“But,” he said, “Egerton has not spoken to me on such a subject; nor can you expect that he would propose to me to stand with him, if he foresaw the chance of being ousted by the very candidate he himself introduced.”
“Neither he nor his party will anticipate that possibility. If he ask you, agree to stand,—leave the rest to me.”
“You must hate Egerton bitterly,” said Randal; “for I am not vain enough to think that you thus scheme but from pure love to me.”
“The motives of men are intricate and complicated,” answered Levy, with unusual seriousness. “It suffices to the wise to profit by the actions, and leave the motives in shade.”
There was silence for some minutes. Then the two drew closer towards each other, and began to discuss details in their joint designs.
Randal walked home slowly. It was a cold moonlit night. Young idlers of his own years and rank passed him by on their way from the haunts of social pleasure. They were yet in the first fair holiday of life. Life’s holiday had gone from him forever. Graver men, in the various callings of masculine labour—professions, trade, the State—passed him also. Their steps might be sober, and their faces careworn; but no step had the furtive stealth of his, no face the same contracted, sinister, suspicious gloom. Only once, in a lonely thoroughfare, and on the opposite side of the way, fell a footfall, and glanced an eye, that seemed to betray a soul in sympathy with Randal Leslie’s.
And Randal, who had heeded none of the other passengers by the way, as if instinctively, took note of this one. His nerves crisped at the noiseless slide of that form, as it stalked on from lamp to lamp, keeping pace with his own. He felt a sort of awe, as if he had beheld the wraith of himself; and even as he glanced suspiciously at the stranger, the stranger glanced at him. He was inexpressibly relieved when the figure turned down another street and vanished.
That man was a felon, as yet undetected. Between him and his kind there stood but a thought,—a veil air-spun, but impassable, as the veil of the Image at Sais.
And thus moved and thus looked Randal Leslie, a thing of dark and secret mischief, within the pale of the law, but equally removed from man by the vague consciousness that at his heart lay that which the eyes of man would abhor and loathe. Solitary amidst the vast city, and on through the machinery of Civilization, went the still spirit of Intellectual Evil.