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
