CHAPTER II
THE CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

For a minute there was a silence. In spite of the fact that Radford Leicester had instilled his own spirit into the party, there was something in his cynicism that repelled them as well as fascinated them. They were not bad young men. Not that they had high ideals, or were filled with lofty enthusiasms. But they had been reared on conventional lines, and although neither of them would have admitted it, they were influenced by the conventions which had surrounded their lives. To them there was something sordid, something repellent, in the thought of a man coolly offering to marry any one in order that he might prove the truth of a cynical statement to which he had given utterance. Nevertheless, they longed to accept his challenge. Radford Leicester's spirit possessed them; the man's cool and confident cynicism attracted them. The very daring of the proposal broke down their conventional ideas. Besides, in spite of Leicester's confidence, they did not believe that his opinions were true. Especially was this true of Purvis and Sprague. They had proposed to Miss Olive Castlemaine and had been refused. Other very eligible young men had also suffered the same fate. Was it likely, then, that Leicester, whose reputation was so peculiar, would be more fortunate than they?

More than all this, both of them felt somewhat bitter towards the woman who had refused them, and although they would not confess it even to themselves, they would rejoice if she should suffer something of the humiliation which they had felt. Such a feeling is natural to weak men. The sting of disappointment made them eager to fasten on anything which promised them a kind of revenge. They had a feeling that Miss Castlemaine was proud of her conquests, and they would rejoice if her pride could be humbled.

"What do our pattern young men say?" repeated Leicester. He emptied his glass as he spoke, and then turned towards them. "Why, think, my dear Moody and Sankey," he went on. "You were longing to save me from the error of my ways a few minutes ago; now here is your chance. It is true I only know this young lady by sight, but I have heard of her religious proclivities. Why, she might convert me. She might snatch the brand from the burning. She is such a pattern young woman, so high-principled, so good. Besides, I am told that she belongs to the Nonconforming order of pious people. She is a Wesleyan, or an Independent, or a Presbyterian, I don't know which; but being one of them, her principles will be more pronounced than those who belong to the worldly State Church. Here is your opportunity, not only of proving your belief in the nobility of women, but of bringing me under religious influences."

He spoke quietly and composedly, yet no doubt he was influenced by the whisky he had been drinking.

"Besides," he continued, "here is your chance of proving that the woman who refused you would also refuse me. Come, now, what do you say?"

"I accept," said Purvis.

"And you, too, Sprague?"

"Miss Castlemaine would not give you a second thought."

"Then you accept my offer? Look here, if I am rejected I give a hundred pounds to – what shall we say – Guy's Hospital? While if I am accepted you give the same sum. Is it a bargain?"

"I tell you she would not look at you. If she is not already acquainted with what those who know you think about you, she would soon become acquainted, and then – well, you would be driven from the house."

"Exactly; then you agree?"

"Oh yes, if you like."

"Good; as for Winfield, his only part in the business is naming the lady. Gentlemen, I am really much obliged to you. I have not felt so interested in life for a long time. You are really benefactors. But come, now, we must go into this affair in a business-like way, and, 'pon my word, I'll have another glass in order to drink success to the enterprise."

He rang the bell and the waiter appeared.

"Four whiskies, waiter," he said.

"I don't like this," said Sprague.

"What, the whisky? I'll complain to the management."

"No, the whole business. It isn't right."

"Not right? Why, it gives me a new interest in life, man. Already my moral sentiments are being elevated. I see myself going to that Nonconformist church with a hymn-book and Bible under my arm. I even see myself a deacon, or an elder, or something of that sort. Not right, when it is having such a regenerating influence?"

"Stick to your guns, you chaps," remarked Winfield quietly, who had been the silent member of the party.

"But I must have fair play," said Leicester. "I want a fair field and no favour. All I demand is that you chaps shall hold your tongues. This conversation must not go beyond these walls. That's fair, isn't it?"

"That's nothing but just," said Winfield.

"But how are you to get an introduction?" said Sprague. "Old John Castlemaine is very particular as to whom he has at his house, and although I have consented to this business, I'll take no part in it."

"Nor I," said Purvis; "and now I come to think about it, I withdraw from it altogether."

"Except to pay your hundred pounds if I succeed," said Leicester.

"You can't back out from that," remarked Winfield.

"Still, I'll be a party to nothing," he said weakly. "Of course I know it'll end in nothing. Miss Castlemaine is one of the cleverest women I know, and she'll see through everything at a glance."

"Then I'm to have fair play?"

"Oh yes, I shall not interfere with you. There will be no need."

"That is to say, not a whisper of this conversation goes outside this room."

"Of course that is but fair," urged Winfield again.

"Very well," said Purvis, "I shall say nothing; but mind you, I do not believe in the business. It's wrong, it's not – well, it's not in good form. But there, it doesn't matter. It'll end in nothing."

"Exactly," said Leicester; but there was a strange light in his eyes. "And you, Sprague, you'll act straight, too?"

"Oh, certainly," said Sprague. "I shall say nothing; all the same, I don't like it. But Leicester'll give up the whole idea to-morrow. He'd never have thought of it to-night if he hadn't been drunk."

"I drunk, my friends! I am as sober as the Nonconforming parson of the church that Miss Castlemaine attends. I'm as serious as a judge. No, no, I stand on principle – principle, my friends. I have a theory of life, and I stand by it, and I am ready to make sacrifices."

"But how are you to get an introduction?" asked Sprague. Evidently he was uneasy in his mind.

"Leave that to me; I ask you to do nothing but to hold your tongues, and that you've promised to do. I stand alone. I'm like your Martin Luther of old times. Against me are arrayed conventions and orthodoxy, pride and prejudice, thunders temporal and spiritual, but I fear them not. I – I, a poor solitary cynic, am stronger than you all, because I stand on the truth, and you stand on sentiment, convention, orthodoxy. Gentlemen, I drink to you in very mediocre club whisky; nay, I don't drink to you, I drink to the man who stands on the truth – truth, gentlemen, truth!"

Again he lifted a glass of whisky to his lips and set it down empty.

"I'm going to bed," said Sprague.

"And I," said Purvis.

"And I, gentlemen," said Leicester, "remain here. Like all men who undertake great enterprises, I must make my plans. As a champion of truth I must vindicate it. I live to rid the world of lies, of sham, of hypocrisy. Good-night, gentlemen, good-night."

The whisky was beginning to show its effects at last, although his voice was still clear, his hand still steady. An unhealthy flush had come to his cheeks; the strange look in his eyes had become more pronounced.

And yet had a stranger entered the room at that moment, that stranger would have been struck by his tall, stalwart figure and his striking face. For Radford Leicester was no ordinary-looking man. Compared with him the others were commonplace. Neither was his face a bad face. It suggested lack of faith and lack of hope, but it did not suggest evil. Moreover, the well-shaped head, the broad forehead, the finely formed features, suggested intellectuality and force of character. It also told of a man whom nothing could daunt when his mind was made up. But it was not the face of a happy man. No man who is without faith and hope can be.

Radford Leicester had come into the world handicapped. His father was a hard drinker before him, and he had inherited the love for alcohol. But more, he had been educated in a bad school. His mother had died when he was a child, and thus he became entirely under his father's influence. His father was a clever man, but a man whom life had embittered. He had been embittered by the death of his wife; he had been embittered because he had never obtained the success he had coveted. He saw men who did not possess half the brains or half the scholarship which he possessed, leap into fame, while he remained obscure. Perhaps this was because his theory of life was so utterly hopeless, and his faith in men and women was so little. Young Radford was naturally influenced by his father's views and his father's character, and thus by the time he was old enough to go to a public school he was, like Shelley, an atheist.

Presently his father, who was ambitious for his son's future, sent him to Oxford. He became a student at Magdalen College, where he obtained, not only a reputation as a scholar and a debater, but he became notorious pretty much on the same lines that Shelley became notorious. He became more and more imbued with the materialistic philosophy which was accepted by a certain section of the men there; indeed, he became their leader and spokesman. He professed an utter contempt for life. He regarded men and women as so many worthless things spawned upon the shores of time, to be presently swept away into nothingness. He had little or no faith in the nobility of human nature. Men were mostly sordid, selfish, and base. Trace men's motives to their source, and they were in the main selfish. Women were, if possible, worse than men. When he was about twenty-four he altered his opinion for a time. He fell in love with a girl who fascinated him by her wit, her beauty, and what he believed to be her goodness. For a time his love made him cast off his father's hopeless philosophy. He formed plans for the future. Through his mother he possessed an income which, while not large, placed him in a position of affluence. It was large enough to enable him to enter Parliament, where he believed he could make for himself a brilliant future.

He proposed to the girl with whom he had become enamoured, and was accepted. He had barely become a happy accepted lover, however, when a young barrister who had won a great deal of praise at the Bar, and had also entered Parliament, where he was spoken of as a man with a great future, also proposed to her. Without hesitation this girl, Blanche Bridgetown by name, cast Leicester aside and accepted the man who had made a reputation, rather than keep her faith with one whose future was uncertain. In this decision Blanche Bridgetown was largely influenced by her mother.

Radford Leicester soon recovered from the wound he had received in his heart, but he did not recover from the blow which was struck at his faith. All his old cynicism and hopelessness reasserted themselves. Whenever he spoke of women he spoke bitterly, his outlook on life became less cheerful than ever.

Then another element entered his life. Up to this time he had not been a hard drinker; but now the taste which he had inherited grew stronger. Drink made him forget his wounded pride; and, confident in his boast that no distilled spirits could ever affect him outwardly, he indulged in this evil habit more and more freely.

Still, pride was not dead. Professing, as he did, that life was a miserable sort of affair at the best, he still had ambition. He wanted to carve out for himself a place of position and power. His party had found a constituency for him, and he had contested it. At the time of the contest, however, the political opinions which Radford had adopted were not popular. His opponent won the seat.

Again he was embittered, again his pride was wounded, and the habit which had been gaining in strength now seemed to have obtained a complete mastery over him. Thus Radford Leicester, who had never been known to be drunk, was a drunkard. He had no faith in man; he had no faith in God.

There was one power in his life, however – ambition. He wanted to be renowned. He knew that he possessed unusual abilities; his career in Oxford had proved it; his friends had admitted it a hundred times in a hundred ways. Moreover, the vice which had mastered him had not degraded him in the eyes of men. Only a very few knew that he was a hard drinker. He always dressed well, spoke clearly, and walked steadily. Of his cynicism he made no secret, of his repudiation of the Christian story and of Christian morals he almost boasted; nevertheless, nearly every one spoke of him as a man who would make a great name.

Besides, to weaker men he had a kind of fascination. He inspired others with his own recklessness, and many almost admired his scorn of conventional beliefs. In a way, moreover, he was liked. While repudiating accepted morality in theory, he was in many respects most punctilious about points of honour. When he gave his word he never broke it. In his political speeches he never pandered to popular cries. He did not say things because they were popular, and even while he declared that all men had their price, he was never known to sell himself.

At the present time many eyes were turned towards him. He had become a great favourite in his constituency. The leader of his party had come to speak at a great gathering, and when, as the accepted candidate, he had also to address the meeting, the great man had been simply carried away by his speech. As he remarked afterwards to his colleagues, it was the speech of a statesman and an orator. It might have been Macaulay, or Burke, who had come to life again.

At times Leicester pretended to despise all this, but at heart he was proud of it. Indeed, as I have said before, ambition was the one thing which kept him from being a wastrel.

No doubt Radford Leicester's story has been repeated many times in many ways; nevertheless, it is necessary to tell it again, in order to understand something of the complex character whom I have introduced to my readers.

The club in which they had met was situated in the region of Pall Mall, and while not in the strict sense political, it was mostly frequented by those who were of Leicester's way of thinking. As I have said, it was not a large club; nevertheless, it provided a limited number of beds. These young men had come up to listen to a debate at the House of Commons, and preferred spending the night at the club to going to an hotel.

"Going to carry this thing through, Leicester?" said Winfield when the others had gone.

"If only to knock the nonsense out of those prigs," replied the other.

"Marriage is a dear price to pay."

"Then why are fellows so eager for it?"

"I don't know. Men are mostly fools, I suppose."

"Yes; but then it was not a question of marriage. It was only a question of being accepted as a possible husband."

"The same thing. No man of honour can win a woman's promise to be his wife and then jilt her."

"A great many do it. Besides, women don't care."

"Don't they? Why do you think so?"

"Because women are women. And it isn't as though this Miss Castlemaine had fears of being placed on the shelf."

"You are very cool about it, old man."

"Quite the reverse. I am quite excited. Just fancy my scheming to be the promised husband of a beautiful heiress, a sort of glorified Quakeress, rich, pious, and high-minded. Winning an election will be a small thing compared with winning her."

"But surely you'll not try and carry the thing through?"

"Why?"

"Because you don't love her."

Leicester gave a significant whistle.

"Love," he said: "does that come in?"

"It's supposed to."

"It's one of the many illusions which still exist among a certain number of people. As for its reality – "

He shrugged his shoulders significantly, and then became quiet.

"What are you thinking about?" asked Winfield presently.

"A man's secret thoughts are sacred," replied Leicester mockingly. "Do you think my pious sentiments are for public utterance?"

Winfield rose and held out his hand.

"Good-night Leicester," he said.

"What, going to bed?"

"Yes, it's past one o'clock."

"Well, what then? You've no wife to regulate your hours."

"No, but I have work to regulate them. A journalist is a slave to the public."

"Stay half an hour longer."

"What's the good?"

"I can't sleep, and it's horrible to go to bed and lie awake. Besides, I believe I've a touch of D.T."

"Nonsense. You who boast that your nerves are steel, and that no whisky can bowl you over."

"That's true, and yet – look here, Winfield, you are not one of these whining sentimentalists, and one can speak to you plainly. I was never drunk in my life; that is, I was never in a condition when I couldn't walk straight, and when I couldn't express my thoughts clearly. Nevertheless, it tells, my son, it tells. I don't get excited, and I don't get maudlin. Perhaps it would be better for me if I did."

"Why?"

"Then I should be afraid. As it is, I am afraid of nothing. And yet, I tell you, I have a bad time when I am alone in the dark. It's hell, man – it's hell!"

"Then give it up."

"I won't. Because it's all the heaven I have. Besides, I can do nothing without it. Without whisky my mind's a blank, my brains won't act. With it – that is, when I take the right quantity – nothing's impossible, man – nothing. Only – "

"What?"

"The right quantity increases – that's all. Good-night. When I come to remember, I shan't have the blues to-night."

"Why?"

"Why? Have I not to make my plans for conquest? I must win my wager!"

"Nonsense. You don't mean that?"

"But I do. Good-night, old man. Let me dream."

Radford Leicester remained only a few minutes after Winfield had left the room. Once he put his hand upon the bell, as if to ring for more whisky, but he checked himself.

"No," he said aloud, "I have had too much to-night already."

He walked with a steady step across the room, and the waiter, who had hovered around, prepared to turn out the lights.

"Good-night, Jenkins," said Leicester, as the man opened the door.

"Good-night, sir."

"Every one gone to bed except you?"

"Nearly every one, sir."

"Then I'll leave it to you to arrange for my bath in the morning. Half-past nine will do."

"Yes, sir. Hot or cold?"

A cold blast of air came along the passage. He was about to say "Cold," but he changed his mind.

"Hot, Jenkins," he said. "Good-night."

When he got to his bedroom and turned on the lights he looked at the mirror, long and steadily.

"Thirty," he said presently, "only thirty, and I'm ordering a hot bath at half-past nine in the morning. It's telling."

He wandered around the room aimlessly, but with a steady step.

"Yes," he said aloud presently, "I'll do it, if only to have the laugh out of those puppies. What's the odds? Blanche Bridgewater or Olive Castlemaine? Women are all alike – mean, selfish, faithless. Well, what then? I'm in the mood for it."

He threw himself in a chair beside the bed and began to think.

"Yes," he said presently, "that plan will work."