"My dear, my dear, forgive me. I didn't understand or know—I ought to have guessed and been kinder to you," he said, holding her close.
But even in the moment of reconciliation a picture shaped itself before his eyes—a picture which he resolutely strove to put away, but which returned again and again during the night. How differently the dream-wife would have told him—and what would it not have meant to him and to her?
CHAPTER V
"Every work that is corruptible shall fail, and the worker thereof shall go with it."—ECCLESIASTICUS.
To achieve success by certain ways is not, after all, very difficult. The schemers and plotters, even the merely selfish, have all in their hands for a time. One need not necessarily be wicked to flourish as a green bay-tree. Persistently to use other people to your own ends, to appeal to pity at the right moment, to take what is offered you as your due, without gratitude or sense of obligation, is to lay a very sure nest-egg of security for the future.
Brand had planned and schemed to some avail. He had every right to be satisfied with the result. For years he had cherished the remembrance of slights long since forgotten by their authors. Well, he had been able to wipe off a great many of such slights lately. He had struck at Evelyn through Farquharson; he had struck at Lady Wereminster through Evelyn; he had struck at Farquharson through Dora; he would strike at Calvert through Farquharson. It was quite simple, after all, to pull the strings of puppets so foolish as to be swayed by the great forces of love and honour, no matter how important the stage on which they played.
Sitting at ease in the lounge of the Grand Hotel at Brighton one afternoon in June, he reviewed the situation critically. He was better off than he had been, too—always a pleasant matter of contemplation. Secretly as he worked, he was recognized by the Press as a man who could tap many mines of marketable knowledge, "one in the know," as the phrase goes, unhampered by petty scruples as to parting with his knowledge for a valuable sum. He had easily learned the journalists' knack of dressing his knowledge in pertinent phrase; that fact told too. Thanks to Evelyn, he was received everywhere now; the world forgets very easily, unless its memory is jogged. The inscriptions on his sisters' tombstones were now illegible for want of care, and Brand himself was not the type of man whom ghosts haunt.
He was careful in small details, sure in his heart that Evelyn could not do more than suspect him, and had no means of proving her knowledge. Her hands were tied too. To prove that Dora Farquharson had told her husband's secrets to a man who, in turn, sold them to the daily Press, was, after all, to drag down Farquharson from his high place. Cæsar's wife—he laughed; in this case she had proved a very useful buffer! Since the episode in the hall, Brand had been more careful in concealing matters from his wife. He went to another banker, and kept his cheque-book under lock and key, for instance—not that that was necessary with Evelyn—but he took care that she should no longer benefit by the price he was paid for his items of news.
And, little by little, he was sowing seeds of suspicion among the Opposition. It was his dearest hope to drag Farquharson's name in the dust. He never forgot that it was Farquharson who had ousted him for ever from the place which he might have taken in Calvert's regard. For ever?—the man was old and weak now; who knew but if Farquharson failed him he might not lend a more willing ear to the voice of the ready sympathizer, who was also a near connection?
In any case Brand was content to wait. Until he is found out, a cheat is bound to win the greatest number of tricks in a game of skill.