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Half a Hero: A Novel, a novel by Anthony Hope |
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Chapter 29. A Beaten Man's Thoughts |
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_ CHAPTER XXIX. A BEATEN MAN'S THOUGHTS On reaching his home, Medland had found that Norburn had arrived before him, and was engaged in the task of consoling Daisy for the untoward issue of the fight. Daisy, on her part, was full of praise for the valour of Big Todd, and delighted to hear of the sort of fiasco that had waited on the military display at the station. Safe from the eyes of all save those who loved him, Medland did not maintain the indifferent air that he had displayed in public. In vain they reminded him of the swift reactions in political affairs, of the sturdy band that still owned his leadership, and of the devotion of all Kirton to him, or bade him think that he was himself almost a young man, and that this defeat was but a check and not an end to his career. For the moment the buoyancy was out of him; he did not care to discuss hopes or projects, and sat silent in his chair, while Norburn sketched new campaigns and energetic raids on Sir Robert's position. Daisy knew her father: these hours of despondency were the penalty he paid for the glowing confidence and rebounding hope that had made him the man and the power he was. "Let him alone a little while," she whispered to her lover. "Something will rouse him soon, and he'll be himself again." She put his letters by him, and the two left him to solitude in his study. He was vaguely surprised that no crowd had assembled to escort him to his house, and that the street was so quiet; he supposed that his adherents felt much as he did, too discouraged to make a parade, or try to hide their wounds under the pretence of a brave show; yet he was sensitive enough to every breath of popular sentiment to be hurt at the first sign of neglect. Perhaps they had had enough of him, perhaps they were looking for a new leader. No; that could hardly be, or they would not have elected all his friends. It was just that they felt as he did, beaten, soundly beaten, and had fled to their dens to lick their sores. He listlessly stretched out his hand towards the letters and began to open them. Here were belated requests for help or advice, calculations of majorities and prophecies of victory, written at the last moment in unquenchable faith, to be read now with a weary smile of irony. Here too were honest, admiring condolences. "Better luck next time"--"Never despair," and so forth--side by side with anonymous and scurrilous gloatings over his fall. Once he laughed out loud: a zealous student compared him at length and in detail to Cleon, and ended with an ode of triumph which, he said, would appear in the press the next day or so. Medland pushed the heap away with an impatient sigh, but one note remained under his hand and he took it up, for it seemed different from the rest. He undid the envelope and glanced at the signature; then he sat up in sudden interest, for it was signed "Alicia Derosne." "You will be surprised," she said, "that I should write; but I doubted if you understood the other night, and I can't be misunderstood by you. If you were what I once thought you, I would do all you ask, whatever it cost me, but I can't now. It's all different now. That thing makes it all different. You will think it a poor reason and a strange idea--I know you will; but your thinking it strange is just what makes it strongest to me. You may not understand--I'm afraid you won't--but you must believe that that is the only thing. Please don't try to see me, but send one line to say you believe me.--ALICIA DEROSNE. Good-bye." At first he thought of what he read only as a fresh defeat, another drop of bitterness in a brimming cup, and he let the letter fall, despising himself for caring about such a matter. But he took it up again and re-read it, and the "Good-bye" at the end--the stifled cry of pain--touched him; she had finished the letter before she wrote that, for its ink was paler; the rest had dried, that had been hastily blotted; it was an after-impulse, a hint of the struggle with which she left her tenderness unexpressed. He pictured so well how she looked writing it, making her sacrifice at the altar of what she held holy in herself. Whether she were right or wrong seemed now to his softer mood to be of little moment. He could not think that she was right, and yet it suited her so well to be wrong on such a point that he could hardly wish her to have been what to his mind seemed right. With the strange feeling of the end of things, of finality, that his defeat and despondency had brought to him, her decision fitted well. She would not come to him, but the ideal of her rested beautiful in the delicate pride and fastidiousness of her scruples and her purity. The sort of life he must lead, no less than that he had led, must needs have soiled the image and stained its spotless white. He was conscious that his reception of what she said was half the outcome of the moment in which her decision reached him; but yet he could not look before him, and the idea of himself, restored to his former mind, scornfully mocking what now claimed reverence, angrily fighting against a merely fanciful hindrance, failed to dress itself like reality, though experience, half-smothered, protested that it would prove real. Now he was very sorry for her and for himself; but it was the sorrow of acquiescence, the pain of a vision that never could have had fulfilment not the fierce disappointment of well-grounded hope. Though she were passing out of his life, yet she would always be in it and of it, and their unhappiness seemed to him a tie as close as could have been knit between them by any union. He was interrupted by the entrance of his daughter and Norburn. They were troubled, as a glance at their happy faces told him, by no sense of the end of things; they were at the beginning, and he was amused to find that, while they deplored his defeat sincerely and resented it hotly, it yet had a bright side to them. It set Jack Norburn at liberty; he had now no official ties and there would be a lull in politics. How should two young people use such an interval better than in getting married? "How indeed?" said Mr. Medland, smiling. "Then when we're comfortably married," said Daisy, "and you've had a little rest, we'll have at Sir Robert again, father! Oh, and I'm so glad those tiresome Eynesfords are going--except Alicia, I mean; I like her. I do hope the next people won't be quite so--" And Daisy's gesture indicated the inhuman exclusiveness and pride supposed to be harboured at Government House. "Well, we go our way and they go theirs," said Norburn, with his good-humoured laugh. "We're happy in ours, I hope they're happy in theirs. Then, as soon as Daisy can be ready, sir?" "Yes, as soon as Daisy can be ready," assented Medland. When, after thanks and some more rose-coloured prophecies, they were gone together, he rose and, hands in pockets, paced up and down the narrow room. "Really, young Norburn has got the philosophy of it," he mused. "He takes my daughter, and his philosophy takes the only other woman I care about! But I believe, after all, that it's bad philosophy." He stretched his arms in weariness. "Ah, I feel burnt out!" he said, sinking back into his chair. "I must answer this," and he took up Alicia's note again, only to fold it up and put it in his pocket. "I can't do it now. I must have some fresh air," he exclaimed petulantly. "This place suffocates me." He opened the window and hailed a hack-victoria that was crawling by. Calling to Daisy to tell her he was going for a drive, he ran down-stairs and jumped in. "Go to the Park," he said. "You needn't hurry." The air revived his spirits. He leant back, sniffing its freshness, and finding the world very good. He met few people about and no one that he knew. The Park was empty, and the old horse jogged along peacefully. Insensibly he found himself thinking about what would happen when the new House met, and sparing a smile for Coxon's defeat, though he was afraid that gentleman would be only too well provided for. It struck him that a pitfall or two lay in Sir Robert's path, and he saw his way to giving Kilshaw a bad quarter of an hour over one of his election speeches. The only thing that he could not get away from was the thought of Alicia Derosne. He knew that there was to be nothing more between him and her, and that she was going away soon, never to return to, soon in all probability to forget, New Lindsey; yet all his doings and activities in the future--and his brain began now to be swift to plan them again--presented themselves to him, not in the actual happening, but as they would look when read by her. This lover's madness irritated him so much that at last he took her letter from his pocket and tore it into little bits, scattering them on the breeze. He could answer it well enough from memory, and perhaps it would be easier to be his own man again when he had no tangible, material reminder of her with him. These things only made a man nurse and cosset fine-drawn feelings, spying curiously into a heart that might get well if it were covered up and left alone. A cheery voice roused him, and his carriage stopped. "Well, tearing up your bills, eh?" called the Chief Justice from the side-walk. "You must be glad to be out of it." "Not I," answered Medland, smiling. "Among other things, I wanted to appoint your successor." "Ah, dreadful, dreadful! Young Coxon, isn't it? I've been laid up with a cold, and seen and heard nothing, but I fancy that's right." "I suppose he'll do pretty well, but he's not the right man to come after you. However, I am powerless now." "Yes, order is safe again. By the way, I hear your friends made a little disturbance last night." "Oh, yes; that headstrong fellow Todd. We can never hold him. It came to nothing, I suppose?" "They arrested him, you know. But, Medland, I doubt----" The driver turned round suddenly. "Did you say Medland, sir?" he asked the Chief Justice. "Is this gentleman Mr. Medland?" "What, didn't you know me?" "No, sir; I'm only just out from England. But, if you're Mr. Medland, don't you know, sir--begging your pardon--what's happened about Todd?" "No; what?" "There's a fine row up at the prison, sir. Two or three thousand of 'em went up there this morning to take him out, and the Governor's up there with the Volunteers, and they say there's going to be a big fight and----" "The fools!" exclaimed Medland. "I must go, Chief Justice." "Why, what can you do?" "Stop it, of course. Here, drive to the prison--drive like fury. Good-bye, Chief Justice. Come and see me soon. Get on, man, get on!" The old horse was whipped up unmercifully, and the Chief Justice watched Medland disappear in a cloud of dust. He took off his hat to wipe his brow. Two little fragments of the white paper which Medland scattered had settled upon it. "Poof!" The Chief Justice blew them off and they fluttered down on the grass. He stooped and picked up the larger bit. If he had looked at it, he would have read "Good-bye"; but he did not. The amber end of his cigarette-tube was loose: he unscrewed it, twisted the little bit of paper round the screw, and fitted the end on again. "Capital!" said the Chief Justice. "It might have been made for it. Poor old Medland!" _ |
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