The villain in chief received an exemplary sentence, and Baxter his Majesty’s gracious pardon for being innocent. But the Post Office, naturally enough, would not employ him again, and Gilead, great to the end, found a situation for him. As to Miss Jennett, she simply repeated her former tactics, and disappeared.
CHAPTER X.
THE QUEST OF THE SHADOW
There came a certain September evening whose memory was destined to imprint itself ineffaceably on the souls of the three most intimately associated in the conduct of the Agency.
Gilead had left the office betimes to attend a meeting convened for the purpose of discussing the Arts Education Bill, a measure which it was proposed to bring before Parliament, and for whose actual initiation he himself was more than anyone responsible. Its main purpose was to reform and direct popular taste in all matters which met the eye; to prevent the disfigurement of the land; to see that desirable sites were ennobled with suitable erections; to control the abuse of advertisements; to lead the common view by the ways of beauty and fitness to an appreciation of both. The promoters of the bill, men of a rare educational foresight, founded their propaganda on the truth that, while learning is subjective, taste is objective, and that it is of little use thinking to conduct towards a millennium of good taste through groves of architectural and other abominations which outrage every principle of it. Their idea was that, as oxygen enters by the mouth to purify the living blood, so taste must be taken in at the eyes to illuminate and refine the intellectual process, and that forcibly to educate the community to an understanding of good things, while confronting and environing it with the very opposite, is to be likened to putting a man into a lazaretto for a rest-cure. In short, they believed that the era of universal gentlehood which we all desire, and can only at present see squalidly foreshadowed in the cheap presumption engendered of compulsory education, is to be approached through the eyes rather than the intellect, and that every desecrated site, every wanton outrage on nature, every vulgar, tasteless and pretentious edifice allowed to be erected is by so much a set-back to the progress of race-refinement. Wherefore they proposed in the first instance the establishment of a Governmental Board of Callaesthetics, or Beauty-Science, whose expenses should be met by a levy on the local rates, and whose business it should be to consider the external plans of every building, public and private, it was proposed to alter or erect, and to approve or, if offensive to the cultivated eye, reject the same (the control of structural details was to remain in the hands of Municipal and local bodies, since these were business matters fit for men of business and demanding only practical qualifications).
The scheme, a very fond one to Gilead’s heart, need not here be discussed in detail. It aimed generally at the overthrow of the tyranny of the vulgarian; embodied a central Committee of art-experts, with official representatives in every capital town, and was immensely far-reaching in its purposes. And, if it was doomed to failure, it was not so doomed on practical grounds, but on the unquestionable liberty of the subject to make himself as offensive as he likes within the law.
On the night in question Gilead, after attending the meeting, had dined en famille with a Cabinet Minister in sympathy with its objects. He left early, purposing to pay a visit to the Agency—long-closed, of course—in order to consult some papers bearing on the matter. As, nodding to the porter who admitted him, he climbed the long stairs to his private room, a queer sense of something accompanying seized upon him all in an instant. It was a quite odd and unusual feeling, breaking into a preoccupation which had been profound. He looked right and left in a curious way, stopped, considered a minute—then, with a little laugh moved on and up. The feeling had gone: perhaps, he thought, it had outstripped him in that momentary pause. The little shock and throb of nerve evoked by the thought stopped him a second time. He gave a self-conscious look, first upwards then backwards, saw the hall empty and the porter gone, laughed once more, but uneasily, and turned the corner of the stairs that mounted to his room. Certainly he did pause in a quick trepidation as he fitted in the key. His breath fluttered uncomfortably; a sense of enormous isolation in those attics of swimming night gripped and astounded him; he began to think of the things that might come bubbling up from the wells of gloom beneath. But his courage was always the master of his imagination, potent as that was; and the next instant he had turned the key and entered. As he switched on the electric light, he saw a young woman standing above the desk by the blinded window.
In the first moment of discovery he would not doubt but that the figure was that of Miss Halifax herself, either remaining, or returned after hours, to get through some arrears of work. He would not doubt, I say, though he had never yet known the amanuensis moved to such a course; but in reality he was fighting for nerve and resolution to meet a shock which he foresaw to be inevitable. And the next instant it came. The figure turned, revealing itself that of a stranger, seemed to look at him intently, and in the very fact was gone.
For minutes Gilead remained perfectly motionless where he stood. Heroes, like monarchs, should meet death erect; and so had not he met and overcome it? He thought that if he had moved in the first shudder of the blow, he would have fallen and died. The realization that he—he himself—had seen an apparition, had endured that mortal experience from whose fear all take refuge in scepticism, was like a sudden shocking revelation of a friend’s treachery. Reason alone could surmount the horror, and he waited rigidly for reason to return.
When it did, he was surprised to find what emotions swept in with it. He had looked into the eyes of a tragedy deep beyond sounding. What it meant he could not know; yet some intimacy engendered of that soul-searching had awakened in him a pity profound beyond terror. His face was very pale, but his lips were firmly set, as he went about his business of investigating.
He found, and expected to find, nothing to explain the appearance. The room was empty of all but its customary appointments. Having satisfied himself—even as to the absurdest, most attenuated lurking-places—he switched off the light, locked the door deliberately behind him, and, descending the stairs, summoned the porter. He had just a single question to ask the man; he put it to him as nonchalantly as possible: he supposed, in short, that no lady had come to request an interview with him after closing-time, or had been invited to await his possible return. The answer was uncompromising, indignantly self-righteous, reassuring for the best of its worth. The porter knew his duty better; he was not to be bought or wheedled into such an abuse of trust. Gilead congratulated him, and went out into the night.