HELEN, meanwhile, was spending the week-end at Cloudesley. And here, too, in the famous Midland home of a great political magnate, certain strange things happened.
To begin with, Mrs. John Endor had to make the best excuses she could for the non-arrival of her distinguished husband. He had “chucked” at the last moment, and it was not easy to forget that fact. The party was large and made up of heterogeneous elements. But more than one of its members had looked forward to spending a certain amount of time in the interesting company of the new Home Secretary. Keen disappointment was expressed by host, hostess and guests alike. Helen’s excuses for the absentee sounded in her own ears rather hollow, but she had tact enough to make them sound convincing in the ear of others.
All the same, her brief Saturday afternoon to Monday morning sojourn in a huge barracks of a house was to prove a particularly trying ordeal. Not that there was any lack of creature comforts. But the ordeal might be said to begin shortly after seven o’clock, just as she was about to ascend the famous white marble staircase to dress for the evening meal. For it came to Helen like a veritable blow to behold Saul Hartz, newly arrived, stride with an air of calm proprietorship into the entrance hall.
At the sight of him, her heart gave a leap. This indeed, was a bird of ill omen. She had not in the least expected him to be there. Not that there was any reason why he shouldn’t be. He had the entrée to nearly every house in England; and in most the art of the charmeur, great when he chose to use it, and his range of information made him a more than welcome guest. To Helen, however, it simply had not occurred that she was likely to meet him. As disconsolately she made a slow ascent of those imposing stairs, she could have wished that the new Home Secretary had followed the practice of Royalty by demanding a list of the people who had been invited to meet him!
To add to Helen’s embarrassment, it fell out that the Colossus took her in to dinner. She would have given much merely to avoid talk with him or even the lightest contact with his arm. Yet surely this was Fate. And from Fate there can be no appeal. At the moment he crossed the room to claim her with a bow and a smile, she felt in her bones that this meeting had to be.
Since John had told her of the diabolical aspersions this man had cast upon her good name, they had not met. In spite of all that she owed Saul Hartz, and she still felt it was much, her resentment was deep, just, implacable. Pride forbade the showing that her wound was still raw, but she could not help letting him see, even had she had the wish to prevent it, that she was now in the thrall of an icy antagonism. And yet with what mastery, what subtle art was this man able to toy with her fine feelings!
At the dinner table he was irresistible. She sought escape at first by turning quickly to a pompous and monosyllabic politician seated at the other side of her. But that didn’t answer. Even more than usual Saul Hartz was dominant. When he liked to exert his great powers, he was the most compelling man she had ever known. The fact that he saw beyond his kind gave barbs to his wit, a depth to his insight, spice to his knowledge, a form to his philosophy.
When this man unbent, there was none like him. Helen once again had to render him that justice. With that strange, remote whisper he could dominate half the large room if he chose; or if, as he now preferred, he chose to confine himself to the young and singularly attractive woman at his side, she, too, must yield to its mystic spells.
The Colossus was never more the Colossus than this evening. All about him were mainly strangers—he was a man of many acquaintances and no friends—and no doubt there were secret enemies in their midst, but he paid them scant regard. He was willing, more than willing, that “his dear Helen” should claim it all.
She fought against him, but it was no use. He spread before her the jewels of his mind and her soul was dazzled. Ever and again, the thought recurred to her that there was none like him. None could there ever be. If demigods there were, to-night Saul Hartz was of their kin.
From the very hour of their first meeting some two years ago at his office in New York she had felt the sense of his power. And now hating him implacably as she did and as she must, he seemed to be raised to a power yet higher. His will, his courage, his imagination made her think of him now as a latter-day Haroun-al-Raschid. But he was something more. He saw beyond the Beyond. To Helen, as he revealed himself in the course of this unforgettable evening, he was like one who had rifled a sealed envelope and read its forbidden contents.
His talk in its abandon was that of one who cares for none of the world’s standards. It was the talk of one who defied God and man; of one who looks beyond experience; of one who saw so much that he accepted nothing. Deep in the heart of Helen was a desire to pity him. He was indeed a figure for pity. A noble mind was straining its moorings. Chartless, rudderless it might soon be out in an open sea.
In the two months that had passed since she had last talked with Saul Hartz, a subtle change had taken place in him. Something had happened to the man himself. Those hooded eyes still veiled their fires, but in the face to which they lent a luster and a value was the look of death. With a flash of vision it came upon Helen that the Colossus was now living in its shadow.
That fact, if fact it was, explained the man to-night. He seemed to know that the end was near. And it was as if he was trying not to care. After all he had had a pretty good inning. He was only fifty-four, still in the prime of his years as other men reckoned them, but a single year as the Colossus lived it was more than a lustrum for those of normal chemistry. Measured in terms of achievement, brain tissue, dynamic power, the fifty-four years of Saul Hartz could be multiplied by ten.
Slowly, with a stealth that at first she did not perceive, the spell of an old fascination came again upon Helen. She did not forget his depth of wickedness. With a shudder that had a tinge of joy she recognized that the mind and will so delicately enfolding hers did evil for the love of evil; but yet she felt, too, as she had always done, that there was nothing ignoble in his choice of the baser part. At the worst, it belonged to a false philosophy of life. It was part of his giantism, his lust of power for power’s sake.
“All the silly gnats”—a big wine was in his glass—“all the silly gnats who swarm in bus and tube, who line up in queues for theaters and movies, who devour bookstalls and live on our headlines, well, well! One-hell-of-a-muss, isn’t it, my dear? No place for people as sane as you and me.”
She was left a little stunned by the logical ferocity of a mind so modern, and yet so subversive of all things that seemed to make life livable.