For **** was reserved more searching torment. He could not realise at first that Maisie, whom he had ordered to go had left him without a word of farewell. He was savagely angry against Torpenhow, who had brought upon him this humiliation and troubled his miserable peace. Then his dark hour came and he was alone with himself and his desires to get what help he could from the darkness. The queen could do no wrong, but in following the right, so far as it served her work, she had wounded her one subject more than his own brain would let him know.
'It's all I had and I've lost it,' he said, as soon as the misery permitted clear thinking. 'And Torp will think that he has been so infernally clever that I shan't have the heart to tell him. I must think this out quietly.'
'Hullo!' said Torpenhow, entering the studio after **** had enjoyed two hours of thought. 'I'm back. Are you feeling any better?'
'Torp, I don't know what to say. Come here.' **** coughed huskily, wondering, indeed, what he should say, and how to say it temperately.
'What's the need for saying anything? Get up and tramp.' Torpenhow was perfectly satisfied.
They walked up and down as of custom, Torpenhow's hand on ****'s shoulder, and **** buried in his own thoughts.
'How in the world did you find it all out?' said ****, at last.
'You shouldn't go off your head if you want to keep secrets, ****ie. It was absolutely impertinent on my part; but if you'd seen me rocketing about on a half-trained French troop-horse under a blazing sun you'd have laughed. There will be a charivari in my rooms to-night. Seven other devils----'
'I know--the row in the Southern Soudan. I surprised their councils the other day, and it made me unhappy. Have you fixed your flint to go?
Who d'you work for?'
'Haven't signed any contracts yet. I wanted to see how your business would turn out.'
'Would you have stayed with me, then, if--things had gone wrong?' He put his question cautiously.
'Don't ask me too much. I'm only a man.'
'You've tried to be an angel very successfully.'
'Oh ye--es! . . . Well, do you attend the function to-night? We shall be half screwed before the morning. All the men believe the war's a certainty.'
'I don't think I will, old man, if it's all the same to you. I'll stay quiet here.'
'And meditate? I don't blame you. You observe a good time if ever a man did.'
That night there was a tumult on the stairs. The correspondents poured in from theatre, dinner, and music-hall to Torpenhow's room that they might discuss their plan of campaign in the event of military operations becoming a certainty. Torpenhow, the Keneu,, and the Nilghai had bidden all the men they had worked with to the orgy; and Mr. Beeton, the housekeeper, declared that never before in his checkered experience had he seen quite such a fancy lot of gentlemen. They waked the chambers with shoutings and song; and the elder men were quite as bad as the younger. For the chances of war were in front of them, and all knew what those meant.
Sitting in his own room a little perplexed by the noise across the landing, **** suddenly began to laugh to himself.
