"Doctor McCloud, we must find Calthorpe and he must come to America and get into this fight. He owes it to himself. He owes it to Secretary Walker who took up his fight in reliance upon him. and whose future is at stake. We have reserved the right to reopen the Ladd case and we have six months in which to do it. Back of all this, back of Walker and Calthorpe, is a big cause which will be set back twenty-five years if we fail. Possibly we can't prove anything against Whittaker, anything illegal, but we can drag these interests into the open and save the resources of the people for the people. If you will write him a personal letter, telling him the facts, asking for instructions, and have it signed also by this Indian woman, I will take it away with me in the morning and eventually put it into the care of a messenger who will have instructions to find Calthorpe, wherever he is in the world, and put that letter into his individual hand. Will you do it?"
CHAPTER XXII
All London knew that the "affair" between Viscountess Effington and Lord Yester was at an end. People in Society are very busy; they work very hard, but they always have time to devote to each other's interests, and they bring to bear on these matters their best abilities, frequently of a high order. If the ingenuity, the penetration, the powers of analysis and deduction focussed upon why Mrs. Smith is not now speaking to Mrs. Jones, or the exact thermometric relations of Mr. White to Mr. Black and Mr. Black's interesting wife, could be concentrated upon, say the subject of unemployment, the world would go forward by leaps and bounds.
The interesting and accomplished thief is frequently told that if he would keep his splendid gifts within legal bounds he would be the same ornament to Society that we are, but this artist has no taste for our dull levels. The noble river refuses to flow in straight lines and at an average depth. It loves the rapids, and the falls, and the crooked way. So probably Society will go on with its minute microscopic study of itself.
Edith, Viscountess Effington, began to think socially at a very early age, and ever since she had come to years of indiscretion the one aim and object of all life, all hope and endeavor, had been the Court Set. Many people pass through life almost ignorant that there is such a thing, but it is of no use to say to one who cannot breathe at an elevation of ten thousand feet: "I am breathing very comfortably."
While we are pleasantly exhilarated the other is bleeding to death. Edith had seen the ambition of her life possible of realization as the Duchess of Uxminster. Every phase of her struggle to this end was familiar to her friends, and every one knew that it now rested in a fashionable London cemetery, where "Here Lies," etc., could be read by any one in the street who would stop long enough to give it a curious glance. This made London somewhat difficult. It furnished her heaven with some of the characteristics of a warmer place. To know that your grief and despair have furnished amusement to your friends, that your thwarted ambition has given them a keen sense of enjoyment; to hear some one throw the switch when you enter a drawing-room, to feel the embarrassed silence, and to know that a damask curtain has been hastily thrown over the remains of your inmost soul under the knives of skilful surgeons who have left no organ unexamined, is an ordeal for the bravest man or woman. Edith tried it. She went everywhere, just as she had done before. She tried to act and look as if nothing had happened. She made a brave show, but she had climbed in a ruthless way and she was finding out that those who live by the sword shall perish by it. She came to know that she had not only not gained ground, but had lost it. Her world had seen her play her cards, knew what she had in her hand, and had already decided that she was inevitable as the Duchess, and it adjusted its deportment accordingly. When they found that she had played and lost, they did not know exactly how or why, they felt the resentment of those who have been cruelly deceived, who have paid something for nothing, or kowtowed to the wrong person, and the gratification of social resentments is a fine art. To a woman of her pride, pertinacity, and ambition this was maddening. She came back from teas, at-homes, week-ends quivering, lacerated, and of course her habits did not improve. Every nerve screamed for rest, for quiet, for forgetfulness, and she drank more and more and more, and then sought relief in the oblivion of the master drug. She had always been an accomplished gambler in the usual social sense, but now it became a passion, an obsession, and she played for stakes that increased rapidly and dangerously, stakes she could not afford to lose. It was the one social diversion that helped her to forget. Her passion for play was leading her into questionable associations, into intimacy with shady people, people she would not have wiped her dainty boots on before. She had used people as steps. They were now using her to walk on, and it was likely to be a muddy process.
There was an old-fashioned prehistoric assumption that the basis of social intercourse was similarity of tastes, the interchange of intellectual or spiritual ideas; but when Society becomes an adjunct to politics, business, or when it becomes a formal profession, a vocation, then some strange things happen.
Things very surprising to herself were now happening to Edith. To her own huge disgust and dismay, she found herself one week-end a guest at the beautiful country-place of Solly Wirtheimer, a South African burglar-person, who was trying to jimmy his way into the polite world. Without any more interest in the horse than in the Mithraic mythology he owned a racing stable, and he was trying hard to lose enough money to the proper persons to enable him to associate with them. It really was hard work. He almost had to push it over to them. Edith naturally felt that nothing short of winning a pot of money would compensate her for the degradation of being one of Solly's house party. At the usual game of bridge, however, she lost persistently. Her game was degenerating or Solly's guests were especially clever or lucky. Eventually she became frightened at her losses. Her genial host offered to lend her any amount she required. She chose rather to accept the offer of her own partner, a friendly young American person, whom she met here for the first time and about whom she knew nothing. This loan naturally led to further acquaintance. It is a way with loans. They either lead to intimacy or estrangement. In the course of London activities her own fortune had been pretty well dissipated, and she had been more than ordinarily reckless because the future had seemed so well assured and the estates of Uxminster seemed to guarantee one against misfortune! Instead of bridge being a pastime, it must be confessed that a great many of the most refined people play it to win. Every smart house in London is a casino, and one must play well, or be very lucky, or have lots of money to lose. In the course of bridge Edith found herself again in need of a loan, and the friendly young American person seemed the most available resource. Young American persons have so much and are usually so delightfully careless with it. This was arranged over a luncheon at The Savoy grill room. At this luncheon the "American person" induced the Viscountess to talk of her husband. She took small pains to conceal her animosity. The upshot of this interview was that she achieved a remunerative occupation that promised an assured income and enabled her to gratify her supreme hate. The combination was delightful. It was understood that she was to give the American person a perusal of all Hal's papers and letters that were available, that she would exercise a supervision of all his future correspondence, and that she would induce him to leave London; that she would keep him out of the way and inaccessible so long as it suited the purposes of the young American person and his friends. This latter stipulation was the only part of the bargain that made her hesitate. She took this under advisement. One day shortly after this interview she was having her breakfast and, happening to look at the clock, she saw that it was six P.M., and after breakfast, when her mind was fairly clear, she looked into the mirror. She was frightened, thoroughly frightened. Her beauty had been her armor, her weapon, her resource, her salvation. She had always suffered. The aches, the pains, the discomfort of ill-health she could endure so long as she kept her personal appearance. Now, in the depths of the mirror, she saw walking toward her a faded, broken woman, with something in the background, something cold, inevitable, horrible, hovering near. Sir George had advised her to travel, to get away from London. London at the moment was difficult. She was under a small temporary cloud. It was very smart to go to the ends of the world in search of sport. Hal had urged it on that terrible night. He had not mentioned it since, because he had learned to conceal his desires. That he wanted to do anything, go anywhere, was sufficient to arouse her vivid opposition, and she was ingenious in making that opposition as painful as possible. He had resort therefore to the trick of advocating the exact opposite of his intent, but she was very cunning in seeing through such subterfuge. She saw, too, in their peregrinations enlarged opportunities of thwarting him. So to his intense amazement she announced her intention of giving up her own pleasures to gratify him, her willingness to go out, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." He concluded that she had become frightened about her health. His own position was deplorable. The atmosphere of the clubs where he would care to go was cold and clammy. The clubs where he would have been welcomed disgusted him. At home he wore the armor of silence and impassivity, to keep from being stung to death. Abroad he wandered here, he wandered there, without pleasure or purpose. At night he frequented the music-halls, bored, with a sneer on his lip for the bald common vulgarity of it all—the brazen women, the vicious youngsters, and the feeble slimy old men. He went to the sporting events, the races. He never missed the Sporting Club, and got some diversion from seeing one gladiator beat another into a bloody pulp. He was drinking again, and gambling too. He didn't have to look into a mirror to see the end of it all. At the suggestion that they go into the wilderness the rubber mask dropped from his face and he smiled. Dormant energy awoke in him. He suggested India. India suited the young American person too, and so it was agreed that they would go after the pigmy hog in Nepal and Sikkim, the cat-bear (Ælurus), wild sheep and goats, and the musk-deer in the precipices of the Himalayas. It was the boy's salvation. It gave him something to think of, plan for, and at least he had the joys of imagination and anticipation all the long way to India. Of hunting he got precious little; of game almost none at all. Edith had no taste for hardship or even discomfort, and she was possessed with a satanic restlessness and capriciousness. No sooner had they determined on one course than she changed it. They were lucky to reach any destination before her whim veered. He had not the strength or the patience to fight these moods. It was easier to let her have her way. And so they drifted, drifted from day to day, from place to place, her preference always being for the cities where racing and other forms of gambling offered some diversion.
The cities brought them in contact with the military class, with its painful and odious memories. She wouldn't go into the forests or the mountains with him, and she wouldn't let him go alone. So drifting here and there up and down over the earth like two lost souls, they found themselves one day at Hardwar, near the head-waters of the sacred Ganges, and Hal felt the call of the mountain, and determined to go into the Kedarnath region for game, but, game or no game, he felt that he must get away, go into the solitudes and have a "long think." He had endured the caprices, the nagging, the ingenious cruelties of her deviltry as long as it was possible. He knew she would not follow him, at least not far. She returned to Hardwar, as he knew she would, before he reached the waters of the Bhaghirati, where they camped for the night.
After the evening meal, as they were gathered about the camp-fire—the guides, interpreter, the carriers—out of the shadows of the night, into the fitful gleam of the flames, walked a religious mendicant, a holy man. Almost naked, oblivious to the intense cold, with the abstraction of the devotee, he stood in proud humility. If he came to beg for food, his purpose was at once absorbed, merged in a rhapsodical fervor. From the perfunctory murmur of what might have been a benediction or a prayer, his voice rose to a penetrating and commanding pitch, reached an intense climax, and then he went out again into the night as he had come. What he said produced a profound impression on his hearers.