WITHIN the space of the eight weeks granted by the Society of the Friends of Peace for Saul Hartz’s decision, much was to happen to John Endor and to the inner world of politics in which he moved. Endor’s own life was linked so closely with the energies of the time that the recoil of events affected it deeply. Many strange, many pregnant, things were about to happen.
John’s first act on his return on the Monday to London from his rather nightmarish visit to Doe Hill was to communicate at once with Helen Sholto. He arranged that they should lunch together at a quiet restaurant in Soho.
Here, in privacy, with none to overhear and none to oversee, he unburdened his heart. He did not think well to let Helen know of the Society, much less of his own transactions with it: how in spite of some deep protesting instinct, he had been induced to take the oath of allegiance; how in the main he had yielded to the powerful arguments of their friend in common, George Hierons; and how, having taken the plunge with a full perception of all that it involved, he was ready to defend his action. For he now saw with a clearness greater than ever before, that the malign growth which was so rapidly eating its way to the core of the state must, no matter what the cost to the body politic, be at once cut out.
One thing, however, Endor decided to do. That was to tell Helen of the charge this man, Saul Hartz, had laid upon her good name. Such, indeed, was his real purpose in going to her at once. The impulse of his nature would not allow him a moment’s rest until the woman he loved was rescued from the clutches of the monster of infamy whom she was loyally serving.
Without preface Endor told her what Saul Hartz had said.
“He says you are his mistress.” As word by word her ear felt their whispered fall, the surge of emotion in his voice filled her with pain. Before the blow itself, however, not a nerve quivered. But her heart turned to ice.
“I felt like killing him. But these are not heroic days. Besides, such canaille are not worth it—if one has a work to do.”
“Not worth it—no,” she said at last, gently, and then, a woman: “Tell me, what led him, do you suppose, to say that?”
“Pure devilment. He knows you’re leaving him, he understands your value, and to give you up to me, of all people, is for one of his nature a bath of vitriol.”
“But it isn’t like him,” said Helen, “to indulge a mere spite. He is too big a man. There must have been a deeper, a subtler motive.”
“What do you think it can be?”
“He must have reckoned on an outside chance of your believing what he said.”
John’s look of sheer incredulity gave her a sudden insight into those hidden depths of character she had yet to penetrate. This new knowledge brought a glow of light to her eyes.
“I think,” he said, “as soon as you have lunched, you had better go to the telephone and tell them you are not returning to the Office. Here and now you must close this man down. You can never go back to Universe Building.”
She did not answer at once. Seconds only were recorded by heart and brain, but when she spoke a weight of years had been added to her voice. “I think you are right,” she said.
He could guess the wrench to such a practical mind as hers to part with her career, to give up with almost quixotic decision the greatest prize in her profession. But faced now with the necessity she did not hesitate. “I have saved very little,” she said quite simply. “And I don’t quite see how I am going to get work—certainly not immediately, if at all. The U. P. may be able to close every door. He says they can. However ... no matter ... there it is. I’ll go and telephone to them now.”
His own will had steeled hers for the task. So be it! Let the die be cast! But as he sat at the restaurant table, looking all the facts in the face, the oppression upon his heart was almost more than he could bear.
Storm clouds lowered on every hand, heavy with menace. The future was dark to the verge of the terrible.
As Helen returned, that virile figure, so strong, so sane, so alive with courage and capacity braced him for his own great throw.
“You’ve cut the painter?”
“Yes,” she said in a low voice.
“Well now, my darling,” he said with the odd tenderness which always made him so hard to resist, “we stand together or we fall. Let us get married at once with the least possible fuss.”
She did not yield at once. Elementally she was very feminine. Besides, there were strong arguments to bring against unseemly haste. It would be a bitter blow to John’s mother who had quite other views for her ewe lamb. And what, pray, had they to set up housekeeping upon, now that Helen had just cast away her princely thousand dollars a month?
John, however, had given thought to all that. The old lady, with Helen’s consent, should stay on at Wyndham where things might remain exactly as they were for the rest of her days; and Helen and he could take a small house in London. At the start, it was true, the house in London would have to be a very modest affair. He had a few hundred a year of his own, plus a few hundred more as a member of parliament; but now that the U. P. had raised the fiery cross, that source of revenue would probably disappear at the next general election, which by all the portents could not be long delayed. When his mother died he would have Wyndham and her entire income, which, however, at the present time was barely sufficient to keep up an old and much depreciated property.
It would be foolish to shirk the fact that for the time being they would have to pare cheese. They would find themselves with their backs to the wall, with calumny and misrepresentation on every hand; but let them stand shoulder to shoulder, their colors nailed to the mast. No matter what happened they would go down fighting.
The light in his eyes decided Helen. She, too, belonged to a free people.
“Yes,” she said, “we’ll stand or fall together.”
He grasped, in his boy’s way, the hand of a good comrade. “We’ll break the International Newspaper Ring, or it shall break us.”
She was quite ready to buckle on his armor. “Government by newspaper must end—if civilization is to go on. One has always smiled at the notion that Saul Hartz can put in any government he chooses and turn it out if it doesn’t please him, but in the last three weeks one’s eyes have been opened to many things. And if the Breit Combine joins with the U. P. as you declare it will, my own country will be in the same plight.”
“Yes,” said John Endor, “now you really see the malignant growth that lies at the very root of the Anglo-Saxon world. There can be no hope of a stable peace while this king of all grafters is free to go on. Well, thank God, the eyes of some of us are open at last. I’ll go down to the House this afternoon and air my voice if I get a chance.”
“Do,” she said. “All power to it. Meanwhile, I’ll go and look for a little house. There are five hundred pounds in my stocking—did I tell you?—his money, alas!—but I hope honestly earned.”
John took from his pocket a sheaf of notes written in pencil. Much new material had come to him in the course of the week-end at Doe Hill for the speech he was meditating in the House of Commons. “But don’t let us deceive ourselves,” he said. “They are not in the least likely to listen to a private member. Strong as this indictment is it will impress neither the Cabinet nor the rank and file. They are men of straw. The U. P. put them where they are and it can remove them to-morrow. At least, they believe it can. Shade of Gladstone and Bright! Shade of Burke and Pitt! that a newspaper trust should have them all in its pocket.”
As he got up from the table, his face, which still bore the marks of recent ill-usage, looked strained and curiously old. But any hint of weakness was effaced by the eyes which burnt with lustre and intensity.