Читать книгу Ambition's Slave - Fred M. White - Страница 9

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CLIVE said nothing for the moment. It was a hard fight to keep his emotions in hand, but he conquered. He could not look into that beautiful face and clear, truthful eyes and feel that Maude had played him deliberately false. Her whole line of conduct forbade the traitorous thought, the attitude, the attitude of utter despair.

She gave him a wild, imploring glance.

"Why don't you leave me?" she asked. "Say something hard and unkind to me. Go away and forget me altogether."

But Clive did not move. His heart was full of an infinite pity for Maude. She would never have done this had there not been some stern necessity for her conduct.

"Presently," he said. "I am not blaming you, Maude; I shall never do that. Some deep tragedy has come into your life, you are taking this course for the sake of another. But surely when you come quietly to consider your own happiness—"

Maude laughed bitterly.

"Henceforth happiness and I are strangers," she said. "I have done this thing deliberately. I must do it. And yet not one word of reproach comes from you!"

"Because I love you," Kit said quietly. "I shall never care for another woman so long as I live. And you love me—nothing can rob me of that confession. Won't you tell me your secret?"

"The secret is not my own to tell."

"But I might show you some way. If disgrace touches you."

"It does. Not so much myself as another. Oh, I know you would not mind, and you are too noble and generous for that. But nothing could make any difference now."

Maude spoke from the depths of her despair. She could not meet Kit's eyes again.

"Very well," he said at length. "I will press you no further. But I shall get to the bottom of the thing. I will leave no stone unturned. For the present we will meet as friends only. Good-night, my darling, and God bless you."

He touched Maude's forehead lightly with his lips and was gone. In the inner room he could hear the full measured tones of Clifford Desborough's voice. There was a quiet ring of triumph and pride in the voice, never had Desborough looked quite so strong and powerful. He crossed over to Clive and held out his hand.

"It was all a mistake," he said. "You must not blame Miss Beaumont—"

"On the whole we had better not shake hands," Kit replied. "As to Miss Beaumont, you need not be under any misapprehension; I don't blame her in the least. By what vile means you have contrived to come between a woman and the man she loves I cannot say, but you are a loathsome scoundrel and you may resent that in any way you please."

The blood flamed into Desborough's face. The contemptuous words cut him to the quick. And from the bottom of his heart he knew that they were so absolutely true. Then he shrugged his shoulders and passed on. What did it matter so long as he had won the game? He had the woman he coveted to be his wife, her fortune would be at his disposal. And he was up to his eyes in debt.

If the crisis came he would be under a sea of bankruptcy, he would have to resign his seat and his political ambitions would be slain for ever. But once his engagement were announced his creditors would be only too glad to wait, the danger would be averted. There were the bills held by Minter, but Desborough did not want to think of that for the moment. He would have to go back to his chambers presently, there to have an interview with the witness Ericsson whose evidence had been so unsatisfactory on the first day's hearing of the Certified Company's case.

There had been a most fortunate reprieve over that case. The whole thing might be compromised yet, and those bills held by Minter could be redeemed in the ordinary way of business. So long as the witness Price, the escaped convict, kept out of the way, the trial could not go on. Desborough devotedly prayed that the police would not catch him at all. In which case—

Meanwhile Kit Clive went home thoughtfully and slowly. His dreams were not pleasant ones to-night. After all he would not go home at all. It was not late and the company of the club smoking-room would be preferable to his own gloomy cogitations. As he passed along somebody halted and hesitated before him. Kit pulled up mechanically.

"You wanted to speak to me?" he asked.

"I—I wondered," the other said, "if you would recognize me. I saw you go out of court as I was going in to give evidence, so that—but it doesn't matter. I am Charles Ericsson, we used to be in the same set in the old college days."

There was a strange hesitation in the speaker's manner—a nervous trembling of the eyelashes, that told its own story. The man was not badly dressed, he had all the outward bearing and semblance of a gentleman, but the seal of drink was upon him. It was only a question of time.

"I recollect now," Kit said quietly. "What can I do for you?"

Ericsson raised his hands with a sudden spurt of passion.

"Talk to me," he said. "For Heaven's sake bear with me. The others have left me to myself for an hour. I could not stand the house, so I came out. I promised that I would not touch a drop of anything, and it's hard. I shall fly to it if I am left alone. At eleven to-night I am to meet Desborough in his chambers. I must be sober for that. Clive, you were always a good soul and I—I—"

The speaker clung to Clive's arm as if seeking protection from some unseen danger.

"Come into my club," Kit said. "Oh, you are quite presentable enough. The fact that you are not in evening dress does not matter in the least. Come along."

Ericsson followed, muttering his gratitude brokenly. In the full glories of the electric light he looked a pitiful wreck indeed, not in the least like the hard athlete that Clive had known not so many years ago.

"Where have you been all this time?" he asked.

"Everywhere," Ericsson said. "All over the world. And I would give my soul to wipe it all out and start afresh. It was all over a girl to begin with. She preferred another and I—well, I tried to drown my sorrow. And I fell from bad to worse. Look at me."

The man spoke with the bitterest self-contempt. He was quite sober now. Kit regarded him pitifully. He could see that the other had fallen very low indeed. There was a wistful gleam in his eyes as a waiter passed with a tray of glasses that told its own tale.

"If I could only help you," Kit said, "give you a chance to pull yourself together—"

"Too late," the other muttered. "All the same I'm glad to have seen you. It's good to look an honest old pal in the face again. If I hadn't met you I shouldn't have passed the next public bar. Walk a little way with me."

Kit nodded. He had nothing to do, and in a way Ericsson fascinated him. And it was always a pleasure to Kit to help anybody in trouble. Ericsson was talking more quietly now, speaking of the past. He pulled up suddenly and gripped Kit's arm. His face had grown horribly white, the bloodshot eyes were staring with terror.

"There," he whispered, "by the lamp. For God's sake don't let him see me!"

Kit half glanced around. He had heard of men acting like this on the verge of delirium tremens. And Ericsson was peculiarly near the border line. Doubtless he was looking at some hideous vision conjured up by his own disordered brain.

"Steady," Kit cried. "Steady, man. Pull yourself together. It is nothing."

Ericsson laughed in a quavering kind of way. He dimly comprehended what Kit was driving at.

"It is not that at all," he said. "I'm horribly shaky, but my brain is clear enough to-night. It is that man standing there looking at that paper. Cross the road."

The speaker was trembling from head to foot and sweating with terror. There was nothing very formidable about the man who stood quietly reading a paper and smoking a cigarette under a lamp-post. He seemed like a respectable mechanic in his best clothes, a thick-set, powerful-looking man with a hard face and a strong-determined jaw; there was a certain air of patience about him, an air of dogged determination. Once on the other side of the street Ericsson stopped and wiped his face.

"I've had a shock," said he, as if talking to himself. "It was the same man—I never guessed for a moment that it would be the same man, not even when I heard that he was—It was a narrow escape for me—What was I talking about?"

Kit replied that he did not know, which was no more than the truth.

Ericsson laughed in a feeble, cackling kind of way that was not good to hear.

"You've been very kind to-night," he said. "Very kind indeed. And much always wants more. And I've had a fright, I dare not go home alone. I shan't be at Desborough's chambers very long. Not more than half an hour. I wonder if you would stretch a point and wait for me. If you only knew what a fright I have had."

He wiped his besotted face again, and his eyelids quivered. Kit nodded. It seemed all cheap and trivial enough, and from the bottom of his heart he was sorry for the other.

"All right," he said cheerfully. "I'll stay here and smoke a cigar. And after that I'll see you safe home to bed. And I should say you need it."