The Weavers: Chapter 19

Chapter 19

SHARPER THAN A SWORD

A glance of the eye was the only sign of recognition between David and
Hylda; nothing that others saw could have suggested that they had ever
met before. Lord Windlehurst at once engaged David in conversation.

At first when Hylda had come back from Egypt, those five years ago, she
had often wondered what she would think or do if she ever were to see
this man again; whether, indeed, she could bear it. Well, the moment and
the man had come. Her eyes had gone blind for an instant; it had seemed
for one sharp, crucial moment as though she could not bear it; then the
gulf of agitation was passed, and she had herself in hand.

While her mind was engaged subconsciously with what Lord Windlehurst and
David said, comprehending it all, and, when Lord Windlehurst appealed to
her, offering by a word contribution to the 'pourparler', she was
studying David as steadily as her heated senses would permit her.

He seemed to her to have put on twenty years in the steady force of his
personality--in the composure of his bearing, in the self-reliance of his
look, though his face and form were singularly youthful. The face was
handsome and alight, the look was that of one who weighed things; yet she
was conscious of a great change. The old delicate quality of the features
was not so marked, though there was nothing material in the look, and the
head had not a sordid line, while the hand that he now and again raised,
brushing his forehead meditatively, had gained much in strength and
force. Yet there was something--something different, that brought a
slight cloud into her eyes. It came to her now, a certain melancholy in
the bearing of the figure, erect and well-balanced as it was. Once the
feeling came, the certainty grew. And presently she found a strange
sadness in the eyes, something that lurked behind all that he did and all
that he was, some shadow over the spirit. It was even more apparent when
he smiled.

As she was conscious of this new reading of him, a motion arrested her
glance, a quick lifting of the head to one side, as though the mind had
suddenly been struck by an idea, the glance flying upward in abstracted
questioning. This she had seen in her husband, too, the same brisk
lifting of the head, the same quick smiling. Yet this face, unlike
Eglington's, expressed a perfect single-mindedness; it wore the look of a
self-effacing man of luminous force, a concentrated battery of energy.
Since she had last seen him every sign of the provincial had vanished. He
was now the well-modulated man of affairs, elegant in his simplicity of
dress, with the dignified air of the intellectual, yet with the decision
of a man who knew his mind.

Lord Windlehurst was leaving. Now David and she were alone. Without a
word they moved on together through the throng, the eyes of all following
them, until they reached a quiet room at one end of the salon, where were
only a few people watching the crowd pass the doorway.

"You will be glad to sit," he said, motioning her to a chair beside some
palms. Then, with a change of tone, he added: "Thee is not sorry I am
come?"

Thee--the old-fashioned simple Quaker word! She put her fingers to her
eyes. Her senses were swimming with a distant memory. The East was in her
brain, the glow of the skies, the gleam of the desert, the swish of the
Nile, the cry of the sweet-seller, the song of the dance-girl, the strain
of the darabukkeh, the call of the skis. She saw again the ghiassas
drifting down the great river, laden with dourha; she saw the mosque of
the blue tiles with its placid fountain, and its handful of worshippers
praying by the olive-tree. She watched the moon rise above the immobile
Sphinx, she looked down on the banqueters in the Palace, David among
them, and Foorgat Bey beside her. She saw Foorgat Bey again lying dead at
her feet. She heard the stir of the leaves; she caught the smell of the
lime-trees in the Palace garden as she fled. She recalled her reckless
return to Cairo from Alexandria. She remembered the little room where she
and David, Nahoum and Mizraim, crossed a bridge over a chasm, and stood
upon ground which had held good till now--till this hour, when the man
who had played a most vital part in her life had come again out of a land
which, by some forced obliquity of mind and stubbornness of will, she had
assured herself she would never see again.

She withdrew her hand from her eyes, and saw him looking at her calmly,
though his face was alight. "Thee is fatigued," he said. "This is labour
which wears away the strength." He made a motion towards the crowd.

She smiled a very little, and said: "You do not care for such things as
this, I know. Your life has its share of it, however, I suppose."

He looked out over the throng before he answered. "It seems an eddy of
purposeless waters. Yet there is great depth beneath, or there were no
eddy; and where there is depth and the eddy there is danger--always." As
he spoke she became almost herself again. "You think that deep natures
have most perils?"

"Thee knows it is so. Human nature is like the earth: the deeper the
plough goes into the soil unploughed before, the more evil substance is
turned up--evil that becomes alive as soon as the sun and the air fall
upon it."

"Then, women like me who pursue a flippant life, who ride in this
merry-go-round"--she made a gesture towards the crowd beyond--"who have
no depth, we are safest, we live upon the surface." Her gaiety was
forced; her words were feigned.

"Thee has passed the point of danger, thee is safe," he answered
meaningly.

"Is that because I am not deep, or because the plough has been at work?"
she asked. "In neither case I am not sure you are right."

"Thee is happily married," he said reflectively; "and the prospect is
fair."

"I think you know my husband," she said in answer, and yet not in answer.

"I was born in Hamley where he has a place--thee has been there?" he
asked eagerly.

"Not yet. We are to go next Sunday, for the first time to the Cloistered
House. I had not heard that my husband knew you, until I saw in the paper
a few days ago that your home was in Hamley. Then I asked Eglington, and
he told me that your family and his had been neighbours for generations."

"His father was a Quaker," David rejoined, "but he forsook the faith."

"I did not know," she answered, with some hesitation. There was no reason
why, when she and Eglington had talked of Hamley, he should not have said
his own father had once been a Quaker; yet she had dwelt so upon the fact
that she herself had Quaker blood, and he had laughed so much over it,
with the amusement of the superior person, that his silence on this one
point struck her now with a sense of confusion.

"You are going to Hamley--we shall meet there?" she continued.

"To-day I should have gone, but I have business at the Foreign Office
to-morrow. One needs time to learn that all 'private interests and
partial affections' must be sacrificed to public duty."

"But you are going soon? You will be there on Sunday?"

"I shall be there to-morrow night, and Sunday, and for one long week at
least. Hamley is the centre of the world, the axle of the universe--you
shall see. You doubt it?" he added, with a whimsical smile.

"I shall dispute most of what you say, and all that you think, if you do
not continue to use the Quaker 'thee' and 'thou'--ungrammatical as you
are so often."

"Thee is now the only person in London, or in England, with whom I use
'thee' and 'thou.' I am no longer my own master, I am a public servant,
and so I must follow custom."

"It is destructive of personality. The 'thee' and 'thou' belong to you. I
wonder if the people of Hamley will say 'thee' and 'thou' to me. I hope,
I do hope they will."

"Thee may be sure they will. They are no respecters of persons there.
They called your husband's father Robert--his name was Robert. Friend
Robert they called him, and afterwards they called him Robert Denton till
he died."

"Will they call me Hylda?" she asked, with a smile. "More like they will
call thee Friend Hylda; it sounds simple and strong," he replied.

"As they call Claridge Pasha Friend David," she answered, with a smile.
"David is a good name for a strong man."

"That David threw a stone from a sling and smote a giant in the forehead.
The stone from this David's sling falls into the ocean and is lost
beneath the surface."

His voice had taken on a somewhat sombre tone, his eyes looked away into
the distance; yet he smiled too, and a hand upon his knee suddenly closed
in sympathy with an inward determination.

A light of understanding came into her face. They had been keeping things
upon the surface, and, while it lasted, he seemed a lesser man than she
had thought him these past years. But now--now there was the old
unschooled simplicity, the unique and lonely personality, the homely soul
and body bending to one root-idea, losing themselves in a wave of duty.
Again he was to her, once more, the dreamer, the worker, the
conqueror--the conqueror of her own imagination. She had in herself the
soul of altruism, the heart of the crusader. Touched by the fire of a
great idea, she was of those who could have gone out into the world
without wallet or scrip, to work passionately for some great end.

And she had married the Earl of Eglington!

She leaned towards David, and said eagerly: "But you are satisfied--you
are satisfied with your work for poor Egypt?"

"Thee says 'poor Egypt,'" he answered, "and thee says well. Even now she
is not far from the day of Rameses and Joseph. Thee thinks perhaps thee
knows Egypt--none knows her."

"You know her--now?"

He shook his head slowly. "It is like putting one's ear to the mouth of
the Sphinx. Yet sometimes, almost in despair, when I have lain down in
the desert beside my camel, set about with enemies, I have got a message
from the barren desert, the wide silence, and the stars." He paused.

"What is the message that comes?" she asked softly. "It is always the
same: Work on! Seek not to know too much, nor think that what you do is
of vast value. Work, because it is yours to be adjusting the machinery in
your own little workshop of life to the wide mechanism of the universe
and time. One wheel set right, one flying belt adjusted, and there is a
step forward to the final harmony--ah, but how I preach!" he added
hastily.

His eyes were fixed on hers with a great sincerity, and they were clear
and shining, yet his lips were smiling--what a trick they had of smiling!
He looked as though he should apologise for such words in such a place.

She rose to her feet with a great suspiration, with a light in her eyes
and a trembling smile.

"But no, no, no, you inspire one. Thee inspires me," she said, with a
little laugh, in which there was a note of sadness. "I may use 'thee,'
may I not, when I will? I am a little a Quaker also, am I not? My people
came from Derbyshire, my American people, that is--and only forty years
ago. Almost thee persuades me to be a Quaker now," she added. "And
perhaps I shall be, too," she went on, her eyes fixed on the crowd
passing by, Eglington among them.

David saw Eglington also, and moved forward with her.

"We shall meet in Hamley," she said composedly, as she saw her husband
leave the crush and come towards her. As Eglington noticed David, a
curious enigmatical glance flashed from his eyes. He came forward,
however, with outstretched hand.

"I am sorry I was not at the Foreign Office when you called to-day.
Welcome back to England, home--and beauty." He laughed in a rather
mirthless way, but with a certain empressement, conscious, as he always
was, of the onlookers. "You have had a busy time in Egypt?" he continued
cheerfully, and laughed again.

David laughed slightly, also, and Hylda noticed that it had a certain
resemblance in its quick naturalness to that of her husband.

"I am not sure that we are so busy there as we ought to be," David
answered. "I have no real standards. I am but an amateur, and have known
nothing of public life. But you should come and see."

"It has been in my mind. An ounce of eyesight is worth a ton of print. My
lady was there once, I believe"--he turned towards her--"but before your
time, I think. Or did you meet there, perhaps?" He glanced at both
curiously. He scarcely knew why a thought flashed into his mind--as
though by some telepathic sense; for it had never been there before, and
there was no reason for its being there now.

Hylda saw what David was about to answer, and she knew instinctively that
he would say they had never met. It shamed her. She intervened as she saw
he was about to speak.

"We were introduced for the first time to-night," she said; "but Claridge
Pasha is part of my education in the world. It is a miracle that Hamley
should produce two such men," she added gaily, and laid her fan upon her
husband's arm lightly. "You should have been a Quaker, Harry, and then
you two would have been--"

"Two Quaker Don Quixotes," interrupted Eglington ironically.

"I should not have called you a Don Quixote," his wife lightly rejoined,
relieved at the turn things had taken. "I cannot imagine you tilting at
wind-mills--"

"Or saving maidens in distress? Well, perhaps not; but you do not suggest
that Claridge Pasha tilts at windmills either--or saves maidens in
distress. Though, now I come to think, there was an episode." He laughed
maliciously. "Some time ago it was--a lass of the cross-roads. I think I
heard of such an adventure, which did credit to Claridge Pasha's heart,
though it shocked Hamley at the time. But I wonder, was the maiden really
saved?"

Lady Eglington's face became rigid. "Well, yes," she said slowly, "the
maiden was saved. She is now my maid. Hamley may have been shocked, but
Claridge Pasha has every reason to be glad that he helped a fellow-being
in trouble."

"Your maid--Heaver?" asked Eglington in surprise, a swift shadow crossing
his face.

"Yes; she only told me this morning. Perhaps she had seen that Claridge
Pasha was coming to England. I had not, however. At any rate, Quixotism
saved her."

David smiled. "It is better than I dared to hope," he remarked quietly.

"But that is not all," continued Hylda. "There is more. She had been used
badly by a man who now wants to marry her--has tried to do so for years.
Now, be prepared for a surprise, for it concerns you rather closely,
Eglington. Fate is a whimsical jade. Whom do you think it is? Well, since
you could never guess, it was Jasper Kimber."

Eglington's eyes opened wide. "This is nothing but a coarse and
impossible stage coincidence," he laughed. "It is one of those tricks
played by Fact to discredit the imagination. Life is laughing at us
again. The longer I live, the more I am conscious of being an object of
derision by the scene-shifters in the wings of the stage. What a cynical
comedy life is at the best!"

"It all seems natural enough," rejoined David.

"It is all paradox."

"Isn't it all inevitable law? I have no belief in 'antic Fate.'"

Hylda realised, with a new and poignant understanding, the difference of
outlook on life between the two men. She suddenly remembered the words of
Confucius, which she had set down in her little book of daily life: "By
nature we approximate, it is only experience that drives us apart."

David would have been content to live in the desert all his life for the
sake of a cause, making no calculations as to reward. Eglington must ever
have the counters for the game.

"Well, if you do not believe in 'antic Fate,' you must be greatly puzzled
as you go on," he rejoined, laughing; "especially in Egypt, where the
East and the West collide, race against race, religion against religion,
Oriental mind against Occidental intellect. You have an unusual quantity
of Quaker composure, to see in it all 'inevitable law.' And it must be
dull. But you always were, so they say in Hamley, a monument of
seriousness."

"I believe they made one or two exceptions," answered David drily. "I had
assurances."

Eglington laughed boyishly. "You are right. You achieved a name for
humour in a day--'a glass, a kick, and a kiss,' it was. Do you have such
days in Egypt?"

"You must come and see," David answered lightly, declining to notice the
insolence. "These are critical days there. The problems are worthy of
your care. Will you not come?"

Eglington was conscious of a peculiar persuasive influence over himself
that he had never felt before. In proportion, however, as he felt its
compelling quality, there came a jealousy of the man who was its cause.
The old antagonism, which had had its sharpest expression the last time
they had met on the platform at Heddington, came back. It was one strong
will resenting another--as though there was not room enough in the wide
world of being for these two atoms of life, sparks from the ceaseless
wheel, one making a little brighter flash than the other for the moment,
and then presently darkness, and the whirring wheel which threw them off,
throwing off millions of others again.

On the moment Eglington had a temptation to say something with an edge,
which would show David that his success in Egypt hung upon the course
that he himself and the weak Foreign Minister, under whom he served,
would take. And this course would be his own course largely, since he had
been appointed to be a force and strength in the Foreign Office which his
chief did not supply. He refrained, however, and, on the moment,
remembered the promise he had given to Faith to help David.

A wave of feeling passed over him. His wife was beautiful, a creature of
various charms, a centre of attraction. Yet he had never really loved
her--so many sordid elements had entered into the thought of marriage
with her, lowering the character of his affection. With a perversity
which only such men know, such heart as he had turned to the unknown
Quaker girl who had rebuked him, scathed him, laid bare his soul before
himself, as no one ever had done. To Eglington it was a relief that there
was one human being--he thought there was only one--who read him through
and through; and that knowledge was in itself as powerful an influence as
was the secret between David and Hylda. It was a kind of confessional,
comforting to a nature not self-contained. Now he restrained his cynical
intention to deal David a side-thrust, and quietly said:

"We shall meet at Hamley, shall we not? Let us talk there, and not at the
Foreign Office. You would care to go to Egypt, Hylda?"

She forced a smile. "Let us talk it over at Hamley." With a smile to
David she turned away to some friends.

Eglington offered to introduce David to some notable people, but he said
that he must go--he was fatigued after his journey. He had no wish to be
lionised.

As he left the salon, the band was playing a tune that made him close his
eyes, as though against something he would not see. The band in Kaid's
Palace had played it that night when he had killed Foorgat Bey.

Back to chapter list of: The Weavers