The Ivory Gate, a new edition

'What can I do if I do act for him?' But there was a hungry eagerness in the man's eyes which made her divine what she could do.

'It is Saturday.' He replied without looking at her. He turned away his head. He spoke to the stair-window. 'To-morrow is Sunday. I have before this, on one or two occasions, found myself as I do now – without money. I have borrowed of Mr. Carstone and of Mr. Edmund Gray. Sometimes, I have paid it back – not always. Lend me – for Mr. Edmund Gray – if you are not rich, he will give it back to you – the sum of five shillings – say, five shillings. Otherwise, I shall have nothing to eat until Monday, when Mr. Carstone returns.'

'Nothing to eat? Nothing at all to eat?' Beggars in the street often make the same confession, but somehow their words fail to carry conviction. Mr. Langhorne, however, did carry conviction.

The old man shook his head. 'I had some food yesterday at this time. Since then I have had nothing. There was neither tea nor bread in my rooms for breakfast. When the clock struck six, my dinner hour, I thought I would walk along the street and look at the things to eat which are placed in the shop windows. That relieves a little. But to-morrow will be a bad time – a very bad time. I shall lie in bed. Oh! I have gone through it before. Sometimes' – he dropped his voice – 'I have been sore tempted to take something – No – no; don't think I have given way. No – no. Why – I should be – disbarred. Not yet – not yet.'

Elsie opened her purse. It contained two sovereigns and a shilling or two. 'Take all,' she said eagerly. 'Take all the gold, and leave me the silver. Take it instantly.' She stamped her foot.

He hesitated. 'All?' he asked. 'All? Can you spare it? I can never repay – '

'Take it!' she said again, imperiously.

He obeyed: he took the gold out of the purse with trembling fingers. Then he raised his rickety old hat – was that a tear that stole into his eyes, or the rheum of old age? – and slowly walked down the stairs, holding by the banisters. He was weak, poor wretch! with hunger. But it was his dinner hour, and he was going to have his dinner.

Elsie sat down again.

It was half-past six – she had been waiting for three hours – when other footsteps entered the house. Elsie sprang to her feet: she turned pale: her heart stood still; for now she realised that if this step was truly that of the man she expected, she was about to confront a person certainly of the deepest criminality, and possibly capable of villainy in any other direction. The steps mounted the stairs. I really think that the bravest persons in the world are those who before the event look forward to it with the utmost apprehension. They know, you see, what the dangers are. Elsie was going to face a great danger. She was going to find out, alone and unaided, who this man was, and why and how he worked these deeds of darkness.

The footsteps mounted higher: from the door to the top of the stairs it took but a single minute, yet to Elsie it seemed half an hour, so rapid were her thoughts. Then the man mounted the last flight of steps. Heavens! Elsie was fain to cry out for sheer amazement. She cried out: she caught at the banisters. For, before her, taking the key of Mr. Edmund Gray's Chambers from his waistcoat pocket, was none other than Mr. Dering himself!

Yes. An elderly man, of truly benevolent aspect, his coat open flying all abroad, his face soft, gracious, smiling, and full of sunshine, his hat just the least bit pushed back, his left hand in his pocket. Elsie thought again of her portrait at home, in which she had transformed her guardian – and here he was in the flesh – transformed according to her portrait.

She stared at him with an amazement that bereft her of speech and of motion. She could only stare. Even if her mother's voice were suddenly to call out to her that it is rude for little girls to stare, she could not choose but stare. For Mr. Dering looked at her with that kind of surprise in his eyes which means, 'What have we here to do with beautiful young ladies?' There was not the least sign of any knowledge of her. He looked at her as one suffers the eyes to rest for a moment without interest upon a stranger and a casual passenger in the street.

He opened his outer door, and was about to walk in, when she recovered some presence of mind – not much. She stepped forward. 'Can you tell me, please, how I could find Mr. Edmund Gray?'

'Certainly,' he smiled – 'nothing easier. 'I am Edmund Gray.'

'You! – you – Edmund Gray? Oh! No – no. You cannot be Edmund Gray – you yourself!' All her beautiful theory of hypnotic influence vanished. No mesmerism or magnetic influence at all. 'You yourself?' she repeated, 'you – Edmund Gray?'

'Assuredly. Why not? Why should a man not be himself?'

'Oh! I don't understand. The world is going upside down. I took you – took you for another person.'

He laughed gently. 'Truly, I am none other than Edmund Gray – always Edmund Gray. My first name I can never change if I wished, because it is my baptismal name. The latter I do not wish to change, because it is my name ancestral.'

'I asked because – because – I fancied a resemblance to another person. Were you ever told that you are much like a certain other person?'

'No; I think not. Resemblances, however, are extremely superficial. No two living creatures are alike. We are alone, each living out his life in the great Cosmos, quite alone – unlike any other living creature. However, I am Edmund Gray, young lady. It isn't often that I receive a visit from a young lady in these Chambers. If you have no other doubt upon that point, will you let me ask you, once more, how I can help you? And will you come in and sit down?'

'Oh! it is wonderful,' she cried – 'wonderful! most wonderful!' Again she controlled herself. 'Are you,' she asked again, 'the same Mr. Edmund Gray who wrote the letter to the Times the other day?'

'Certainly. There is no other person, I believe, of the name in this Inn. Have you read that letter?'

'Yes – oh, yes.'

'And you have come here to talk to me about that letter?'

'Yes – yes.' She caught at the hint. 'That is why I came – to talk about that letter. I came in the hope of finding the author of that letter at home.'

He threw open the door of his sitting-room.

'Will you step in? We can talk quite quietly here. The Inn at this hour on Saturday is almost deserted.' He closed the outer door and followed his visitor into the sitting-room. 'This,' he went on, 'is the quietest place in the whole of London. We have not, in this Square, the stately elms of the old garden, but still we have our little advantages – spacious rooms – quiet always in the evening and on Sundays. A few rackety young men, perhaps; but for one who reads and meditates, no better place in London. – Now, young lady, take the easy-chair and sit down. We will talk. There are very few people who talk to me about my theories. That is because I am old, so that I have lost my friends, and because my views are in advance of the world. No man is so lonely as the man born before his time. He is the prophet, you know, who must be stoned because he prophesies things unintelligible and therefore uncomfortable – even terrifying. I shall be very glad to talk a little with you. – Now, allow me first to open these letters.'

Elsie sat down and looked about her. She was in a large low wainscoted room, with two windows looking upon the Square. The room was quite plainly but quite well furnished. There was a good-sized study table with drawers: a small table between the windows: a few chairs, a couch and an easy-chair; and a large bookcase filled with books – books on Socialism, George had told her. A door opened upon a smaller room: there was probably a bedroom at the back. A plain carpet covered the floor. Above the high old-fashioned mantel were two or three portraits of Socialist leaders. The room, if everything had not been covered with dust, would have been coldly neat: the chairs were all in their places: the window-blinds were half-way down as the laundress thought was proper – millions of Londoners always keep their blinds half-way down – a subject which must some day be investigated by the Folklore Society: the curtains were neatly looped: it wanted only a Bible on a table at a window to make it the Front Parlour of a Dalston Villa. There were no flowers, no ornaments of any kind.

Mr. Edmund Gray opened half-a-dozen letters lying on his table and glanced at them. There were a great many more waiting to be opened.

'All are from people who have read my letter,' he said. 'They share with me in the new Faith of a new Humanity. Happy is the man who strikes the note of leading at the right moment. Happy he who lights the lamp just when the darkness is beginning to be felt. – Yes, young lady, you are not the only one who has been drawn towards the doctrines of that letter. But I have no time to write to all of them. A letter makes one convert – a paragraph may make a thousand.'

Elsie rose from her chair. She had decided on her line. You have heard that her voice was curiously soft and winning – a voice that charms – a voice which would soothe a wild creature, and fill a young man's heart with whatever passion she chose to awaken. She had, besides, those soft eyes which make men surrender their secrets, part with their power and their strength. Did she know that she possessed all this power? – the girl who had no experience save of one man's love, and that the most natural, easy, and unromantic love in the world, when two who are brought up side by side and see each other every day, presently catch each other by the hand and walk for the future hand in hand without a word. Yet Delilah herself, the experienced, the crafty, the trained and taught – could not – did not – act more cleverly and craftily than this artless damsel. To be sure, she possessed great advantages over Delilah – by some esteemed attractive – in the matter of personal charm.

'Oh!' she murmured softly, 'it is a shame that you should be expected to waste your valuable time in writing letters to these people. You must not do it. Your time is wanted for the world, not for individuals.'

'It is,' he replied – 'it is. You have said it.'

'You are a Master – a Leader – a Prince in Israel – a Preacher – a Prophet.'

'I am – I am. You have said it. I should not myself have dared to say it. But I am.'

'No one can doubt it who has read that letter. Be my Master – too – as well as the Master of – of all these people who write to you.'

'Be your Master?' He blushed like a boy. 'Could I desire anything better?'

'My Father and my Master,' she added with a little change of colour. Girls take fright very easily, and perhaps this old gentleman might interpret the invitation – well – into something other than was meant.

'Yes – yes.' He held out his hand. She took it in her own – both her own soft hands, and bowed her head – her comely head – over it.

'I came to-day thinking only' – Oh, Delilah! – 'to thank you for your great and generous and noble words, which have put fresh heart into me. And now that I have thanked you, I am emboldened to ask a favour – '

'Anything, anything.'

'You will be my Master – you will teach me. Let me, in return, relieve you of this work.' She laid her hand on the pile of letters. 'Let me answer them for you. Let me be your Private Secretary. I have nothing to do. Let me work for you.' She looked into his face with the sweetest eyes and the most winning smile, and her voice warmed the old man's ear like soft music. Ah, Circe! – 'Now that I have seen you – let me be your disciple, your most humble disciple, and' – Ah, Siren! – 'let me be more, Edmund Gray – I cannot say Mr. Gray – let me be more, Edmund Gray.' She laid her hand, her soft-gloved, dainty, delicate hand, upon his, and it produced the effect of an electric battery gently handled. 'Let me be your Secretary.'

It was ten o'clock before Elsie reached home that evening, and she refused to tell them, even her own brother and her lover, where she had been or how she had spent her evening.

CHAPTER XXII

MASTER AND DISCIPLE

It was Sunday afternoon in Gray's Inn. The new Disciple sat at the feet of the Master, her Gamaliel: one does not know exactly the attitude adopted by a young Rabbi of old, but in this case the disciple sat in a low chair, her hands folded in her lap, curiously and earnestly watching the Master as he walked up and down the room preaching and teaching.

'Master,' she asked, 'have you always preached and held these doctrines?'

'Not always. There was a time when I dwelt in darkness – like the rest of the world.'

'How did you learn these things? By reading books?'