Routledge rides alone

Routledge left his lodgings a little before nine that night, and breasted the February fog in his great frieze coat. He was minded to hail a cab when he wearied of walking, but the time and distance were put behind with a glow and a gradually quickening pace. It was a good four miles from Bookstalls to Trafalgar Square and the Armory where the Army and Navy reception was held. He skirted Hyde Park, now in the zenith of its season, and glimpsed Piccadilly again. Its full electric bloom was a ghastly sheen in the fog. London, the old and blackened brick Mammoth, was sweet to him, even now vaporing in her night-sweat.... He had thought of these shops, clubs, lights, smells, and monuments in the long, heaven-clear Indian nights. Afar in the Himalayas, where the old Earth-mother strains hungrily toward the stars (as does the soul of man who broods in those austere heights), he had thought hard upon these stirring pavements and yearned for them in red moments of memory. In the rice-lands of Rangoon; in the cotton country Bombayward; in the bazaars of Lahore; overlooking the plains from Simla; in the under-world of Calcutta, and the house-tops of Benares—he had mapped these streets in reflection and colored certain land-marks with desire.

Here, in his own world-yard again, walking for an hour through the centre of London, and not a human had hailed him. The strokes of ten boomed down from some spire lost in the muffling mists.

“One would have to carry a lantern, like the old prophet of the barrel-house, to find his playmates in a night like this. Besides,” he added, “most of my playmates by this time are bathing in the vanities across the Square.”

There was a herd of carriages at the entrance to the famous ball-room; and under the awnings he encountered the quick, natty figure of the much-liked Finacune—seized the shoulders of the little man affectionately.

“Hello, old heart—my first glimpse of a white man in the Home-zone——”

Finacune turned in an abrupt, unnerved way. “Why, how d’ do, Routledge?” he mumbled throatily. His right hand had jerked toward the other from habit, but was withdrawn without the clasp. “How d’ do? Comin’ in, I s’pose?”

With this astonishing greeting, the Word man leaped up the stone steps and left his “mystic of the wars” beneath the dripping canopy, not a little perturbed. The rather intent regard of the cab-starter pulled Routledge from his reflecting after a moment, and he followed Finacune into the Hall, being shown at once to the gentlemen’s coat-room. Apparently Finacune had shed his outer garment with incredible speed, for he was not there; nor any other guests. Routledge’s first thought was that a joke was being perpetrated at his expense, Finacune’s action merely preparing the way, but he could not hold fast to this. His whole nature was sensitive at once to a formidable disorder.

His name trembled above the sense-stirring music as he stepped upon the floor of the brilliant hall. It was a distinguished company of admirals, generals, civilian campaigners, and exalted representatives of the Home, Foreign, and Colonial Departments; the bravest men of the kingdom, perhaps; certainly some of the fairest women. The throng moved about in a slow, suppressed way; and the faces turned toward him not gladly, not pointedly, but in a quick, secretive, on-the-defensive fashion, as upon some huge agent of menace and craft.

With difficulty, Routledge controlled the muscles of his face. The public speaker knows the moment. Here is straightforward testimony of the power of mind over matter. That first volume of abhorrence and distrust which his eyes had ever met, seemed to rub out his features and weave its own image upon the flesh. He never forgot the sensation. Women craned their heads behind the shoulders of the men. A steward passed before him, fell into the current of hatred, and his face altered visibly. Routledge summoned all his resistance and smiled. He understood instantly that only a few of the men, the most valued tools of the kingdom, knew the specific allegation, and that by the others he was charged with some dreadful generality. Finacune had disappeared. Jerry Cardinegh had not arrived. Trollope, that goodly bullock of a man, most slow of all to be blown in a gale of popular opinion, stood nearest to Routledge. The two faced each other fixedly.

“I say, brother, what’s up?” Routledge inquired lightly.

“I was thinking of interviewing you on the matter—not for publication, of course, but for my own curiosity,” was the puzzling answer.

Routledge quickly stepped forward, but Trollope turned away.

Burling-Forster, an artillery chieftain, whose valor, years before at Quetta, had vividly been placed before the British people by Routledge, the only civilian detached with him at the time, took the place of Trollope now and stared with steady, stony insolence, an accomplishment of Englishmen only, at the man who had made him famous. He did not move to take the hand which Routledge was careless enough to offer him. However, Burling-Forster uttered a sentence which showed that he quite forgot that there were women in the room.

There was not a shade of change now in the brown hue of Routledge’s face, nor in the pleasure of his smile.

“Colonel, I once saw your temper working to better effect,” he said courteously.... “Feeney,” he remarked, turning to the grim visage of the old man, “perhaps you may tell me—am I out of order to inquire what this game is?”

“It appears to me,” Feeney answered gloomily, “that you are out of order anywhere.”

“Thank you—I didn’t know.”

It was now the turn of Dartmore, the editor of the Review. As has been related, it had been the recent vocation of Routledge to make this newspaper important in and between wars. To be insulted by Dartmore was like being thrown from a horse into a hedge of Spanish-bayonets.

“I am glad that you were crafty enough not to call at the Review office to-day, though you’ve got hell’s own audacity to come here. Don’t go to the Review for your cheque. I will see to it that it is brought to the Rubicon Buffet within an hour. I advise you to buy something with it to kill yourself.”

A tall figure in evening wear brushed by Routledge now, rather roughly and without apology. It was Bingley, of the Thames. For an instant Routledge was blinded—the Hindus name it well—by the red mists of passion. He had drilled himself to bear the words, had listened coldly, curiously, for the past few moments, but the actual physical contact unleashed his rage.

“I shouldn’t advise him to kill himself until he is well clear of the shores of England, Dartmore—the taint, you know!” Bingley said with a brassy smile.

The face of a woman hurrying toward him through the breathless groups in the great reception hall pulled Routledge out of delirium.

“Bingley,” he remarked, shutting his eyelids forcibly, as if to expel the rheum of anger, “I’ll bear in mind your suggestion.”

The editor turned his back upon his prince of servants, as routine men frequently dare to do. A butler stood by Routledge with the great frieze coat. The air became electric with whisperings. The whole company was intent upon a matter, the nature of which only a handful knew. But the others discussed it in awed, hungry eagerness—in that deplorable, hungerish way of lesser folk who are enabled to forget their own limitations by the spectacle of one of the mighty fallen. Routledge swung into his outer garment, smiling strangely....

Then the ladies of the kingdom gasped and the valiants stared. A lady broke in through the narrowing circle and ran to the outcast—a wondrous Irish lady of red-gold hair and pale gold silk. Her hand fell upon the sleeve of his great-coat, and her face, the masterpiece from the famous gallery of Erin, was upturned proudly but pitifully to his.

“They won’t tell me—they speak of treachery, but no one dares to tell me—what is this horrid mistake?” she demanded.

The sudden look of tenderness in Routledge’s eyes gave way to fear and pain. The others had stepped back.

“Run away, you blessed girl,” he whispered. “Something big is wrong. I seem to understand it least of all—but its plain I’m bad medicine here now. It will all come out. Meanwhile, don’t be seen with me, Noreen!” He added in the shadow of a whisper, “Your father——”

“Father will be here to-night. He brought me to the door, promising to be back within an hour. I think he went to find you. Oh, he’s changed—more than I feared! But you, Routledge-san——”

“Please leave me. You are assailing your position by talking with me. That hurts worse than anything these people might say. I shall go out and think it over.... Good-night, Noreen, my dear friend.”

But she clung to his arm. “What do I care what they think of me? I want you to know—you must know when you are alone—that there is one woman who will stand by you, through all things!”

Her words were not lost to the periphery of the crowd. He drew back stoutly, but his heart sank when she added even more loudly: “Remember, you have one friend—even though all your brave companions fail!”

His lips moved with the words: “Dear Noreen—say no more.”

“Remember me!” came back to him.

For an instant she watched as he turned to the door—lineage to Plantagenet and stuff of angels warm in her heart. The other women fathomed his attempt to shield her from them and from her own impulsiveness. What they thought of his gallantry they did not tell; but what they thought of Noreen Cardinegh was revealed in jewelled combs and in the elaborate artistry of back-hair which met her eyes when she turned once more to the hall.

“Mighty brave of you, I’m sure, Miss Cardinegh,” said Bingley, stepping to her side. “I should like to have a friend so loyal. But you’re wrong this time, really——”

“Even so, Mr. Bingley, I shall trust to my own judgment,” she answered, moving swiftly into the throng, where he did not essay to follow.

Routledge had not missed the attitude of the Hall toward her. The tempest of abhorrence, though a new and very wonderful brand of battle, did not shatter his philosophy, but the slight which his champion was enduring for his sake—this was grim hell in his heart.

Outside he fought it, the roar of dripping London in his ears. A cab drove up to the reception-canopy, and her father, Jerry Cardinegh, stepped out—incredibly shrunken, altered, and uncertain of step. Far different had he left London for India less than a year before, a hard, weathered, full-blooded man. Routledge hungered now for his friend of friends, but he did not call.

In the Rubicon Buffet, across the Square, the Review’s cheque was handed him presently by a messenger. The outcast signed the receipt, and sat down dazedly, forgetting to drink. An hour later, Burling-Forster entered the buffet with some friends from the Armory. The artilleryman saw Routledge at a far table and backed out.

“We will go on,” said he. “I perceive that this is no place for us.”

The manager’s quick eye had seen Burling-Forster’s glance rest upon the solitary figure at the distant table, and he stared doubtfully now at Routledge. The latter rose and approached him. “Forgive me,” he said, quitting the place. “Not for fortunes would I impair the popularity of your excellent buffet.”

London had changed in an hour; it was pitiless, alien. Yet he could laugh at London. The thought that made him writhe had to do with the gorgeous woman who had cast herself into the débris of his fortunes—the woman who had meant so much to him in the silences of service.... He moved about in the fog; passed the Review office, glanced up at the fourth floor, the blazing lights just a pale glimmer now. Friends were there, putting their best of brain and hand into the maw of the morning paper. The cutting sentences of Dartmore returned, and he did not go upstairs. In the little press-club around the corner, the day men were in festival. Routledge winced—and passed by. There was time still to catch a night-train for Paris, but he couldn’t let the mystery beat him, not even for the glisten of Paris—not for New Jerusalem! He would wait and ask no questions. A broad, low building very lavish with its music, lights, and laughter appeared at length upon the right of way. Routledge inquired of a policeman what was going on within.

“It’s the cab-drivers’ annual ’op, sir,” the officer said.

“May one enter who is not a cab-driver at present?” Routledge asked.

“’Avin’ the price, sir.”

All things to all men, Routledge fell gladly into the gathering, buying seas of beer and continents of cake. Within a half-hour he had telephoned to Rupley’s for a ten-story confection, and presently many couples, shining-faced, were preening and pirouetting for the possession of it. Had he been the King’s groom, he could not have mounted higher in the estimate of the guests. His heart grew warm with the fun. It was after midnight when the new social stratum tumbled about his ears. The hard-headed little master of ceremonies approached, very white and sorrowful:

“I regrets hexceedingly to say, sir, that one as ’as been dismissed from the Harmy’s and the Noivy’s ’op, sir, cawn’t rightly be expected to find a boith ’ere.”

Routledge had a large view of the world, and a compressed notion of the personal equation, but his humor did not save him now from being stung hard and deep.

“You are quite right, of course,” he said. “I’m very sorry to have intruded, and very thankful for the good time up to now. Good-night.”

There was a murmur of sorrow from many feminine quarters when the great frieze coat was brought, but it was quickly silenced by the undertone of intelligence which spread like poison through the hall. The butler at the Army and Navy reception had told one of the drivers, who, turning up later at the celebration of his own guild, found the outcast there. Thus have empires fallen.

Routledge walked the full distance to his lodgings. Sometimes he smiled; sometimes he found himself striding forward with mad swiftness; then he would smile again, and pull up to the pace of a leisurely gentleman enjoying the night air. Entering his stairway in Bookstalls, he just avoided stumbling over a little figure curled up asleep. His heart went out to the street-waif. Here was one, at least, in London who had no hate nor insult for him. The impulse came to carry the little one up into the warmth. Without waking, the child was placed in a big chair before the grate-fire in the lodgings upstairs. Then Routledge sat down to meditate.

“This is a merry old trail—God knows I love it!” he muttered. “I have had what the good gray poet would call a night of ‘richness and variety.’... Perhaps I would be less happy did I know the breed of incubus which has fallen upon me.... I shall probably be turned out of here in the morning—perhaps be cast into stone and steel. It is strange, strange, that I, Routledge, whose business it is to tell the world the gossip of inner courts and the issue of open fields—that the point of my own fate should be buried in me before I get a look at it!... And that wondrous girl! Why did I not know her when the dust of the world had not fallen upon me; when I had not looked upon the world’s red wines—because they were red!... Routledge, old wanderer, how often has some woman arisen to save you from death—and now a woman arises to save you from your friends!”

A watcher would have thought, for a long time afterward, that Routledge dozed, with the stem of a nargileh between his teeth, except for the soft bubbling in the bottle and the tiny puffs of smoke at long intervals. The dawn came in, graduated from gloomy gray to the dead-white of a sunless morning.... The bell aroused him. He arose and opened the door. Jerry Cardinegh was on the stairs.