The Demagogue and Lady Phayre

by William John Locke

CHAPTER XIII—THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER

The Paris-Lyons express was speeding through the darkness. It was intensely cold. The two other occupants of the carriage were shiveringly asleep beneath their rugs. But Goddard was awake, tinglingly awake, yet unconscious of external things.

He was passing through one of those rare epochs in life when a man feels himself to be master of his fate. Ever since he had seen the Dover Cliffs fading out of sight, and with them the last troubling impressions of a late graveside, he had been strung with a sense of invincibility. Nothing in his life that he had ardently desired had not been accomplished. He had but to will a thing, and it was done. He had conquered his position, step by step, with never a failure—his reputation as a popular leader, his responsible position in the Progressive League, his seat on the London County Council, his standing as an economic writer, his prestige at Ecclesby, and now his seat in Parliament. He had been returned by a triumphant majority. The victory intoxicated him—that and the elation of freedom. In his exalted mood he saw himself lifted above the moral conventions of men. The death of his wife seemed a part of his destiny of victory. He had scarcely been responsible. Blind fate had helped him, as it had done hitherto.

And now he was on his way to the most glorious conquest of all. Every moment was bringing him nearer. To-morrow he would see Lady Phayre. His arms would be about her. She would yield herself to him. The new life would begin—great, glorious, wonderful. With her by his side there would be nothing impossible. The whole world should bless his name. He would make history. He would go down to posterity as the Great Demagogue.

She would put her white arms about his neck, and her lips would cling to his. When the thought came, a flash of passion irradiated the whole man.

He never doubted that he would win her. She loved him. The letter which he had read over a thousand times was overwhelming evidence. Her hurried flight from London also testified to the seriousness of the blow the discovery had been to her. He conjured up scenes and incidents in their past intercourse whose significance, unnoticed at the time, became sweetly plain in the light of his new knowledge. Nothing could stand in his way now. He was going to her, not a broken man humiliated with failure, as he had done on the last occasion he had sought her, but proud with name and fame, and the promise of great power in the land.

He had not written to her. His imagination was too much fired with the idea he had conceived of bursting upon her suddenly with the news of his freedom and with a passionate appeal. The vividness and excitement of the past few days had awakened the theatrical element in his nature—the dramatic instinct that lies in the nature of any great orator and leader of men.

“Lyons, dix minutes d’arrêt!”

Goddard left the compartment to stretch his legs. The great station loomed vast in the darkness of the mid-January morning. The tapping of the wheels echoed ghostly in the stillness. Only a few muffled forms had braved the cold, and were stamping their feet on the platform, or hurrying to the dimly lit buffet for the morning coffee. Nothing more delicious than this in the sweet spring dawn, but at five o’clock in mid-winter it requires an effort to leave the snugness of the compartment. To Goddard the journey was half dream, half delight. The great train, standing, to his English eyes, monstrously high above the rails, seemed some strange engine appointed by fate to his service. It seemed symbolic of the irresistible force that he had at his command.

When the train started again he tried to sleep, but his brain was too excited. He had not slept for three nights. Yet the feelings of prostration that had come upon him just before Lizzie’s death had passed away, giving place to one of intense vitality. Every fibre in his body was alive. Sleep was scarcely necessary. Only a shooting pain now and then in his head made him start and pass his hand impatiently across his forehead. The train thundered on through the darkness, and Goddard remained awake, possessed by the passionate intensity of his fixed idea. He watched the day dawn, bright and glorious. At Avignon the world was bathed in sunshine. It was an omen of happiness. At Marseilles it was hot. All along that beautiful coast Goddard’s heart glowed within him. The deep-coloured sea, the flowers, the light, the joyousness of the south filled his senses with the wonder of a new world. His silent companions got out at Toulon, and three swarthy Gascons took their place, and talked with rich deep voices and extravagant gestures until they reached Camoules, their destination. Goddard missed their whole-hearted laughter when they had gone.