room with its splendid furniture, its sober coloring, its scent of damp London winter; above all, Allsopp, silent, respectful, and respectable--were things to dread.

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