Soane had got hold of a couple of long-stalked glasses. They clinked together whilst he searched the cupboard for something.
“Eh, what?” he said. “It is pretty strong, isn’t it? Ought to shake out some of the supporters, eh? Bill comes on tomorrow … do for that, I should think.” He wanted a corkscrew very badly.
But that was precisely it—it would “shake out some of the supporters,” and give Gurnard his patent excuse. Churchill, I knew, would stick to his line, the saner policy. But so many of the men who had stuck to Churchill would fall away now, and Gurnard, of course, would lead them to his own triumph.
It was a criminal verdict. Callan had gone out as a commissioner—with a good deal of drum-beating. And this was his report, this shriek. If it sounded across the housetops—if I let it—goodbye to the saner policy and to Churchill. It did not make any difference that Churchill’s was the saner policy, because there was no one in the nation sane enough to see it. They wanted purity in high places, and here was a definite, criminal indictment against de Mersch. And de Mersch would—in a manner of speaking, have to be lynched, policy or no policy.
She wanted this, and in all the earth she was the only desirable thing. If I thwarted her—she would … what would she do now? I looked at Soane.
“What would happen if I stopped the presses?” I asked. Soane was twisting his corkscrew in the wire of the champagne bottle.
It was fatal; I could see nothing on earth but her. What else was there in the world. Wine? The light of the sun? The wind on the heath? Honour! My God, what was honour to me if I could see nothing but her on earth? Would honour or wine or sun or wind ever give me what she could give? Let them go.
“What would happen if what?” Soane grumbled, “D⸺n this wire.”
“Oh, I was thinking about something,” I answered. The wire gave with a little snap and he began to ease the cork. Was I to let the light pass me by for the sake of … of Fox, for instance, who trusted me? Well, let Fox go. And Churchill and what Churchill stood for; the probity; the greatness and the spirit of the past from which had sprung my conscience and the consciences of the sleeping millions around me—the woman at the poultry show with her farmers and shopkeepers. Let them go too.
Soane put into my hand one of his charged glasses. He seemed to rise out of the infinite, a forgotten shape. I sat down at the desk opposite him.
“Deuced good idea,” he said, suddenly, “to stop the confounded presses and spoof old Fox. He’s up to some devilry. And, by Jove, I’d like to get my knife in him; Jove, I would. And then chuck up everything and leave for the Sandwich Islands. I’m sick of this life, this dog’s life. … One might have made a pile though, if one’d known this smash was coming. But one can’t get at the innards of things.—No such luck—no such luck, eh?” I looked at him stupidly; took in his bloodshot eyes and his ruffled grizzling hair. I wondered who he was. “Il s’agissait de … ?” I seemed to be back in Paris, I couldn’t think of what I had been thinking of. I drank his glass of wine and he filled me another. I drank that too.
Ah yes—even then the thing wasn’t settled, even now that I had recognized that Fox and the others were of no account … What remained was to prove to her that I wasn’t a mere chattel, a piece in the game. I was at the very heart of the thing. After all, it was chance that had put me there, the blind chance of all the little things that lead in the inevitable, the future. If, now, I thwarted her, she would … what would she do? She would have to begin all over again. She wouldn’t want to be revenged; she wasn’t revengeful. But how if she would never look upon me again?
The thing had reduced itself to a mere matter of policy. Or was it passion?
A clatter of the wheels of heavy carts and of the hoofs of heavy horses on granite struck like hammer blows on my ears, coming from the well of the courtyard below. Soane had finished his bottle and was walking to the cupboard. He paused at the window and stood looking down.
“Strong beggars, those porters,” he said; “I couldn’t carry that weight of paper—not with my rot on it, let alone Callan’s. You’d think it would break down the carts.”
I understood that they were loading the carts for the newspaper mails. There was still time to stop them. I got up and went toward the window, very swiftly. I was going to call to them to stop loading. I threw the casement open.
Of course, I did not stop them. The solution flashed on me with the breath of the raw air. It was ridiculously simple. If I thwarted her, well, she would respect me. But her business in life was the inheritance of the earth, and, however much she might respect me—or by so much the more—she would recognise that I was a force to deflect her from the right line—“a disease for me,” she had said.
“What I have to do,” I said, “is to show her that … that I had her in my hands and that I cooperated loyally.”
The thing was so simple that I triumphed; triumphed with the full glow of wine, triumphed looking down into that murky courtyard where the lanterns danced about in the rays of a great arc lamp. The gilt letters scattered all over the windows blazed forth the names of Fox’s innumerable ventures. Well, he … he had been a power, but I triumphed. I
