The Masquerader
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Katherine Cecil Thurston >> The Masquerader
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20 THE MASQUERADER
I
Two incidents, widely different in character yet bound
together by results, marked the night of January the
twenty-third. On that night the blackest fog within a four
years' memory fell upon certain portions of London, and also
on that night came the first announcement of the border
risings against the Persian government in the province of
Khorasan the announcement that, speculated upon, even smiled
at, at the time, assumed such significance in the light of
after events.
At eight o'clock the news spread through the House of Commons;
but at nine men in the inner lobbies were gossiping, not so
much upon how far Russia, while ostensibly upholding the Shah,
had pulled the strings by which the insurgents danced, as upon
the manner in which the 'St. Geotge's Gazette', the Tory
evening newspaper, had seized upon the incident and shaken it
in the faces of the government.
More than once before, Lakely--the owner and editor of the
'St. George's'--had stepped outside the decorous circle of
tradition and taken a plunge into modern journalism, but
to-night he essayed deeper waters than before, and under an
almost sensational heading declared that in this apparently
innocent border rising we had less an outcome of mere racial
antagonism than a first faint index of a long-cherished
Russian scheme, growing to a gradual maturity under the
"drift" policy of the present British government.
The effect produced by this pronouncement, if strong, was
varied. Members of the Opposition saw, or thought they saw, a
reflection of it in the smiling unconcern on the Ministerial
benches; and the government had an uneasy sense that behind
the newly kindled interest on the other side of the House lay
some mysterious scenting of battle from afar off. But though
these impressions ran like electricity through the atmosphere,
nothing tangible marked their passage, and the ordinary
business of the House proceeded until half-past eleven, when
an adjournment was moved.
The first man to hurry from his place was John Chilcote,
member for East Wark. He passed out of the House quickly,
with the half-furtive quickness that marks a self-absorbed
man; and as he passed the policeman standing stolidly under
the arched door-way of the big court-yard he swerved a little,
as if startled out of his thoughts. He realized his swerve
almost before it was accomplished, and pulled himself together
with nervous irritability.
"Foggy night, constables," he said, with elaborate carelessness.
"Foggy night, sir, and thickening up west," responded the man.
"Ah, indeed!" Chilcote's answer was absent. The constable's
cheery voice jarred on him, and for the second time he was
conscious of senseless irritation.
Without a further glance at the man, he slipped out into the
court-yard and turned towards the main gate.
At the gate-way two cab lamps showed through the mist of
shifting fog like the eyes of a great cat, and the familiar
"Hansom, sir?" came to him indistinctly.
He paused by force of custom; and, stepping forward, had
almost touched the open door when a new impulse caused him to
draw back.
"No," he said, hurriedly. "No. I'll walk."
The cabman muttered, lashed his horse, and with a clatter of
hoofs and harness wheeled away; while Chilcote, still with
uncertain hastiness, crossed the road in the direction of
Whitehall.
About the Abbey the fog had partially lifted, and in the
railed garden that faces the Houses of Parliament the statues
were visible in a spectral way. But Chilcote's glance was
unstable and indifferent; he skirted the railings heedlessly,
and, crossing the road with the speed of long familiarity,
gained Whitehall on the lefthand side.
There the fog had dropped, and, looking upward towards
Trafalgar Square, it seemed that the chain of lamps extended
little farther than the Horse Guards, and that beyond lay
nothing.
Unconscious of this capricious alternation between darkness
and light, Chilcote continued his course. To a close observer
the manner of his going had both interest and suggestion; for
though he walked on, apparently self-engrossed, yet at every
dozen steps he started at some sound or some touch, like a
man whose nervous system is painfully overstrung.
Maintaining his haste, he went deliberately forward, oblivious
of the fact that at each step the curtain of darkness about
him became closer, damper, more tangible; that at each second
the passers-by jostled each other with greater frequency. Then,
abruptly, with a sudden realization of what had happened, he
stood quite still. Without anticipation or preparation he had
walked full into the thickness of the fog--a thickness so
dense that, as by an enchanter's wand, the figures of a moment
before melted, the street lamps were sucked up into the night.
His first feeling was a sense of panic at the sudden isolation,
his second a thrill of nervous apprehension at the oblivion
that had allowed him to be so entrapped. The second feeling
outweighed the first. He moved forward, then paused again,
uncertain of himself. Finally, with the consciousness that
inaction was unbearable, he moved on once more, his eyes wide
open, one hand thrust out as a protection and guide.
The fog had closed in behind him as heavily as in front,
shutting off all possibility of retreat; all about him in
the darkness was a confusion of voices--cheerful, dubious,
alarmed, or angry; now and then a sleeve brushed his or a hand
touched him tentatively. It was a strange moment, a moment of
possibilities, to which the crunching wheels, the oaths and
laughter from the blocked traffic of the road-way, made a
continuous accompaniment.
Keeping well to the left, Chilcote still beat on; there was a
persistence in his movements that almost amounted to fear
--a fear born of the solitude filled with innumerable sounds.
For a space he groped about him without result, then his
fingers touched the cold surface of a shuttered shop-front,
and a thrill of reassurance passed through him. With renewed
haste, and clinging to his landmark as a blind man might, he
started forward with fresh impetus.
For a dozen paces he moved rapidly and unevenly, then the
natural result occurred. He collided with a man coming in the
opposite direction.
The shock was abrupt. Both men swore simultaneously, then
both laughed. The whole thing was casual, but Chilcote was in
that state of mind when even the commonplace becomes abnormal.
The other man's exclamation, the other man's laugh, struck on
his nerves; coming out of the darkness, they sounded like a
repetition of his own.
Nine out of every ten men in London, given the same social
position and the same education, might reasonably be expected
to express annoyance or amusement in the same manner, possibly
in the same tone of voice; and Chilcote remembered this almost
at the moment of his nervous jar.
"Beastly fog!" he said, aloud. "I'm trying to find Grosvenor
Square, but the chances seem rather small."
The other laughed again, and again the laugh upset Chilcote.
He wondered uncomfortably if he was becoming a prey to
illusions. But the stranger spoke before the question had
solved itself.
"I'm afraid they are small," he said. "It would be almost
hard to find one's way to the devil on a night like this."
Chilcote made a murmur of amusement and drew back against the
shop.
"Yes. We can see now where the blind man scores in the matter
of salvation. This is almost a repetition of the fog of six
years ago. Were you out in that?"
It was a habit of his to jump from one sentence to another, a
habit that had grown of late.
"No." The stranger had also groped his way to the shopfront.
"No, I was out of England six years ago."
"You were lucky." Chilcote turned up the collar of his coat.
"It was an atrocious fog, as black as this, but more
universal. I remember it well. It was the night Lexington
made his great sugar speech. Some of us were found on Lambeth
Bridge at three in the morning, having left the House at
twelve."
Chilcote seldom indulged in reminiscences, but this
conversation with an unseen companion was more like a
soliloquy than a dialogue. He was almost surprised into an
exclamation when the other caught up his words.
"Ah! The sugar speech!" he said. "Odd that I should have
been looking it up only yesterday. What a magnificent
dressing-up of a dry subject it was! What a career Lexington
promised in those days!"
Chilcote changed his position.
"You are interested in the muddle down at Westminster?" he
asked, sarcastically.
"I--?" It was the turn of the stranger to draw back a step.
"Oh, I read my newspaper with the other five million, that is
all. I am an outsider." His voice sounded curt; the warmth
that admiration had brought into it a moment before had frozen
abruptly.
"An outsider!" Chilcote repeated. "What an enviable word!"
"Possibly, to those who are well inside the ring. But let us
go back to Lexington. What a pinnacle the man reached, and
what a drop he had! It has always seemed to me an extraordinary
instance of the human leaven running through us all. What was
the real cause of his collapse?" he asked, suddenly. "Was it
drugs or drink? I have often wished to get at the truth."
Again Chilcote changed his attitude.
"Is truth ever worth getting at?" he asked, irrelevantly.
"In the case of a public man--yes. He exchanges his privacy
for the interest of the masses. If he gives the masses the
details of his success, why not the details of his failure?
But was it drink that sucked him under?"
"No." Chilcote's response came after a pause.
"Drugs?"
Again Chilcote hesitated. And at the moment of his indecision
a woman brushed past him, laughing boisterously. The sound
jarred him.
"Was it drugs?" the stranger went on easily. "I have always
had a theory that it was."
"Yes. It was morphia." The answer came before Chilcote had
realized it. The woman's laugh at the stranger's quiet
persistence had contrived to draw it from him. Instantly he
had spoken he looked about him quickly, like one who has for a
moment forgotten a necessary vigilance.
There was silence while the stranger thought over the
information just given him. Then he spoke again, with a new
touch of vehemence.
"So I imagined," he said. "Though, on my soul, I never really
credited it. To have gained so much, and to have thrown it
away for a common vice!" He made an exclamation of disgust.
Chilcote gave an unsteady laugh. "You judge hardly." he said.
The other repeated his sound of contempt. "Justly so. No man
has the right to squander what another would give his soul
for. It lessens the general respect for power."
"You are a believer in power?" The tone was sarcastic, but
the sarcasm sounded thin.
"Yes. All power is the outcome of individuality, either past
or present. I find no sentiment for the man who plays with
it."
The quiet contempt of the tone stung Chilcote.
"Do you imagine that Lexington made no fight?" he asked,
impulsively. "Can't you picture the man's struggle while the
vice that had been slave gradually became master?" He stopped
to take breath, and in the cold pause that followed it seemed
to him that the other made a murmur of incredulity.
"Perhaps you think of morphia as a pleasure?" he added.
"Think of it, instead, as a tyrant--that tortures the mind if
held to, and the body if cast off." Urged by the darkness and
the silence of his companion, the rein of his speech had
loosened. In that moment he was not Chilcote the member for
East Wark, whose moods and silences were proverbial, but
Chilcote the man whose mind craved the relief of speech.
"You talk as the world talks--out of ignorance and
self-righteousness," he went on. "Before you condemn
Lexington you should put yourself in his place--"
"As you do?" the other laughed.
Unsuspecting and inoffensive as the laugh was, it startled
Chilcote. With a sudden alarm he pulled himself up.
"I--?" He tried to echo the laugh, but the attempt fell flat.
"Oh, I merely speak from--from De Quincey. But I believe this
fog is shifting--I really believe it is shifting. Can you
oblige me with a light? I had almost forgotten that a man may
still smoke though he has been deprived of sight." He spoke
fast and disjointedly. He was overwhelmed by the idea that he
had let himself go, and possessed by the wish to obliterate
the consequences. As he talked he fumbled; for his
cigarette-case.
His bead was bent as he searched for it nervously. Without
looking up, he was conscious that the cloud of fog that held
him prisoner was lifting, rolling away, closing back again,
preparatory to final disappearance. Having found the case, he
put a cigarette between his lips and raised his hand at the
moment that the stranger drew a match across his box.
For a second each stared blankly at the other's face, suddenly
made visible by the lifting of the fog. The match in the
stranger's hand burned down till it scorched his fingers, and,
feeling the pain, he laughed and let it drop.
"Of all odd things!" he said. Then he broke off. The
circumstance was too novel for ordinary remark.
By one of those rare occurrences, those chances that seem too
wild for real life and yet belong to no other sphere, the two
faces so strangely hidden and strangely revealed were identical,
feature for feature. It seemed to each man that he looked not
at the face of another, but at his own face reflected in a
flawless looking-glass.
Of the two, the stranger was the first to regain self-possession.
Seeing Chilcote's bewilderment, he came to his rescue with
brusque tactfulness.
"The position is decidedly odd," he said. "But after all, why
should we be so surprised? Nature can't be eternally
original; she must dry up sometimes, and when she gets a good
model why shouldn't she use it twice?" He drew back,
surveying Chilcote whimsically. "But, pardon me, you are
still waiting for that light!"
Chilcote still held the cigarette between his lips. The paper
had become dry, and he moistened it as he leaned towards his
companion.
"Don't mind me," he said. "I'm rather--rather unstrung
to-night, and this thing gave me a jar. To be candid, my
imagination took head in the fog, and I got to fancy I was
talking to myself--"
"And pulled up to find the fancy in some way real?"
"Yes. Something like that."
Both were silent for a moment. Chilcote pulled hard at his
cigarette, then, remembering his obligations, he turned
quickly to the other.
"Won't you smoke?" he asked.
The stranger accepted a cigarette from the case held out to
him; and as he did so the extraordinary likeness to himself
struck Chilcote with added force. Involuntarily he put out
his hand and touched the other's arm.
"It's my nerves!" he said, in explanation. "They make me want
to feel that you are substantial. Nerves play such beastly
tricks!" He laughed awkwardly.
The other glanced up. His expression on the moment was
slightly surprised, slightly contemptuous, but he changed it
instantly to conventional interest. "I am afraid I am not an
authority on nerves," he said.
But Chilcote was preoccupied. His thoughts had turned into
another channel.
"How old are you?" he asked, suddenly.
The other did not answer immediately. "My age?" he said at
last, slowly. "Oh, I believe I shall be thirty-six
to-morrow--to be quite accurate."
Chilcote lifted his head quickly.
"Why do you use that tone?" he asked. "I am six months older
than you, and I only wish it was six years. Six years nearer
oblivion--"
Again a slight incredulous contempt crossed the other's eyes.
"Oblivion?" he said. "Where are your ambitions?"
"They don't exist."
"Don't exist? Yet you voice your country? I concluded that
much in the fog."
Chilcote laughed sarcastically.
"When one has voiced one's country for six years one gets
hoarse--it's a natural consequence."
The other smiled. "Ah, discontent!" he said. "The modern
canker. But we must both be getting under way. Good-night!
Shall we shake hands--to prove that we are genuinely
material?"
Chilcote had been standing unusually still, following the
stranger's words--caught by his self-reliance and impressed by
his personality. Now, as he ceased to speak, he moved quickly
forward, impelled by a nervous curiosity.
"Why should we just hail each other and pass--like the
proverbial ships?" he said, impulsively. "If Nature was
careless enough to let the reproduction meet the original, she
must abide the consequences."
The other laughed, but his laugh was short. "Oh, I don't
know. Our roads lie differently. You would get nothing out
of me, and I--" He stopped and again laughed shortly. "No,"
he said; "I'd be content to pass, if I were you. The
unsuccessful man is seldom a profitable study. Shall we
say good-night?"
He took Chilcote's hand for an instant; then, crossing the
footpath, he passed into the road-way towards the Strand.
It was done in a moment; but with his going a sense of loss
fell upon Chilcote. He stood for a space, newly conscious of
unfamiliar faces and unfamiliar voices in the stream of
passersby; then, suddenly mastered by an impulse, he wheeled
rapidly and darted after the tall, lean figure so ridiculously
like his own.
Half-way across Trafalgar Square he overtook the stranger. He
had paused on one of the small stone islands that break the
current of traffic, and was waiting for an opportunity to
cross the street. In the glare of light from the lamp above
his head, Chilcote saw for the first time that, under a
remarkable neatness of appearance, his clothes were well
worn--almost shabby. The discovery struck him with something
stronger than surprise. The idea of poverty seemed incongruous
is connection with the reliance, the reserve, the personality
of the man. With a certain embarrassed haste he stepped
forward and touched his arm.
"Look here," he said, as the other turned quietly. "I have
followed you to exchange cards. It can't injure either of us,
and I--I have a wish to know my other self." He laughed
nervously as he drew out his card-case.
The stranger watched him in silence. There was the same faint
contempt, but also there was a reluctant interest in his
glance, as it passed from the fingers fumbling with the case
to the pale face with the square jaw, straight mouth, and
level eyebrows drawn low over the gray eyes. When at last the
card was held out to him he took it without remark and slipped
it into his pocket.
Chilcote looked at him eagerly. "Now the exchange?" he said.
For a second the stranger did not respond. Then, almost
unexpectedly, he smiled.
"After all, if it amuses you--" he said; and, searching in his
waistcoat pocket, he drew out the required card.
"It will leave you quite unenlightened," he added. "The name
of a failure never spells anything." With another smile,
partly amused, partly ironical, he stepped from the little
island and disappeared into the throng of traffic.
Chilcote stood for an instant gazing at the point where he had
vanished; then, turning to the lamp, he lifted the card and
read the name it bore: "Mr. John Loder, 13 Clifford's Inn."
II
On the morning following the night of fog Chilcote woke at
nine. He woke at the moment that his man Allsopp tiptoed
across the room and laid the salver with his early cup of tea
on the table beside the bed.
For several seconds he lay with his eyes shut; the effort of
opening them on a fresh day--the intimate certainty of what he
would see on opening them--seemed to weight his lids. The
heavy, half-closed curtains; the blinds severely drawn; the
great room with its splendid furniture, its sober coloring,
its scent of damp London winter; above all, Allsopp, silent,
respectful, and respectable--were things to dread.
A full minute passed while he still feigned sleep. He heard
Allsopp stir discreetly, then the inevitable information broke
the silence:
"Nine o'clock, sir!"
He opened his eyes, murmured something, and closed them again.
The man moved to the window, quietly pulled back the curtains
and half drew the blind.
"Better night, sir, I hope?" he ventured, softly.
Chilcote had drawn the bedclothes over his face to screen
himself from the daylight, murky though it was.
"Yes," he responded. "Those beastly nightmares didn't trouble
me, for once." He shivered a little as at some recollection.
"But don't talk--don't remind me of them. I hate a man who
has no originality." He spoke sharply. At times he showed an
almost childish irritation over trivial things.
Allsopp took the remark in silence. Crossing the wide room,
he began to lay out his master's clothes. The action affected
Chilcote to fresh annoyance.
"Confound it!" he said. "I'm sick of that routine: I can see
you laying out my winding-sheet the day of my burial. Leave
those things. Come back in half an hour."
Allsopp allowed himself one glance at his master's figure
huddled in the great bed; then, laying aside the coat he was
holding, he moved to the door. With his: fingers on the
handle he paused.
"Will you breakfast in your own room, sir--or down-stairs?"
Chilcote drew the clothes more tightly round his shoulders.
"Oh, anywhere--nowhere!" he said. "I don't care."
Allsopp softly withdrew.
Left to himself, Chilcote sat up in bed and lifted the salver
to his knees. The sudden movement jarred him physically; he
drew a handkerchief from under the pillow and wiped his
forehead; then he held his hand to the light and studied it.
The hand looked sallow and unsteady. With a nervous gesture
he thrust the salver back upon the table and slid out of bed.
Moving hastily across the room, he stopped before one of the
tall wardrobes and swung the door open; then after a furtive
glance around the room he thrust his hand into the recesses of
a shelf and fumbled there.
The thing he sought was evidently not hard to find. for
almost at once he withdrew his hand and moved from the
wardrobe to a table beside the fireplace, carrying a small
glass tube filled with tabloids.
On the table were a decanter, a siphon, and a water-jug.
Mixing some whiskey, he uncorked the tube, again he glanced
apprehensively towards the door, then with a very nervous hand
dropped two tabloids into the glass.
While they dissolved he stood with his hand on the table and
his eyes fixed on the floor, evidently restraining his
impatience. Instantly they had disappeared he seized the
glass and drained it at a draught, replaced the bottle in the
wardrobe, and, shivering slightly in the raw air, slipped back
into bed.
When Allsopp returned he was sitting up, a cigarette between
his lips, the teacup standing empty on the salver. The
nervous irritability had gone from his manner. He no longer
moved jerkily, his eyes looked brighter, his pale skin more
healthy.
"Ah, Allsopp," he said, "there are some moments in life, after
all. It isn't all blank wall."
"I ordered breakfast in the small morning-room, sir," said
Allsopp, without a change of expression.
Chilcote breakfasted at ten. His appetite, always fickle, was
particularly uncertain in the early hours. He helped himself
to some fish, but sent away his plate untouched; then, having
drunk two cups of tea, he pushed back his chair, lighted a
fresh cigarette, and shook out the morning's newspaper.
Twice he shook it out and twice turned it, but the reluctance
to fix his mind upon it made him dally.
The effect of the morphia tabloids was still apparent in the
greater steadiness of his hand and eye, the regained quiet of
his susceptibilities, but the respite was temporary and
lethargic. The early days--the days of six years ago, when
these tabloids meant an even sweep of thought, lucidity of
brain, a balance of judgment in thought and effort--were days
of the past. As he had said of Lexington and his vice, the
slave had become master.
As he folded the paper in a last attempt at interest, the door
opened and his secretary came a step or two into the room.
"Good-morning, sir!" he said. "Forgive me for being so
untimely."
He was a fresh-mannered, bright-eyed boy of twenty-three. His
breezy alertness, his deference, as to a man who had attained
what he aspired to, amused and depressed Chilcote by turns.
"Good-morning, Blessington. What is it now?" He sighed
through habit, and, putting up his hand, warded off a ray of
sun that had forced itself through the misty atmosphere as if
by mistake.
The boy smiled. "It's that business of the Wark timber
contract, sir," he said. "You promised you'd look into it
to-day; you know you've shelved it for a week already, and Craig,
Burnage are rather clamoring for an answer." He moved forward
and laid the papers he was carrying on the table beside
Chilcote. "I'm sorry to be such a nuisance," he added. "I
hope your nerves aren't worrying you to-day?"
Chilcote was toying with the papers. At the word nerves he
glanced up suspiciously. But Blessington's ingenuous face
satisfied him.
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