The dead silence was broken by a low groan--a groan of despair and penitence.

"G.o.d!" he gasped. "Surely the truth cannot possibly be known? How can it? No," he went on, murmuring to himself. "Bah! I'm timid--thoughts of it always unnerve me. And yet from this it seems very much as if some secret enemy had waited through these years until I had attained position and popularity in order to strike, to crush, to ruin me for ever!"

He was silent again, silent for many minutes. He stood quite motionless, still gazing into the fire.

"But dare I face exposure?" he asked himself, his hoa.r.s.e whisper sounding strangely in that old room. "No. A thousand times no! No-- impossible! A thousand times no! I'd prefer death. Yes, suicide. It would be the only way. Death is far preferable to dishonour."

He saw it all--he who could read between those lines. He detected the hand of some secret enemy uplifted against him--an enemy who, he did not doubt, held that secret which through the past six years had been the skeleton in his cupboard. In the esteem of men he had risen rapidly, until to-day he was declared to be one of the shrewdest of England's legislators, fulfilling all the traditions of his ancient and honourable house. And through out these six years he had striven, and striven, always with an idea of atonement for his cardinal sin; always working in the interests of the nation he had resolved to serve.

How strange it was that His Majesty's Foreign Minister should have actually communicated this to him, of all men! But man works half his own doom, and circ.u.mstance the other half. _C'est toujours le destin_.

In his despair there had arisen before him that grim and hideous ghost of the past which had always overshadowed the later years of his life; that incident which he constantly feared might come to light to destroy the position he had created, to wreck his popularity, and to cause his name to be synonymous with all that was base, treacherous, and ignominious. For the fault he had committed--a grave offence which he knew could never be humanly forgiven--he had endeavoured to atone to the best of his ability. Other young men of his wealth would have probably married and taken their ease; but with that secret deep in his heart he had worked and striven for his country's good, prompted by a desire not merely to become popular, but to accomplish something by means of which to make amends.

Men had, of course, never rightly understood his motives. They had believed him to be one of a motley crowd of place-seekers, whose brilliant oratory had fortunately brought him into the front rank, though this was certainly far from being the case Popularity had been heaped upon him as an entirely unwelcome reward. He always declared within himself that he merited nothing--absolutely nothing; and this belief accounted for his utter indifference to the plaudits of the public or the praise bestowed upon him by his Party. He was endeavouring to work out his atonement and make reparation--that was all.

Try as he would, however, he could not put aside the grave suggestion that some secret enemy was preparing a _coup_ beneath which he must fall. The disquieting despatch from Constantinople seemed to portend this. It was a presage of his downfall. To endeavour to prove his innocence, to try to withstand the storm of indignation that must certainly sweep over England, or to prevent exposure of the truth, spelt futility. He was helpless--utterly helpless against the onsweeping tide of retribution.

The marquess urged that he--the very man concerned in the disreputable affair--should make secret inquiry into the truth of the report. Was not that a freak of Fate? Surely Nemesis was already upon him. What could he reply to that despatch? How could he act?

Many men grudged him his position and the fame he had won. And yet, would they envy him if they were aware of the terrible truth--if they were aware of that awful secret ever burdening his conscience?

Suddenly, as though some fresh thought had occurred to him, he crossed to the opposite side of the room, and, pressing against one of the shelves filled with old brown-covered folios, opened a part which concealed a small safe embedded deeply in the wall, hidden from even the keenest eyes in a manner that could scarcely have been improved. From his watch-chain he selected a key, opened the safe and took from one of its drawers a large official-looking envelope. Walking back to the light of the table, he drew out a piece of thin transparent tracing-paper which he opened and spread upon the blotting-pad.

Upon this paper a letter in a strange, almost microscopic hand, had been traced. This he read carefully, apparently weighing every word. Twice he went over it, almost as though he wished to commit it to memory; then, with a hard look upon his dark features, he replaced it in the envelope, sealed it with a stick of black wax and put it once more in the safe. From the same drawer he extracted a second paper, folded in a small square. With this in his hand he walked toward the nearest window, so as to be in the best light for his purpose. When he was satisfied in this regard, he undid the packet. It contained a curl of fair hair bound together with sewing silk of a faded pink.

As he looked upon it tears welled up into his eyes. That lock of hair brought back to him memories, bitter and tender memories which he always tried to forget, though in vain. Before him arose a woman's face, pale, fair, with eyes of that deep child-like blue which always proclaims purity of soul. He saw her before him in her simple dress of white linen--a vision of sweet and perfect beauty. The words she had spoken in her gentle voice seemed once again to fall upon his ears with the music that had so invariably charmed him. He remembered what she had said to him--he recollected the whole of that conversation, although years had pa.s.sed since it had been held. He found it impossible to prevent his thoughts from wandering back to the tender grace of a day that was dead, when, beside the sea, he had for a few hours enjoyed a calm and sunny paradise, which had too quickly changed into a wilderness barren of both roses and angels.

He sighed; and down his cheek there crept a single tear. Then he raised the tiny lock of hair to his lips.

"May G.o.d cherish her always--always," he murmured.

Twice he kissed the lock of hair before, with every sign of reluctance, returning it to the packet and replacing it in the steel drawer.

Superst.i.tious persons believe that ill-fortune follows the possession of hair; but Chisholm was never superst.i.tious. This curl, which at rare intervals he was in the habit of taking from its secret hiding-place, always carried his memory back to those brief days when, for the second time in his life, he had experienced perfect happiness. It was an outward and visible sign of a love that had once burned fiercely within two hearts.

He had just locked the safe and hidden it in the usual manner, when Benthall burst into the library, and said in a merry tone of voice:

"I've come just to see what you're doing, old fellow. The gong went half an hour ago and the colonel says he's got a ravenous appet.i.te. The soup will be cold."

He had walked across to the table, and stood beside it ready dressed for dinner.

"I--oh! I was busy," his host answered. "A lot of official correspondence from the Foreign Office, you know--things I ought to have seen to this morning instead of shooting. Correspondence always crowds upon me if I go out of town even for a couple of days."

"But you've done now--haven't you?" asked his guest, glancing at the littered table.

"Just finished. But I'm awfully sorry to have kept you fellows waiting.

The colonel's so infernally prompt at feeding-time. They say at the Junior that he doesn't vary five minutes at dinner once in six months."

"Well, come along, old fellow. Don't wait to finish." He seated himself on the edge of the big writing-table while Dudley busied himself in replacing some letters he had taken from the steel despatch-box which accompanied him everywhere.

Smoking a cigarette, and swinging his legs easily, Benthall waited while his host--who had pointed out that he could not leave confidential doc.u.ments open for the servants to pry into--straightened his papers, and put them together with the communications littering the table, in the box, afterwards locking it.

Only one was left on the table, the despatch which Lord Stockbridge had ordered him to destroy. This he carried to the fire, lit one corner, and held it until it was all consumed, afterwards destroying the tinder with the poker.

"What's that you're so careful to burn?" asked Benthall, interested.

"Oh, nothing, my dear Harry--nothing," answered the Under-Secretary in a nonchalant manner. "Only a despatch."

"From Stockbridge, or one of the other Ministers, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"But why did you burn it?"

"In order that it shouldn't fall into anybody else's hands."

"Something very confidential, then?"

"Yes, something extremely confidential," answered Chisholm. "But come along, old fellow, let's go to dinner, or the colonel will never forgive me."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

SHOWS A POLITICIAN AND A POLICY.

Dudley Chisholm, with the excuse that his presence was urgently required at the Foreign Office, returned to town by the first train on the following day, leaving the colonel and Benthall to continue their sport.

He would probably return in a couple of days, he said, but Lord Stockbridge wished to explain to him the line of policy which he intended to adopt towards France, with a view to lessening the tension between the two nations, and to give him certain instructions as to the conduct of the forthcoming debate in the House.

As both his guests understood that a man holding such a position was liable at any moment to be called up to town, they made the best of their disappointment, wished him good luck when the time came for his departure, and went out with the head-keeper for a day's sport in Parnholt Wood.

That same afternoon, in the fading light, the Under-Secretary was closeted with his Chief, the Most n.o.ble the Marquess of Stockbridge, K.G., Prime Minister of England, and Her Majesty's Princ.i.p.al Secretary of State, in his private room at Downing Street.

Next to the Sovereign, this tall, thin-faced, grey-bearded man, with the rather ascetic, aquiline features and keen dark eyes that age had not dimmed, was the most potent personage in the British Empire. The room in which he was sitting at the big pedestal writing-table was on the first floor of the Foreign Office, a s.p.a.cious apartment, solidly furnished and of a very business-like appearance. In that room Amba.s.sadors and Envoys Plenipotentiary had discussed matters of such importance, in such a way, that if those walls had ears to listen and tongues to repeat, the whole of Europe would have been in arms on many an occasion. Placed as far from the door as possible, the most conspicuous object in the room was the Prime Minister's table, standing on the right, close to the fireplace of black and white marble, with a plain, gilt-framed mirror above, and one of those ordinary square marble clocks which may be found in almost every middle-cla.s.s dining-room. In a small bookcase close to his lordship's left hand was a library of reference works; while to his right, in the centre of the apartment, was a round table covered with books, where the current issue of the _Times_ was lying.

In front of the great statesman was a long lounge, upholstered in dark green leather, as was the rest of the furniture, and upon the wall behind the lounge a rack containing a large number of maps. Two or three deep armchairs, a couple of other tables and several revolving bookcases completed the furniture of the private room of the head of the Cabinet. At the table sat the marquess toying idly with his quill, while upon the leather-covered lounge before him sat Chisholm, the Under-secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

They were alone, with the door closed against intruders. The greyness of the short afternoon had become more and more p.r.o.nounced during their conversation, and as neither had risen to switch on the electric light the room was in semi-darkness. Chisholm was thankful, for he was uneasy, and feared that his face might betray him to that keen and practised statesman beneath whose calm gaze many a diplomatist, whether British or foreign, had so often trembled. A rather cold, but exceedingly courteous man, Lord Stockbridge always spoke with slow deliberation, and with a gentleness that one would scarcely have expected from a man of such an austere manner. He was an autocrat both at the Foreign Office and in the Cabinet, always ruling with a firm hand, exhibiting a strange individualism in responsibility, bestowing but little praise upon any of Britain's hard-working representatives abroad; but he was a patriot, and every inch a gentleman.

Representatives of certain of the Powers at the Court of St. James held him in dread--they even hated him, because of his integrity, his calm dignity, and his shrewd foresight. They knew that he was not a man to be tricked, and that in his anger the British lion showed its teeth.

To this rather melancholy man with the grave face and the quick dark eyes the British nation chiefly owed the retention of its position as the first Power in the world. During his fifteen years of office the European outlook had, times without number, been of a grim blackness, and the war-cloud had hovered on the political horizon almost incessantly; yet, by means of his careful statesmanship and the marvellous tact and _finesse_ constantly exhibited by him, this splendid politician had succeeded in piloting the ship of state into quieter waters.

Like his trusted Under-Secretary, he was a man who hated popularity, although he was equally popular in England and throughout the great Empire over-sea. He detested cheap notoriety; he always declared that he left that sort of thing to the Opposition benches. In a word, he was an honest, straightforward, patriotic Englishman, the most trusted of Her Majesty's Ministers, and the greatest living statesman in Europe.

Had he not acted with firmness and discretion, as well as with quick foresight, Great Britain would a dozen times have been at war with her jealous neighbours. More than once conspiracies, deeply laid and skilfully engineered, had been in progress in some diplomatic circles for the purpose of inveigling England into hostilities; but his power of keen penetration and swift deduction had caused the efforts of our enemies to be thwarted and they themselves to be discomfited by some remarkable _coup_ in quite another direction. It was the cackling cry of certain leader-writers that English diplomacy was abortive, that other nations left us behind in the race, and that our Amba.s.sadors and Ministers were merely bunglers. These prophets (hired at the rate of two guineas a column) always conveniently overlooked the fact that the world virtually owed its peace and consequent prosperity to the thin-faced, rather haggard-looking, man who was the personal friend, confidant and adviser of his venerated and peace-loving Sovereign.

He sat there in the half light twisting his quill in his thin hands, a sign that he was puzzled.

"The situation is undoubtedly critical, Chisholm," he said in a low voice. "I confess I cannot make it out in the least. The whole thing appears to me an enigma at present."

"Have you received no further despatch from Vienna?" inquired the Under-Secretary.