CHAPTER II
THE HISTORY OF A COMPACT
THREE years earlier there had been an appalling railway accident between Cordova and Seville. Two tightly packed trains had come into collision, with results that had prevented even the Spanish officials from hushing up the contretemps, and had sent an electric wave of shudders over the whole news-reading world. Among the second division of its victims, the dangerously, even mortally, wounded, there appeared one name at least which added, in England, at any rate, to the sensational interest which for nearly a week the affair induced. It was that of the most prominent coming man of the day, Paul Gastineau, K.C., M.P., a man who had indeed arrived and who was bound, in French phrase, to go far. Lay politicians were fond of quoting one another that a man of such marvellous brain-power and capability for hard work had the easy and certain reversion to the Woolsack: members of his own branch of the profession, if they did not agree with the forecast, let it pass unchallenged; while there were many grains of intentional truth in the chaff indulged in by the other branch when they would declare that the solicitor, who, having a fighting case on hand, failed to retain Paul Gastineau, laid himself open to an action for negligence.
For Gastineau was above all things a fighter, and one who fought with his brains as well as with his tongue; a distinction which they who know courts of law will readily appreciate. An awkward adversary, ever in deadly earnest, who always fenced with the button off; his enemies and defeated opponents, and they were many, said not too scrupulously; but he fought to win, and usually did win, leaving mere niceties and quibbles to the schoolmen; and to have the knack of winning means much, if not everything. It meant much for Paul Gastineau. He became the most talked about man at the Bar, and his enemies being too human to let his praises pass in silence, simply added their voices to the babble that made him known. Our forefathers were stupid enough to regard the envy, hatred and malice that attend on success as something of a drawback; a toll, they called it, paid for being eminent: we know better, and nowadays the wisely successful man regards his detractors as a valuable asset in the working capital on which he pursues the business of eminence.
Parties in the political world do not look far or seek beneath the surface for their allies. Perhaps they are too busy, or too lazy; not to suggest that they are too stupid. Anyhow they have a well-defined leaning towards ready-made reputations: the practice may be expensive and exacting, but it saves trouble. Once Gastineau had become an established success his Party found that they could not do without him, and to that success and to that discovery did a very worthy and somnolent brewer, whose legislative faculties appeared to be somewhat clouded by the fumes of his own ale, owe his more comfortable place of repose in that honourable, if shunted, wagon-lit called the House of Lords. Eminent forensic lawyers are often failures in Parliament, and Gastineau was clever enough at the Bar to make wiseacres pretty sure of his falling short in the House. But the short-sighted soothsayers who judge the individual from the aggregate had made no allowance for a certain quality which, beyond his grit, his talent, and his power of concentration, was to be an important factor in the success which he forthwith became. They forgot that he was not altogether an Englishman: there was Southern blood in his veins, a warmer tinge to his mind; he had the vivacity and intellectual chic of the Italian added to the determination of an Englishman. So he rose almost at a bound to a high position among the legal members of the House, and with that his position seemed assured.
Naturally when it was seen that this distinguished man was among the victims of the Spanish railway smash, something like a thrill ran through the country which was the stage of his career. Society speculated as to the extent of his injuries and his chance of recovery; his own profession believed, many of them hoped, that, even if he did recover, his flight would thenceforward be a drooping one, while our old friend, the man in the street, always ready with an obvious moral platitude, made much of the impending sword which Fate hangs over the heads of even the most brilliantly successful of poor humanity.
Meanwhile in a poor monastery near an obscure Spanish town Gastineau lay battling with characteristic determination to keep at bay Death who stood over him. When he had been extricated from the wreckage of the train he was placed aside on the ground to await means of removal to the improvised hospital; and he had lain there in what, to a man of his character and ambition, far exceeded the bitterness of death. His spine was injured, he felt no pain, was, indeed, scarcely conscious of the strange numbness and deprivation of all muscular power. But, after the first stunning shock, his mind had become, even for him, abnormally clear and alert, the change from lethargic dizziness had come like the clearing off of vapours from the sun. “Thank Heaven,” he muttered to himself, “this is the end, the lightning before death; if only it will come quickly, for all is over with me.”
So in a state of savage, resentful impatience he lay there, looking up at the stars, all unconcerned in their cold glitter, types of the all-enduring, which mocked that poor transient clay which had aspired to be a planet in a system so mundane as to admit of railway accidents; and as he looked with despairing eyes he cursed them as the unjust rulers of his fate. Then, for his mind was in too great a state of exaltation to dwell long on any one thought, before him rose and passed as in an extraordinarily vivid panorama the salient incidents of his career, to be succeeded by the principal stages he had been wont justifiably to picture in his future. Never to be. The past was all he could claim now; the present was mere impotence, and the future had vanished at the touch of a sleepy signalman’s hand on the wrong lever. He ground his teeth as he thought of it; he had a good deal of cynical philosophy in him, but it failed here, the stake had been too great, the certainty of winning too absolute for him to regard this startling reverse with equanimity. Then he came to review his triumphs, his mistakes, his sins: the last had been mostly pleasant, none the less so, perhaps, that his ambition had required their concealment; he felt he would rather have lived for sin, flagrant, even, and open, than died like this. If he had known how near the end was he would not have been so careful; the world’s opinion, bah! What was it worth now? Something came to his mind that since the jar of the accident he had strangely forgotten; something that had sent him there, sent him, as it turned out, to his death. Was there justice in that? Curiously his legally trained mind began to busy itself in weighing the equity of the penalty. It was at least strangely swift, fitting and thorough, but was it just? Summum jus, summa injuria. He smiled resentfully at the aptness of the adage, then became conscious that some one was speaking to him, was sympathetically asking as to his hurt. A young man knelt by his side and, with a cushion, tried to make his position more comfortable, talking cheerily to him the while. He was one of the uninjured passengers doing his best for his less fortunate fellow travellers. For the moment Gastineau hated his succourer in a wave of malicious envy; why had not this nobody, this worthy, common-place young Englishman, dull, probably, and mentally circumscribed, with the hallmark of Eton plainly showing, why had not this man been shattered, and he, the brilliant worker, with a name and a place in the world, have gone scatheless? So bitter was the selfish thought that for a while he could hardly bring himself to acknowledge the young stranger’s kindness; all he wanted was to be let alone, to die quickly. But the other was not to be easily rebuffed; perhaps he made allowance for a sufferer’s state of mind and temper; anyhow he soon won, by tactful assiduity, the wounded man’s gratitude, to such a degree, indeed, that when they came to bear Gastineau to the monastery he begged the young fellow not to leave him. There self came in again, since other sufferers might need the young Samaritan’s care; but the case seemed desperate, and he could not bear to refuse a manifestly dying man’s request.
In such manner began the friendship between Paul Gastineau and Geoffrey Herriard.
Now, within the next few days, chance, that had brought Gastineau to this pass, continued a sequel which had a singular and important bearing upon the future of the two men it had thrown together. Gastineau, having been carried to the monastery and tended by the monks, ever ready for such an office of mercy, lay for days in a semi-comatose condition on the borderland between life and death. He was but one of some dozen victims under the care of these good brothers who, simple and practically dead to the world beyond their narrow sphere, took little heed of their patients’ identities; they were to them simply suffering men whose pain called forth their loving service. Presently, to their joy and Herriard’s satisfaction, Gastineau, who had seemed doomed, began to mend. He regained in a surprising degree his mental faculties; the doctor shook his head at any idea of complete recovery; he could never walk again, but, with care till the crisis was well past, he would live. It was wonderful, wonderful, he declared; not one man in a thousand would have survived such an injury, but the vitality of the Señor Inglese was the most marvellous he had ever known; it was a revelation; and, after all, though most of us die when we need not, there are some subjects whom it is absurdly difficult to kill. But then look at him. Did one ever see such unmistakable power in any one as this dark, resolute Englishman manifested? Were all mankind built of that steel-like fibre physicians would be few. But to give him the best chance it would be well to remove him to the air of the mountains, and the sooner it was done the better.
Accordingly, early one morning, the patient, accompanied by Herriard, was driven off on a journey of some half-dozen leagues to the restorative atmosphere the doctor had suggested.
Now it happened that, an hour after their departure, death, as though determined not to be twice baulked, struck his dart at one of the patients who remained at the monastery, an Englishman also, a stockbroker of travelling proclivities whose proposed itinerary had scarcely included the River Styx. During the morning the reporter of the local paper, who had, from the columns of a Madrid “contemporary,” discovered that an Englishman of note was among the wounded (a fact which he had totally failed to get wind of at first hand), bustled up to the monastery with an eye to “copy” and the unusual importance of a series of press telegrams to the capitals of Europe. Only to be told that the Englishman had died that morning. Too disgusted at a lost opportunity to enquire more closely as to the identity of the deceased, he jumped to the conclusion that it was of course the eminent advocate and distinguished member of the British Parliament who was dead, and hurried off in sorrow to his office, formulating his dispatch by the way. So it came to be flashed abroad that Paul Gastineau had, as expected, succumbed to his injuries.
Herriard reading the news some days after was hot on contradicting it, and greatly surprised when Gastineau forbade him to do so.
“Let it be,” he commanded. “It is scarcely a mistake. I am dead. Yes; considering what my life has been, as really dead as many a man who is in his grave. Let it be so, Herriard; give me your word that you will not set the mistake right. I will tell you why presently.”
He was so evidently in earnest, that Herriard could not refuse to pass his word, unaccountable as the request seemed. Yet, perhaps, to him who, being a humble member of the same profession, knew well his companion’s position and character therein, it was just conceivable that this brilliant and ambitious man could not bear to swallow fate’s nauseous dose in public. If we have to make a wry face we need not stand in the market-place to do it.
So it came to pass that the report of Gastineau’s death was never contradicted; he was supposed to have been buried in an obscure Spanish grave; obituary notices appeared in the papers, and the very fact that these were allowed to pass unchallenged practically confirmed their truth. This business of a supposititious death would, however, have been difficult to carry out successfully had it not been helped by the circumstance that Gastineau stood, so far as family ties were concerned, almost alone in the world. There was no near relative to go out to Spain and make enquiries, even as a pious duty. Such distant cousins as he had were poor, for he had raised himself; he had never encouraged any advances they had attempted, and they accepted the news of his death with little more interest than the rest of the world. So when presently it appeared that he had left to his friend Geoffrey Herriard a life interest in his property the relations had scarcely an excuse for a grievance.
But when once the deception had been decided on, the busy, acute brain, as keen as ever, set to work strenuously to perfect all the details of the business. And something more. The hidden light was to burn as brightly as ever behind its screen of lies; the dead hand was to strike as viciously as of old, the stilled voice to sting through other lips. Gastineau studied Herriard and came to the conclusion that he was fitted for the purpose he had in mind. He could have done with a little less honesty, but the scheme in its very character contained an element which would neutralize that. Paul Gastineau was not going to play the dead man in aught save in name. He was still a power. The sword with which he had fought and gained so many encounters had snapped in his hand, but he would do some savage execution yet with the jagged dagger it had become. He was not going to lie still and impotently watch the unchecked triumphs of the rivals and enemies he hated and despised. The sole sharer of his secret was clever, ambitious, sick of waiting for his chance, and, by Heaven, he should have it.
Accordingly he one day considerably startled Herriard by proposing to him a scheme, extraordinary enough, yet of obvious feasibility. It was simply this: That they should return to London secretly, and that he, Gastineau, out of gratitude for the services rendered him, should repay service for service by putting the whole of his great talents at his young friend’s disposal to the furtherance of his career. Herriard, in a word, was to be the mouthpiece of the stricken man’s brain. Gastineau should be the dramatist and stage-manager, Herriard the actor, the manifest form of the invisible spirit.
“I will make you, Geoffrey,” he protested, warming to kindle the necessary enthusiasm in his intended pupil. “Your fortune at the Bar, that will be child’s play; I will guarantee for you, if I live, something higher, a prize more glorious than mere money. Don’t think of that; leave money-grubbing to tradesmen; more than enough for everything a man can want will come of course, for you cannot march successfully through our profession without the accompaniment of the golden cymbals! But if I take you in hand as I propose, there is no saying where you will stop. Because I am at the end of my tether, which has pulled me up with an ugly jerk, because I can do no more for myself, is no reason why, so long as my brains are left me, I should not do something for another man. No, don’t begin to thank me; I am not even pretending that there is any virtue in my offer. If,” he laughed, “I had still the use of my legs I wouldn’t do it, that’s obvious. I should be too keen on my own career to trouble much about helping another man on. I should, if I had completely recovered, have probably given you a piece of jewellery in acknowledgment of your kindness, and always been your friend and glad to see you. I am selfish; all successful men are, although some contrive to disguise it from a stupid public by advertising the contrary; it has made me; I don’t say I could not have got on without practising selfishness, but it would have taken me much longer, and time, you know, is of the essence of our contract with Fate in these days of hustle, rush and scramble. And it is just that very instinct of self that now draws me to you; for selfishness by no means implies ingratitude. Within limits, they who make self their god are keenly grateful to those who serve in his temple. It is just as well to be honest in a matter of this kind, and for neither of us to enter upon a contract such as I am proposing with false impressions. For it must be a contract, my dear Geoffrey; binding by the very seal of our individual interests, and to be honourably kept in its spirit as well as on its material side. It will be necessary for us to believe in one another, to trust one another. Those are general stipulations: the only specific conditions I shall make are, absolute, inviolable secrecy, which you would hardly break, and, what you may find less easy to comply with, implicit obedience to my instructions. I am not surprised to see you look serious at that, but don’t misunderstand me. I am not going to put a knife in your hand and send you forth to murder one of my pet aversions. I have no intention of asking you to do anything, to use any weapon which an ordinary man of the world need in honour, our code of to-day, shrink from. But if I want a man hit hard you must hit him hard; you will be my soldier, and when I send you out to fight I don’t expect you to patch up a truce and arbitrate. I have always been a fighting man, and as my representative, my proxy, you would have to carry my banner, which bears the motto, ‘No compromise.’ The rewards would be great. If, as I hardly suppose, my affairs should turn out so that it became necessary for me to levy toll of your earnings, I would take care you were no loser by that. I will get you into the House, and what is more, I will make you master of the art of making your mark there when you are in. That is the real crux. That is where nine out of ten, even clever, men fail. There need be no limit to your ambition. Every day’s programme shall be sketched for you, every wrong turning marked with a red cross, every pitfall fenced, the right road clearly marked. You shall see your fellow travellers drop off, but you shall, if you follow my clue, go on triumphantly, each milestone marking a new success. The world is before you to conquer. The world consists mainly of fools, but even fools get in your way, it is all they can do, and there are clever spirits to oppose your progress. The conquest is easy enough, but unhappily men usually find that out too late, when they are too old for the fray. I doubt whether you could do it alone, Geoffrey, at least while the victory is worth having, but with me behind you, you may be irresistible. Is it a compact?”
The compact was made readily enough, the chances of the strange proposal being too dazzling to be rejected. If the purely ethical side of the arrangement lodged a feeble protest in Herriard’s mind, the material advantage with which it was weighted drove the monitor out of hearing. Success deferred is to the impatience of youth more galling, perhaps, than the settled disappointment of failure to a maturer mind. From Herriard success, the immediate success which a fairly clever and ambitious man expects to be his, had been withheld to a degree that had begun to gall him. Other men of his standing, no cleverer but more pushing, or more lucky, than he, were forging ahead. We are never so conscious of our slow progress as when we see ourselves left behind by others who started with us. Here, ready to Herriard’s hand, was a means of catching up and passing his rivals, indeed of astonishing his world. It seemed rather like making a compact with the devil, he would tell himself with a laugh; yet where, he argued, was the wrong? He was going to rob no one; it was merely a partnership that he was entering into, and the success of a partnership is gauged by its strongest rather than its weakest member. Why should a bed-ridden man of genius be debarred from the active exercise of his mental powers? Where was the dishonour in being his spokesman, any more than his amanuensis?
So the argument went all one way; the strange partnership began, and was not long in justifying its existence. Men who frequented the fruitful and thorny paths of the law began to speak of Geoffrey Herriard as one of the cleverest of rising counsel; some, speculating in “futures” out of the capital of their reputation for foresight, pointed at him as the coming man. He went far to justify them by the lucky capture of a seat at a bye-election, the victory being in some measure due to a series of particularly smart and telling speeches, which tore into shreds the platform of his opponent, a flabby soap-maker with a long purse and a short vocabulary. Herriard’s maiden speech was a success. “Best I’ve heard since poor Paul Gastineau,” Sir Henry Hartfield commented.
“Rather reminds me of him,” his companion remarked. “Something of the same fiery periods and tendency to antithesis. It just shows how easily a man’s place can be filled, even the cleverest.”
The resemblance in style was indeed remarkable both at the Bar, on the platform, and in the House, for in the early day of his pupildom Herriard had to keep tight and assiduous hold on his master’s hand. The work was hard, but the tutor was clever in imparting his knack, and, with a reputation increasing to a flattering degree, the incentive to industry on the pupil’s part was great.
Every night Herriard paid a visit to the secluded house in Mayfair, sometimes to stay far into the early hours of the morning, rehearsing a speech, analyzing the probable trends of a cross-examination, making notes from Gastineau’s quick observation of weak points or strong ones, spotting flaws, devising traps, in fact looking to every rivet in his own armour, speculating on every possible loose joint in his adversaries’ for the morrow’s tilt.
So the singular conjunction of rare master and apt pupil had continued in almost unbroken success for more than three years. Herriard had gained such a degree of confidence in playing his part as now almost to wear his instructor’s talent at second-hand. He promised to become a rich man, and Gastineau, with ample means of his own for his circumscribed luxury, was pleased that it should be so. In return for wealth and reputation he expected Herriard to mark down, to follow up and worry certain old-time rivals of his own. His pupil sometimes marvelled at the malignant viciousness of his “riding orders.” It was as though Gastineau had given him a rhetorical bottle of vitriol to fling over the smug face of some self-satisfied prig of an Under Secretary. Still he felt in honour bound to fling the corrosive denunciations with the most stinging effect, very much to the distortion of the Superior Being’s cultivated blandness. Then Gastineau was wont to declare himself well satisfied; and perfect friendship, founded on mutual service, existed between the two men.
But strange events, little dreamt of by either, were on their way to meet them; events which were to turn into disastrous twistings the paths that had run so easily side by side.