THE MASTER SPIRIT
CHAPTER I
A DWELLER IN DARKNESS
THE light on the Clock Tower, that cheerful beacon which assures Britons that good and picked men are kept from their beds to raise the standard of their liberties, and, incidentally, their taxes, had just gone out, sharply, as though glad to announce to yet-stirring London a respite from the babble of lawmaking; and the great workshop of Westminster where the artisans are so many and busy, and the results perhaps so meagre, discharged its crowd into the illuminated night. Out they came hurrying, for the hour was late: the sitting had been animated and prolonged, and even professional, to say nothing of casual, politicians are nowadays too busy in wasting the nation’s time not to set a high value on their own. Out they streamed, still chattering and arguing, as became the priests in that great Temple of the Tongue, those of them whose voices were seldom heard and never listened to in the House talking the loudest outside; a varied crew typifying the component parts of their country’s greatness. Ministers, bent, fine-drawn and unkempt, as men whose ceaseless rolling of Sisyphian stones gave no time to spare for the clothes-brush, superior Under-Secretaries, some dapper, others affecting a soul and a mission above the niceties of costume, all far more important than any Prime Minister who ever lived, and displaying a pretty contempt for those of the rank and file who took upon themselves to criticise the conduct of the debate; then the mob of hungry politicians, keen hustlers; here sharp-faced wood-cutters in the tangled forests of the Law, each with his axe to grind; there egotistical, opulent tradesmen, members by virtue of contributions to the Party coffers, and with a never-sleeping eye on the Birthday Honours list; now smart men of leisure gained by their fathers’ toil, merely adding the House of Commons to their clubs; and so on, with here and there a single-minded politician who imagined, misguided man, that he served his country by supporting his own shade of opinion, seeking nothing for himself, and getting nothing—but influenza and the privilege of leaving to his party the legacy of an inconvenient bye-election.
“Capital speech of yours, Herriard. Won’t do you any harm.” The speaker was a genial, middle-aged man of fashion who liked to be in the House as he liked to have the entrée everywhere, and to stand well with everybody from the Premier to the latest blatant labour member.
“Glad you liked it, Sir Henry. I was rather afraid I should be squeezed out after Darrell’s interminable effort,” answered Herriard, as he swung himself into a hansom. “Can I give you a lift?”
“Thanks. No. My man ought to be here. Many congratulations. Good-night.”
Herriard nodded and leaned back. “Park Lane,” he called out to the driver. As the cab turned out of the courtyard the more brilliant lights of Great George Street fell upon the face within it, that of a young man, interesting enough, handsome and not without character, which latter trait was perhaps just then more strongly accentuated than usual by the illuminating expression of the hour’s success. It was a face more interesting by its suggestion of possibilities than by any marked indication of actual, present power.
A short distance up Park Lane Herriard dismissed the cab and walked on. On his left, under a crescent moon, the Park lay slumbering still, and, save for a few nocturnal prowlers, lifeless: in vivid contrast to the still busy, if languid, roll of traffic on the other side of its railings. Herriard, walking briskly, turned up Hertford Street, and presently taking a little used thoroughfare, made his way deep into the intricacies of Mayfair, that curious maze of mansions and slums where Peers live next door to slop-shops, and the chorus from a footman’s Free-and-Easy at the public-house across the street may keep awake a dowager countess or weave melody into ducal dreams.
At the end of an out-of-the-way spur from what was half street, half mews, Herriard stopped before the old-fashioned portico of a house the frontage of which, at any rate, was squeezed up in a corner, giving at the same time a suggestion of greater expansion at the back. A curious eighteenth century residence, built on unconventional and, with regard to space, ingeniously utilitarian lines; a house that nineteen out of twenty passers-by would fail to notice and the twentieth would stop to wonder at, since the genuinely quaint has of late years in London given way to the hideously regular or the pretentiously unconventional. As he reached the projecting doorway, Herriard turned sharply and glanced back down the short street. He was alone there; obviously no one without special business would be likely to pass that way. Then he took out a latch-key and let himself in, passed through an octagon hall hung with rare tapestry, went up a broad staircase so heavily carpeted that no footfall could be heard, gave a slight knock at one of the doors on the square landing, and went in.
If the hall and stairway were marvels of costly decoration, the room Herriard had entered was, particularly in contrast to the house’s dingy exterior, a still greater revelation, and, in its bearing upon the character of the inmate, should have a short word of description. The walls were hung with dark crimson silk of which, however, little could be seen between the exquisitely toned frames of the multitudes of striking pictures, mostly or all of the French school, with which it was covered. But the whole tone and furniture of the room were French, and French at its most ingenious and its quaintest. The eye fed on a mass of art, simple and applied, never flamboyant, and subdued with such skill and taste that the sense of crowding and profusion was kept from obtruding itself. Everything was novel, unexpected, and yet logically fitted to its place, and the general toning-down effect was aided by the many exquisite bronzes which were placed with an artistic eye about the room. To make an end, the ceiling was a radiant specimen of Angelica Kaufmann’s brush-work, showing so little age that the newer glories below could not kill it, and the floor was covered with a rare Aubusson of a design that invited and yet defied analysis.