"Yes," he answered slowly, "yes, Brent. I will come."
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE CHALLENGE
Looking back upon that day, Sevier was often to wonder whether indeed he had missed Fate's purpose, and blinded by a personal ambition, had set its plan at naught. For that instant's decision was to prove the key to a series of fateful doings which bore him on, irresistibly, into a line of action from which, deliberately, he must have shrunk.
But having set his hand, it was characteristic of him that he did not falter. It had required resolution to put Echo and his relations with her into the background, but he accomplished even this, and he allowed no thought of possible complications to affect his mental serenity. His face was composed and determined as he descended from the train, at dusk of the sixteenth, at the familiar city station, to find—as Brent had arranged—his motor waiting for him, with Bob, his chauffeur, wearing a broad grin of welcome, at its door. So pleasantly habitual it all seemed, so sharply remembered was each sight and sound as the car sped through the glimmering traffic, that almost he could have believed the past year, full as it had been of pain, a vacuous dream and that no hideous hiatus had lain between the then and now.
He was sensible for the first time of the intense mental strain he had been labouring under since his sluggish prison routine had opened into this dubious freedom—the tension of his struggle, the instinct of impending catastrophe, and the ghastly doubt of himself where Echo was concerned. The lassitude and inaction of the Bungalow had added to this strain. The relief now of movement and action brought surcease, and a feeling of present confidence, if not of definite security. Before he reached his apartment, he was sufficiently himself to give the welcome he received from Aunt Judy and from Suzuki a feeling of usualness. Brent, with two or three others who saw eye to eye with him, so far as the exigencies of the political situation were concerned, spent a part of the later evening with him and the talk furnished the final tonic—if any had been needed—to brace him for the task that awaited. That night, for the first time in many months, he slept the deep, fortifying sleep of utter and dreamless unconsciousness.
With the morning he felt no misgiving or shadow of self-doubt. His mind temporarily was clear and untroubled, all of the vexing problem was pushed, by the singleness of his purpose, into the unknown future. By his express wish, his arrival had not been published, and, except for a few of its leaders with whom Brent had conferred, the circles of the convention, then in session in the biggest auditorium the city boasted, were no more aware than were the hosts of his friends, of his coming. He spent the morning alone in his room, sitting movelessly hour after hour, marshalling his ideas, assembling his forces, stirred as he had never before been stirred by the quick suggestion of a living issue and an unrivalled opportunity.
He lunched quietly alone with Brent in a private room at the club, and immediately afterward drove with him to the hall. Throughout the morning the platform had been under discussion; the debate was now about finished. It was the psychological moment for his effort.
As Harry stood silent before the sea of faces, in the instant that followed his recognition and introduction, he was conscious of a tense and vital concentration that swept from him the last vestige of self-consciousness. With his first measured words, too, the outline which he had pondered during the morning vanished utterly from his brain. He remembered nothing save the one thing he had come to do, saw with his mind's eye only the monstrous evil against which he stood.