Routledge rides alone

Jerry Cardinegh experienced a very swift and remarkable transition. All the red-blooded hatred with which he had executed his coup in India was drained from the man sitting in London. His gigantic scheme accomplished, Cardinegh withered like a plant overturned in a furrow. Instead of facing the consequences with the same iron humor that he had faced the wars of his time—as he had planned for months, in the event of discovery—his great mad zeal had burned him out. He found himself old, run-down, pitiful, hungering for peace, when his young Messiah had come—praying for the imperial stimulus of English hatred in order to write a great book of the craft. In his weakness and in the powerful attraction of home and Noreen, Cardinegh had not analyzed the idea seized at random by Routledge. Later he was incapable. Always the young man had been strange in his ways and startling in his achievements. Jerry had sensed the crush of this thing which the other demanded for a stimulant. Vaguely, the old man pictured from time to time the “mystic of the wars” sunk and steeped somewhere in India, turning out stupendous narratives under the goad of secrecy and peril.

Even the swiftest physical changes are more or less imperceptible to the victim, whose body is gently numbed, and mind shadowed by a merciful cloud. The veteran felt his years, and talked much of their weight, but he alone was incapable of perceiving the extent of his ruin. And what desperate irony was there in the trick which Nature played upon him! His brain held fast to the exciting minutiæ of Plevna, and the elder services, but lost entirely his latest and crowning strategy to encompass British disaster. He had conceived and carried out a plan to force a Russo-Indian alliance against England—and had practically forgotten it. More than that, the fact that his work had been foiled by England’s counter-alliance with Japan seemed scarcely to touch his mind after his last talk with Routledge. Memory served him mightily from her treasures of old actions, but the record of his awful lone war and its dreams had been writ in water.

Cardinegh gradually grew more and more content as the silence from abroad endured and his own forces failed. Many Londoners came to pay him homage; and with a single glance, the visitors understood that it were wiser to talk of El Obeid and the Chinese Gordon rather than of the new century. So the old campaigner, busy with his callers, his pipes and Latakia mixtures, his whiskies, white and red, finally came to forget for weeks at a time that the honor of his days was not his own.

Only occasionally, between long periods of serenity, there would come a stirring tumult to his brain. At such times he was frightened and speechless. Nameless fears pulsated through him like the rise and fall of a tempest. Once when the old man thought he was alone, Noreen heard him mutter at the fireside: “He’s lost in India somewhere—working and brooding, the young devil,—but war will bring him out of his lair.”

He was as usual the next morning. Had Noreen not been altogether in the dark in regard to the specific charge against Routledge, she could have put this and other fragments together into a rough form of truth. The few who knew all, imparted nothing. To the rest, the name of Routledge was attached to a certain unspeakable atrocity, and was thus whispered wherever Englishmen roved and strived. The man’s mysterious figure had been in the London press for years. England makes much of her correspondents, and Routledge, the Review man, had aroused comment from Auckland to Winnipeg—familiar comment, like the record of a general. A curse had fallen upon the name now, and it was none the less heinous because the reason, so far as the multitude was concerned, was a historical mystery. Articles like Finacune’s from the field in Bhurpal had given Englishmen everywhere an idea of the personality of this arch-enemy; and the fact that Routledge was still alive, and miraculously unpunished, was a covert challenge to the British around the world.... Noreen despaired of learning the truth. The merest mention of the subject harrowed and discountenanced her father, and netted no revelation whatsoever.

Hers were stern, hard-checked days, full of heart-hunger. It seemed to her sometimes as if her individuality must perish in the midst of this interminable system of agonies. That last hour in the carriage had left her thrilling, burning. She wished she had said even more to show her loyalty.... She thought of Routledge out on God’s great windy seas—always alone, always on deck in storms that drove others below; she thought of him moving in the hidden slums of India, native of the natives, eternally shadowed from his kind—alone, wasted, accursed.... Once—it was the same night that he had slipped from a noose in the house at Madras—she woke with a scream to find that it was only a dream—that he was being murdered. Yet she was terrified for days, as only one can be terrified whose brain is fine enough to respond to the immaterial currents, molding and weaving behind all scenes and things.

Often it came to her, “This is my battle. I must fight it cleanly and without a cry. It is hard for him and hard for me—as much as we can bear. Only Routledge-san and I can know how hard—and God, who measures our strength. But I shall see him again. I shall see him again. I shall see him again.”

Beyond this, she could never go in coherent thinking. In calm moments, and without any warning, there would come to her just a glimpse beyond, but never by deliberately forcing her thoughts. What glimpses they were, winged, marvelous,—of a bewildering intensity past the handling of common faculties.... A great, strong-souled woman, fashioned with the beauty of angels, and inspired with a love of the kind that only the dreamers can know in spirit.... And she held fast to what was left of her father, loved him, nor allowed the vision of crossing the world to her lover to militate against the work of the hour.... As for Routledge degraded, Routledge-san doing a shameful thing—this was unthinkable, a masterpiece of evil, one of the world’s four-dimension errors, which held him outcast in a wilderness where her soul cried nightly to be.

Autumn of the following year, and still Jerry Cardinegh sat in the little rooms in Cheer Street, his daughter ministering.... Noreen made a pilgrimage to Bookstalls. It was a day reserved from summer, and she had waited until afternoon when her father napped. All things were made ready for his comfort when he awakened, and she had the hours. Her carriage turned into the rutty, cobble-paved road, narrow and eternally jammed. The upper front windows of the old house were closely curtained.... She had never been up there, though once she had asked to go.... Her father and others had told her of the wanderer’s trophy-room, which Routledge kept from year to year and occupied so seldom. How fared the master in this hour?...

The street boy who had been with Routledge that last morning was passing swiftly, carrying the wares of a pastry-cook upon a tray. He had the look of one who was trusted and prospering. She called and he ran forward, but halted in excitement.

“Why, you are the Boy!” she declared joyfully.

His answer was equally engaging: “Has the Man come back?”

“Won’t you come into the carriage with me—so we can talk about the Man?” she asked.

Talking about the Man was desirable but forbidden. Another party had wished to talk about the Man. It was but a moment after the Man had left him, in the carriage of this woman. A stranger had touched his arm, asked queer questions in a clumsy, laughing way, stood treat variously, and bored for information in the most startling and unexpected fashion, always laughing. Altogether that had been a forenoon which made him damp to remember. Night after night, in the little hall-bedroom, he had gone over every word which the stranger had extracted. He felt that the Man would have been proud of him, but there had been several narrow squeaks.... As for the Man, Johnny Brodie had built his future and his God-stuff about Him. It wasn’t altogether a matter of clothes and grub and a room of his own. There was something deeper and bigger than that.... And this woman—her chances were slim about getting anything out of him about the Man.

“I got these ’ere torts to carry?” he said. “Has the Man come back?”

“No, but we’ll talk about him—when you are through with your work.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about ’im.”

“Oh, but it’s enough that you know him—and are fond of him. How long will you be busy?”

“Till dark.”

“Oh, dear! But you will come to my house after that, won’t you, Boy? I’ll have a good supper for you—and some things to take away. You’ll be glad if you come.... Won’t you come, Boy?”

Five minutes later, Johnny stared at the receding carriage and at the money in his hand. He had promised to go to Cheer Street that evening when his work was done. How it came about, was one of those things which he must figure out in silence and darkness. Certainly he had not intended to go. Evidently she was one of the Man’s possessions, and what a way she had with her!... Everything about the Man was right. He was all that a man could and should be. More would be superfluous and distasteful.... It had looked as if the Man had wanted to be alone that morning, when this woman had borne him away in the carriage. Johnny had never quite forgiven her for that. Possibly the Man might have had more to say to him if she hadn’t come.... She wanted to go up into the Room, but the Man hadn’t allowed that....

“’E took me in, an’ not ’er!” he mused with sudden amazement.

The long-locked lodging—that Superlative Place!... Johnny had a pet dream. He was back on the stairs, and the Man came and carried him up into that place of kingliest attraction. Those were rooms like a man ought to have—shields, guns, knives, saddles, tufts of hair (certainly scalps), chain-shirts, and shirts with tattoo-marks all over; and there was one saddle, with mud still on the stirrups, sorrel hair on the cinch, and a horsy smell.... Johnny jerked himself out of his delectable memories.

“I’ll go,” he muttered; “but she needn’t think she’ll ’ear anything about ’im from me.”

Noreen returned to Cheer Street in the twilight, troubled by the thought that there was to be company in the evening. She had forgotten, and wanted the whole time with the boy.... He had passed the night in the lodgings with Routledge—the very hours which had made an outcast of her lover. What might the boy not have heard? At least he knew the Man—one soul in London who knew Routledge and did not seek to crush him.

Her father regarded her hungrily as she entered.

“You’ve been gone long, Noreen,” he said. “’Tis a queer thing that comes over a man with the years, deere. I was thinking this afternoon of going away for a year—the thought of it! It’s all gone from me. Old Jerry is off to the wars no more, unless they furnish portable pavilions for the women of the correspondents.”

She knew that his liveliness was unnatural, but so much of her work was mere service for the tragic effacement of a loved one, that she brightened responsively to his slightest mental activity. Dinner was nearly over when the door-bell rang. Noreen left her father at the table and admitted Johnny Brodie, leading him into the sitting-room.

He removed his cap carefully, uncovering a noble achievement of water, wrought against gritty odds, with a certain treasured pair of military brushes. The cap was carelessly stuck in his pocket. His shoes—but the blacking of Bookstalls and many other roads had the start of months and asserted itself before the drying fire above the recent veneer of the stranger brand. Johnny Brodie looked captured and uncomfortable, so that Noreen despaired to win him. Had he been older or younger, she could not have failed; but there he sat, a male creature all deformed by years and emotions, precocities and vacuities—a stained and handicapped little nobleman, all boy, and all to the good.

“We haven’t heard from the Man, either, Johnny,” she said. “We are terribly worried about him and awfully interested. I know he was very fond of you, and I hoped you could tell us something about him. Did you know him long?”

“Nope.” The boy wondered who else was included in the “we.”

“But that morning you seemed to have such a fine and complete understanding. Did you often spend a night with him?”

“Nope. We was fren’s, though. ’E’s the right sort. Gives me a bloomin’ Tommy’s harmy blanket to sleep in, and wen I goes to get into me boots—they’re filled wit bobs an’ tanners. I looks up, an’ ’e’s grinnin’—as if ’e didn’t know as to ’ow they got there.”

It was all replenishment to her veins. “And didn’t he go to sleep that night, Johnny?” she asked softly.

“’Ow should I know?” he demanded innocently.

“I thought maybe you’d know. He told me—that is, I know he had a visitor besides you that night.”

Manifestly this would never do. Noreen felt uncomfortable in her probing. She must make him see how important anything he might say would be not only to her, but to the Man.... As for what the boy knew, an analyst, or, better, an alienist, would be necessary to piece into a garment of reason his poor little patches of understanding, in regard to what he had heard that night—names of men and places and deeds outside of Bookstalls. The fact that Johnny Brodie did not understand, was no reason why he should uncover his patches to this woman who understood so much. He was a little afraid of her, and not a little sorry that he had come. He felt, in spite of himself, that his face was telling her that he knew a great deal about that night. He squirmed.

Noreen sensed many of his mental operations, arose and knelt before him, her elbows upon his knees, and looked up into his face.

“Boy,” she whispered, “you are very good and dear to me for trying to keep his secrets. He is a great and good man, who means very much to you and to me. He is doing for some one else (who cannot love him as you and I do) a great thing and a hard thing, which keeps him away from us. So long as the secret is kept, Boy, he will have to stay away, but if we knew the secret we could bring him back to us and be very happy.... I want you to tell me all that you know, all that you heard that night while the visitor was there—but before you do you must understand that you are doing only good for him. His good, his welfare, is life and death to me. I love this man, Johnny Brodie, I think even better than you do. Won’t you help me to bring him back?”

His eyes were wide with temptation. He longed to consult her about the laughing stranger who had pumped him. Many things had happened to him in twelve flying, graceless years, but nothing like this. Never would come another moment like this—with the woman, whom Bookstalls had gasped at the sight of, kneeling before him. The fate of a city might well have wavered in the balance before the pleading of such a woman. He had a premonitive sense that this moment would become more significant the older he grew. She overturned half his resistance with the single fact of sharing with him the possession of the Man and acknowledging his almost co-equal rights in all that pertained. It was not her interest, but their interest.... And then—the seething curiosity for months—this woman could tell him why the Man wanted the Hate of London! There could be no mistake about this last. The Man had begged for it in many ways and in such language as was never heard in Bookstalls, except in the Socialist’s Hall. How could one old man, all scarred and shot up, give him the Hate of London?

At this instant Jerry Cardinegh opened the door from the dining-room. Noreen felt the little body turn rigid under her hands and saw the thin jaw tighten. As she turned hastily to her father, she heard Johnny Brodie’s voice—the voice of one who has triumphed over temptation:

“Ask ’im! Wot yer askin’ me fer—wen ’e knows?”

She hurried to lead her father back into the dining-room, but he could not stir. His eyes had fixed themselves upon the boy, and seemed to be draining from him some deadly poison. His liquor betrayed him, as it ever betrays the old and the fallen. The tissue it had sustained collapsed in his veins and the low light left his brain. Only there remained horror as of a basilisk upon his face. His bright, staring eyes had a look of isolation in the midst of altered ashen features.

It was too much for Johnny Brodie—this quick formation of havoc on the face that had been florid and smiling. Moreover, he saw the conspiracy against him in the woman and the old man. He clapped his hand to his pocket—the cap was where it belonged—bolted into the hall and down the stairs.

Noreen’s lips formed to call his name, but the look of her father forbade. She heard the slam of the front door.