As he spoke he turned and took up the paper again, reading the paragraph slowly and carefully. Horner looked at him with a breathless hunger in his eyes. At some moments it is a crime to think, for we never know but that thought may be transmitted without so much as a whisper.
‘“The miners were accompanied by a gentleman from London,”’ Conyngham read aloud, ‘“a barrister, it is supposed, whose speech was a feature of the Chester le-Street meeting. This gentleman’s name is quite unknown, nor has his whereabouts yet been discovered. His sudden disappearance lends likelihood to the report that this unknown agitator actually struck the blow which injured Mr. Alfred Pleydell. Every exertion is being put forth by the authorities to trace the man who is possibly a felon and certainly a coward.”’
Conyngham laid aside the paper and again looked at Horner, who did not meet his glance nor ask now of what he was thinking. Horner, indeed, had his own thoughts, perhaps of the fireside—modest enough, but happy as love and health could make it—upon which his own ambition had brought down the ruins of a hundred castles in the air—thoughts he scarce could face, no doubt, and yet had no power to drive away, of the young wife whose world was that same fireside; of the child, perhaps, whose coming had opened for a time the door of Paradise.
Conyngham broke in upon these meditations with a laugh.
‘I have it!’ he cried. ‘It’s as simple as the alphabet. This paper says it was a barrister—a man from London—a malcontent, a felon, a coward. Dammy, Geoff—that’s me!’
He leapt to his feet. ‘Get out of the way, Tim!’ he cried to the dog, pushing the animal aside and standing on the hearthrug.
‘Listen to this,’ he went on. ‘This thing, like the others, will blow over. It will be forgotten in a week. Another meeting will be held—say in South Wales, more windows will be broken, another young man’s head cracked, and Chester-le-Street (God-forsaken place, never heard of it!) will be forgotten.’
Horner sat looking with hollow eyes at the young Irishman, his lips twitching, his fingers interlocked—there is nothing makes so complete a coward of a man as a woman’s love. Conyngham laughed as the notion unfolded itself in his mind. He might, as he himself had said, be of no great brain power, but he was at all events a man and a brave one. He stood a full six foot, and looked down at his companion, who sat whitefaced and shrinking.
‘It is quite easy,’ he said, ‘for me to disappear in such a manner as to arouse suspicion. I have nothing to keep me here; my briefs—well, the Solicitor-General can have ’em! I have no ties—nothing to keep me in any part of the world. When young Pleydell is on his feet again, and a few more windows have been broken, and nine days have elapsed, the wonder will give place to another, and I can return to my—practice.’
‘I couldn’t let you do it.’