HELEN and the American had a sudden craving for fresh air. For both the restriction of four walls had grown intolerable. Endor’s wife begged her friend as he was leaving the house to let her walk with him some of the way towards his hotel.
Hierons readily assented.
Devoured by pity for a brave woman, he was also devoured by pity for a brave man. Loyal as he was to the Society which he had sincerely believed to be necessary to the world’s governance and which he had done as much as any man to call into being, he saw now that its methods had been pushed too far. But with bitterness of soul he realized that he could do nothing. Like Endor himself he was caught in a tragic coil of Fate’s weaving.
The morning was fine, the pavements were dry, and the sky was reasonably clear for December in London. For some time they walked in silence. They had become great friends, these two. There was more between them than the tie of nationality. On vital issues their minds marched together. Their outlook on life was the same.
“This horrible coil,” said George Hierons at last, “began first to be woven when America declined to enter the League of Nations. Her arguments, at the time, were no doubt strong, but she was not able to see far enough.”
Helen sighed. “To me,” she said, “the inability to see far enough begins to seem the universal tragedy, common to each individual life and to the life of every nation.”
Hierons agreed. And he added with an air whimsically prophetic: “Man being as he is in the world that we know, it is a tragedy for which there can be no remedy. Even the wisest people have to improvise their actions from day to day, without knowing or being able to guess what their re-percussion will be.”
Slowly they walked along Knightsbridge, past Hyde Park Corner into Piccadilly. As they approached the Ritz, which was on the other side of the road, the eyes of both were most oddly caught by a sight that held them fascinated.
They had grown alive to the fact that Saul Hartz was stepping off the pavement immediately in front of them. In spite, almost in defiance, of a flux of traffic, the Colossus made a bee line for the opposite side of the street. With a glossy silk hat tilted at a rather rakish angle, the fur coat of the plutocrat and an umbrella with an ivory crook depending from his right arm, his progress almost into the very jaws of the swift-moving buses and motors was so arrogant, so inhumanly cool, as to be sublime.
Oddly enough the thing which really fixed the eyes of the two spectators was the umbrella with the ivory crook. It hung so negligently from the arm of the great man that just as he was about to put off to the farther shore it threatened to drop from its perch. With a quick motion Saul Hartz re-grappled it to his arm.
Helen and George Hierons, their eyes and thoughts in the spell of a single image, halted for nearly a minute, yet without speaking a word, to watch the Colossus cross the wide road and enter the hotel. Still without speaking, but with an unforgettable picture in their minds, they resumed their walk as far as the corner of Dover Street.
“Thank you for bearing with me so far,” said Helen offering her hand.
“Won’t you come and have lunch somewhere?” said Hierons.
Helen declined the invitation. She frankly owned that food was very far from her thoughts just now.
Both were suffering. The American kept Helen’s hand a moment in his own. “I shall be at my hotel,” he said, “for at least another week. You have only to communicate with me at any time and I will come to you at once—if there is any chance of my being of the slightest use.”
“In the meantime,”—his quiet voice deepened to intensity—“we who share great and unhappy secrets must keep close together in the thoughts of one another. We can but watch out in the hope that somehow—somewhen—a sign may be given.”
Helen was not able to speak. A single tear forced its way slowly along an eyelid and down a thin cheek.
Just as she was about to turn away in the direction of her club, an afterthought, swift and half-formed, caused Hierons still to detain her.
“There’s just one thing,” he said, “that—that occurs to me.” In odd contrast to his habitual air of decision his voice was halting, his words fragmentary. “There may ... may be a possibility ... and yet no ... after all ... it hardly bears thinking about.” In a fashion abrupt and strange he checked his words. “It wouldn’t be wise to....”
Helen looked at him disconcertedly. The man who was speaking was not the George Hierons she knew.
“No, we won’t clutch at straws,” he said enigmatically. “Let us continue to meet the facts of the case. But whenever you want me, ring up my hotel and I will come to you at once.”
She thanked him again. Then she turned and walked slowly down the street.
For a minute or more he stood to watch that tragic figure pass from view. An unspeakable oppression weighed heavily upon him. And then in the midst of it, with a feeling that was half nausea, half elation, a quick thought recalled to his mind that Lien Weng was in London. He remembered, moreover, that the President of the Council was staying at the Ritz.
As if drawn by a new chain of ideas Hierons turned suddenly and crossed the road. One more brief moment of reflection followed. Then slowly and sombrely he made his way to the doors of the hotel.