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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42763 ***
+
+                            Swords Reluctant
+
+                 Published in London under the title of
+                          "War and the Woman"
+
+
+                                   By
+                             Max Pemberton
+    Author of "The Fortunate Prisoner," "The Garden of Swords," etc.
+
+
+                    "Peace hath her victories
+                    No less renowned than war."
+                                  MILTON: _Sonnets_.
+
+            "I, in this weak piping time of peace,
+            Have no delight to pass away the time,
+            Unless to see my shadow in the sun."
+                                 SHAKESPEARE: _Richard III._
+
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+
+                        G. W. Dillingham Company
+                         Publishers   New York
+
+
+
+
+                  ENTERED FOR COPYRIGHT MAY 29TH, 1912
+                           UNDER THE TITLE OF
+                           WAR AND THE WOMAN
+
+
+                          COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
+                        G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
+                           UNDER THE TITLE OF
+                            SWORDS RELUCTANT
+
+
+    _Swords Reluctant_
+
+
+
+
+                                   TO
+                            ANDREW CARNEGIE
+                             NON EXERCITUS
+                  NEQUE THESAURI PRÆSIDIA REGNI SUNT,
+                              VERUM AMICI
+
+
+
+
+    _The Author would make acknowledgments to Sir Max Waechter and
+    to Sir Francis Trippel for the generous help given to this book
+    and to its purpose. While the characters in it are entirely
+    fictitious, the scheme for the Federation of Europe is wholly
+    due to Sir Max Waechter's initiative. This scheme has obtained
+    favour at the Courts of the Continent and is warmly approved by
+    many in this country, who realise how inseparably the Peace
+    question is allied to that of the national finance._
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+                         Book I.--The Challenge
+
+    CHAPTER                                                     PAGE
+
+    1. GABRIELLE SILVESTER WRITES A LETTER                        11
+
+    2. A MAN OF DESTINY                                           20
+
+    3. BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH                                   30
+
+    4. THE BEGINNING OF THE ODYSSEY                               45
+
+    5. GENERAL D'ARNY AND HIS DAUGHTER                            67
+
+
+                         Book II.--The Players
+
+    1. A RACE FOR AN EMPEROR                                      81
+
+    2. LOUIS DE PALEOLOGUE                                        91
+
+    3. THE DAMNABLE MOUNTAINS                                    101
+
+    4. THE BURNING OF RANOVICA                                   114
+
+    5. A STRANGE VOYAGE                                          133
+
+    6. GOODWILL TOWARD MEN                                       156
+
+
+                          Book III.--Aftermath
+
+    1. THE MEMORABLE WINTER                                      173
+
+    2. OF LOVE BUT NOT OF MARRIAGE                               193
+
+    3. AFTER TEN DAYS                                            203
+
+    4. CINDERELLA                                                219
+
+    5. THE MAN OF THE MOMENT                                     234
+
+
+                     Book IV.--Merely Men and Women
+
+    1. AFTER THE DEBACLE                                         247
+
+    2. THE SHADOW IS LIFTED                                      263
+
+    3. THE MARIGOLDS TO THE SUN                                  272
+
+    4. SURRENDER AND AFTERWARDS                                  284
+
+    5. TWO SHIPS UPON THE SEA                                    306
+
+
+
+
+                                 BOOK I
+
+                             THE CHALLENGE
+
+
+
+
+                            SWORDS RELUCTANT
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+                  GABRIELLE SILVESTER WRITES A LETTER
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Gabrielle returned from the Town Hall where the meeting was held, just
+after ten o'clock, and was glad to see the fire burning brightly in her
+room. She remembered that she would never have thought of such a luxury
+as a fire in her bedroom prior to her visit to New York.
+
+All agreed that it had been a very successful meeting, and that real,
+convincing work had been done. She herself could say, in the privacy of
+her own room, that the excitements of such gatherings had become a
+necessity to her since the strenuous days in America, and perhaps to her
+father also.
+
+How changed her life since she first set foot on the deck of the
+_Oceanic_ and began to know a wider world! England had seemed but a
+garden upon her return and its people but half awake. She had a vivid
+memory of the rush and roar of distant cities, of strange faces and new
+races, but chiefly of a discovery of self which at once frightened and
+perplexed her.
+
+Would it be possible to accept without complaint the even tenor of that
+obscure life in Hampstead which she had suffered willingly but seven
+months ago? She knew that it would not, and could answer for her father
+also. A call had come to him and to her. She had been sure of it at the
+meeting, but of its nature she had yet to be wholly convinced.
+
+Gordon Silvester, the most eloquent preacher among the
+Congregationalists, had gone to America at the bidding of a famous
+millionaire, there to bear witness to the brotherhood of man and the
+bond between the peoples. The achievement of the great treaty between
+America and the Motherland had drawn together the leading intellects of
+the two countries, and had culminated in that mighty assemblage in New
+York which had stood before the altar of the Eternal Peace and closed,
+as it believed for ever, the Temple of the twin-headed Janus. With the
+minister had gone Gabrielle, his only child, and thus for the first time
+during her three and twenty years had she seen any world but that of the
+suburban parish in which Gordon Silvester laboured.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+It was a bitter cold night of the memorable winter with which this story
+is chiefly concerned.
+
+Gabrielle wore furs, which had been purchased in Quebec, and a hat which
+some upon the steamer had thought a little _outré_ for a parson's
+daughter. These furs she had just laid upon her bed, and was busy
+unpinning her hat when her father knocked at the door and asked if he
+might come in. She thought that he was more excited than he was wont to
+be in the old days, and there were blotches of crimson upon his usually
+sallow cheeks.
+
+"I am just going to bed," he said in a quiet tone; "if you want anything
+to eat, let Jane know. The room was very hot, I think--my head is
+aching."
+
+She turned with her hand still among the curls of her auburn hair, a
+wonderfully graceful figure for such a scene.
+
+"You must be very tired, dear," she said very gently. "I have never
+heard anything more beautiful than your speech."
+
+He took a step into the room, his hand upon the door.
+
+"Then you think it was a success, Gabrielle?"
+
+"I don't think at all about it; it was what Mr. Faber would have called
+'electrical.'"
+
+He let go the door, and then shut it behind him.
+
+"Ah!" he said, as though thinking upon it, "if we could have had Faber
+with us."
+
+She laughed, showing the superb whiteness of her teeth.
+
+"The lion and the lamb. Why do you attach any importance to him?"
+
+He crossed the room to an arm-chair and sat there, poking the fire.
+
+"He is one of the men who can make peace or war," he said. "Sir Jules
+Achon agrees with me. Popular sentiment goes for much, but the men who
+control the destinies are the financiers."
+
+"But, father, how could Mr. Faber control this particular situation?"
+
+"He could set a great example of forbearance. Is he not rich enough?"
+
+She came and sat by him near the fire. It was yet early in the most
+memorable winter that England has ever known, but the cold had become
+intense.
+
+"I saw so little of Mr. Faber on the ship," she said reflectively; "he
+appeared to me to be a man who could move mountains ... with somebody
+else's arms, to say nothing of somebody's else's spades."
+
+"Was that your only impression of him?"
+
+"Oh! force--hardly of character, perhaps--that and his restlessness. Why
+did everyone talk of him? Was it because he is worth eleven millions of
+money? Was that all that could be said of him?"
+
+"A very good reason nowadays. They say he has a contract with the French
+Government for five millions of the new rifles. Permissible exaggeration
+makes him the arbiter of peace or war. Did he not give you that
+impression?"
+
+"I hardly think so; he was mostly concerned about his boarhound's
+dinner. As far as I remember, he considers our party just harmless
+lunatics. I made him confess as much one day."
+
+Silvester passed by the admission.
+
+"He goes on a fearful journey," he said, falling unconsciously to the
+pulpit manner. "Of course such men know a great deal. He believes that
+there will be war in Europe in six months' time, and that our country
+will be concerned. Did he not tell you that?"
+
+"I think not, father. He was too busy asking me to arrange the roses in
+his cabin."
+
+"Ah! I remember them, pink roses everywhere in early December. What a
+feminine display!"
+
+"But not a feminine subject. I have never met a man whose character
+impressed me so clearly. He has only begun in the world--those were his
+own words."
+
+"Well, then, why should he not begin with us? Sir Jules believes that
+nothing would make a greater stir than his joining our Committee."
+
+"Then why don't you ask him yourself? He's in London until the end of
+the week."
+
+Silvester did not speak for some minutes. He seemed to have become a
+little shy of this outspoken wide-eyed daughter of his, who evaded the
+issue so cleverly.
+
+"I wish you'd write, Gabrielle."
+
+"To Mr. Faber?"
+
+"Yes; you seemed very good friends on the ship. I believe he'd join if
+you asked him."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I don't believe it would make any difference who asked him. I'll write,
+if you wish it."
+
+"Yes," he said, rising abruptly, "write now before you go to bed. You're
+sure you are not hungry?"
+
+Gabrielle laughed lightly.
+
+"I have left all my vices in America," she rejoined, "being hungry in
+the witching hours is one of them."
+
+
+                                III
+
+Her boudoir overlooked the great well wherein London lies. Though the
+moon was in the first quarter, the night was wonderful in stars, and the
+air quivered with the virility of frost. She could see St. Paul's and
+the City spires; the Carlton Hotel lay more to the west, and was hidden
+behind the slopes of Haverstock Hill. There was no snow, for this frost
+was black as iron.
+
+Just below, were the winding walks to which the pilgrims came in search
+of Keats. She had read the sonnets and tried to understand them, but
+candour compelled her to say that she preferred Tennyson. Sometimes she
+thought her whole interest in literature to be an affectation; but
+undoubtedly she was addicted to erotic poetry and the fire of Swinburne
+would burn in her veins. All this, too, was hidden from her father, who
+occupied himself but little with her affairs, and believed that her
+interests were entirely his own.
+
+Girls of twenty-three are usually fervent letter-writers and Gabrielle
+was no exception. She had furnished folios of gossip that very day for
+her friend, Eva Achon, who had been her intimate upon the ship. But when
+it came to writing "John Sebastian Faber, Esq.," her pen trembled upon
+the paper. How impossible it seemed to say anything to which such a man
+would listen. She depicted him as she had last seen him upon the deck of
+the _Oceanic_, stretched on a sofa-chair, and smiling at her philosophy.
+"Letters answered themselves," he had said. He got through life on
+cables and confidence. There was not a private letter in fifty which
+said anything worth saying. He had proposed a league for the suppression
+of private correspondence, and begged her to be one of the
+vice-presidents. She remembered her own disappointment that he had not
+asked her to write to him.
+
+So it was no easy thing at all to begin, chiefly because she feared his
+irony and was quite sure that her letter would achieve nothing.
+Half-a-dozen sheets of good "cream laid" note were destroyed before she
+could get her craft launched and she was still in harbour so to speak
+when she heard her name cried out in the street below, and opening the
+window immediately, discerned Harry Lassett with skates upon his arm.
+
+"Is that you, Gabrielle?"
+
+The cold was intense and filled the room with icy vapour. She shivered
+where she stood, and drew her dressing-gown close about her white
+throat.
+
+"Whatever are you doing, Harry? It's nearly eleven o'clock."
+
+"I know that. We've been skating on the Vale. There'll be grand ice
+to-morrow. Won't you come? You must!"
+
+"I haven't got any skates!"
+
+"Oh, send into town for some. I'll go myself if you'll throw me out an
+old boot. You don't mean to say you're going to miss it?"
+
+She shook her head and tried to shield herself behind the heavy
+curtains.
+
+"I fear I'll have to go visiting to-morrow."
+
+"What, those American dollars again! No! They're spoiling you; I thought
+you had done with that nonsense."
+
+"I did not say they were American. I am going to Richmond to see Eva
+Achon."
+
+"Oh, hang Eva Achon. We shall have bandy, if it holds. Throw me out that
+boot, and I'll go away. Your people go to bed in the middle of the day,
+don't they? It's all locked up like a prison down here."
+
+"I am not in bed, Harry. I am writing a letter."
+
+"American, of course?"
+
+"Of course," and she laughed at him. Then the boot was found, and tossed
+out.
+
+"How's that?" he asked--a man who had played for Middlesex and the
+'Varsities could not have asked any other question.
+
+"Let me know just how much they are, and I will send it round in the
+afternoon. Father promised me a pair to-night. I'm glad you can get them
+for me."
+
+"Right oh! We shall skate on the Vale directly I return. Dr. Houghton of
+Grindelwald wants me to have a pair of his blades. You'd better have the
+same. They're grand!"
+
+"Anything you like, my dear Harry, if they'll keep me warm. I shall be a
+pillar of ice if I stand here."
+
+"Like Lot's wife! Was it ice, by the way? Well, good-night, then; or
+shall I post the letter?"
+
+"That's splendid of you. I'll just finish it. But I'll have to shut the
+window."
+
+"Imagine me a sentry doing the goose step. Will you be long?"
+
+"Just two minutes, really."
+
+He kissed his hand to her when she shut the window and began to stamp
+about to warm himself. They had been lovers since children, and were
+still free. Harry Lassett's three hundred a year "in the funds" just
+permitted him to play cricket for the county and to spend the best part
+of the winter at St. Moritz. He had not thought much about marriage.
+
+Gabrielle's two minutes "really" proved to be an exact prophecy. Haste
+bade her throw both preface and conclusion to the winds. She just wrote:
+
+    "DEAR MR. FABER,
+
+    "My father would be very pleased if you would become one of the
+    Vice-Presidents of the International Arbitration League. Will
+    you let me say 'yes' for you?"
+
+And that was the letter Harry carried to the post for her.
+
+Vanity promised her an answer. It would come over the telegraph wires,
+she thought.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+                            A MAN OF DESTINY
+
+
+John Sebastian Faber had a suite of five rooms at the Savoy Hotel, and,
+as he said, he lived in four of them most of the time. The room which he
+did not occupy was devoted to three secretaries.
+
+Gabrielle found him at his desk in an apartment which should have been a
+drawing-room. The windows looked out upon the Shot Tower and showed him
+the majesty of Westminster. There was a litter of American journals upon
+a round table at his back and copies of the English _Times_, much
+mutilated by cutting. He wore a black morning coat, and would have been
+called well-dressed by an American tailor.
+
+His was the "clean-limbed" type of man who is such an excellent product
+of the sister nation--moderately tall, suggesting virility and immense
+nervous energy. Someone upon the ship said that he "snatched at life,"
+and that was no untrue description of him. But he had also picked up a
+little sum of eleven millions sterling by the process, and that kind of
+snatching bears imitation.
+
+A footman brought Gabrielle to the room, and Faber sprang up
+immediately, brushing back curly brown hair from his forehead. It was
+evident that he expected a somewhat protracted interview, for he wheeled
+a low chair near to his own before he held out his hand to her.
+
+"Why, now, I'm glad to see you. Sit down right here and let us talk. A
+long way in from Hampstead, isn't it? Too hot, perhaps; well, then,
+we'll have the steam turned off."
+
+"Oh, please!" she said, casting loose her grey furs--he had already
+regarded her from a man's first aspect and approved the picture--"I have
+been walking down the Strand and the air is so cold. It's delicious in
+here--and what roses!"
+
+"Ah! that's where I blush. I always have roses wherever I go; didn't
+your lady from Banbury Cross do the same thing with the music? Well, I
+get as far off that as I can--most music. Wagner's good if you're up
+against a man. You never hear him crying 'Enuf.' Well, now, that's
+right. So you want me for the I.A.L.--or, rather, your father does. Why
+didn't he ask me on the ship?"
+
+He swung back in his chair and looked her over from head to foot. She
+had always been a little afraid of the sensitive eyes, and they did not
+fail to magnetise her as heretofore. It was possible, however, to be
+very frank with such a man; she spoke with good assurance when she said:
+
+"Oh! I suppose he didn't think of it."
+
+"You mean that he didn't know enough about me? Why, that's fair. I dare
+say he heard my name for the first time that night I ran the charity
+concert for him. Guns and the gospel don't go well together, my dear
+lady, not in civilized parts. Your father won't want rifles until he
+goes to China to turn the great god Bud inside out. I'll let him have a
+consignment cheap when he's starting."
+
+She thought it a little brutal, hardly the thing he should have said;
+but his good humour was invincible, and she forgave him immediately.
+
+"The fact is," he ran on, "your father is a good man, Miss Silvester,
+and I'm a merchant. Where we come together is in admiring a certain
+fellow passenger who ran the ship and will run other ships. There we're
+on common ground. Now say what you like to me and I'll hear it, for I've
+just twenty minutes at your disposal, and you may count every one of
+them. To begin with the I.A.L.--does your father remember that I'm a
+gunmaker?"
+
+She was vastly puzzled.
+
+"I think he knows it in a vague way. The captain of the _Oceanic_ said
+you were building the new American navy--is that quite true?"
+
+"It would be in a prospectus. My house builds one of the new cruisers,
+and some of the destroyers. Guns are the bigger line. I've come to
+Europe to sell guns. Did they tell you that also?"
+
+"Yes, I think everyone knows it."
+
+"Then why come to me? Would you go to the keeper of a saloon and ask him
+to help you to put down the drink? He'd tell you that drink made George
+Washington, just as I tell you that guns made your Lord Nelson. Would
+the Admiral have joined your I.A.L.?"
+
+"Oh," she said, with womanly obstinacy, "then you still think there is
+no alternative but war?"
+
+He laughed and began to make holes with his pencil in the blotting pad
+before him.
+
+"It's just as though you asked me if there were no alternative but human
+nature. Why isn't the world good right through? Why do murder and other
+crimes still exist on the face of the earth? Would a league suppress
+them--a decision at Washington that there should be no more sin? I guess
+not. If a man knocks me down before lunch, I may go to law with him; if
+it's after and there's been any wine, I'll possibly do my own justice
+and do it quick. War is as old as human nature, and if we are to believe
+that a God rules the world, we've got to believe also that man was meant
+to go to war. Shall I tell you that some of the noblest things done on
+this earth were done on the battlefield? You wouldn't believe me. Your
+father thinks George Washington a son of the devil, and Nelson a man of
+blood. I've heard that sort of thing from the platform, and it's turned
+me sick. Your I.A.L. is a league for the manufacture of lath-backed men.
+Do you think the world will be any better when every man turns the other
+cheek and honour has gone into the pot? If you do, well, I'm on the
+other side all the time. War may go, but it has got to change human
+nature first. Tell your father that, and ask him to think about it. I
+wonder what text he'd take if a troop of cavalry camped in his
+drawing-room to-night. Would the I.A.L. do much for him? Why, I think
+not."
+
+She smiled at his wild images, and thought that she would demolish them
+simply.
+
+"You speak in fables," she said, "it's like the nonsense in the panicky
+stories. There is no one in England nowadays who seriously believes in
+that kind of war. I do not think you can do so yourself. Now, really,
+did you ever see a battlefield in your life, Mr. Faber?"
+
+He looked at her with eyes half shut.
+
+"I was in Port Arthur the night the ships were struck. I saw the big
+fighting at Liaoyang. Go back farther and I'll tell you stories of
+Venezuela and the Philippines, which should be written down in red. I'm
+a child of war--my father died at a barricade in Paris three days before
+the Commune fell. A diamond of a man saved my mother and took her out to
+America, where I was born. There's war in the very marrow of my bones--I
+live for it as other men for women and children. Should you ask such a
+man to join such a League? I'll put it squarely to you. Now tell me the
+truth."
+
+The intensity of the appeal startled her. The method of her life in the
+parsonage at Hampstead would have prompted a platitude of the platforms,
+some retort about the progress of humanity, and the need for social
+advance. But it seemed impossible to say such things to John Faber. Her
+courage ran down as ice before a fire; she was wholly embarrassed and
+without resource.
+
+"Come," he repeated, "you owe me the admission. Should the request have
+been made to me?"
+
+"No, indeed--and yet I will not say that anyone would be dishonoured by
+it."
+
+"Did I suggest the contrary?"
+
+"I think your idols false."
+
+"They are the idols of human nature--not mine."
+
+"We could say the same of the primitive savages. Why should we have
+advanced beyond the battle-axe and the club?"
+
+"Not the political clubs--see here, is there any real advance when the
+knife goes deep enough? Suppose a thousand English women were butchered
+in China--or I'll make it Turkey--would your father be for the I.A.L.?
+If he were, the people would burn his pulpit!"
+
+"It only means that we must educate."
+
+"We're doing it all the time. Does education make your burglar sing
+psalms, or does it teach him to use oxygen for burning open the safe? I
+think nothing of education--that way. Who are the best educated people
+in Europe? The Germans. Are they coming in to the I.A.L.?"
+
+"My father hopes that much may be done by the understanding between the
+ministers----"
+
+He laughed rudely, brutally.
+
+"All the sheep baaing together, and the wolf sharpening his teeth on the
+national grindstone. I've no patience to hear it."
+
+"Then I certainly will not repeat it."
+
+A flush of anger coloured her cheeks, and her heart began to beat fast.
+She was conscious of a rôle which fitted her but ill, and was no
+reflection of herself. How much sooner would she have been downstairs
+among the well-dressed women who were beginning to flock into the
+restaurant for lunch! This man's brutal logic threatened to shatter her
+professed ideals, and to leave her vanity defenceless. She remembered at
+the same time what the meaning of the triumph would be if she won him.
+All the country would talk of that!
+
+"You are not offended with me?" he said in a gentler tone. "I'm sure you
+won't be when you get back home and think of it."
+
+"I shall try to think of it as little as possible."
+
+"As your countrymen are doing. If there was more than half-an-ounce of
+the radium of common sense in this kingdom at the present moment, some
+people would be thinking very hard, Miss Silvester----"
+
+"Of what?"
+
+He rose from his chair, thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets,
+went over to the window and stood looking out.
+
+"They would be thinking of the frost," he said.
+
+"Perhaps it is too cold to think about it!"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Well said and true. Did you read in the _Times_ that there is ice in
+the English Channel for the first time for twenty years?"
+
+"I never read the _Times_----"
+
+"Then don't begin if you would remain a woman."
+
+"Is she, then, unworthy of it?"
+
+"Not at all--it is unworthy of her. It tells the truth!"
+
+"Oh, I grant that that is embarrassing sometimes. We were speaking of
+the frost."
+
+"And the fables. The fable, written by a great German, is about to
+freeze the English Channel and the North Sea! Ice from the Humber to
+Kiel! Portsmouth frozen up. An ice carnival at the Thames' mouth. Do you
+believe in fables?"
+
+She stared at him amazed.
+
+"What would happen if this one were true?"
+
+"Oh," he said, "you had better ask the I.A.L."
+
+She was silent a little while, then she said:
+
+"Your bogies are wonderful. Are there many in your life?"
+
+"More than I count."
+
+"They are lucky then?"
+
+"Yes, for one of them sends you to my rooms to-day."
+
+He had never spoken to her in this way before, and the tone of it found
+her amazed. Hitherto the man of affairs and the woman of the useful
+vanities had been speaking; but John Faber had changed all that in an
+instant. She felt his wide eyes focused upon her with a sudden glance
+which burned. He had taken a step toward her, and for a moment she
+feared that some mad impulse would drive him to forget the true
+circumstance of their meeting, and to suppose another. She felt her
+heart beat rapidly--a true instinct warned her to act upon the
+defensive.
+
+"I think we were talking of another kind of bogy," she said
+quickly--"women deserve a new chapter."
+
+He laughed a little hardly, and turned upon his heel.
+
+"The goose awoke and the Capitol is saved. Well, about this frost?"
+
+"Oh, I shall hope for a thaw."
+
+"That's what your I.A.L. is doing all the time. Tell them that John
+Faber wishes them well, and will sell them a hundred thousand rifles any
+time they are reconsidering the position. Perhaps I shall meet you when
+I return from Paris. We can put the contract through then."
+
+She shook her head, trying to hide the annoyance of the rebuff.
+
+"I don't suppose I shall ever see you again," she said.
+
+"I'll bet you a thousand dollars you do, either in Paris or Berlin."
+
+"Why should I go there?"
+
+"Because your little friend Claudine d'Arny will see that you do."
+
+"Oh, that was only an acquaintance on the ship. I had forgotten her."
+
+"My memory is better. I have been chewing her father's name for twenty
+years."
+
+"Do you know him, then?"
+
+It was his turn to laugh--with the silent anger of a man who remembers.
+
+"He gave the order for my father to be shot. I don't think I'll forget
+him."
+
+She hardly believed him to be serious. There he stood, smiling softly,
+one hand deep in his trousers pocket, the other toying with his roses.
+He had just told her what he would have told no other woman in England,
+and she thought him a jester.
+
+"Is this one of the fables?"
+
+"Certainly it is. I am going to Paris to write the moral."
+
+She watched his face curiously.
+
+"But, surely, if General d'Arny gave any such order, it was in his
+official capacity."
+
+"As I shall give mine--in an official capacity."
+
+"Then you have not forgiven him?"
+
+"It is for that very purpose I am going to Paris. That and one other."
+
+"To sell your guns--I read it in the papers."
+
+He smiled--in a kindly way this time.
+
+"I'll give you twenty guesses."
+
+"But I am hopeless at riddles."
+
+"Then I'll solve this one for you. I am going to Paris to give one
+million dollars to the man who took my mother to America--if I can find
+him."
+
+"I hope you will succeed--and I wish I knew the man."
+
+He liked this, for it was the first really girlish thing she had said.
+Perhaps even at that stage Faber read her wholly, and believed that it
+was good for her to see "common sense in curl papers," as he put it. He
+might even have led her to talk of her father and her home had not the
+inexorable secretary knocked upon the door at that very moment. The
+summons brought him to "attention," as the call of a sergeant to the new
+recruit.
+
+"Time is unkind to us," he said. "I must go down to Throgmorton Street
+to make a hundred thousand dollars. Well, we shall meet again in Paris
+or Berlin. A thousand dollars for your I.A.L. if we don't. Remember me
+to your father, please. Is he likely to accept that call to Yonkers, by
+the way?"
+
+"I don't know," she said quite simply; "he is so ignorant about American
+money."
+
+John Faber smiled at that. Gabrielle went down the Strand blushing
+furiously, and wondering why she had said anything at once so honest and
+so foolish.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+                        BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Clad in an alpaca coat, which had long since lost its lining, and in
+carpet slippers very much too large for him, Gordon Silvester awaited
+his daughter's return to the house in Well Walk. The luncheon bell had
+rung a second time, and God alone knew what was in the mind of Agatha,
+the cook. Silvester feared this woman greatly, especially in those
+frequently recurring seasons when her madness ran to taking the pledge.
+
+It was a quarter past two when Gabrielle returned, and they should have
+lunched at half-past one. The minister's anxiety was above all meats,
+and in his curiosity to know what had happened he forgot the sainted
+martyr below stairs.
+
+"Well, is he willing, my dear?"
+
+Gabrielle drew a chair to the table; she carried a couple of letters in
+her hand, and glanced at their envelopes while she spoke.
+
+"Oh, my dear father, it was quite hopeless."
+
+Silvester sighed, and took up his knife and fork. It was a terrible
+descent from the millennium to mutton; but, after all, he ate but to
+live.
+
+"I feared it would be so. Well, we have done our best, and that is
+something. Did he give you any reasons?"
+
+"One tremendous reason--he calls it human nature."
+
+Silvester helped her to a fair cut and himself to two. He was already
+eating when he took up the subject again.
+
+"This movement will be stronger than his argument," he said. "What
+people call human nature is often little more than the animal instinct.
+I can conceive no nobler mission for any man. We cannot expect this
+particular class of man to see eye to eye with us."
+
+"There was never any chance of it, father. He believes that war is the
+will of God, and he does not hesitate to say so."
+
+"Would he have us to believe that typhoid fever is the will of God--or
+smallpox? We are stamping those out. Why not the greater plague?"
+
+Gabrielle sighed.
+
+"I wish you had been there to argue with him, father. A girl is at such
+a disadvantage."
+
+"Naturally, with such a man. I don't suppose John Faber ever knew one
+really human weakness since he was a child. Did he say anything about
+me, by the way?"
+
+"He mentioned you several times. I told him about the call to Yonkers."
+
+The minister's eyes sparkled.
+
+"That is a subject I would gladly take his advice upon. What did he say
+about it?"
+
+"Very little, I think."
+
+"Was it favourable to my going?"
+
+"I don't think he expressed an opinion either way."
+
+"It would have been a great help to me had he done so. Sometimes I feel
+that I have a great work to do in America. This Peace Movement is the
+finest thing in the story of the whole world. Christ Himself has taught
+us no more beautiful idea--His own, as we must admit. There is a true
+sentiment in America; but a pretence of it here, I fear."
+
+"Are you quite sure of that, father?"
+
+"Of what, my dear?"
+
+"Of the true sentiment in America. Mr. Faber said on the ship that he
+hoped to sell five hundred thousand rifles for Mexico before the trouble
+was over. Is that a true sentiment?"
+
+"I believe it very foreign to the real wishes of the American people."
+
+"He doesn't; neither do the Germans. They say all this talk of
+arbitration is so much humbug to prevent us adding to our navy, and to
+allow President Taft to occupy Mexico."
+
+"That is in the yellow press, my dear; you should not listen to it."
+
+"Anyway, Sir Jules Achon thinks it true. May I read Eva's letter? I
+expect she reminds me of my promise to go there to-day."
+
+"You know that we have a meeting of the Girls' Friendly Committee
+to-night?"
+
+"Oh, father, can't they do without me for once? I don't often stay
+away."
+
+He helped himself to an apple tart, and made no reply. Gabrielle read
+her letter, and her cheeks flamed with excitement.
+
+"What do you think?" she said. "Sir Jules is going on his yacht to
+Corfu, and he wishes me to go with them."
+
+"To go upon his yacht!" The astonishment was very natural. "That is very
+kind of him."
+
+"Douglas Renshaw is going, and Dr. Burrall. Eva says they will call at
+Lisbon and Gibraltar, and perhaps at Genoa. What a splendid trip!"
+
+Her eyes were very bright with the vision, and her lips parted in
+excitement. Not only was this a respite from the monotonous days, but a
+respite which she would consider regal. She was going upon a pilgrimage
+into the old world as she had gone into the new. And with the promise
+there flashed upon her mind a memory of John Faber's wager. He would
+meet her in Paris or Berlin!
+
+"It is indeed a very remarkable opportunity," said her father presently.
+"Sir Jules Achon is a greater man than your American. He has more
+ballast, and quite as much money."
+
+"And he has not come to Europe to marry an English woman."
+
+The minister looked at her covertly. A secret thought which had sent her
+to the Savoy Hotel whispered an accusation in his ear, and found him
+guilty. He would have given much to know just what passed between
+Gabrielle and John Faber. Perhaps he saw also that his daughter had
+never looked so well. Undoubtedly she was a beautiful woman.
+
+"Yes," he said at last; "I don't think Sir Jules will marry. You must
+accept this invitation, Gabrielle."
+
+"But what am I to do for frocks?"
+
+"Can't you wear those you took to America?"
+
+"My dear father, they were mostly summer dresses."
+
+"Well, Corfu is a summer resort. I forget what the winter temperature
+is--something abnormal. Unfortunately, they have just opened a gambling
+saloon there. Wherever nature is most beautiful, there men turn their
+backs upon her."
+
+"Sir Jules is hardly likely to do that. He is going to Corfu to try to
+meet the German Emperor. You know he has a great idea--the Federation of
+Europe. He says that commerce is the only key to the peace of the
+world."
+
+"A faith rather in the Jews than the Divine gospels."
+
+"Oh! I think not--a faith in good common sense, father."
+
+Silvester shook his head.
+
+"He will not associate himself with us," he said, a little sadly. And
+then, "They tell me he is a very rich man."
+
+"Just the reason why I must have some frocks if I go to Corfu."
+
+
+                                   II
+
+She was not to leave for Richmond until the end of the week, and when
+lunch was over she was reminded of Harry Lassett's promise by the advent
+of that boisterous sportsman and his expressed determination to take her
+at once to the Vale of Health pond, where the ice was "top-notch." There
+Gabrielle found herself amid a knot of very suburban but friendly
+people, whose noisy cordiality forced her to remember that this rather
+than the other was her true sphere.
+
+Harry Lassett had been down to St. James's Street to get her skates, and
+they fitted her to perfection. The scene was inspiriting and full of
+colour. All about them lay the whitened heath; London beneath a veil of
+sunlit fog in the hollow. So keen was the splendid air that every nerve
+reverberated at its breath. Such frost had not been known in England
+since oxen were roasted whole upon the Thames in the early days of the
+nineteenth century.
+
+She was a good skater, and had often accompanied Eva Achon to Princes
+during the previous season. Harry Lassett waltzed divinely, and while
+waltzing upon boards was anathema to Gordon Silvester, waltzing upon the
+ice seemed to him a harmless diversion. He even came down to the brink
+of the pond and watched the merry throng at play; but that was before
+dusk fell and the great bonfire was lighted, and those who had merely
+clasped hands discovered that a more binding link was necessary.
+Silvester saw nothing of the outrageous flirtations. He would have been
+sadly distressed had he known that Gabrielle herself was among the
+number of the sinners. She was, in fact, one of the ringleaders.
+
+Why should she not have been? What pages of her life written in the dark
+room of a shabby parsonage forbade that freshet of a young girl's
+spirit, here gushing from the wells of convention which so long had
+preserved it? Silvester, all said and done, was just a successful
+Congregational minister. His sincerity and natural gifts of eloquence
+had pushed him into the first rank of well-advertised special pleaders.
+By this cause and that, the doors had been opened to him; and with him
+went Gabrielle to the ethical fray. If her heart remained with those
+whom the world would have called "her equals," she was but obeying the
+fundamental laws of human nature. Millionaires and their palaces; my
+lord this and my lord that, thrust into the chair of a cause for which
+they did not care a snap of the fingers--what had Silvester's house in
+common with them? Reason answered nothing; he himself would never have
+put the question.
+
+So here was Gabrielle like a child let out of school. The long afternoon
+found her pirouetting with Harry Lassett, or with other disorderly young
+men of a like nature; the swift night discovered her in a sentimental
+mood, with all thought of multi-millionaires gone away to the twinkling
+stars. A brass band had begun to play by that time, and a man was
+selling baked chestnuts. A pretty contrast that to the Savoy Hotel.
+
+Their talk had been chiefly ejaculatory during the afternoon, but the
+twilight found them mellowing. Harry still harped upon America, and with
+some disdain; and now, at length, his contempt found expression.
+
+"Did you see that American chap all right?" he asked her in an interval
+of the riot.
+
+She admitted the guilt of it.
+
+"Do you mean Mr. Faber?"
+
+"The fellow you met on the ship--Apollo and the liar; the man who talked
+about eleven millions sterling."
+
+"Yes, I saw him. How did you know I was going?"
+
+"Oh! I was in the Savoy myself this morning. I'm thinking of buying the
+place."
+
+"Then you propose to settle down?"
+
+"Or settle up. What did you want from the Stars and Stripes this
+morning, Gabrielle?"
+
+"An impertinent question. Why should I tell you? Why do you want to
+know?"
+
+"Because I have the right to know."
+
+"The right, Harry--the right!"
+
+They were over at the eastern corner of the pond, shadows sheltering
+them. Harry Lassett's "six foot one" towered above her five feet five,
+and made a woman of her. He had the round, "apple" face of a boy of
+twenty-four, vast shoulders, limbs of iron. His eyes were clear and
+lustrous, and his hair jet black. There was every quality which makes a
+quick, physical appeal to the other sex, and now, perhaps not for the
+first time, Gabrielle became acutely conscious of it. This was something
+totally apart from schemes for the world's good; something with which
+millionaires, were they British or American, had no concern whatever.
+Ten years of a boy and girl friendship culminated here. She tried to
+withdraw her fingers from Harry's grasp, but could not release herself;
+his breath was hot upon her forehead; she quivered at his touch, and
+then stood very still.
+
+"Why have I not got the right? Who has if I haven't?"
+
+"The right to what?"
+
+"To warn Apollo off. Gabrielle, I'm in love with you--you know it."
+
+She looked up; his eyes devoured her.
+
+"What is the good of our being in love?"
+
+"You don't mean to say you are thinking of the beastly money?"
+
+"Harry!"
+
+"Well, then, don't ask me. I've three hundred a year, and I'm going with
+Barlean in Throgmorton Street when the cricket season's over. That's a
+half-commission job, and my cricketing friends will rally round. If I
+tour Australia next year, they'll pay my expenses, and I'll make them
+pretty hot. We could be married when I come back, Gabrielle."
+
+She laughed, and half turned her head.
+
+"It's quite like a fairy story. And so mercenary! It's just like a
+business deal."
+
+"Well, your father will ask for a balance sheet, and there it is--totted
+up by 'Why not' and audited by 'Expectation.' Why don't you say
+something about it?"
+
+"Do you want me to say that you will always be my best friend?"
+
+"_Family Reading_--go on. Love and respect and esteem. I'm d----d if I
+stand it. This is what I think."
+
+He slipped his arms about her, and kissed her hotly upon the lips. She
+had never been kissed by a man before, and the swift assault found her
+without argument. She was conscious in a vague way that prudence should
+have made an end of all this upon the spot. Yet there was a physical
+magnetism before which she was powerless; an instantaneous revelation of
+life in its fuller meaning, of a sentiment which had nothing to do with
+prudence.
+
+"Harry!" she cried, and that was all.
+
+"Gabrielle, you love me--I feel that you do when you are near me."
+
+"How foolish it all is--how mad!"
+
+"I won't have that rot. Why, you are part of my life, Gabrielle."
+
+"Of course, we are very old friends----"
+
+"If you say any word like that I will take you out into the very centre
+of the pond and kiss you there. Come along and skate now. I feel quite
+mad."
+
+He caught her in his arms, and they went whirling away. The red-nosed
+man with the cornet played the "Merry Widow" until his whole body
+swelled; there were harsh tones of cockneyism, silver laughter of boys
+and girls, the whirr of good skates cutting the ice. And above all a
+clear, starless heaven, such as London had not known for many a year.
+
+"How long will you be away with these Achon people, Gabrielle?"
+
+"I don't know; we are going to Corfu to see the German Emperor."
+
+"Don't bring him back with you. He'd never get on with fools. Isn't it
+all rather out of the picture?"
+
+"What do you mean by that, Harry?"
+
+"Well, your trotting about with millionaires, hanging on to the skirts
+of other people's ambitions. It can't last. Some day soon, these doors
+will be shut. There'll be nobody at home when you call."
+
+"That would not trouble me. I go because my father wishes it; and, of
+course, I like Eva."
+
+"She's rather a jolly girl, isn't she? They're a different class to that
+Faber man. He's just an adventurer."
+
+"Who has managed to make himself necessary to two continents. I wish you
+knew him. You'd be the first to bow down."
+
+"To eleven millions! I might if he handed over one of them. That must be
+the fly in his ointment. I don't suppose he has a friend in the world
+who doesn't want to get something out of him."
+
+"Do you include me in that category?"
+
+"Well, you wanted his name. I knew he'd laugh at all that peace rot.
+It's the greatest humbug of the twentieth century, and I admire the
+German Emperor for his courage. He and Kitchener are the two greatest
+men in the world to-day. Now, don't you think so?"
+
+"I don't think anything of the kind. If there is any one conviction in
+my life that is sincere it is this. You know it, Harry."
+
+She was very earnest, and he would not wound her. Gabrielle Silvester
+could dream dreams, and some of them would put great intellects to
+shame. Harry knew this and admired her in the mood; he altered his own
+course at once.
+
+"Of course I know it. But tell me, what did Faber say?"
+
+"Oh, very little--he spoke about the frost."
+
+"Wants to skate with you, eh?"
+
+"I think not. He is full of bogies. The English Channel and the North
+Sea are to be frozen over."
+
+"Great idea that. We shall skate all the way to Paris! Dine at the Ritz
+and curl afterwards. What a man!"
+
+"No, really--what he fears is a panic in England if the sea should
+really freeze."
+
+Harry thought about it for some minutes in silence. Presently he said:
+
+"I don't believe it could happen. He was chaffing you."
+
+"I think he was."
+
+"But if it did happen--by gad! what a funk some people would be in!"
+
+"The valiant people--who believe in war in the abstract."
+
+"Now you're ironical, Gabrielle."
+
+"No," she said; "I'm only hungry."
+
+
+                                  III
+
+It was very dark in Well Walk when they arrived before her father's
+house.
+
+Harry had fallen to a sentimental mood, and would talk about their
+future just as though it had all been settled in the beginning of
+things, and was as unalterable as the course of the planets. She began
+to think that his love for her was very real, and not a mere ebullition
+of a boyish sentiment. Long years of her childhood seemed to be lived
+again as he put his arm about her and told her of his happiness.
+
+"You knew it all the time, Gabrielle. You never had any doubt about it.
+Of course, I loved you. Tell me so yourself. Let me see it in your
+eyes."
+
+She laughed, and told him, as the situation seemed to require, not to be
+foolish.
+
+"Father will be waiting for me. What shall I say to him?"
+
+"That I am going to marry you directly I return from the Australian
+tour."
+
+"Why frighten him prematurely? There are thousands of pretty girls in
+Australia."
+
+"That's beastly of you. Deny it, or I will kiss you again."
+
+"Oh, Harry, my cheeks will be so red."
+
+"Say it's the frost. I must kiss you, Gabrielle. There--little cat! Why
+do you wrestle with me?"
+
+"Because I feel that we are just two children playing."
+
+"But you'll never play with any other child--swear that to me,
+Gabrielle."
+
+"My dear Harry, that would be the most childish thing of all. Now, you
+must say good-night, I hear my father."
+
+He held her for an instant in his arms, and she trembled. When at length
+he strode off in his masterful and imperious way, her father stood in
+the porch and called her. He had seen nothing of this curiously
+"worldly" scene, and was full of a letter he had just received from the
+Archbishop of Canterbury. This invited him to a Conference at the
+Mansion House, and he pointed out with satisfaction that it had been
+written at the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth.
+
+"This movement may not bring all the nations in, or make them dwell
+together in harmony and peace," he said, "but it will certainly bring
+peace to the churches. Of course, they will ask me to speak, Gabrielle."
+
+"When is it for, father?" she asked him.
+
+"In ten days' time--at the Mansion House."
+
+"You will have to get a typewriter; I shall be at Richmond."
+
+"I think it is better. I should not like Sir Jules or Mr. Faber to know
+that you do such work, Gabrielle."
+
+"Oh," she said with a light laugh, "I don't think they would be shocked,
+father. They are both self-made men."
+
+"Yes, but self-made men rarely like self-made women. It's the way of the
+world. If we go to America----"
+
+"But you do not intend to accept the call from Yonkers, father?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"A man might do a great work over there. My imagination is sorely
+tempted. I am altogether at a loss."
+
+She was too tired to take up the ancient arguments which this threadbare
+question had provoked. Later on, in her own bedroom, she sat before a
+brisk fire, and tried to take stock of the varied events of that busy
+day.
+
+Vaguely out of the mists there emerged the truth, that two men had made
+love to her, and that one was a man who might presently rule the Western
+world. She could look down a vista of fable land to a future surpassing
+all expectations of her dreams, and believe that at a word she might
+enter in. The obverse of the medal was Harry Lassett and the story of
+her youth. This lad had crept into the secret places of her heart. She
+still trembled at a memory of his kisses. With him, life would be
+meticulous--a villa and a trim maidservant. His scheme of things could
+embrace no great idea; and yet he, too, was a popular hero, and great
+throngs would go to Lords to see him play. Gabrielle knew that she loved
+him; but she doubted if her love would prove as strong as the dreams.
+
+It was midnight when she undressed.
+
+The weather had turned much warmer. She opened her window to discover
+that it was snowing, and that the snow melted as it fell.
+
+The fables were already discredited. It seemed almost an omen.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+                      THE BEGINNING OF THE ODYSSEY
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Bertie Morris was a very fair type of the American journalist, whose
+body goes to Paris while he lives, whatever may happen to his soul at a
+later period.
+
+Thirty-one years of age, he knew the world backwards; was as much at
+home in Port Said as in Philadelphia; wrote as though kings were his
+boon companions and had settled the hash of more than one intrepid lady
+with polyandric tendencies. The product is purely twentieth century, and
+frequently has flaxen hair. Bertie was becoming bald in the services of
+the _New York Mitre_. He was blessed with a proprietor who would have
+drawn blood out of a stone and then complained of its quality.
+
+When John Faber left London, he went straight through to Paris, and
+there chose Bertie Morris for his guide. This young man had specialised
+in the Franco-German war, and knew the whole story of the Paris Commune
+intimately. Fired by the splendid opportunity of hob-nobbing with one of
+the richest men in the world (and of eating his dinners), Bertie set out
+gaily upon his fortunate pilgrimage. He had hired an old soldier, by
+name Picard, who had served under General d'Arny when that worthy shot
+down the revolutionaries as though they had been French partridges; and
+with this fellow for a guide, he and John Faber set off for Belleville
+and Vincennes.
+
+Bertie's vocabulary, it should be said, was chiefly exclamatory when he
+was not translating. He was a fluent Frenchman, and had an uncommonly
+sound knowledge of his subject. Listening to him in more restrained
+moods, Faber lived again those bloody days which had cost his father his
+life, and indirectly had established his own fortune. All the ferocity,
+the savage brutality, the hopeless idealism of the Commune came to be
+understood by him. Here had the trade by which he lived prospered
+greatly. It had dyed those stones with blood some forty years ago.
+
+"Say, shall we begin with Belleville or the Bois?" Morris had asked him.
+He thought that it would be best to work round the city to his father's
+old house near the Jardin du Luxembourg. But first he had a question to
+put.
+
+"What I want to know is this," he asked: "How did it all begin? What set
+a handful of red republicans trying to fight a country? It's a big thing
+to have done, anyway. What put it into their heads?"
+
+Bertie Morris liked the subject, and entered upon it with true American
+zest.
+
+"Why," he said, "war was at the back of it. You've seen the same thing
+in Russia. Peace keeps the lid on the pot of revolution; war spills the
+stew. There were just two or three hundred thousand descendants of the
+old Jacobins in Paris, and when Napoleon III. was sent into Germany,
+they made up their minds to keep him there. Directly peace with Germany
+was signed, all the wild men came out. You had every kind of crank and
+others. There were big men and little, dreamers and red devils; they
+meant to govern Paris on the 'help yourself' plan, and they didn't begin
+so badly. But for Thiers and a few million sane folk behind him, I don't
+doubt they would have enjoyed themselves finely. As it was, what they
+divided were bayonets, and there were plenty to go round."
+
+He rattled on, appealing often to the old soldier Picard and proud of
+his staccato knowledge. Faber listened with interest but said very
+little. He was trying, while they drove through the narrow streets to
+Père la Chaise, to realise what this Paris had been when his father
+lived and worked in it during the fateful years before the war of 1870.
+The first John Faber also had been something of a republican; had
+dreamed dreams of the millennium and of the rights of the proletariat.
+And the French had dragged him out and shot him for his pains. He had
+died protesting that he was an American citizen.
+
+A big Mercédès car carried the pilgrims upon this journey, and its
+welcome in the black streets of Belleville was not blandly enthusiastic.
+Blue blouses at the doors of the wine shops spat upon the pavement and
+cursed the bourgeoisie; coarse women with skirts hanging about them like
+rags laughed brutalities and flung indecencies after them. There were
+pale-faced Apaches and white and callous children. It was inevitable
+that these should suggest their forbears of 1870, and even the old
+soldier remarked the fact:
+
+"They would burn Paris again to-morrow, messieurs--as I have seen it
+burned already. Ah! the terrible days!"
+
+He tried to give them a picture of the fateful week--the last of the
+month of May and of the Commune. The Communards had been driven into the
+eastern labyrinth of the city then, he said, and in the anger of defeat
+had sent their women forth to burn this Paris which could not defend
+them. Since Nero fiddled, no such spectacle had been seen in Europe. The
+old man told them the story with eyes uplifted and hands clenched. He
+had become as a child, and these were the scenes of his youth.
+
+"It was on the Tuesday night that they burned the palace of the
+Tuileries," he said. "The women went out with naphtha; I saw them
+running like devils through the streets and crying to one another to
+fire the houses. The day before that, the Hôtel de Ville flamed up. They
+say it was an accident, but--God knows. The 'Council of State,' the
+Bank, the Bourse, the Church of St. Eustache, all were burned those
+terrible days. There was one bank of the river a wall of fire on the
+Wednesday night; a man could have read his paper at Passy. It was as
+light as day, they told me, in the park at Versailles. All the streets
+were full of wild, screaming people; but if you went a little way toward
+the Bois you heard the cannon, you stumbled over the dead. What a
+butchery was that, messieurs! God help those who went out of their
+houses to see what the soldiers were doing! Ladmirault, Galifet, Vinot,
+Cissey--those were the names of the generals. They held their courts
+under the trees, in the cafés, at the street corners. It was sufficient
+to have worn a blouse, to be sorry for the dead, to express displeasure
+at what was being done--away went such a man or woman to the nearest
+wall. We are now coming to the Rue Lafayette. I was in this very street
+when my company seized the Communard, Varlin, and dragged him up to the
+Buttes Montmartre. They tied his hands behind his back and cut his face
+with their sabres while he walked. It was a horrible thing to see,
+messieurs! When he could no longer walk, they carried him until someone
+thought it time to kill him with the butt end of a musket. They say he
+was the cleverest member of the Commune--I do not know; I was only of
+the infantry of the line, and their politics did not concern me."
+
+Faber listened to all this with the interest of a man who is obsessed by
+one dominating idea. This Commune had been the first attempt in modern
+times to set up the socialism of Marx--and in what had it ended? In a
+deluge of blood, and the derision of all sane people. He wondered what
+would have been the modern story of Paris if Félix Pyat and his fellows
+had been stronger than Thiers and the Versaillese. A consummate
+knowledge of modern politics reminded him that the blue blouses of
+France were still socialistic to the core, and that individualism sat
+upon a throne of straw. He had often thought that such fortunes as his
+own would never be made by generations to come; but that concerned him
+little, for he had no children. The reflection brought an image of
+Gabrielle Silvester to his mind. It was odd that he should think of her
+while the old soldier related these bloody scenes.
+
+Bertie Morris, on the other hand, enjoyed himself immensely. He drove
+his tame millionaire as far up the Butte as he could, and even took him
+to the Rue Lepic and the Moulin de la Galette. He was a prize to be
+shown to artists and authors, poor devils who would dine that night for
+fifty sous and sell their masterpieces for as many to-morrow. This
+pilgrimage of the ateliers was not unwelcome to Faber, and was made at
+his own request.
+
+"I want to hear of a man," he said, "Louis de Paleologue is his name."
+
+"Where do you think he hides up?" Bertie asked.
+
+Faber said that he had no idea.
+
+"He was drawing for Gavarnie some forty years ago. I've never heard of
+him since, and I wasn't born then."
+
+"Say, that's simple. Has he any grandfathers alive?"
+
+"It's a fine story," was the quiet response. "I only learned it a year
+or two back, when I found some of my mother's papers. Louis de
+Paleologue was the man who took her over to America when General d'Arny
+shot my father. There was a pile of correspondence between them, and it
+does the man great credit. If I find him living I'll give him a million
+dollars, if he'll take them."
+
+Bertie Morris whistled.
+
+"You don't suggest a preliminary canter. Why not try it on the dog? He's
+willing."
+
+"Most dogs are. My world is all barking. You find Paleologue for me, and
+see what Father Christmas puts in your stocking. He's the only man in
+Europe I ever did want to see outside my own business. It's natural that
+I can't find him."
+
+"Can you tell me anything about him? Where did he live? What was he? For
+whom did he work? I'm right out for this, Mr. Faber."
+
+Faber smiled.
+
+"He was an artist who drew small pictures with a large genius. They say
+he worked for Hachette. The last letters speaks of his marriage--it must
+have been written many years ago. I cabled to Paris when it came into my
+hands, and the answer back from your office was that he had gone to the
+East. That means Paleologue was a Roumanian, and he's gone home. I
+suppose I shall have to follow him."
+
+"It would be a bully trip, anyway. Why not do the Balkans in a motor?
+There was a chap here last month who had just come back. They didn't
+shoot him this time."
+
+"Well, I guess they won't shoot me, either. I'm buying a yacht directly.
+Now, let's go and lunch. Your young Raphaels are rather greasy. I think
+I'd like to wash."
+
+
+                                   II
+
+They lunched near the Bourse, in a flaring café whither the jobbers
+resorted. There were a few conspicuous women of the company, loudly
+dressed and aggressive in the true spirit of their commercial patrons.
+These liked neither English nor Americans, and said so by face and
+gesture. The jobbers themselves looked a gloomy troop, though whether
+depressed by their hopes of gain or surety of loss it would have been
+difficult to say. Had they known that John Sebastian Faber sat cheek by
+jowl with them, it would have been another story. How many a time had
+he, from his distant office in New York, set that same market hoarse
+with excitement, filled the streets with bawling madmen, and put ropes
+of pearls about the necks of the cocottes who now made inelegant
+grimaces at him when the clients had their backs turned. He thought of
+it with some pleasure over a _sole meringue_. They would have been down
+upon him like a pack of wolves had they known him.
+
+Bertie Morris enjoyed his _déjeuner_ with the satisfaction of a man who
+knows he is not paying for it. He had a programme for the afternoon,
+which was to be capped by a dinner at the Ritz Hotel, also at Faber's
+expense. It never occurred to him that he was not putting his companion
+under a large obligation, and the whole tone of his talk was autocratic,
+as one who should say, "I open all doors."
+
+"We'll trot out to the Avenue de Nancy and see where the Versaillese
+came in," he put it cheerfully. "It was on a Sunday, Picard tells me,
+and the fraternity lot got a few shells for breakfast. They had just
+made up their minds that the millennium had come, when Vinot and
+Ladmirault turned up with the cannon. They had a good deal in common
+afterwards--chiefly explosive. I'll show you a house at Passy with a
+shell in the wall over the front door. The owner won't have it touched.
+It's right there, just where the Versaillese put it."
+
+"A kind of keepsake. Do they remember anything about all this in Paris
+nowadays?"
+
+"On the first of May, before they get drunk. I don't think it comes up
+at any other time. The century isn't interested overmuch in yesterday.
+It's all 'to-morrow' nowadays."
+
+"I don't know that I quarrel with that. Half the people would commit
+suicide if it wasn't for to-morrow. We're a sort of recurring decimal,
+but we don't believe it."
+
+"Say, then you don't believe overmuch in the 'destiny' department?"
+
+"I do not. A few things are going on all the time--very few. The
+civilization of Babylon was pretty much the civilization of Rome; while
+Rome wasn't so very different from ourselves. There's a little levelling
+of the classes; but there's no longer a goal, either in heaven or hell.
+That means a soulless people."
+
+"But it marches all the same."
+
+"Where science leads it. There's the only clear thinking. What's the
+good of talking when men don't know why they're here, or what they are?
+When they had heaven and hell, they thought clearly enough. Your new
+gospel leads them into a morass. It couldn't very well lead them
+anywhere else. The things that go on evolve as we ourselves have
+evolved. All the politicians, parliaments, philosophers don't help them
+a jot. They were saying the same thing on the top of monoliths before
+the flood. We are driven--but we don't know why or whither unless we
+believe, as all but the fools have believed, by Almighty God."
+
+Bertie Morris helped himself to an orange salad.
+
+"Say, why don't you write all this?"
+
+"Because I've something better to do. My business is to make guns and to
+sell 'em."
+
+The journalist pricked up his ears.
+
+"There was some talk of a big contract of yours going through here. Is
+that right?"
+
+"Ah! you'd pay something to know--and a good many more. Did they couple
+d'Arny to the talk?"
+
+"Well, it's chiefly up to him. He's a lot of backers up against him in
+the Chambers. Jaurés says he's corrupt."
+
+"He'd have to be in his job. We're all corrupt, for that matter. I
+believe that Walpole's right. I'd buy any man body and soul for a
+price."
+
+"And women too--I don't think."
+
+Faber laughed.
+
+"No money is too much for a good woman," he said.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+They followed the programme afterwards, driving right round the Bois and
+returning to the Jardin du Luxembourg.
+
+The day had fallen bitterly cold again, and a light snow whitened the
+trees in the famous avenues. Paris took a romantic mantle and covered
+her pretty shoulders daintily. Habitués fled to the cafés and ensconced
+themselves in warm corners; fur-clad women sank deep in the cushions of
+their motors; there were ridiculously dressed children scampering about
+the Bois and crying, "_Dieu, comme il fait froid_"--a fairy-like scene
+quite characteristic of a city which is rarely serious, and then
+tragically so. Through this Faber passed to his father's house. He had
+become silent and preoccupied--a man of few emotions, but of one which
+had never been absent from his life.
+
+His father! How often he had tried to create the living man from the
+insufficient pictures of that time!
+
+They had told him that John Faber was tall and Saxon haired--a cheery,
+business-like, unobtrusive fellow, very generous, far-seeing beyond his
+epoch. He had founded the house of Faber at Charleston, and had come
+over to Europe to learn Eastern methods. He was in Paris for the purpose
+of studying the new French artillery when the war broke out, and had
+lived for three months there, in the little house overlooking the
+gardens of the Luxembourg. Such was the man whom General d'Arny had shot
+in that very street, swearing he was of the Communards. A fever of anger
+fell suddenly upon the son as he remembered his mother's story. Good
+God, his own father! What years of affection they would have spent
+together but for that mad ferocity of the Commune! How the one would
+have helped the other! And the fortune--he would have poured it into his
+father's lap and waited for his words of pride. His father--shot there
+in that silent street--the man whom his mother had loved as woman rarely
+has loved in the human story.
+
+He left the car at the corner by the Catholic Institute and walked down
+the Rue d'Assas to its junction with the Rue de Fleurus. Naturally, the
+condition of things had altered very much, and there were many new
+buildings in the vicinity. He discovered certain landmarks, but others
+had vanished into the limbo of the municipal gods and trim modern
+"blocks" had taken their places. For all that, he believed that he could
+identify the actual house in which these things had happened, and when
+he had located it, he knocked upon the door, and was answered by a trim
+old woman, who seemed much put out at the occurrence. Bertie Morris was
+quite equal to such an occasion. "Give her five francs," he said. It was
+done immediately.
+
+"Who lives here now, madame?"
+
+"Monsieur Brocas, the advocate--for many years, he and his mother."
+
+"Is he at home?"
+
+"He is at Lyons, m'sieur."
+
+"And madame?"
+
+"She is in the south."
+
+"This gentleman with me is an American. His father and mother lived here
+forty years ago--before the war. Naturally, he would very much like to
+see the house."
+
+"What is his name, m'sieur?"
+
+Faber told her himself, and the tone of his voice seemed to awaken
+memories. She began to mumble something in the argot of the "Boul.
+Mich," and then bade him come in. The room clearly belonged to people
+who were fond of books when at home, and neglectful of them when away.
+It was all very untidy and dusty; the furniture handsome, but shown to
+poor advantage. The very first thing Faber set his hand upon was a
+volume of Hawthorne's "House of the Seven Gables." His father's name was
+written beneath an English book-plate.
+
+"Tell her," he said to Morris, "that this was once my father's
+property."
+
+She did not seem at all interested, but she avoided their glances
+nevertheless, and seemed strangely afraid of them.
+
+"You understand?" said Faber at last. "My father's book."
+
+She nodded and answered him, to his surprise, in broken but
+comprehensible English.
+
+"I was your mother's servant three years, m'sieur--a very little child.
+I am nearly sixty years old, but my memory is good."
+
+"You remember my father, then?"
+
+"If I remember him! Do children forget such things?"
+
+"Were you here when he died, madame?"
+
+She clasped her hands together almost as one in prayer. Her voice was a
+sing-song, like that of a child reciting a learned lesson.
+
+"It was at nine o'clock on the Friday night. Ah! what a day, m'sieur!
+There had been cannon since the Sunday, and the streets full of mad
+people. I looked down from my window and saw the dead carried away. I
+was cold with a child's curiosity. When night came, m'sieur would not
+dine. He had been out all day helping the wounded, and all he would take
+was a little soup and wine. Then he went out again while madame and I
+were up in the front room watching the fires burn and listening to the
+cannon. M'sieur, the heavens opened that night! My soul shrank at the
+sight; I thought the end of the world had come. And I was but a child,
+and had lived such a little while."
+
+She paused and breathed almost convulsively, as though suffering the
+terrible hours again. Faber watched her without flinching. His swift
+imagination moved out there in the streets where his father worked amid
+the wounded.
+
+"And afterwards, madame--afterwards?" said Bertie Morris in French.
+
+She looked up at him almost angrily, the thread of the inspiration of
+memory broken.
+
+"It is so many years ago, m'sieur. I remember badly."
+
+Faber stepped across the room and laid his hand upon her arm.
+
+"How did my father die, madame? Remember, I am his son."
+
+"So very like him, m'sieur; he seems to stand beside me once more."
+
+"You remember the night--you cannot have forgotten it?"
+
+"No, no; it is all here. The heart knows, but the tongue will not
+speak."
+
+"Did you see him when they brought him in?"
+
+She quivered, as though the scene had been yester-night.
+
+"M'sieur, it passed so swiftly--death came to him while he walked. I saw
+Captain d'Arny upon a white horse--I heard m'sieur's voice--how well I
+knew it! Then someone spoke in anger, a rifle was fired, madame ran from
+me, her tears choking her so that she could not speak to me. They
+brought monsieur in and laid him on the sofa; your hand is touching it
+now. I remember that his hand was in madame's, his eyes hurt by the
+bright light of the chandelier. He begged for a little wine and I went
+to the buffet; my hand shook, and I could not open the bottle. When we
+had found a glass m'sieur was dead. How shall I tell you more?--m'sieur
+was dead."
+
+Her voice died down almost to a whisper; none of the others spoke for
+some minutes. It was still snowing, and a black cloud was over the city.
+Faber thought that it must have been just such a day when the
+Versaillese, drunk with victory, entered the Rue de Fleurus and found
+his father there.
+
+Some of them still lived and remembered the night. General d'Arny was
+such a one, and they were to meet to-morrow.
+
+
+                                   IV
+
+At the Ritz Hotel a few hours later, Bertie Morris studied a fine
+company with a critic's eye. He knew most of the people in the famous
+_salle à manger_, and put himself up several pegs on the strength of his
+knowledge.
+
+"Say, there are some glad frocks--what?"
+
+Faber, who had a little bundle of papers in his hand, looked round and
+about for the first time. "All friends of yours?" he asked slyly.
+
+Bertie showed a row of gold-rimmed teeth.
+
+"Know most of them. Newspaper people must. That's young Mrs. Vanderbilt;
+the Countess Sobenski's next to her. Of course, you recognize Steel--and
+the Great Man. He's as good as he's great--a hundred and forty papers
+and more than one Cabinet Minister pretty fond of him. Beyond him is Sir
+Charles. Did you ever hear him speak? About the best hindleg man they've
+got over yonder. Oughtn't to have been an actor--he'd have run
+Canterbury better. Who the next lot are, can't say. The flaxen-haired
+one is a d----d fine girl--I don't think. Wonder who she is?"
+
+Faber smiled. "She's a parson's daughter--no good to you. There's Sir
+Jules Achon and his daughter, but who the little girl in black may be, I
+don't know; she looks like a French girl."
+
+"I'll ask Ellis; he's a 'Who's Who' here. Fine chap, Ellis, ought to
+have got the K.G.G. when he was in London."
+
+"What's the K.G.G. anyway?"
+
+"The Knight of the Grand Gorge--two pots crossed and a tumbler rampant.
+Puts Pommery in your thoughts. Suppose we do?"
+
+Faber gave the order and the wine was served. Accustomed to the immense
+hotels of New York, he found the Ritz interesting chiefly by reason of
+its guests. The women were magnificently gowned, and many of them very
+pretty. Such a cosmopolitan company could hardly be found in any other
+hotel on the Continent; its united wealth would have financed a kingdom.
+Faber reflected with satisfaction that he had the right to be there. His
+brains had earned him the title.
+
+"About this parson's daughter," Bertie asked; "what's she doing in such
+a place as this?" He had grown curious, for Gabrielle Silvester was
+quite the most beautiful woman in the room.
+
+"She appears to be eating at present."
+
+"Yes, I know; but who are her friends?"
+
+"The man is Sir Jules Achon. He's a big man--those who come after will
+hear of him. Have you read nothing of the Federation of Europe?"
+
+"Not as much as the top dot of a semicolon. Who's going to federate?"
+
+"It's his own idea. Kill war by commerce--you can't kill it any other
+way. Europe's paying ten per cent taxation as against America for her
+armies and navies. Make one federated state with no commercial barriers,
+and you knock the ten per cent down to two. That's Sir Jules's notion."
+
+"You don't think there's anything in it?"
+
+"So much that if I was British born, I'd give him a headline in dollars
+which would set the town talking. There's everything in it except the
+men. He's got the German Emperor, and he'll get the Tsar. It's the
+smaller fry who don't listen."
+
+Bertie smiled.
+
+"Your Venus with the tow-coloured topknot seems to be in that boat.
+She's looking at you all the time."
+
+"Do you quarrel with her taste?"
+
+"No; but you know her pretty well, then?"
+
+"An impertinent question. She came over on the ship with me."
+
+"And wants to go back the same way--eh, what? Well, I'd like to
+interview Sir Jules anyway. There ought to be a column story in him."
+
+"Yes, he ought to be worth fifty dollars."
+
+"Did you say he'd got the German Emperor?"
+
+"I understand that's so; he's going down to Corfu to see him again.
+He'll get the thing through if I don't upset it."
+
+"Why should you upset it?"
+
+"Rattle up your brains and see the reason. I'm here to sell guns. While
+that man is dangling about an anteroom, kow-towing to menials, I shall
+be inside with the chief. It's common sense. I'm here to do
+business--he's here to prevent that kind of business being done."
+
+"Is he going to take the peerless Saxon with him?"
+
+"You seem rather hot on that scent."
+
+"A d----d fine woman! Look at her arms! She's got a style you don't
+often find among Englishwomen. I can't see her feet."
+
+"Ask the waiter to take away the table."
+
+"I'll bet she takes fives. Her eyes are of the 'get there' sort. Can't
+you feel her looking this way?"
+
+"I'm not conscious of any rise of temperature. If you've done looking,
+perhaps we'll smoke. They'll be coming out immediately."
+
+"Then you'll introduce me?"
+
+"Ah! I didn't say that. Is it brandy or Kümmel?"
+
+"Oh, brandy--if you've got to talk to women."
+
+They passed out into the corridor, and sat there near the band. The
+place was deliciously warm; it glowed with soft lights, and was redolent
+of the odours of flowers. Superbly dressed women rustled by them; men,
+who had dined well, lurched past with their hands in their pockets and
+cigarettes in their mouths. The Hungarians played one of Lehar's
+waltzes--a scene of colour and of life reflecting the holy of social
+holies and of the almighty dollar. Presently Sir Jules Achon came out,
+followed by the three girls. Now, Faber recognised the third. She was
+Claudine d'Arny, General d'Arny's daughter.
+
+The party was almost gone by before Gabrielle discovered him. She turned
+at once and held out her gloved hand.
+
+"The wager," she said, looking at him very earnestly; "I appear to have
+lost."
+
+"Well, there's nothing to pay anyway. Are you going through to the
+yacht?"
+
+"Yes, to Naples. Sir Jules wishes me to see Italy and then the
+Adriatic."
+
+"Full of pirates and wild men," said Eva Achon, who was by Gabrielle's
+side. "We shall all be carried away to a cave."
+
+"I didn't know they had so much taste. How do you do, Sir Jules?"
+
+Sir Jules was a little man with a wonderful head. He was sixty-four
+years old, but had the intellectual energy of a man of twenty. The East
+and the West were strangely blended in a countenance full of power and
+quiet dignity. A softer voice Faber had never heard.
+
+"Very well, Mr. Faber. And you?"
+
+"Always well--on paper. You are going through to Italy, I hear--you'll
+catch the Emperor, I think."
+
+"I hope so. The promises encourage me."
+
+"But the performances will be better. Any old fool of a minister can
+promise; it is a king who performs."
+
+"You have read my pamphlet, Mr. Faber?"
+
+"Every line--the greatest peace scheme--I was going to say, on earth.
+I'll change that: Out of heaven's nearer it!"
+
+"Of course, it must come slowly, if it comes."
+
+"All the best things come slowly. Man was about a million years about
+before he thought of microbes--this is a great affair; none greater. It
+would be the coup of the century if you brought it off. There could be
+nothing greater."
+
+"I hope to do so. Are you staying here long?"
+
+"As many hours as it will take me to teach a man my name. I may be at
+Corfu myself afterwards. I'm imitating you, and buying a yacht."
+
+"The one luxury in the world--get a good one."
+
+"There won't be any better when I begin."
+
+The group passed on; Faber shook hands with Eva, but not with Claudine
+d'Arny. When Gabrielle's turn came, he held her hand in his for a brief
+instant and said:
+
+"Well, how's the I.A.L.?"
+
+"Waiting for your name," she replied. But she did not withdraw her hand.
+
+"Will you give me the top of the bill?"
+
+"In gold and purple."
+
+"And printed on fine linen? Well, I'm not tempted."
+
+"The day will come----"
+
+He laughed and dropped her hand.
+
+"That's Booth, the actor. Well, most of you are play-acting, anyway.
+Good-night, Miss Silvester, don't forget what I say."
+
+She laughed and spoke in a lower tone.
+
+"I will remind you of it at Corfu," she said.
+
+The men watched them down the corridor before Bertie Morris became
+eloquent. He was not a little piqued that the girls had ignored him,
+while even Sir Jules had regarded him as one regards an ugly piece of
+china in a glass-case. A poor tribute, he thought, to the might of the
+pen.
+
+"Well?" said Faber.
+
+"A d----d fine girl, but cold as marble!"
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Voice, gesture, everything. Give her a chance, and she'd be up on a
+platform spouting."
+
+"I don't think so. She's going to have many chances. What about the
+others?"
+
+"The old man's daughter is just a bread-and-butter miss. I liked little
+Claudine d'Arny--as ugly as sin, but passion enough for a nautch girl."
+
+"You remind me of her father. See here: I had a letter from him to-day.
+What would happen to-morrow if I published it--by accident? Here's a
+note of it."
+
+Bertie read it carelessly; then with a journalistic interest:
+
+"If you published that----"
+
+"Or you did----"
+
+"Same thing--I guess he'd be out of Paris in four-and-twenty hours."
+
+"Ah, then I mustn't publish it--don't you be playing any journalistic
+tricks on me!"
+
+"I don't think," said Bertie Morris.
+
+And their eyes met.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+                    GENERAL D'ARNY AND HIS DAUGHTER
+
+
+                                   I
+
+General d'Arny lived in an old house in the Boulevard St. Germain, one
+of the few monuments still existing to the golden age of Récamier and
+the salons. He did not care a scudo for the literary and artistic
+associations of this gloomy mansion, but much for the fact that he paid
+little rent. Beaumarchais had lived there on the eve of his flight to
+Holland; the great rooms had known Fleury and his fellows, Balzac and
+Saint-Beuve--a very panel of genius written across the centuries.
+
+It all meant very little to Hubert d'Arny, the bulk of whose fortune
+went into the trough at Panama; the residue into the hands of the
+jobbers on the Bourse. The general was notoriously a financial derelict;
+as notoriously a suspect to his many enemies in the Chamber.
+
+He had married late in life--some years after the war--and his wife died
+in childbirth. One daughter, Claudine, was alternately the object of a
+maudlin affection and of sentimental regret. She cost a great deal of
+money, and had the indecency to arrive at a marriageable age. When
+Captain Issy-Ferrault, a son of one of the oldest aristocracies in
+France, came forward, the general assented in spite of his democratic
+principles. The business of providing for the girl aged him
+pathetically. The newspapers said it was Morocco; but the trouble lay
+much nearer home.
+
+As it chanced, John Faber arrived in Paris in the midst of the
+preparations for Claudine's wedding. He knew nothing of it; no one had
+guessed that he had any interest in the daughter of the French Minister
+of Artillery, or she in him. Claudine went to America at the invitation
+of the French Ambassador, whose children were her friends. When Faber
+was introduced to her upon the ship, she said frankly that she did not
+like him. His manners were _gauche_, and his eyes inquisitive. She
+avoided him with a sure instinct, being ignorant that he knew anything
+of her or her family. This was a great misfortune, for she had many
+qualities which appeal to men, and Faber was not the kind of man to
+remain insensible to them.
+
+In Paris, upon her return, she entered the promised land of preparation.
+The general swore loudly while he signed the cheques, but signed them
+none the less. Dressmakers flocked to the Boulevard St. Germain, and
+their mouths were full of pins. Claudine was of a romantic temperament,
+but it could stoop to laces and fine linen. She argle-bargled with her
+father like a wench at a fair, and when he discounted the list, she
+declared that she would not be married at all. A scandal was the potent
+weapon in her armament. He could not have a scandal.
+
+This extravagance of idea filled her bedroom to overflowing; to say
+nothing of other bedrooms. She would sit curled up amid a tangle of the
+most delicate draperies--transparencies which should have come from a
+fairy godmother; masterpieces in velvets and satins--she would wonder if
+life were long enough to wear them all. These things were hidden in her
+virgin holy of holies, but she ticked off the days which shut the door
+against the One Unknown, and often fell to a young girl's awe in the
+presence of the mysteries. Then came the last night of all--the maids
+had left her; the house was at rest. A dirty fluff of snow fell upon the
+streets of Paris. She was to be married at St. Eustache to-morrow!
+
+Claudine undressed herself, and putting on the most wonderful of lace
+robes, she sat before a fire of wood and warmed her pink and white feet
+at the blaze. There should have been regrets at the life she was
+leaving: she might have dwelt with some affection upon her passing
+girlhood, and the home which had sheltered her. But she did nothing of
+the kind. Her thoughts were entirely devoted to St. Eustache and
+afterwards. What an exciting day it must be! Every friend she had would
+be in the church. One of the canons was to marry them, and afterwards
+there would be a great feast and many speeches in the old ballroom
+downstairs. At four in the afternoon, Justin's motor-car was to take
+them to the old château, near Rambouillet, where the first week was to
+be spent. She pictured the lonely drive over the whitened roads, through
+the forests--then the château, grim, old and moated. They would dine
+together--and then--then she would know what love was!
+
+Her ideas were truly French, and English sentiment could have offered
+them little sympathy. Perhaps Captain Issy-Ferrault stood to her less
+for _the_ man than for _a_ man. She had been educated in convents where
+saintly women shuddered at the mere footsteps of their common enemy and
+provoked a thousand curiosities by their very holiness. Then had come a
+few short years of the world--it had taught Claudine that all life began
+from the hour when a man first took a woman into his arms and the Church
+blessed the proceeding. Afterwards there were other things. The first
+step was sufficient for her vigil that night.
+
+Her wedding dress had been laid upon a little bed in the adjoining room.
+She went there on tip-toe as though afraid that someone might spy upon
+her while she touched the satin and laces with delighted fingers. Strong
+scents perfumed the room and the odour of blossoms. Claudine went and
+stood before a long mirror of the wardrobe and studied herself in many
+attitudes. She did not know whether she was really pretty. Justin, her
+fiancé, had paid her many compliments, and she tried to believe them. A
+greater source of encouragement was her figure--the fine rounded limbs,
+the pink and white of a young girl's skin. For an instant she remembered
+the ordeal of discovery which awaited her to-morrow; then with a light
+laugh, she returned to her bedroom. Other brides had suffered and
+survived--she took courage.
+
+The priest had told her to say many things in her prayers--good man, he
+said them in his--but they were clean gone from her head at this time.
+The girlish romance of an English wedding was not for her. No gifts of
+sweet and silent hours were hers. She knew very little of Justin--he,
+less of her. He had kissed her but twice, and then apologetically. Yet
+to-morrow she would be his wife.
+
+Stay, but was it to-morrow? She listened at the window and counted the
+church bells chiming the hour.
+
+Twelve o'clock.
+
+Her wedding was to-day.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+The afternoon of the same day had found General d'Arny closeted with
+John Faber in a little room in the Avenue de l'Opéra. Here was the Paris
+agency of the great Charleston Company, and hither came d'Arny at his
+own suggestion.
+
+A bent old man, not lacking dignity in a common way--dignity had gone to
+the journalistic dogs that afternoon. He entered the office trembling
+with excitement; he could not speak for some minutes, and when he did
+so, his tones rolled like thunder.
+
+"It is finished," he said. "Read!" And he held out a paper with
+quivering fingers.
+
+Faber watched him with half-closed eyes. He was thinking of another day,
+when this man, a mere captain of the Chasseurs-à-Cheval then, had ridden
+down the Rue de Fleurus and commanded his men to hunt out the
+Communards. Some forty years ago, and no doubt the soldier had forgotten
+every hour of it. None the less, the sword of destiny was poised and
+would fall.
+
+"What shall I read?" Faber rejoined, after a little spell of waiting. He
+knew every word his friend Bertie Morris had cabled to America, but his
+face was void of knowledge.
+
+"Some talk of the deal," he ran on. "Well, I guess we expect it. Why
+should they keep quiet?"
+
+The soldier pulled himself together, and taking the paper from the
+outstretched hand, he began to turn the leaves quickly.
+
+"It is on page 3," he said. "Yes, that is it, if you would be good
+enough to read."
+
+The clock ticked in a silent room for some minutes. Faber read the
+article to the end without moving a muscle of his usually expressive
+face. A great business man is often a great actor. He was one.
+
+"There seems to have been a leakage," he said presently, and then,
+looking up, "Whom do you suspect?"
+
+"I suspect! God in Heaven, what has suspicion to do with me?"
+
+"I should have thought you were in the way of it--that is, if you take
+it seriously this side."
+
+The old man wormed with impatience.
+
+"The _Soir_ has it; there will not be a paper in Paris without it
+to-morrow. Do you not see that it is, in effect, the letter I wrote to
+you on Tuesday last?"
+
+"Who's to blame for that? I told you at the beginning not to write."
+
+"Is it to be imagined that you cannot receive letters?"
+
+Faber leaned over the table, and began to speak with some warmth.
+
+"See here," he said, "you're a Minister of Artillery in Paris. You
+receive, I suppose, some three or four hundred letters a day? Can you be
+responsible for them all?"
+
+"But this was sent to you privately at your hotel."
+
+"A foolish kind of letter at the best--I remember every word of it. You
+admit in so many words that our deal is for forty thousand francs, and
+stipulate that Captain Clearnay must have ten. Why couldn't you come
+round to me and say so?"
+
+"I was three times at the hotel that day; you were absent on each
+occasion. It was urgent that Clearnay should be dealt with if the
+contract was to go through."
+
+"Exactly what this newspaper man says. He calls it a second Ollivier
+case, I see. Well, I shouldn't wonder if it made as much noise."
+
+D'Arny tortured himself into new attitudes.
+
+"Good God!" he cried. "Don't you see my position?"
+
+"Perfectly. I saw it from the beginning. You'll have to leave Paris
+awhile."
+
+"Then the contract is lost?"
+
+"I never thought it would go through, General. I wasn't such a d----d
+fool."
+
+"But at least a word from you will save my name. You can deny the
+letter."
+
+"I could deny it."
+
+"Are you wishing to tell me that there is any doubt?"
+
+"No doubt at all. Unfortunately, it was read, by mistake, in the Hotel
+Ritz the night it reached me. You should see Morris, of the _New York
+Mitre_. He might do something for you."
+
+The man rose, white as a sheet and broken. He may or may not have
+understood the nature of the trap into which he had fallen, but it was
+clear to him that John Faber could or would do little for him. He went
+out into the street to be offered a copy of _La Guêpe_, and to hear the
+newsboy cry the latest news of this surpassing jobbery.
+
+A less consummate artist than Faber would have spoken of the Rue de
+Fleurus, and of what happened there forty years ago. Hubert d'Arny had
+not the remotest notion that the man who had ruined him was the son of
+that American citizen who had been shot by his orders at the crisis of
+the great debacle.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Paris licked its lips over the scandal, and then stood aghast.
+
+The tragedy surpassed all expectation, and yet all admitted that there
+was no other course.
+
+Hubert d'Arny was found dead in a little hotel at Passy that very night.
+He had blown out his brains upon the eve of his daughter's wedding.
+People thought rather of Claudine than of him. Much that would have been
+written and said was obliterated or hushed when she was mentioned. Who
+would break it to her? Such a blow had not been struck at the Republic
+since the Humbert scandal.
+
+Faber knew nothing of the coming wedding, and he heard the news of
+Hubert d'Arny's death without emotion. There were primitive traits in
+his character which this affair made dominant. If pity urged claims, he
+thrust them aside when he remembered his dead father. "An eye for an
+eye--and for death, the dead." A sense of power and authority nerved his
+will and flattered a well-balanced vanity. After all, his brains and
+money had won this victory against all the shining armour of France. He
+perceived that the financier was, after all, the most considerable power
+in the world to-day. Kings can make war when the bankers will pay for
+it. He had been his own general and his money was his army. A stroke of
+the pen had laid one of the most powerful men in Paris dead at his
+feet--as vulgar tragedy would put it. A mind that had little subtlety
+and much common sense rose to no analytical attitudes. He had killed the
+man just as a Southerner shoots down a nigger--and of the two the nigger
+was perhaps the more deserving.
+
+In this frame of mind, he was greatly astonished to receive a visit from
+Gabrielle Silvester very early on the following morning. He had even
+forgotten that she knew anything of his dealings with General d'Arny,
+nor did he immediately connect her with the tragedy of which all Paris
+was talking. She had come to tell him that the yacht was sailing, he
+thought; then he noticed that she did not offer him her hand, while her
+manner toward him was utterly changed--a chill womanly manner he could
+not mistake.
+
+"Why!" he said. "Still in Paris?"
+
+She avoided the question, and went straight to the heart of the matter.
+
+"I have come to ask you, Mr. Faber, if you knew that Claudine d'Arny was
+to have been married to-day?"
+
+He stepped back a pace and looked her full in the face. Rarely in his
+life had he flinched before man or woman, but the accusation stunned
+him.
+
+"Was I aware? But how should I be aware?"
+
+She drew nearer, her face aflame and her heart beating wildly.
+
+"I must know this--please bear with me. I must have your answer!"
+
+"It has been given you. I knew nothing."
+
+She seemed dazed and not a little helpless now. Seating herself upon the
+edge of a chair near the fireplace, she began to speak her thoughts
+aloud.
+
+"The secret is yours and mine. I would have told nobody. For you, it
+must be a hard thought to the end of your life. She was to have been
+married to-day. Will you tell me that if you had known it, it would have
+made a difference?"
+
+He debated that, standing with his hands in his pockets, but his face
+grave enough.
+
+"Nothing would have made any difference between that man and me. He shot
+my father. Very well--he had to pay, sooner or later. But I don't think
+it would have been to-day, if I had known."
+
+She was silent a little while. Then she said:
+
+"I can think of nothing but such simple things. If I had stopped to tell
+you in the hall of the hotel--just that--there would not have been
+to-day! It was one of those chances that do not recur. I thought
+everyone knew that Claudine was to be married."
+
+"The last thing a man knows about any woman who is a mere acquaintance.
+Have you seen her to-day?"
+
+She shivered.
+
+"I dare not go--I dare not!"
+
+"She has relatives in Paris?"
+
+"I suppose so--friends would put her to shame. Does it matter when he is
+dead?"
+
+"He was a rogue, or I would have spared him. He tried to cheat me from
+the start. I found nothing I could fix upon--and I looked for it!"
+
+She would not consider it from that point of view.
+
+"This will always be in your life and Claudine's. Time cannot alter
+judgments of this kind. It will grow with the years. I am very sorry for
+you, Mr. Faber."
+
+He resented it; the patronage of women rarely failed to anger him.
+
+"Leave me to my own affairs. I take the responsibility. I've taken a
+good many in my time. The girl's to be thought of. Who was she going to
+marry?"
+
+"Captain Issy-Ferrault. I hardly know him: an officer of cavalry, they
+say."
+
+"Poor, I suppose, as most of the kind?"
+
+"I cannot tell you."
+
+"When will she marry him now?"
+
+"Oh, surely, you understand?"
+
+"I understand one thing: he's going to marry her."
+
+"A child would know that it's impossible!"
+
+"Then I am wiser than a child. Will you let me have his
+address--to-morrow, say?"
+
+"I am leaving Paris to-morrow."
+
+"Then one of my clerks will get it. Shall we meet at Corfu?"
+
+"I don't know," she said. "I came to tell you that I never wished to see
+you again."
+
+"You haven't told me so. It shall be at Corfu."
+
+She did not answer or hold out her hand. He knew that a barrier had
+risen up between them and his pride was quickened.
+
+He would marry this woman because she had judged him.
+
+
+
+
+                                BOOK II
+
+                              THE PLAYERS
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+                         A RACE FOR AN EMPEROR
+
+
+                                   I
+
+There were two yachts on the Adriatic Sea waiting for an emperor.
+
+One lay in the harbour of Fiume; the other at Trieste. The emperor
+himself was still at Potsdam, and none of the newspapers seemed to know
+when he would sail.
+
+Sir Jules Achon was a man of infinite patience and superb tenacity. Few
+but his intimate friends knew much about him. He had amassed a great
+fortune as a shipbroker, and now with advancing years, he devoted the
+bulk of that fortune to this tremendous project of European Federation.
+Yet it was all done without any claptrap whatever. The newspapers had
+hardly heard of it. There was no writer of eminence to take it up. Sir
+Jules worked in great places, but he worked silently. Already his scheme
+had the approval of kings and emperors. He had gone to St. Petersburg
+with a recommendation to the English Ambassador which opened all doors.
+But for a dramatic accident of destiny, the Tsar would have been his
+first patron. Three ministers knew his scheme, and two of them were warm
+supporters of such a transcendent project. The third saw in it a danger
+to the diplomatists, which self interest could not tolerate. "This will
+make an end of us," he had said. Sir Jules agreed that it was so. That
+very night Ivolsky obtained an audience of the Emperor, and besought him
+to withdraw his patronage. The others were too late by a few hours, and
+who shall say how far that accident of time and space has affected the
+immediate destinies of Europe?
+
+For the common peace projects, beating of pacific drums and waving of
+fraternal flags, Sir Jules cared not at all. He believed that
+international peace could come only upon a basis of common European
+interests. His scheme would have established free trade between the
+kingdoms. Wars arise chiefly from commercial disputes; commercial
+disputes are the first fruits of tariffs. Let the commercial incentive
+be wanting and disarmament may begin. A gradual process needed many
+years for full attainment--but it could begin to-morrow if the
+conditions were fulfilled.
+
+He talked very little of all this to those with him on the yacht. It
+was, in effect, a young people's party and a merry one at that. Dr. Joe
+Burrall had come from Putney, a braw man of thirty, who had rowed for
+Cambridge. Douglas Renshaw, a gunner whose occupation had gone, came
+because he was asked, and was asked because he was sure to come. He had
+taken to the Stock Exchange recently as a wire-haired terrier to the
+gorse, and Sir Jules had put a small fortune into his pocket. He knew a
+little geology, and declared his intention of studying Slav. So far the
+only word he had picked up was "hijar," and he was not very sure to what
+tongue it belonged, though he used it frequently as an expression of
+joy.
+
+These two with Gabrielle Silvester were the guests of Sir Jules and his
+daughter upon the _Wanderer_, the fine steam yacht which had so often
+invaded the superb mysteries of the Western Mediterranean. They
+understood their host's ambitions, but rarely spoke of them. When it was
+learned that there was a doubt about the Emperor going to Corfu after
+all, they looked upon it as a personal rebuff, but did not discuss it
+except apart. All kinds of excursions kept them busy. They visited the
+unsurpassable islands of the Adriatic, became learned about Zara and
+Sebenico and matchless Ragusa, the incomparable Republic, defying East
+and West alike during the centuries. Local interests attracted them;
+they saw much of these savage peoples; were ashore for many a frolic;
+lived in a blaze of sunshine and an atmosphere wholly medieval.
+
+Gabrielle's voyage to America had been her first world experience beyond
+the walls of meticulous suburbia. This new adventure fascinated her
+beyond measure. She felt that she had really begun to live. It were as
+though the passion of the East stirred in her normally cold blood and
+left her panting. Destiny had snatched her up from the ruck to put her
+in high places. Far from surrendering to the enervating suggestions of
+this sunny sea, they forced her mind to considerable ambitions--and with
+them all the name of John Faber would associate itself despite the
+memories. This was contrary to all she had determined in Paris, and put
+her to some shame. She felt that she had no right to see such a man
+again, that he was a social pariah, without pity or any title to the
+meanest respect. And yet he would creep into the scheme of her
+ambitions, and she understood in some way that without him they were
+meaningless.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+It was a great surprise to Gabrielle when the launch returned to the
+yacht one afternoon in the second week in December with her father and
+Harry Lassett on board. This was one of Sir Jules' great surprises--one
+in which Eva had a part. Silvester was very tired after his long journey
+across Europe, but Harry was very full of it. They were greeted by
+Douglas Renshaw with a "hijar"; by Sir Jules with that quiet smile which
+betokened pleasure in the company of his friends.
+
+"I had no idea you could get away," he said, "or I would have asked you
+in London."
+
+Silvester said that he had no idea of it either; an American had come
+over from Yonkers and was taking his services for a fortnight. Harry
+admitted that for his part he could always get away, which, as Joe
+Burrall remarked, was an advantage as useful in debt as in matrimony.
+
+This was a sunny day, an ideal day of southern winter, and they all took
+tea beneath the awning of the promenade deck. With Harry, Gabrielle was
+a little constrained and uneasy. She was glad to have him there, and yet
+felt that in some way his presence was a douche upon her schemes. He
+spoke of the little world of outer London, not of the wider horizon to
+which she looked. She had built a tower of her imagination which Harry
+Lassett would never climb. Indeed, he would have derided it as he had
+done her American friendship. With her father it was different. She had
+a long talk with him in his cabin before dinner and she learned again
+how much importance he had attached to her diplomatic success with John
+Faber.
+
+"It would send me to Yonkers with better credentials than any Englishman
+ever carried across the seas," he said. "Think of it--John Faber with
+us! The man who has done more than anyone alive to make war possible in
+our time."
+
+"You will never get him, father. It would be a great wrong against the
+truth if he came in."
+
+"Why should it be wrong, Gabrielle?"
+
+"For many reasons. He believes that all our dreams are sentimental
+moonshine; he never could be in earnest--how should he be when he does
+not believe?"
+
+"Is it not possible to put our view so convincingly that he must
+believe?"
+
+"Are we convinced ourselves? Is it very real to us?"
+
+"It is very real to me. I think it must be to every man of culture."
+
+"How many that would exclude. Nelson could not have been a man of
+culture."
+
+He looked up, pained.
+
+"Faber has been talking to you."
+
+"No, I have been talking to myself. I think with you that war is a very
+great crime against humanity, but, after all, God allows it."
+
+He sighed and began to sort out his papers.
+
+"There is a great deal which seems to be permitted. It is another way of
+saying that mankind has been left a great work to do. We are fortunate
+if we are called to bear the smallest burden. I think disappointments
+should be numbered among them."
+
+"Oh! I agree with you. And, of course, I shall still hope for Mr.
+Faber's name."
+
+"If you think it a wrong, that would be an inconsistency."
+
+"Not altogether; it might be a great victory. He is a man with whom you
+can argue."
+
+"Then I hope you will see him again at Corfu."
+
+Gabrielle did not answer that. Her own words accused her in some way.
+
+A great victory! A woman's victory! What would that mean in this case?
+For the moment she let ambition run away with her and imagination reared
+fine castles. They went down with a crash when she heard Harry Lassett
+calling her. She made some excuse and went out--just as she had gone
+when Harry called below her window at Hampstead.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+A superb night with a fine round moon found them aft upon the deck,
+gazing over the lights of Fiume to the vine-clad hills beyond. A
+wonderful stillness upon land and water gave place from time to time to
+sounds most musical--the lingering notes of sonorous bells, the lilt of
+Italian song, the splash of unseen oars, and the music of ships.
+Lanterns shone about them, the lanterns of steamers at anchor and of the
+Austrian fleet. Against a glorious horizon the sails of feluccas would
+take fantastic shapes; the stars grouped themselves in joyous
+brilliancy. There were many houses upon the distant hillside and they
+stood there as beacons, speaking to the ships and the sea in a tongue
+which all understood.
+
+Sir Jules and Silvester were in the smoking-room at this time having
+what Harry called "a pow-wow." Eva played sentimental themes upon the
+great organ in the drawing-room; the doctor and Douglas Renshaw were
+ashore for the good of the populace. Gabrielle, herself, set deep in a
+deck chair with Harry Lassett at her feet. He smoked a great pipe and
+talked St. Moritz. There had been trouble with his trustees, and he was
+not sure he could get out there this year.
+
+"So, you see," he said, "I came along when the old chap asked me."
+
+"A most candid way of putting it; there could have been no other reason
+in the world."
+
+"Oh, I say, puss! That's nasty now."
+
+"Not at all. To qualify candour is a crime. Well, you can't go to St.
+Moritz. What then?"
+
+"I didn't say I couldn't go. I said that old Ben Stuart, my trustee, was
+playing the fox with me. He says I overdrew a hundred and ninety last
+year, and it can't go on. As if it was his own money!"
+
+"Do you disagree with his accounts?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Arithmetic's no good to me. I was a bit of a flier at Ananias and Dido
+at school, but I could add up a column every time and make it different.
+I ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer--eh, what? Surely, you don't
+mind?"
+
+He nestled his head against her knees as though this kind of comfort
+were some solatium. Gabrielle was thinking of John Faber and of what his
+opinion would have been of such an admission.
+
+"I suppose life isn't worth living unless you go to St. Moritz?"
+
+He detected no irony.
+
+"How's a man to keep fit in our beastly country?--then, there's habit. I
+believe in doing to-morrow what you did yesterday--don't you? If I stop
+in England, it's covered court tennis, nothing more! How's a man to go
+through the winter on covered court tennis?"
+
+"The survival of the fittest. Whatever will become of you on the yacht?"
+
+He puffed stolidly.
+
+"That's vegetation. I can lie on my back with any man--I'm a plus two at
+it. A man's year should include a month of it. Then I'm orderly; I know
+just what I'm going to do during the next two seasons, as sure as the
+moon and stars: cricket, four months; two months' shooting; a bit of
+hunting if I can get it in, and if I can't, then some pat ball on the
+links. What more do you want?"
+
+"Are you putting the question to me?"
+
+"I wasn't--but I will!"
+
+"Oh, I should want a lot more: to begin with, a definite object."
+
+"Ah, you're a girl. My opinion of men with definite objects is that they
+are generally bores."
+
+"But the country would not get on without them, would it?"
+
+"Don't believe such nonsense, puss. Who's the greater man: Asquith or
+Foster? Would you sooner be Lloyd George or Bobs? Who's doing more for
+England--the man who helps to beat the Australians, or the lawyers who
+put threepence on the income tax? You ask the average man, and see what
+he says."
+
+"The average man has not much brains; he is the servant in the house of
+intellect. I should never consult him about anything."
+
+"Puss, I know what you're thinking about--it's that popgun man."
+
+"Rather inconsequent, isn't it? You wouldn't average Mr. Faber?"
+
+"No, I suppose he's clever enough. He makes money. Old Baker, our head
+at school, always used to say that the faculty of making money was one
+of the most contemptible. But it's useful, I admit."
+
+"Oh, yes, we all admit that, and show our contempt of the faculty by
+worshipping the possessor."
+
+"Do you worship John Faber?"
+
+"Collectively, yes; individually, not at all."
+
+He thought upon it.
+
+"I suppose you had a jolly time with him in Paris?"
+
+"Oh, my dear Harry, what next? I saw him twice: once in the corridor of
+the hotel, then in his own rooms."
+
+"In his rooms!"
+
+"Yes; to tell him I never wished to see him again."
+
+"Oh, you brick; that's the best thing I've heard. Of course, I knew you
+would. There's never been anything said, but you owed that to me--now,
+didn't you, puss?"
+
+She would not answer him. They passed to the vague intimacies of an
+incomplete amour, in which their whispers were inaudible and the sound
+of voices in the cabin a warning discord. Eva still played an
+intolerable waltz. The harbour waves sported about the dinghy, tethered
+astern. Gabrielle wondered why it was that she was incapable of
+resisting all this; that she suffered this quite brainless boy to kiss
+her at his pleasure--a great bear with fearsome limbs cuddling her. Was
+it because of her twenty-three years of Suburbia? Because of an
+inherited instinct for the commonplace of the natural life--such a life
+as all about her lived, and would live in that little world of
+Hampstead? Or was it purely the call of sex--more potent than a thousand
+theories, imperious beyond all the laws of emperors and kings?
+
+The latter thought did not occur to her. She suffered the spell of the
+scene, the soft airs of night, the shining stars, the harbour lights,
+the waxing and waning chords of distant music. Harry's passionate
+whispers were like a message from afar. She submitted to him as though
+thus was her destiny written.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+                          LOUIS DE PALEOLOGUE
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Do you know Ragusa--Ragusa, the Pearl of the Adriatic?
+
+It was here that the Imperial yacht carried the Emperor when at last he
+sailed from Trieste--here that John Faber saw him within three hours of
+his going ashore.
+
+Here also Faber found the man he had sought so many years. Louis de
+Paleologue, who had taken his mother to America after his father's death
+in Paris.
+
+Ragusa--what city is like to this of all that border the incomparable
+shore? Sebenico, Zara, Spalato--who cares if they perish while Ragusa
+remains?
+
+Consider how through the centuries this little republic shut the gates
+of her sanctuary in the face alike of Moslem and of Christian; how she
+defied now the Turk, now the Servian, even the mighty power of Venice at
+its zenith. Neither friend nor foe coming to her for shelter was
+refused. She protected Stephen Nemanja, who fought her allies of the
+Byzantine Empire; she opened her gates to Queen Margarita, and defended
+them against the King of Dalmatia. The "winged lion" writes no shame
+upon her citadel. She fell at last, not to man, but to the very earth
+which opened and swallowed her up. There was never a history of Ragusa
+after that fateful year 1667. The great earthquake ended a
+story--Napoleon wrote but a sorry epitaph.
+
+What a cosmopolitan company is that which gathers every day within the
+tremendous walls of this fallen citadel. All the colours of the Balkan
+peoples are to be seen here--the flag and turban of the Turk; the white
+breeches of the Albanian--Joseph's coat upon the back of the son of the
+Black Mountain. Servians are here: Bosnians and men of Herzegovina;
+Italians who have drifted down from northern towns; Austrians in
+possession. Crimson clashes with the sky-blue tunics of the Austrian
+officers--there are deep reds and glowing tints of orange--all moving in
+kaleidoscopic splendour through streets which the extended arms may
+measure; by churches and palaces, which are matchless in their art. A
+city girded by the libidinous foliage of the south; a city of
+half-lights and shaded cloisters; of a fortress running out into the
+blue Adriatic, lifting mighty walls to the caress of the kindly seas.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+Louis de Paleologue had taken up his abode in a veritable hole in the
+wall near the Dominican monastery. The place was dark and cavernous, and
+might have been (but for its monstrous stones) a booth in an Eastern
+bazaar. When he worked it was in the cool of the monastery gardens, the
+monks stealing looks over his shoulder at wonderful forms in bewitching
+_négligé_--or even at terpsichoreal advertisements of pills and powder.
+For despite his sixty-two years, and the fact that he was a prince in
+his own country, Louis still earned his living by the advertisers, and
+was held to be the cleverest draughtsman at the business.
+
+One grievance he had, and one joy--his daughter Maryska, nineteen upon
+her last birthday, and still a child. Maryska like her father (and
+another celebrity who has had a statue raised to him) never grew up. She
+was the youngest woman of nineteen in the whole wide world, and when
+father and daughter went for "a rag" together, it was wonderful that
+anything at all was left in the Cantina--as he had named the house.
+
+Such days they passed! Louis, prone in the sun with a cigarette in his
+mouth; Maryska, flitting about the scene like a schoolgirl at play! They
+went hand in hand everywhere like sworn friends in an academy for young
+ladies. What money they earned would be sometimes in his pocket,
+sometimes in hers. They quarrelled babyishly--the man shedding tears
+more often than the girl. Yet he would have put his knife into the heart
+of any who did her injury, with as little thought as he would have
+killed a stray dog at his door. There had been one such tragedy at
+Zara--the body was found in the harbour some days afterwards.
+
+Maryska was a cosmopolitan. She had starved in New York, in London, in
+Paris, in Berlin. Now she starved in Ragusa--except upon those splendid
+occasions when a cheque came from England. Then the Austrian banker
+would be fetched out of bed or café to cash it. They were rare days, for
+Louis would knock down the bottles like ninepins, and never turn a hair
+whatever their number. Maryska drank just as much as she could, and then
+fell asleep. He used to shout and swear because she would not wake up to
+draw another cork for him.
+
+Latterly, it had been the devil to pay at the Cantina. Louis had lived
+in prospective upon six disorderly nymphs--all décolleté--who were to
+have proclaimed the merits, _urbi et orbi_, of a new suspender for
+ladies of fashion. These drawings were quite wonderful. The prior of the
+monastery who no doubt, may have imagined that they were part of a
+scheme for a stained glass window, thought very highly of them. The
+Austrian officers begged for copies of the paper. The governor laughed
+and had a fit of coughing. He wanted to know where the models came from.
+Louis would not tell him that, except to say that they were memories of
+Paris and New York. He rarely drew the beautiful dark face of
+Maryska--but there is a portrait of her in the church of St. John the
+Divine in London, and many would swear it is a madonna of an old master.
+Louis painted it for the priest, who used to tell him he was a
+scoundrel. It was so very true.
+
+Well, the pictures were drawn and dispatched to London; and then a
+dreadful thing happened. The firm, which understood the female mysteries
+so well, treated the financial verities with a contempt which quickly
+ended in Carey Street. No cheque came to that hole in the wall at
+Ragusa. Squat-legged and patient, Louis smoked his cigarette and
+listened to Maryska's wholly unmelodious music. There was bread in the
+house, but no wine. Well, wine would come presently.
+
+Wine did not come, but in its place came John Faber. For a moment, Louis
+thought that a customer had crossed the seas to buy his pictures. Then
+he said that the firm, which was suspended because of its suspenders,
+had sent an embassy with the cash. However it might be, he determined to
+borrow five crowns of the stranger, and saluted him with princely
+politeness.
+
+Maryska, meanwhile, stood up ready to go to the wine-shop.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Faber took off his hat at the entrance to the cavern, and blinked in the
+darkness. He saw a handsome man squatting on the floor, and behind him a
+pair of eyes which glowed as a cat's. They belonged to Maryska; but he
+did not know, indeed, he wondered if there were wild beasts in the
+place.
+
+"Say, does anyone named Louis de Paleologue live here?"
+
+The accent transplanted father and daughter to New York in an instant.
+What years they had lived there! How they regretted them!
+
+"He does, sir, and what then?"
+
+"You are Mr. Paleologue?"
+
+"That is so. My daughter--she doesn't bite--at least, only me!"
+
+Maryska's teeth were to be counted on the instant. She laughed as the
+Italians laugh, without reservations.
+
+"_Accidenti!_" she cried, and then coming out into the light, "_caro
+mio_--he is too tough, poppa, I should spoil my teeth!"
+
+Faber saluted her in a way he intended to be Continental.
+
+"You have been in New York, signorina?"
+
+"Five years, mister. I am all Americano!"
+
+"Then I'll walk right in, if I may."
+
+He did not wait for permission, but entered the cavern. It was evident
+that he would have liked a chair, but seeing none, he accepted a mat
+which she offered.
+
+"Poppa burned all the chairs long ago. Can you sit down on nothing,
+mister?"
+
+He said that he could, looking at Maryska all the while. Louis took a
+box of Bosnian cigarettes from the floor and passed it over.
+
+"Say, are you thirsty, boss?"
+
+Faber smiled at that.
+
+"Well, this is thirsty ground. As the governor said--but I guess ye
+don't know what the governor----"
+
+"Bet you!" He said. "'Don't let it be long between the drinks.' There's
+a wine-shop two blocks away."
+
+Maryska stepped forward, as keen as a hound. She held out her hand for
+the money without any shame at all--she and her father had been holding
+it out for years--yet some of Louis' gifts in return had been more
+precious than gold.
+
+"How much shall I give you?" Faber asked. She replied that a kronen
+would be ample. He gave it her, and she was away in a flash.
+
+They smoked a space in silence when she was gone. Presently Faber said:
+"Business good down this way?"
+
+Louis did not like the tone of it, and the quills of his pride
+stiffened. "What's that to you?"
+
+"Might be a good deal--I'm in dead earnest."
+
+"What's your line--pills or powder?"
+
+"I'm neither. I make guns."
+
+"Want me to fire 'em off--well, I'm ready. What's the size?"
+
+Faber smiled.
+
+"Not quite it," he said; and then wandering right away from the subject,
+"I wish I'd known you were in New York. You didn't work under your own
+name there."
+
+"That's so. I used to sign just 'Louis.'"
+
+"Will you draw me a picture of Maryska--for my house? A thousand dollars
+now and another thousand when it's delivered?"
+
+Louis drew back a little.
+
+"Why the girl?"
+
+"You must know why. There couldn't be a better subject."
+
+"Yes; but if I do not choose to do it, what then?"
+
+"Why, then I'm beaten."
+
+He threw away the stump of his cigarette and took another. Presently
+Maryska returned with the flask of white wine and the glasses were
+chinked. The child drank a draught which would have put a vintner to
+shame. Then she showed her pretty teeth.
+
+"Oh, how good!" she said, and then with a heavenly sigh, "_Ecco c'e
+vuoto_."
+
+"Think you could do another?" Faber asked Louis. The reply was quite
+stately.
+
+"Sir, I am at your disposition."
+
+Maryska went off with five crowns this time. When she was gone, her
+father thawed a little.
+
+"Have you seen much of this place?"
+
+"Just as much as the harbour showed me."
+
+"Staying here long?"
+
+"Why, as to that--why stay?"
+
+Paleologue knocked the ashes off his cigarette with magnificent dignity.
+
+"You make guns; why not see some of them go off?"
+
+"Do you suggest fighting?"
+
+"That's so. I'm going up to Podgorica in three days' time, afterwards on
+to the frontier. There'll be riot, rape and pillage. Like to come
+along?"
+
+Faber was a little nonplussed.
+
+"Do you go alone?" he asked.
+
+"The girl and I, certainly. We can talk business on the road. Why not?"
+
+"Oh, I'll come! Here's the wine, I see. She's a wonder that girl of
+yours."
+
+Louis assented.
+
+"Her bringing up; she has forgotten how to read and write. It is
+education which is the matter nowadays. I believe the Greeks knew women.
+Come here, wild cat, and tell the stranger you can't read or write."
+
+Maryska reddened at this and cried "Beast!" with real anger. She sulked
+for quite a long time, hiding in the dark corner where only her glowing
+eyes could be seen. Louis took no notice of her tantrums; he had begun
+to be rather interested in the stranger.
+
+"Say, you know the fighting may be a bit lively. I'm bound for
+Ranovica--want to see it burned. There was a man here yesterday from the
+London illustrated papers. He's out for fancy pictures and put me on.
+He's mighty anxious after the rape and pillage. I guess we'll see
+something of that at Ranovica."
+
+Faber looked at the girl; she did not seem to be listening.
+
+"Aren't you imprudent? Isn't it better to leave your daughter here?" he
+asked in a low voice.
+
+Louis did not understand him. "Where I go, she goes. Besides, they know
+me very well, these people. You are not afraid, mister?"
+
+"Afraid! How do we go?"
+
+"Steamer to Antivari."
+
+"I'll take you on my yacht."
+
+Louis expressed no surprise. If his guest had promised a warship with
+golden plates his sphinx-like attitude would have been unchanged.
+
+"Just as you like," he said. "We take the horses at Scutari anyway."
+
+To which Faber responded with a further offer. "I've a car on my ship;
+we'll put her ashore and try that road."
+
+Louis shook his head. "No good at all; there isn't any damned road.
+To-day's Saturday; shall we say to-morrow morning at ten?"
+
+"But it was to be three days' time."
+
+Louis yawned. "Oh, d----n time!" he said. "I never think of it."
+
+"Then we'll start to-morrow at ten."
+
+He drank off his wine and turned to look at Maryska. She had crept
+nearer while they talked, and her head was bent to the floor that she
+might not miss a word. When Faber held out his hand to her she leaned
+upon her elbows and looked at him with strange eyes.
+
+"Good-bye, mister!"
+
+"You are coming on my ship, Maryska."
+
+"Not with that man," and she pointed to her father.
+
+"Pouf!" said Louis. "I will flay you with the whip."
+
+"And I will kill you with my knife," she said quickly, in Italian.
+
+It was the customary exchange of their daily compliments. Louis rather
+liked it.
+
+"Say," he exclaimed on the threshold, "and who may you be, anyway?"
+
+"I? Why, my name's John Faber."
+
+"Faber--Faber? I used to know a Faber in Paris in the 'seventies."
+
+"His son, sir."
+
+Louis turned his cigarette over in his mouth.
+
+"How did you hear of me?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I got your name in Paris. The _New York Mitre_ people gave it to
+me."
+
+"That's odd; I used to know your mother forty years ago. Well, so long,"
+and he turned on his heel.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+                         THE DAMNABLE MOUNTAINS
+
+
+This was a bitter winter on the Albanian frontier, and God alone knows
+how the party got to Ranovica at all.
+
+None but a madman would have attempted the journey at such a moment in
+the story of the Balkans; but as John Faber remarked, it needed a
+double-barrelled charge of insanity to venture it in the winter. Yet he
+had told Maryska that he would go, and go he did.
+
+What a country, and what a people! The Almighty seemed to have blasted
+the mountains and the mountaineers alike. Such a wilderness of grey
+rocks, of weirdly scarped precipices, of awful caverns and fearsome
+valleys is to be imagined by none who have not visited it.
+
+Depict a range of mountains built up of the barren limestone into a
+myriad fearsome shapes of dome and turret, castle and battlement. In the
+valleys far below, put the gardens of the world, fertile beyond all
+dreams; where the grapes grow as long as the fingers on your hand, and
+every tropical plant luxuriates. Drive humanity from this scene and
+deliver it up to the world and the bear. Such is the frontier of Albania
+where it debouches upon Montenegro--such are the "damnable mountains,"
+as every Christian in their vicinity has learned to call them.
+
+A desert upon an altitude, and yet it is not wholly a desert. Here and
+there ensconced in nook and cranny you will come upon an oasis where a
+village harbours wild people and a scanty patch of fertile soil keeps
+body and soul together. Such a place was Ranovica, to which Louis de
+Paleologue led his guest on the sixth day afterwards. They came up to it
+at three o'clock upon that December afternoon when the sun was
+magnificent over the Western Adriatic, and even these desolate hills had
+been fired to warmth and colour.
+
+An odd party--three upon cheeky little Hungarian horses; three upon
+mules. Frank, the American valet, had much to say about the habits and
+character of the mule, but he reserved it until they should be safely
+upon the yacht again. The other two servants were Austrians who had been
+heavily bribed for the venture--even they would have refused had they
+understood that it was for an expedition to Ranovica. This hole in the
+hill was full of savage Christians who hated the Montenegrins much, but
+the Moslem a good deal more. It was bound to be burned sooner or later.
+
+Ranovica has a fine old gate built by Stephen of Bosnia, heaven knows
+how many years ago. The party rode through this just after three
+o'clock, and was challenged immediately by half-a-dozen warriors with
+the most wonderful white breeches the Western world has seen. Already,
+and when far down the valley, the outposts of the little force defending
+this wild place had put the travellers through a searching inquisition;
+but they had to face another ordeal at the gate, and lucky for them that
+Louis spoke Servian so fluently. The soldiers listened to him as though
+a brother was speaking. They looked at Maryska with wide black eyes. Why
+not?--she was good to look upon, surely, with her high boots and crimson
+breeches and little Greek cap. Faber himself had looked at her a great
+many times on the way up, but he was by no means pleased that she should
+become the cynosure of so many evil eyes.
+
+"Well?" he said to her, while Louis played the millionaire among the
+wild men, "and what do you think of this, young lady?"
+
+She was still upon her pretty little horse and her eyes were here, there
+and everywhere; but not with the curiosity an untravelled woman would
+have displayed. Maryska had seen too much of the world to be troubled by
+Ranovica. Besides, she was hungry.
+
+"I think my father is a fool to come here, and you also, boss, that is
+what I think."
+
+"Guess you've hit it first time. Are you hungry, Maryska?"
+
+"Why, yes. Are you, boss?"
+
+She imitated her father perfectly, and Faber laughed. They were in a
+street so narrow that his horse had a head in the window upon one side
+of the road and a tail in a window upon the other. A tremendous
+battlement of rock lifted a sheer precipice far up above this peopled
+gorge. In the shadows there moved a fierce people, savage, wild, hunted.
+They gathered round the strangers menacingly, and but for the old
+white-haired priest, even Louis' gift of tongues might not have saved
+them. The priest, however, liked the jingle of good Austrian crowns. Let
+the strangers come to his house, he said, the inn was not fit to harbour
+a dog.
+
+So the party rode on a furlong--the men, the girl, the American valet
+and the Austrians. At every step the crowd pressed about them, black and
+scowling. It was good at last to enter an open courtyard and to see that
+none followed. Dark was coming down then and lights shining from the
+windows of the miserable houses. Faber remembered that he had
+communicated with the Turkish authorities before setting out and
+congratulated himself upon his prudence.
+
+"They'll want my guns, and so they'll want me," he said.
+
+But he was still mightily anxious about Maryska.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+The priest's house was about as big as a cow-house and as filthy as a
+Spanish podesta. Of food there was little save coarse bread and
+villainous-looking brandy. Here the guests came to the rescue, for Louis
+had carried up victuals at Faber's expense, and now the good things were
+spread upon old "Pop's" table, to that worthy's exceeding satisfaction.
+None ate with better appetite than he; none smacked fine lips so loudly
+over the good white wine, unless it were Maryska.
+
+Louis had christened him "Old Pop" immediately, and he talked to him in
+voluble Servian during the repast. Occasionally he interpreted at
+Maryska's request, and fragments of talk were tossed down to her as
+bones to a dog. They made the girl laugh, but Faber found them grim
+enough. He was asking "What does he say?" almost at every sentence.
+Louis picked out the tit-bits and passed them on.
+
+"There were Turks nine miles from here the day before yesterday. They
+burned Nitzke, and killed the women; some of the Nitzke people are here
+now; one has lost his nose--yes, they always cut off the noses, and so
+do our fellows when they catch a Turk. This place would be easy to hold
+if there were troops, but, of course, Nicholas can't send any until war
+is declared. Pop hopes that Alussein Pasha won't find us. If he does,
+there'll be a massacre; yes, it will be in the next two or three days.
+You're not behind the times, sir; you'll see the fun if there is any."
+
+Faber looked at Maryska, and discovered that she was looking at him.
+Evidently she shared her father's whim of exaggeration and her curiosity
+as to "the stranger's" behaviour was now awake. These odd terms: "boss,"
+"stranger," "master," picked up from the backwoods of America twenty
+years ago, pleased the Southern ear, and were guarded tenaciously.
+Maryska wished to frighten this American, and would have been delighted
+had she succeeded.
+
+"What shall you do if they come?" she asked him.
+
+He said, as quickly: "I should go to bed," and at that she laughed
+again.
+
+"And what will you do?" he asked her. She leered as she put a whole
+sardine into her capacious mouth.
+
+"I shall see them fight. Men are for fighting--women to see them. In
+your country, you have no soldiers. All the Americans talk a heap about
+it, but none of them have seen anything at all. You will be a great good
+man after this, boss!"
+
+He opened his eyes.
+
+"Why a great good man?"
+
+"Because you will have seen something that is great and good."
+
+He was very much astonished.
+
+"Do you mean that killing other men is great and good, Maryska?"
+
+Her face wore a pensive attitude, but she still had one eye upon the
+comestibles.
+
+"I think they are a brave people. I think it is great and good to fight
+for your country."
+
+"Well, wouldn't the Americans fight for theirs?"
+
+"Perhaps; I don't know. You are all too clever to think about anything
+but money. He says so."
+
+"Isn't money a very good thing to think about?"
+
+She looked at him with great contempt.
+
+"I was not born a shopkeeper," she said, and then, "Ask poppa and hear
+what he will say."
+
+He nodded his head.
+
+"Why has poppa come to Ranovica?"
+
+"To draw pictures for the papers, yes."
+
+"Is it for money?"
+
+"If he will receive it, yes; if he does not like the people he will not
+receive it."
+
+"Then how will you live, Maryska?"
+
+She tossed her head.
+
+"We shall live very well, sir; my father is a noble in his own country.
+He will not be insulted by such people; he is very proud."
+
+And then she said with a ridiculous want of gravity, "And so am I.
+Please to give me some of the chocolates, sir. The old Pop will eat them
+all."
+
+He passed her the chocolates and helped himself to a cigar from one of
+his own boxes. The room was long and narrow, the walls wainscoted in oak
+and painted a dirty pink above. An ikon hung in a corner, for "Pop" was
+of the Greek Orthodox Church, and very devout--when he was not drunk.
+The latter appeared now to be his condition, and when they rose from the
+table, he insisted upon taking them out into the village that they might
+hear him harangue the people. Night had come down at this time, but no
+one thought of sleep in that oasis of the bleak mountains. Far up on the
+desolate hills were the sentries who would tell Ranovica of the Turks'
+approach. In the street itself moved a heterogeneous company of old and
+young men, and women and laughing girls, everyone carrying a revolver in
+the girdle and some armed to the very teeth. A babble of excited talk
+fell upon the night air as a hum of insects. What was in store for the
+people of this new citadel? Would the Turk come or pass them by? God and
+the morrow must answer.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+It was a far cry to the great arsenals at Charleston, but Faber's mind
+crossed the seas when he walked alone that night in the street before
+the priest's house. What particular freak of a latent insanity had sent
+him to this place?
+
+Was it curiosity or the girl? Just the passing fancy for the wildest
+little woman he had ever met or the desire to see his fellow men
+butchered? One or the other it must be, and he was too honest to deny
+it. Either Maryska or the Turkish butcher, scimitar in hand.
+
+If it were the girl, his vain folly had met with a swift rebuke. Looking
+up to her bedroom window, he remembered her "good-night," and the manner
+of it. She had told him that he was an "old, old man," and the words
+struck him as a thunderclap. An "old, old man!" Good God! had so much of
+his life already run? No one had ever spoken such words before and his
+vanity bristled. Had the girl been serious, or did she speak in jest?
+
+An "old, old man"--and he was not forty. In America, it is true, they
+have little use for forty unless forty can command allegiance. He, John
+Faber, had ruled a city in Charleston. His works employed more than five
+thousand men; he was the high priest of the temples of labour his own
+brain had built up. No one remembered his age there. They spoke of him
+as "the new Krupp," the young genius in steel who could make or mar the
+fortunes of empires. The women pursued him relentlessly, remembering his
+eleven millions. He could have led the life of an Oriental debauchee and
+no one criticise him. To read the papers--many of which he owned--you
+might have set him down for twenty-five. This chit of a wild girl had
+burst the bubble with a little pin prick of her candour. An old, old
+man! The words raked his self-assurance, he could have boxed her ears
+for them.
+
+If not Maryska, what, then, had brought him to Ranovica?
+
+Was it to see if he could witness something of that wild life of the
+Balkans which had stirred his imagination in the past? When quite a lad
+he had read of these villages and of what befell them when the Turk came
+in. One incident he had never forgotten; it was on the Macedonian
+frontier where a little town had been sacked, the men butchered or
+burned by naphtha, the women violated, the old priest flayed alive. He
+had the account of it in the _Illustrated London News_ among his papers
+to that very day. Such a village as this might have been the scene of
+it!
+
+He passed on, musing deeply, and presently met an Albanian posted at the
+head of the street. The soldier had an American rifle, and he discovered
+that it had come from his own factory at Charleston. He gave the man a
+couple of crowns, and the fellow grinned savagely, pointing at the same
+time up to the silent hills. There were Turks somewhere up there, and he
+would shoot them. The rifle was about to do that for which it was made.
+Faber would see the fruit of his own work.
+
+He walked on a little way and met his valet, Frank. The young man spoke
+German fluently, and had learned a good deal from the Austrian porters.
+He was much alarmed by his situation, and did not hesitate to say so.
+
+"They tell me an attack is expected, sir. We shall fare badly in this
+hole if it comes off. I don't think the authorities can do much for us;
+what's more, there ain't any."
+
+Faber thrust his hands into his pockets--a habit of his--and walked a
+little way by his servant's side.
+
+"Why," he said half reflectively, "it isn't exactly the Ritz Hotel to be
+sure. Who's been talking, Frank?"
+
+"All of them, sir, all together. Turks are known to be five miles away
+and the young lieutenant expects them to ride in before morning. He says
+passports are a sure road to paradise--you can get to heaven quicker on
+an ambassador's signature than on any other. I'd do this block next time
+if I was you, Mr. Faber, to be sure I would. We may all have our throats
+cut before morning."
+
+Faber chewed his cigar heavily.
+
+"Mr. Paleologue doesn't think it; he's been among them before. He says
+the Turks like newspaper men; he's one of them. I advised our people in
+Constantinople I was coming, and I don't suppose they've gone to sleep.
+Anyway, can you fire a gun, Frank?"
+
+Frank turned a little pale.
+
+"I'd sooner see others fire it, sir."
+
+"True enough, and guns won't be much good if the knives get going. I
+think we'll move on to-morrow, Frank; we'll learn what happens from the
+newspapers."
+
+"I wish you'd go to-night, sir."
+
+Faber shook his head.
+
+"There's the young lady to be thought of. I guess she's asleep. It's got
+to be the morning, anyway."
+
+"At any particular hour, sir?"
+
+"As early as you like, Frank, if mademoiselle is ready."
+
+The young man went off more afraid than he would say, but glad of the
+crumb of comfort. His master, however, continued to walk up and down the
+narrow street before the house and to regard the cold mountains
+wistfully. What an odd scene! What a place for him to be in! The hole
+was full of the queerest people he had met in all his travels. Every
+hour added to the multitude of souls, while as for the inn or
+guest-house, it might have been a barracks. Albanians whose belts were
+full of knives and revolvers wrangled with refugees from the mountains
+who had fled before the Turks; there were travellers, police, wild
+women, soldiers, all boxed up together like sardines in a tin; and to
+add to the uproar a mechanical organ played the "Merry Widow" waltz
+without an interval. From time to time shrieks were to be heard and the
+sound of blows. A man would come reeling out into the street with bloody
+face or gashed limbs. One of them fell dead almost at the door of the
+priest's house, but no one took any notice of him. As for Louis de
+Paleologue and "old Pop" they were far too busy getting drunk together
+to observe such a trifle.
+
+Faber assured himself that the man was quite dead, and chancing upon two
+immense Albanians who were coming down the narrow street, he told them
+as much of the story as gestures would permit. They shrugged their
+shoulders and entered the guest-house, whence two or three tipsy fellows
+emerged presently to drag the dead man away as though the body were a
+sack. Following them to the lower end of the village, Faber perceived
+them disappear upon a narrow path by the side of the gorge he had
+climbed that afternoon, and he had no doubt that they would throw the
+dead man into the ravine, and leave the wolves to perform the last
+obsequies. He followed them no further, but stood a little while
+breathing the cool air and looking over toward Scutari. There lay
+Antivari and his own yacht. His voyage had been successful enough, and
+he had found the Emperor complaisant, but this estimate of his success
+was attended by another thought, and it concerned a woman. Sir Jules
+Achon would be at Ragusa by this time. Had Sir Jules seen the Emperor,
+and if so, to what end?
+
+Here was a memory of Gabrielle Silvester speaking to him, and in some
+way moving him to an exaltation of success, not wholly chivalrous.
+
+Had he not wagered that he would obtain an audience of the Kaiser, while
+the ridiculous ambassadors of a silly sentimentalism were still dreaming
+of their projects? And what he had promised, he had performed. The new
+Faber rifle would go to Germany--manufactured in part by Krupps, in part
+at Charleston. Meanwhile, universal peace remained a pretty topic for
+public platforms, and for certain distinguished old gentlemen whose
+philanthropy all the world admired. He, John Faber, owed something to it
+for it had introduced him to one of the cleverest women he had met in
+all his life, and this could be said despite their dramatic farewell.
+The latter troubled him, to be sure, but he did not despair of her when
+he remembered that the ugly business in Paris could yet be set straight.
+Claudine d'Arny must have a husband bought for her as other women have
+jewels or toy dogs. It should not be beyond his resources to contrive as
+much.
+
+He lighted a new cigar upon this pleasant realisation of power--a
+gratification which his busy life made rare--and turning about, he
+retraced his steps toward Ranovica. The contrast between the lonely
+mountains which guarded the valley and the hive of armed men within was
+sharp enough, but it interested him at the moment less than other omens
+which a quick ear detected. The stillness seemed to him almost
+unnatural. He could have sworn at one place that a face peered down at
+him from a cranny of the precipice above, and, upon that, there came
+from afar the echo of a rifle shot. He was sure of it, faint as was the
+report and difficult to locate. A rifle shot over there beyond the great
+mountain which protected Ranovica from the northern winds! Long he
+listened for any repetition of the firing, but hearing none, returned at
+last to the priest's house. His nerves were playing tricks with him, he
+said. It was time to have done with it. There was a light in Maryska's
+room and a shadow upon the blind said that she was not yet in bed. Faber
+smiled as he looked up and remembered her words.
+
+"An old, old man."
+
+What had put it into the little cat's head to call him that?
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+                        THE BURNING OF RANOVICA
+
+
+There were two beds in the room, and one was occupied already by Louis
+de Paleologue, who lay in a heavy stupor, but was not properly asleep.
+Faber had slept in such rooms before--in the old wild days when he had
+travelled in Western America to sell revolvers to a Christian people,
+who were set upon shooting other Christians. This room impressed chiefly
+by its omnipresent suggestions of profound filthiness. He feared to
+touch anything in it--the chairs, the walls, the very coverlet on the
+bed. His own rugs were his armament. He wrapped himself in them from
+head to foot, and fell asleep at last, still wondering in his dreams
+why, in God's name, he had come to Ranovica.
+
+When he awoke, it was at a touch of the hand of his valet Frank. He felt
+heavy and drowsy, and knew that he had missed a good night's
+rest--indispensable to men whose brains are dominant. It was already
+light, and the curtains were drawn back from the window. He sat up to
+listen and became aware of a strange hubbub in the street without.
+
+"Why, what are you saying, Frank; what's that you're telling me?"
+
+The valet was ghastly pale; he walked upon tip-toe as though afraid of
+being heard; his voice was hardly more than the whisper of polite
+servitude.
+
+"The soldiers are in, sir--it's all up with Ranovica."
+
+"You don't say so! When did they come in?"
+
+"Five minutes ago, sir. Don't you hear that--my God, don't you hear it,
+sir?"
+
+There is no mistaking the cry of a man who is being butchered by knives,
+and Faber could not mistake it then. He sprang out of bed at a bound and
+ran to the window. The street below was full of Turks--the red fez, the
+baggy blue breeches were everywhere. Leaning out to get a better view,
+he saw a huge Albanian held down by four assassins who had the faces of
+the devils in the pictures. Another, like to them, had a broad butcher's
+knife in his hand, and was deliberately hacking the prone man's head
+from his shoulders. It was clumsily done and the wretch shrieked
+horribly at every cut upon the bare flesh. His blood already ran in the
+gutters, where it mingled with the blood of fifty others.
+
+A sense of utter helplessness--of a sickness and horror he had not yet
+experienced, held Faber to the window for some minutes. He could look at
+nothing else but the outstretched figure and the clumsy knife. When head
+and body at length were torn apart, and the former held up on the end of
+a scimitar, a loud shout of fury escaped him, and he ran across the room
+for his revolver. The uproar had awakened Paleologue, who sat bolt
+upright watching his friend. When he perceived the revolver in his hand,
+he sprang out of bed and caught him in powerful arms.
+
+"What are you doing, boss--what d----d nonsense is this?"
+
+"I tell you they're hacking men to pieces in the street out yonder. Let
+me go--by God, I can't stand it."
+
+"Say, don't be a fool. Do you think you can shoot a regiment? Keep that
+pistol out of sight, and hold your tongue. We'll have them up here if
+you butt in like that! Don't you understand it isn't our business? Why,
+you're more d----d nuisance than any woman--and you talk as much. Now,
+be quiet, and hear me out. You've got to sit this through and say
+nothing. I'll do the talking for myself and the girl. You look on and
+remember why you're here. Haven't you sense enough at your age?"
+
+The irony of it stung Faber, and he put the pistol down. The frightened
+valet still looked out of the window and howled at intervals, as though
+he himself were already in the hands of the Turks. They could hear rifle
+shots, sometimes a volley, then a few straggling reports, which spoke of
+fugitives, who were making a dash for the mountains. In the street
+itself, it seemed that men scurried hither and thither as rats from
+their holes. Shouts of triumph were followed by sharp cries of pain,
+often by groans and the shrill screams of women. The air came pungent
+with the odour of gunpowder. In the room itself there was now silence
+save for the servant's bellowing. Paleologue dressed himself without any
+fuss whatever, and he did not utter a single word. When he was quite
+ready, he went out into the street immediately--Faber at his heels. No
+one had asked for Maryska.
+
+Paleologue was wearing a ridiculous suit of yellow tweed at this time,
+and a green Homburg hat with a feather in it. He carried no other
+weapons than a cigarette case and a box of matches. The Turks round
+about eyed him with amazement not untempered by curiosity; but before
+any of them could make a movement he shouted out in their own tongue
+that he was an English newspaper correspondent, and their rifles were
+lowered. Doffing his cap to a man upon a little grey horse, who appeared
+to be their officer, the artist crossed the street and offered him a
+cigarette, speaking rapidly in the careless way he could command,
+whatever the language. Faber listened open mouthed. He thought that he
+was as near to death as ever he had been in his nine and thirty years,
+and he made no poor guess.
+
+"What does he say, Frank?" the question was hurled up at the window
+where the valet's white face could be seen. He might as well have asked
+the fellow a question in Chinese.
+
+"I don't know, sir. I think he is mad."
+
+"I guess we were all mad to come here. My God! what a slaughter-house!"
+
+No truer description of the scene could have been uttered by any man.
+The streets of Ravonica had become a shambles. Turks ran in and out of
+the distant houses like dogs at a warren. There were twenty headless
+bodies within ten yards of the captain in command. From the door of the
+inn or guest-house a broad eddy of blood was oozing away to the gutter;
+they could hear the troops within looting and ravaging at their
+pleasure, while the wretched organ still played some trumpery waltz in
+irony most wonderful. So dreadful it was that Faber, who believed that
+he knew the whole story of war, staggered back in a revolt of nausea and
+would have re-entered the priest's house but for Paleologue's imperative
+summons. The artist had never been more at home. He wore his hat
+jauntily and smoked with gusto while he talked to the captain.
+
+"Say, boss, come and report yourself. This is Alussein Pasha. He has had
+word of you from headquarters; just shake and look as pleased as you
+can."
+
+Faber shook hands with the man, while Louis offered him a cigarette and
+struck matches for them all. The concomitants of the ghastly scene were
+wholly out of place and singularly at variance with the truth. These
+three men might have met by accident in this outlandish village and have
+been discussing the best road back to civilization. The bloody struggle,
+still proceeding in the miserable hovels round about, moved Alussein
+Pasha no more than did the howling of dogs in an Eastern street. And
+Paleologue was just as indifferent until some of the ruffians fetched
+out "old Pop" by the hair of his head and held a scimitar at his throat.
+Then, to be fair to him, he woke up to the truth and began to argue
+excitedly with the Pasha--at which moment also Maryska appeared at a
+window above and spoke to her father in Italian. He answered with a wave
+of his hand, bidding her disappear; but not before a Turkish subaltern
+had seen her and thrown her a kiss in the Western fashion. This was too
+much for Louis, who knocked him down out of hand.
+
+Undoubtedly it was a mad act, and went near to costing the lives of the
+party. Alussein Pasha uttered a roar like a stricken bull when his
+officer was floored; the Turks about him drew their knives and pressed
+upon Faber with fierce shouts. He had as good as given it up, and
+thought that this was the end of the business, when a young man at the
+Pasha's side said something to his chief in an earnest note and appeared
+to bring that savage worthy to his senses. He roared an order to the
+hawking pack, and they fell back from the prey they had marked down. An
+excited exchange of doubtful compliments between Louis and the grand
+Turk was followed by a compromise, Alussein stipulating for an immediate
+return to the shelter of the priest's house until the affair was over.
+So, in they went, the soldiers half pushing them with the butts of their
+rifles and barring the door behind them. "Old Pop" was the only prisoner
+now. They had forgotten him in the excitement of that very critical
+moment through which they had passed.
+
+"Have a drink?" said Louis, throwing himself into a chair by the window
+and his hat into another; he seemed quite unconcerned, even unaware that
+there had been an instant of peril. John Faber, on the other hand, was
+talking to himself in decided terms. "John, my boy, you're a d----d fool
+to be here," he was saying--and that was very true. When he had drunk a
+tumbler of white wine and mineral water he found the sweat running off
+him like rain.
+
+"Hot weather for the time of year. Where's your girl, Louis?"
+
+"Oh! I guess she's all right--better where she is. Will you pass over
+that drawing pad? I can see a picture here."
+
+Faber passed him the pad, and he settled deep in the arm-chair and began
+to make a rapid sketch of the crowded street. At the same moment Maryska
+entered the room and closed the door firmly behind her.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+"Where is the priest?" she asked them in a strange tone. The men looked
+at her together, then at each other.
+
+"Why, isn't he in the house?"
+
+"They are killing him," she said. And then, "What are you doing here?"
+
+Louis put down his pencil, and leaning out of the window, which was on a
+level with the street, he watched the scene a little while in silence.
+
+"By God!" he cried at last; "they're singeing the old man's beard.
+Listen to that."
+
+They listened and heard a harrowing sound, neither cry nor scream, but
+the wail as of a cat mewing. Twenty Turks had "Old Pop" in their midst;
+they had torn his clothes from his back and cut off his nose. Now some
+of them brought naphtha and poured it on his head, and instantly he
+became a vomit of flame.[1] Every feature of the wretched man could be
+seen with horrid distinctness, clarified by the fire. The flesh withered
+up before their eyes. He stood for a long minute plucking at his own
+flesh with hands of which but the bones were left. Then, all his cries
+ceased, and he fell forward in a ghastly heap, while the Turks howled
+derisively and thrust scimitars into the fire. They had burned many a
+priest these latter days, but this fellow was famous, and had fought
+many a good fight for Ranovica. His death stimulated a frenzy of lust
+and madness, and they rushed away to enter the houses and drive out the
+women. All the make-believe of a military occupation had been put aside
+by this time. Alussein had led them across the mountains to teach these
+Christians a lesson, and they were good masters.
+
+    [1] The incident here described is taken almost unchanged from
+        the recent story of Macedonia.
+
+Maryska heard the priest's cries, but she did not see the manner of his
+death. Had it not happened so swiftly and with such dramatic finality,
+the men would have made some stir to save him; but, as though guessing
+their intention, a group of soldiers with rifles across their arms
+pressed about the window, and made it very clear that they would shoot
+upon next to no provocation at all. Alussein Pasha had ridden on at this
+time to the lower road overlooking Scutari, and would return when the
+good work was done. He would declare that the villagers had brought it
+all on themselves, and his report would be a model of tearful orthodoxy.
+Meanwhile, there were very few of the male inhabitants to bring anything
+upon anybody; the women alone remained, and they were dragged from their
+houses, some by the hair of their heads, some forced by thrust of
+swords, a few going without protest, as though they dreamed. Of the
+latter were the younger girls, mere children of fourteen or fifteen
+years, who stood in a little group before the priest's house, and looked
+at the soldiers, uncertain--nay, ignorant--of their meaning. Maryska saw
+these anon; and Louis also. He had been chewing his cigarette very
+busily since the priest died, and there were few lines upon the paper.
+As for Faber, he merely stood motionless by the window. The scene held
+him spellbound with an influence he knew to be evil.
+
+"What have they done with the priest? Why do you not answer me, Mr.
+Faber?"
+
+She touched him upon the arm, and he looked down upon a child's face
+from which a woman's eyes stared up at him wonderingly. What answer
+could he make to her?
+
+"You must just run away and think nothing about it, Maryska," he said
+quietly. "We can none of us do anything. I wish to God we could."
+
+"Are you not going to speak for the children, then?"
+
+"The children! Oh, they're all right; they won't hurt the children."
+
+"That is not true," she said, for the instinct of the woman guided her
+surely. "Someone must speak for the children. Will not you, father?"
+
+The appeal touched Paleologue, and he threw away the stump of his
+cigarette and leaned out of the window. They heard him talking rapidly
+with the Turks upon the side-walk, and presently shouting something to
+an officer before the guest-house opposite. Whatever he said moved the
+soldiers to derision and the children themselves to hope. They knew that
+he was their friend, and their round eyes watched his every gesture.
+
+"What's the man saying?" Faber asked. Louis hardly seemed to know.
+
+"I guess it's a bad business, boss, a d----d bad business."
+
+"You don't mean to say----"
+
+"I do every word of it."
+
+"We must see this thing through, Paleologue. I'm going out."
+
+"You can't go out. What's the good of doing stunts? They'll shoot,
+sure."
+
+He tried to hold back the impetuous man, appealing and swearing in a
+breath. From below, the children watched the scene with a look of
+bewilderment and despair. The unknown strangers were quarrelling, then!
+What hope of mercy had they if this went on? This must have been in
+their minds when Maryska, climbing nimbly as a cat, slipped by her
+father and leaped down among the Turks. She was kissing and hugging some
+of the children and telling them in a tongue they understood that all
+would be well with them; doing this, and defying the snarling troopers
+before a man could have counted ten. Then the men at the window lost
+sight of her, the throng closing about her as water filling the vortex
+of a falling stone.
+
+"Good God, man, aren't you going now?"
+
+Paleologue licked his lips, a little astonished, perhaps, not to find a
+cigarette between them. He caught up a great planter's hat and clapped
+it on the side of his head; then, without a word, he clambered over the
+casement and pushed his way among the soldiers. Of course, Faber was
+upon his heels, treading so close on his tracks that they stumbled into
+the press together and were instantly swallowed up by it. Instructed to
+deal patiently with the strangers, none of the sentries fired upon them,
+but all swarmed about them and tried to pull them back. The village
+itself had by this time become a Golgotha, from whose wretched houses
+came the groans of butchered men and the screams of women in an agony of
+fear and shame. Their terrible cries were echoed up and down the streets
+from many a group which stooped about an infamy; while at the far end
+near the church, flames spurted from an isolated house, and the wood
+burned with a detonation heard closely upon the still air. The outposts
+of the legions of hell had begun their work; they would do it thoroughly
+enough before their chief returned to call them off.
+
+"Where's my daughter? What have you done with her?" Paleologue's voice
+rose to a shrill pitch as he pushed and fought his way into the crowd
+and was thrust forward and still forward by the wiry American at his
+heels. Faber had never imagined such a scene as this, nor could he have
+believed it possible. The heat and clamour of the street, the sweat of
+the fighting men; here and there a girl caught in a man's arms and held
+firmly as a wild beast holds its prey; smoke of the burning house coming
+down upon the wind--the crazy organ still rolling out its dirge-like
+waltzes. All this and the fierce oaths of the maladroitly butchered--the
+horrid, gashed corpses in the gutters--the rearing, terrified horses of
+Alussein's lieutenants; and, above it all, the serene sky and the
+desolate mountains lifting their scarred summits in savage menace. What
+an inferno, what a hell of human creation! And into this the girl
+Maryska had plunged, headlong as a bold swimmer into a raging sea which
+has engulfed a child.
+
+He found himself imitating Paleologue by and by, and calling her name
+aloud. The attempts of the sentries to get the pair of them back to the
+house were met by thrust upon thrust; a good square push from the
+shoulder here and a dive into an opening there. Gradually they won their
+way up the street, but could not find her; and upon that a sense of
+desperation drove them to some imprudence, and they began to deal in
+blows. Such madness might have brought a swift penalty but for the fire
+which the priest's death had kindled. The God of Ranovica, designing
+that these people should perish to bear witness to their faith, willed
+also that Ranovica should fall with them, and that the priest should be
+the instrument. From his body the flames had run to the crazy house;
+from the house to the church, and thence to the narrow street, which
+instantly became aglow. Faber found himself pressing forward amid
+showers of sparks, and still crying "Maryska--Maryska!" as though the
+child's voice could be heard amid the din. Turks pressed about him
+shielding their faces with sun-browned arms and cursing the "spawn of
+dogs" by which the visitation had come upon them. He was driven in and
+out of courtyards, tossed hither and thither by the human wave, whose
+crest was the whirling scimitars of the destroyers. In the end he found
+himself out upon the hillside, flaming Ravonica below him, and the still
+air alive with the cries of its people. Paleologue had disappeared;
+there was no trace of Maryska, and he himself had hardly a rag upon his
+back.
+
+He sat down upon a great boulder, and presently heard a familiar voice.
+It was that of his valet, Frank.
+
+"Mr. Faber, is that you, sir?"
+
+"I guess it is, Frank."
+
+"Thank God for that, sir! Our baggage is done for, sure and certain. The
+house is afire from top to bottom, sir."
+
+"Never mind the baggage, Frank. Have you seen Mr. Paleologue?"
+
+"He was down among the soldiers five minutes ago, sir."
+
+"And the young lady?"
+
+Frank could not answer.
+
+"She went away with some of the young women--I think toward the church,
+sir."
+
+"Was that long ago?"
+
+"About five minutes before they fired it; I'm sure it wasn't more."
+
+"Well, look at the church now, anyway. This is an awful business,
+Frank."
+
+"I suppose in their way it's what they call war, sir. But it's a
+terrible business."
+
+"Ah!" said Faber. "I suppose it would be. You don't happen to have a
+cigar on you, Frank?"
+
+"I've got a few cigarettes, sir."
+
+"Then pass one up. We'll go and look for Mr. Paleologue presently; I
+guess he's taken the lower road. We should find both of them there."
+
+"I hope we shall do so, sir."
+
+He passed the cigarettes and the matches, and his master lighted one and
+sat and smoked in silence. It may be that he asked himself what he, John
+Faber, was doing out there upon this bleak hillside when he might have
+been on board his yacht in the harbour of Antivari. Such reflections had
+occurred to him on several occasions when some absurd venture had
+brought him very near to that haven where millions are the poorest
+credentials; but they were unduly ironical to-day, and not a little
+persistent. Why had he come to Ranovica? Because that little wide-eyed
+woman, who made such a curious appeal to him, had insisted upon his
+coming. It was very true, and he would not fence with it. He might lose
+his life for Maryska even yet; and that would be a grotesque finale
+enough. Meanwhile, a certain doubt about her remained and troubled him
+with a graver thought. Why had he not discovered her in the village? No
+man could venture into that inferno now, for the whole place was just a
+flame upon the hillside; but he had been up and down the street with
+Paleologue, and they had seen nothing of her. He thought it curious if
+nothing more. They should have discovered her immediately when the fire
+broke out.
+
+Alussein Pasha rode up presently and his little staff with him. He had
+treated Faber with some deference from the beginning, and now that the
+fury of the sack was over he became almost grotesquely polite, gabbling
+in appalling German and expressing as well as he could his regret for
+the state in which he discovered the stranger. In return, Faber asked
+him of his friend--gesture serving where names failed--and the matter
+being understood, the Pasha told off a lieutenant and two men who
+invited the "infidel" to follow them. Ranovica had burned itself to a
+cinder by this time, and if it was not possible to pass down the narrow
+street, at least the precincts of the houses might be searched. Faber
+trudged after the men and came to the ruined church, now but a shell and
+a few blackened beams. A young Turkish soldier walked to and fro here;
+but the gulley of the road before the church was blocked by corpses, and
+near by them lay the figure of Louis de Paleologue. He had been shot
+through the head just as he reached the porch, and he lay face
+downwards, an unlighted cigarette between his lips and his kindly eyes
+wide open.
+
+Faber knelt and turned the dead man over. He felt his pulse, and even
+laid his head upon his chest to listen for the beating of his heart.
+There had been horrors enough in Ranovica this day; but they had to do
+with a strange and savage people, of whom he knew nothing. He remembered
+that this man had taken his mother to America when she had no other
+friend in the world. Had he not come to Europe to reward him for what he
+had done as few have been rewarded, whatever the service? And this was
+the end of it--this prone figure, still and fearful--this, and the Turks
+who looked down upon the scene with Oriental indifference--this, and the
+sentry who leered behind their backs and made no attempt to hide his
+satisfaction. Faber caught the fellow grinning, and recognized him for
+one of the men who had turned on him earlier in the day when Paleologue
+floored the officer. The rifle in his hand had come from the arsenal at
+Charleston. Surely destiny spoke loudly enough here.
+
+He borrowed a burned and tattered cloak from one of the dead in the
+gutter, and covered his friend's face reverently. Where to go, what to
+do next, he knew not; nor in what manner he should seek Maryska. The
+truth had gripped him with fingers of iron.
+
+This was war--and of war was he not the disciple?
+
+
+                                  III
+
+The Turks left the village about three in the after-noon. It was
+understood that they had other work of the kind, but more to the
+northward, and removed from the observant eye of their neighbours, the
+Montenegrins, who would surely avenge this day. Before they left, they
+were able to restore to Faber the mules which had brought his party to
+Ranovica. The beasts had been taken up the hillside during the
+conflagration, and would have been led much further afield but for the
+Pasha's desire to curry favour with the American. He knew that this was
+the man who made the rifles with which the infidel dogs must be
+destroyed; urgent messages from Constantinople had warned him to show
+deference to so useful an ally, and he obeyed his instructions with a
+display of manners quite pleasing. It was otherwise when the dead artist
+and his daughter were mentioned. Constantinople had said nothing about
+them, and it really seemed to Faber that the flat-faced, good-humoured
+Alussein could be a genius of understanding or the dullest blockhead at
+his pleasure.
+
+So away the Turk went, just when the sun was beginning to dip down over
+the Adriatic and all the wilderness to glow beneath the shimmer of its
+deepening rays. A hillside, normally grey and cold, shone rose-pink and
+purple in the waxing splendour of the hour. The burned village became
+but the blacker for the gift, a charred log lying in a cup of the
+burnished rocks. Out of it, when every ruin had been twice searched,
+every heap of ashes turned for possible plunder, out of it went the
+baggy breeches and the little white horses and the fierce and bristling
+men, as cool and laconic as though this were but an episode and
+to-morrow would furnish another. Romancers' tales of troops drunk with
+lust and slaughter could not be told of them. All that passed, women's
+fearful struggles to escape their embraces, the shrieks of men whose
+hearts were being torn out, the gasps of the dying and the livid faces
+of the dead--all this was already forgotten, and would hardly be
+remembered when a week had gone. Had not the Prophet commanded them so
+to do, and was not he a discerning person withal?
+
+Faber had taken a meal with Alussein upon the hillside about midday, and
+after that he had patrolled the village with Frank at his side, waiting
+and hoping for the coming of Maryska. To return to Ragusa without her
+would have been an infamy he could not contemplate; and yet he feared to
+meet her or to tell her the truth which must be told. When at last he
+did discover her, some hours had passed, and it was quite dark. The
+hillside with its savage boulders had given up the most part of the
+refugees then, and they had come down to the village to wander amid the
+ruins of their poor homes and to fill the street with their wailing. It
+was at this time also that another band of Albanians came up the valley
+to their comrades' rescue; alas, so many hours too late, but yet in time
+to help the desperate refugees and to bring them food and succour. Fires
+were now lighted by the valley road, and the women and children grouped
+about them. The most timid crept down from the rocks above; girls
+dishevelled and weeping, men who had fled with gashed limbs to the
+harbourage of caves, children whose parents lay dead beneath the
+ashes--all came at the summons of the shrill goat's horn. Meanwhile,
+none thought of burying the dead--none except Faber, who would not leave
+the body of Louis de Paleologue where it was, and returned with two
+lusty Albanians at his heels to do what could be done in the matter.
+
+It was then that he found Maryska.
+
+One of the Albanians carried a lantern, and the rays of it discovered
+her, kneeling against the broken railings of the church porch, but with
+face averted from the dead. She did not appear to have been weeping. Her
+eyes were big and round; her head bare, her hair dishevelled. What she
+had suffered at the soldiers' hands might not be imagined; but its
+memories had been obliterated by this sudden realization of the greater
+loss. All that humanity had been to her lay still and ghastly in that
+fearsome gutter. Father, brother, friend--he who had gone hand in hand
+with her through the wild wilderness of the world, he would lead her no
+more. The night had dropped a black curtain between her and the eternal
+hope of youth. Womanhood had revealed itself, its secrets thrust upon
+her by the bloody hands of monsters; but the drugged soul of the child
+could find no place in her mind for that. He was dead. Why, then, did
+she live?
+
+She shrank from the light, but did not cover her eyes. Discerning Faber,
+she leaped toward him as an animal unchained, and bared her breast with
+frenzied fingers. "Shoot me, stranger--shoot me through the heart!" she
+cried. He caught her outstretched hand, and she fell almost lifeless
+into his arms. Oblivion, the greater mercy, saved her reason in the
+critical hour. She was in a delirium when they made a rude palanquin and
+carried her down to Antivari. She awoke therefrom upon the afternoon of
+the second day after in a cabin upon Faber's yacht; and then, for the
+first time, they believed that she would live.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+                            A STRANGE VOYAGE
+
+
+                                   I
+
+The _Wanderer_, carrying Sir Jules Achon and his party, lay in Ragusa
+harbour when the fugitives came down from the hills. The two boats were
+moored almost side by side in the offing, and hardly had Faber set foot
+aboard when he sent a message to Gabrielle, begging her help in an
+emergency. Half an hour later she met him at the head of the gangway
+ladder, and he led her at once into the gorgeous saloon of the
+_Savannah_, as his own boat was named.
+
+"Is this the emergency?" she asked laughingly, as she pointed to the
+wonderful decoration of the cabin. He told her as bluntly that it was
+not.
+
+"I've got a patient on board," he said. "Will you help me?"
+
+"You know that I will--very gladly. Is he here now?"
+
+"It's not he--it's she. That's why I sent for one of her own sex. God
+help a foreign woman in this part of the world! This is a mere baby. She
+calls me an 'old, old man.' So I guess she's interesting."
+
+He betrayed no emotion of any kind. His anxiety concerning the child,
+his perception of the irony of fate directing his footsteps into such
+strange paths, the baser curiosity which had sent him into the hills,
+were masked successfully by that clear-cut face. Gabrielle imagined that
+his act was an impulse of charity, and she was pleased that he had made
+her the instrument of it.
+
+"Where is this precious derelict, and what has happened to her?"
+
+"She's in the pink saloon. Don't speak of it lightly. She's lost her
+father, and has not a friend in the world. I knew she would find her way
+to your heart. Shall we go and see her? The doctor's there now, I guess.
+We'll have to get our orders."
+
+He led the way to the cabin, and they went in. It was a beautiful room,
+and his servants already had smothered it in flowers. A young Austrian
+doctor from Ragusa was trying to give the head stewardess his
+instructions, and failing as dismally. He turned with relief to
+Gabrielle, whose German was pretty if not eloquent. The cabin was to be
+kept as quiet as possible; the patient must be watched zealously in case
+of sudden collapse. He understood that this was a case of shock, and
+could know nothing until consciousness returned. His suggestion that a
+nurse should be fetched from one of the military hospitals was refused
+almost ungraciously by the English girl he so plainly admired. Gabrielle
+would play the part herself. She had already removed her furs, and was
+busy about the cabin where artistic fingers could do so much. It was
+quite needless for the doctor to repeat his instructions as he was
+prepared to; she dismissed both him and her host with a wave of the hand
+which said "begone" as no tongue could have uttered the word.
+
+It was nine o'clock at night before Faber saw her again. His dinghy had
+gone across to the _Wanderer_ with a message explaining the
+circumstances, but he himself remained on deck, waiting for news that
+might be a new echo of this pitiful tragedy. But a few days ago he had
+entered that beautiful place and discovered the little nomad whose life
+now hung upon a thread. He had wished to bring happiness to her father
+and herself, but had failed beyond repair. Money did not help him in the
+wilds of Albania, nor could money buy one jot or tittle of content for
+the child of the man he had discovered in the cavern. Had not he himself
+paid for the journey to Ranovica--a whim which cost the life of a man to
+whom he owed his very existence? And now the child was his legacy. He
+stood at the taffrail wondering what unnameable secret she had carried
+down from the hills.
+
+Perhaps he remembered the multitude of women who had so suffered since
+God Almighty created a battlefield; but understanding had never come in
+that way hitherto. Little Maryska--he would have given a good deal of
+his lavish fortune to have saved her life that night. His heart bounded
+when Gabrielle came out of the cabin at last to bring him better news of
+the invalid.
+
+"She is conscious and would see you. I think you had better go down."
+
+"Do you approve my going?"
+
+She looked at him in a curious way.
+
+"She has asked for you, Mr. Faber."
+
+"Why, then, I'll go right now. Have you eaten that dinner yet?"
+
+"As much as I want. I must go now and get my things from the yacht."
+
+"But you'll come back, sure?"
+
+"I think I must--there's no one else."
+
+"That's right down fine of you. I knew you'd do it when you understood."
+
+She looked him full in the face and smiled.
+
+"There are some things no woman can misunderstand. I shall not be very
+long. Please let her talk as little as possible."
+
+"Ah!" he said, fallen to a grave manner. "I fear this is a bad business
+altogether."
+
+She did not ask him why, nor had she any clue to his meaning. The whole
+affair was a mystery which could have but a human solution. She made
+light of the romantic story concerning Louis de Paleologue, and
+believed, with a feminine instinct for the obvious, that vulgar
+flirtation had been the impulse of Faber's journey. All this hurt her
+pride, but could not be the just subject of complaint. Tenaciously she
+clung to the idea that she might yet use this master intellect for the
+schemes which had lifted her father and herself from the slough of
+monotony to a little place in the story of the world. This very
+accident, this revelation of a man's weakness, might be a precious
+opportunity, however deeply her vanity suffered. If she succeeded, her
+triumph must be the greater; if she failed----But failure was a word
+which Gabrielle Silvester refused to add to her vocabulary.
+
+So she went over to the _Wanderer_ to tell her father of the sick girl,
+and to add, almost in a whisper, "I believe there's a good deal in it."
+To which Silvester replied that he was sorry to hear it, "for," said he,
+"there is no man alive who could do so great a work if he would come
+over to us."
+
+
+                                   II
+
+Faber went straight down to Maryska's cabin and found her crouching upon
+a pillow. The long, jet black hair had been taken down, and lay in a
+tangled skein about her; she was very pale, and her eyes glowed as with
+a fever. Evidently she had been listening for his footsteps, for she
+turned instantly when he came in and fixed her eyes upon him.
+
+"It's Mr. Faber," she said, but without satisfaction.
+
+He took a chair and drew it to her bedside.
+
+"Well, Maryska, are you feeling better, my dear?"
+
+She paid not the slightest heed to the question. Sitting up in bed, she
+closed her gown about her chest and breathed a little heavily. Then she
+said, without warning:
+
+"Where is my father?"
+
+He bent his head, fearing to meet her gaze.
+
+"My dear little girl, you'll remember all about that presently."
+
+There was a long pause upon this.
+
+"Yes," she said at last, and still apparently unmoved; "I do remember.
+Why did you let him die, Mr. Faber?"
+
+"I, Maryska? I had nothing to do with it. If he had taken my advice he
+would not have left the Pasha's side. I was quite a long way off when it
+happened."
+
+She insisted, looking at him with pathetic eyes.
+
+"If you had not come to Ragusa, he would not have left me. I am sorry
+you came. Shall I be kept here long?"
+
+"Do you mean in this ship?"
+
+"Yes, of course. Is it your ship, then?"
+
+"It's my ship--at least, I've hired it. Don't you like it, my dear?"
+
+She looked round about her critically.
+
+"You are not very rich," she said at last. "We came from America in a
+much larger ship than this. He was with me then."
+
+Her eyes filled suddenly with tears, and she saw no longer either the
+cabin or the man. Faber covered the outstretched hand, and stroked it
+softly.
+
+"My poor little girl! You must make your home with me now."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You are not rich; it would be different with you," she said; and then,
+in just the childish tone she had used at the Cantina, she exclaimed, "I
+don't believe you have much money."
+
+He laughed, and reassured her.
+
+"I've a great deal more than you or I will ever want, Maryska."
+
+It was evident that the wolf-child was suspicious. The gipsy instincts
+were awake.
+
+"Will you give me some money if I want any?"
+
+"I'll give you as much as you ask me for."
+
+"Five crowns, say--would you give me five crowns?"
+
+"Of course I would."
+
+"Here and now?" and she held out her hand.
+
+He was nonplussed for the moment, but he took a bank-note from his
+pocket, and thrust it into her tiny fist.
+
+"There, I guess there are fifty crowns and more there, Maryska. You
+shall have another when you want it."
+
+The hand closed upon the bank-note like a vise. None the less, her
+thoughts were not wholly of the money.
+
+"If my father had been here he would have been very glad of this. He
+will never know now."
+
+"I don't believe that. He'll know that you've become my little daughter,
+Maryska. He'll understand that all right. My home's yours now. I want
+you to understand that right here."
+
+She shook her head, the long hair smoothed back from her forehead.
+
+"He will never know. I cannot speak to him. I have tried so hard and he
+does not hear me."
+
+"Believe no such thing, my dear. He hears every word you say. He knows
+that you will be happy with me."
+
+She looked up inquiringly.
+
+"With you, Mr. Faber? Why should I stay with you?"
+
+"Because I mean to make a home for you."
+
+"Will you make it upon this ship?"
+
+"Why, you couldn't live always upon a ship."
+
+She became practical.
+
+"I would sooner live in Ragusa; but not in the Cantina, because he would
+not be there with us. It is very cheap, and if you had the money we
+could live very well upon a crown a day and the wine. I have had no wine
+since I came away; the lady would not give me any. If you have any money
+left and would send for some wine----" She looked up beseechingly, with
+a look which reminded him of the little wild wolf who had run to the
+wine-shop the night he discovered her father. He hardly knew how to
+satisfy her.
+
+"I'll send down anything the doctor orders for you. If he says wine----"
+
+"Oh!" she cried, flown into a passion in an instant. "I could kill
+you--I could kill you for that!" And without another word she turned her
+face to the wall and still clutching her money tenaciously, she made it
+plain that she had done with him.
+
+"All right, Maryska," he said, rising, "you shall have the wine all
+right. I don't care that for the doctors; I'll see to it myself."
+
+She did not answer him, and lay so still that she might have been dead.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Gabrielle returned immediately after the interview was terminated, and
+with her Harry Lassett, who by no means liked the circumstances of her
+visit, and had come to verify them. She went at once to Maryska's cabin,
+but Lassett remained on deck to sample the green cigars, and
+incidentally to cross-question their owner. He talked upon a number of
+subjects with the assurance of twenty-three years and the experience of
+ten.
+
+"I've heard a lot of things about you from Gabrielle. Of course, you
+know I'm engaged to her."
+
+Faber finished the operation of striking a match and then lighted his
+cigar.
+
+"Why, is that so? My congratulations. When is it to be?"
+
+"Oh, I dunno; marriage is a considerable proposition. Besides, I'm going
+out to Australia next winter--cricket, you know."
+
+"Ah! you play ball, then? Is there much to it?"
+
+Harry grinned.
+
+"Nothing. I'm an amateur, you know--that is, if you know anything about
+the game at all. We can't take any money for our services, so we have to
+charge expenses. And jolly well we're worth it--some of us," he added
+with conviction.
+
+Faber nodded, as though he understood perfectly.
+
+"I guess you deliver the goods. There's something of that sort in my
+country, only we don't call 'em amateurs. Anyway, the name doesn't hurt.
+You'll be married when you come back, I suppose?"
+
+"Ah! there you _cherchez la femme_. Gabrielle isn't struck with
+marriage--not very much. She's full of this tomfool business about peace
+on earth and goodwill toward Wilhelm. It makes me sick to listen to it.
+The yacht loaded up with cranks, and every one of them trying to get
+something out of Sir Jules. It's almost as good a game as Throgmorton
+Street, if you can find the mugs, chiefly those with handles. I tell
+you, I'm just fed up with it."
+
+"You don't get thin on it, sure. How long does Sir Jules propose to stop
+here? Has he said that?"
+
+"He'll stop on the off chance of another interview with the Emperor on
+his return from Corfu."
+
+"The first one wasn't satisfactory, then?"
+
+"Oh, lots of pats on the back and that sort of thing--plenty of butter,
+but not much bread. By the way, do you think there's anything in the
+business, or is it just fancy?"
+
+"I think there's a great deal. Sir Jules Achon is about the deepest
+thinker in this line I've yet struck. But he wants a man with him--he
+wants a hustler. Europe listens when you beat the drum, but it's got to
+be a mighty big drum nowadays. He's merely playing with fiddle-sticks."
+
+"That's because his drummer is on the sick list. I hear he's a regular
+roarer--Rupert Trevelle, who hustled Balfour into the Blue Ensign Club.
+He was to have been here, but he's down with neuritis or something. They
+say that's why we're all drifting about the Adriatic doing nothing but
+patting each other's back. It will be different when Trevelle gets
+going."
+
+"Then set him going right quick. Does Miss Silvester take to it kindly?
+Is she dead earnest?"
+
+"That's just what I want to know. I'll tell you what, though--she won't
+be when she's married to me. No peace at any price in my house, I'm
+d----d if there is."
+
+"Don't believe in it, eh?"
+
+"Does any good Britisher really believe in it? Wars made us what we are.
+Would Nelson have gone to a law court? And what price would Drake
+receive in a county court action for singeing the Spanish King's beard?
+I tell you it's all d----d nonsense, and some of 'em must know it to be
+so. When I am married to Gabrielle----But here she comes, my boy, so
+mum's the word. There's time enough for arguments--eh, what?"
+
+Faber smiled and stood up to get another chair. Gabrielle was very
+serious, and looked gracious in her perplexity. She had a strange tale
+to tell of her patient, and recited it in a kind of astonished despair
+which amused her host very much.
+
+"Do you know," she exclaimed, "the child drinks wine like an alderman.
+Whatever am I to do?"
+
+"What?" cried Harry. "You're rotting, Gabrielle, you're not serious."
+
+"It's true, every word of it. She says that she is doing it by your
+orders, Mr. Faber. Is it really so?"
+
+"How much has she taken? I sent a bottle down. It's only the light stuff
+they drink hereabouts. You can hardly call it wine."
+
+"She has drunk the whole bottle. I was never more astonished in my
+life."
+
+"We shall have to humour her a bit. Of course, it must be stopped. And
+that reminds me--I want a home for her in England. Will you and your
+father give her one?"
+
+"She'll do for the 'horrid' example at your temperance meetings,
+Gabrielle. Better take her."
+
+"I think," said Gabrielle, "you had better see my father. You know that
+he is undecided about this call to Yonkers."
+
+"He won't be undecided about it when I've had my say. Is the patient all
+right now? Do you think well of her?"
+
+"I think she is terribly distressed, and is hiding it from all of us."
+
+"A brave little girl! I guessed as much. We must get her away from this
+place as soon as possible. When does Sir Jules propose to sail?"
+
+"Not until the Emperor leaves Corfu. He said so at lunch."
+
+"He'll weigh before then; the Emperor doesn't mean to see him a second
+time. Anyway, you won't leave her, Miss Silvester, I go pat on that."
+
+She averted her eyes from both of them, and looked away to the other
+yacht.
+
+"I don't think I ought to leave her. The better way will be for you to
+see my father. She's sleeping now. We might go over to the _Wanderer_ at
+once, if you liked----"
+
+"And make it an excuse for a jolly little supper on deck," said Harry
+voraciously. He had done little but eat and sleep since they left
+London.
+
+
+                                   IV
+
+Gordon Silvester was as astonished as Gabrielle by the proposition which
+Faber made to him, but he listened sympathetically none the less.
+
+"This would mean a definite refusal to Yonkers," he said, and Faber
+agreed that it was so.
+
+"I'll tell you what, Mr. Silvester. This affair has cut pretty deep down
+into some of my old-fashioned notions, and is costing me more than I
+care to tell any man. I came across to Europe to pay a debt I owed to
+one who was my mother's friend. I meant to reward him pretty liberally.
+And what have I succeeded in doing after all? You know the story.
+Paleologue lies dead up at Ranovica--the child's on my yacht to judge me
+for what I've done. Henceforth, she is going to stand to me as my own
+daughter. I shall spare no expense to educate and train her. She'll have
+the best that money can buy; all that gives a woman a chance in the
+world. If you will, you and your daughter shall be my agents in this.
+Live where you please, take the best house the agents can find for you,
+spend all the money you can spend on making her what I would wish her to
+be. You say the pastorate has tired you out, and that you would like to
+devote yourself to literature. Here's the chance of your life time!
+Don't tell me that you will let it go begging."
+
+Silvester knocked out the ashes of his pipe with some deliberation. He
+was very much excited by the offer, but at some pains to conceal his
+surprise at it. Many schemes ran through his head--alas! none of them
+had to do with Maryska de Paleologue.
+
+"Of course," he said, "I could devote myself entirely then to the I.A.L.
+It would be a great opportunity. I can imagine no finer."
+
+"There is one finer, Mr. Silvester."
+
+"Of what are you thinking?"
+
+"Of a woman's soul--just the heart and the soul of a little waif from
+the hills. She's a finer opportunity, for she's flesh and blood. Your
+geese are all swans, Mr. Silvester. You'll know as much when they fly."
+
+"I fear you are as hostile to us as ever. Yet it seems to me--I say it
+with all reserve--that these days should have done something for us."
+
+Faber thrust his hand deep into his pocket, and bit into his cigar.
+
+"They've taught me nothing, except to say 'kismet.' Who knows truly how
+a man's destiny works? I shall make Maryska de Paleologue one of the
+richest women in Europe--well, there I come in. Money's stronger than
+most things, and it's going to be stronger than a man's death on this
+occasion. Wait until the story is written, then we'll draw the moral."
+
+"Do you wish me to go to England at once?"
+
+"To-morrow, in my yacht, if you can. I go to Berlin to sign up a
+contract for rifles, but I expect to be in London in a fortnight's time.
+You should have your house then. There'll be no difficulty when you show
+them the money. I leave all that to you and to Miss Gabrielle. She's got
+to be the good angel in this affair. I'm counting on her right through."
+
+"You may well do that. She is a wonderful organizer; no talk, no fuss. I
+am sure they would have liked her in America if we had gone to Yonkers.
+As it is, I really don't know what to say to those people."
+
+"Oh, tell them to go to hell!" said Faber, while he struck a match
+sharply and relighted his cigar.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+The _Savannah_ weighed at dawn, and all that day they steamed by the
+glorious isles of the matchless Adriatic. Their destination was Venice,
+whence Faber would go via Munich to Berlin. The others were to travel
+direct by the Simplon to London--all but Harry Lassett, who meant to put
+in a few days at Montana before he returned.
+
+They carried a young doctor from Ragusa, but he soon discovered that he
+had little to do save to take a fee, a performance which he accomplished
+with truly professional grace. Maryska had a heart of iron, it appeared,
+and a constitution to match it. Whatever the unnameable night had taught
+her of life or of men, she held the damnable secret with the tenacity of
+a race born to such acts and schooled in the creeds of ferocity. Very
+silent, suspicious of all, agitated and given to fits of trembling when
+alone, those with her could not read that riddle of a child's dreams
+aright. To Gabrielle she remained an enigma, seemingly wanting in
+gratitude and anxious to escape every occasion for it. Gordon Silvester
+she treated as though he did not exist; Harry Lassett was a problem in
+manhood to awake distrust and find her eyes furtive. John Faber she
+trusted wholly.
+
+They had allowed her to come on deck during the heat of the day, and she
+lay there in a hammock swung between hatches. An untamed restlessness
+found her starting at every sound. She would sit up and watch the
+passers-by as though afraid of them; or stare at the crew with deeply
+black eyes, as though seeking a friend among them. Her requests that
+Faber should be sent to her were unceasing. In his turn, he liked to
+hear her talk. He would watch those eloquent eyes, and forget that she
+had called him "an old, old man" in the early days of their
+acquaintance.
+
+"Will you come and sit beside me, Mr. Faber, just a little while? I do
+not want the others to come. I will not have them near me."
+
+"But, Maryska, my dear, they just want to be kind to you, that's all.
+Don't you like Miss Gabrielle, now?"
+
+She thought about it. Then she said: "Is she your wife, Mr. Faber?"
+
+"My!--what an idea! I haven't got a wife. She's engaged to the young man
+over there."
+
+"Not the one with the wolf's whiskers and the teeth."
+
+"Of course not; he's her father. The other one who's playing with the
+quoits."
+
+She watched Harry Lassett a little while; her face became grave.
+
+"_He_ used to play that when last he came from America. He played with
+me, and then I won money for him from the others. We can't do that here;
+is that right, Mr. Faber?"
+
+He laughed and took her hand.
+
+"Let me tell you about this money, Maryska. Do you know I'm very rich,
+my dear? They call me one of the richest men in the world. You mustn't
+think about money any more. I've got more than you and I will ever spend
+if we live to be as old as Methuselah. So just change the subject,
+little lady, and find another."
+
+She made nothing of it, the years of the human chase pursued her. Was
+she not alone now? _He_ could never help her again, and he had been so
+great a part of her life.
+
+"What is the good of telling me this? It is not my money, Mr. Faber. I
+must go and get some for myself when the ship stops. You had no right to
+take me away from Ragusa--my home was there. Why have you done it?"
+
+He tried to tell her, but it was very difficult. In some moods she was
+little better than a waif of the streets, who had learned to beg like a
+mendicant at a church door; in others her birthright gave her a
+wonderful dignity before which the plebeian in John Faber was dumb.
+
+"I want you to have a new home, Maryska, one that you'll be glad to call
+your own. That's why I'm taking you to England. Miss Gabrielle there is
+going to live with you and so's her father. But it will be your own
+house and everything that's in it yours. You'll like it, sure, when you
+see it, my dear. I don't think you'll want to go back to Ragusa again."
+
+She listened pensively.
+
+"Will that boy be there?"
+
+"The one who's playing games?"
+
+"Yes, the boy who laughs."
+
+"Oh, I dare say he'll come sometimes. Do you like him, then?"
+
+"I don't know; he is very young, is he not?"
+
+"I haven't asked his age, but I dare say he'll tell you."
+
+"I should not ask him. Men do not like to tell their age. He never
+would. Why are you paying for this house you speak of? You have no right
+to pay for anything for me. You know that very well."
+
+The question gave him his opportunity, and he told her as much of the
+story as she could comprehend. Her father had been the best friend he
+had ever known. He had taken his mother to America at the crisis of her
+fortunes. It was an obligation he could never forget. He had meant to do
+so much in return, but fate was against them both. They must act
+together henceforth and make the best of their lives they could. She
+must help him to honour his mother's name. In her turn Maryska replied
+but vaguely. He had thought that she was not listening, but when he had
+finished, and following a little interval of silence, she threw herself
+back upon her cushions and cried wildly, "Jesus Christ! I never had a
+mother to honour." And that surely was as lamentable a confession as any
+he had heard from her lips.
+
+
+                                   VI
+
+They were off Venice upon the following night, and so favoured by
+fortune that the waxing moon gave them a vista of the hundred isles,
+beautiful beyond compare.
+
+A still sea hardly stirred a ripple upon the sandy shores of the Lido.
+Venice herself stood up in a haze of soft light, her spires and domes
+rising above the vast lagoon of untroubled waters, dim, mysterious,
+entrancing. Seen from afar, she might have been a great house of dreams;
+her windows so many stars above a silent lake; her palaces but the dark
+clouds of a vision. As phantoms about them, ships drifted upon a
+reluctant tide; sails took shape and glided away, spectres of an
+instant, into the deeper shadows. There were musical voices crying out
+of the darkness; notes of song most pleasing; the dwelling
+reverberations of ancient bells to tell of hours which should have been
+unnumbered. As they drew nearer still and the Dogana took shape with the
+vast dome of the Maria della Salute beyond it, then it was as though the
+centuries spoke with one voice, and all the lustre and the achievement
+of a thousand years were revealed in a splendid instant. So is it ever
+for those who approach Venice from the sea and obliterate the black
+modernity which wrestles with her story. Such is the vision of her which
+Turner beheld.
+
+Faber watched the spectacle from the boat deck, and was far from
+displeased to find Gabrielle at his side. There had been few
+opportunities for confidential talk since they sailed from Ragusa, and
+she herself had said no word to lead him to believe that the course of
+her life was about to be changed. Very stately in mien this night, her
+height accentuated by the place where she stood, her hair a little wild
+beneath her wrap, eyes very bright and searching, her manner restful, he
+wondered whence came the "aristocrat" in her lineage, and how a mere
+manse had sent forth such a missioner. Let the assembly be what it
+might, Gabrielle Silvester would take a proud place. Intellectually she
+was far above him in education and artistic perception, but he suffered
+a sense of inferiority with patience, and admired her the more because
+she could awaken it. Bertie Morris had said that she was "cold and
+Saxon." Faber doubted the truth of that.
+
+They discussed many things in an ordinary way. She spoke of the story of
+Venice and found him skilfully parrying his own ignorance. He knew
+little of the history of the place--had heard of St. Mark's and of the
+"Three." The lion's mouth struck him as a fine idea. There ought to be
+one in every city for cranks and faddists, he said, and a special box
+for politicians and newspaper men. When she asked him if the vision of
+the city suggested nothing more, he thrust his hands into his pockets
+and said that it reminded him of New York Bay.
+
+"Which is to say that all this talk of fine buildings is so much flute
+blowing. I guess our people wouldn't give New York second best if they
+spoke the whole truth. You'll never admit as much yourself just because
+you're full of Eastern prejudices. That's to be expected. A thing which
+has stood a thousand years has got the moss of the world's approval
+pretty thick upon it. I take off my hat to Venice, but I'm thinking of
+New York all the time."
+
+"Of the temples of a mighty industry? Isn't that in the advertisement
+line? I don't think you can be quite serious, though. It must mean more
+to you than that."
+
+"Why should it mean more to me. I guess it's brick and marble anyway,
+and not so very much better because it's old. What we are seeing
+to-night comes out of heaven--light and atmosphere and the sea for a
+setting. I could show you a night in New York Bay which is up to
+anything hereabouts. Why should I spread myself when conviction isn't
+there? Yonder's a beautiful city--is it worse because there are others?"
+
+Convention bade her smile, but she would yet try to teach him.
+
+"You have no true inspiration," she said; "there will never be another
+great building in the world until we find the key to the old. If a man's
+faith could move mountains, he might build such a city as that. But the
+faith must be there, I am sure of that."
+
+"Meanwhile the world gets along very well on stucco fronts. No one
+believes very much in anything but money. You yourself are but half
+convinced, and you want to make a convert of me. Now, isn't that the
+truth, Miss Gabrielle?"
+
+She was very angry with him.
+
+"You rich men have no ideals. You discredit the ideals of others. If I
+had your money, I would build such a temple to peace as would compel the
+world to come in. Oh! think what one might do, the name one might leave,
+the homes one might save. It is money that hides all this from you,
+money that hides even the purpose of life itself. You grub in the
+valleys when imagination should lead you to the hill-top. Your eyes look
+downwards--how shall anyone teach you to see?"
+
+He smoked on patiently. Presently, he said:
+
+"There's something in the Bible about the blind leading the blind. I'll
+tell you what. You are trying to convince yourself about this peace
+nonsense, and in the end you may succeed. When you do, I'll build your
+temple for you; it's a promise between us, and shall be kept. The
+heretic building the church for the faithful; I like the idea of that,
+don't you?"
+
+"You will never build it," she said. "I have come to know that now. You
+have not the imagination to build; nothing teaches you in spirit."
+
+And then she exclaimed with very real conviction:
+
+"You are a man without pity for humanity--all your story is told in
+that."
+
+He accepted the savage assault with a smile that was unchanging. Candour
+in women pleased him; as his wife, this woman would carry him far upon
+an unfamiliar road his ambition had often sought. In the vulgar phrase,
+she would bring culture.
+
+"I may be without pity for humanity," he said, "but humanity's had a
+good many dollars out of my pocket. Do you know how much humanity I
+employ at Charleston, I wonder? Well, all told, I dare say there are
+some nine thousand hands, all eating and drinking at the expense of the
+man whom nothing touches in spirit. When I'm dead, maybe I'll write as
+good an epitaph as your friends who blow other people's trumpets and
+give their money for the archangels who don't exist. Anyway, I'll let
+the record stand, and as to this temple of yours, I'll build it all
+right, and you shall have it as a wedding present. Can I say fairer than
+that?"
+
+She looked up quickly, her face flushed.
+
+"Why do you speak of a wedding present?"
+
+"Because I must make haste to do what I ought to have done long ago, and
+congratulate you--of course, I did not know."
+
+She laughed rather hardly. Very wonderful castles were falling all about
+her, and a woman's chagrin did not help her.
+
+"We were both very ignorant," she said helplessly.
+
+He watched her closely. "A very old friend, Mr. Lassett, isn't he?"
+
+"I have known him all my life."
+
+"Ah, that is the sure way of knowing him better. Did I hear he was a
+cricketer? I thought he said something of the kind."
+
+"He is one of the greatest cricketers England has had. Anything else?"
+
+"Why, no; well, I congratulate you. You'll be married, I suppose, before
+we meet again."
+
+She was surprised at this.
+
+"Are you not coming to see Maryska?"
+
+"When she asks for me, yes; but I know the sex. She'll have forgotten my
+name in a month's time; it is the privilege of women."
+
+"And in that case----"
+
+"Oh," he said, "I shall be in America building my temple. It's steel
+mostly, and butters a good deal of humanity's bread."
+
+She was very much perplexed.
+
+"Maryska will never like that. I am sure she will be very unhappy
+without you."
+
+"I don't agree," he said, and bade her listen.
+
+The sound of young voices came up to them from the cabin. Harry Lassett
+was talking to Maryska, and when she answered him, there was a little
+ripple of girlish laughter, which seemed to say that she had found a
+friend.
+
+"I don't agree," Faber repeated, and then with some sternness, he added:
+"Mr. Lassett is teaching her cricket, I suppose. Well, that's a game I'd
+rather she didn't learn!"
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+                          GOODWILL TOWARD MEN
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Faber arrived in Berlin three days after the yacht had put into Venice.
+The cordiality of his reception in the German capital surprised him.
+Known both as the inventor and the manufacturer of the famous "Faber"
+magazine rifle, the greatest instrument of war the twentieth century had
+yet seen, he found himself a celebrity most welcome to the Germans.
+Rarely had there been so much "hoching" for a comparatively private
+individual. Remarkable personages in remarkable uniforms overwhelmed him
+by their hospitality; he was made familiar with superb "vons" in
+accoutrement more superb. The gay city--by far the gayest in Europe at
+the present time--delighted him by its capacity for enjoyment and its
+freedom from social cant. The women flirted with him outrageously. He
+had never been made so much of since fortune first smiled upon him.
+
+Bertie Morris came from Paris on the fourth day, and brought him all the
+news in exchange for his own. Bertie was not surprised that Faber's
+first question should be about little Claudine d'Arny, and what had
+happened to her since the tragedy of her father's death. He had come to
+Berlin prepared to give a good account of his stewardship in that
+affair, and he was very proud of what he had done. They were at dinner
+when the narration took place, and the restaurant of the Metropole Hotel
+glowed with light and colour, and the glitter of fine uniforms. There
+were officers everywhere; women whose gowns neither Paris nor Vienna
+might shame. They moved in an atmosphere of soft tints; the warmth of
+crimson carpets and the spotless white of polished walls setting off
+their "creations" to perfection. The air was heavy with the scent of
+crimson roses, which were on every table, despite the season.
+
+Faber had a table in the corner of the room, and he allowed
+_hors-d'oeuvre_ and soup to be served before he interrupted the
+journalist in his occupation of criticising the company with that
+running and often ironical commentary in which writing people delight.
+When the prettiest women had been "sized-up," famous people reduced to
+pulp, and the European situation dismissed in twenty words, Bertie was
+ready to speak of Claudine. He was too good an actor to bring her on the
+scene before.
+
+"She arrived at Cannes yesterday," he said at last. "I chose the Riviera
+Palace because it's the kind of hotel where she'll meet the most people,
+and forget the quickest. Of course, Issy-Ferrault is going. It was
+difficult enough to do your business, but I did it bluntly in a business
+way. 'Marry Claudine d'Arny,' I said, 'and she'll have a guaranteed
+income of one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs a year.' His own
+douceur was to be another hundred and twenty-five thousand paid on the
+day the contract was signed. I put it to him as plainly as if I had a
+picture to sell. In the end, he bought her with no more scruple than if
+she had been a horse."
+
+"Blustering first; I suppose, and talking of his ancestry."
+
+"I don't think--there was about an hour and a half of it. Issy-Ferrault
+came out of the history box like pepper out of a pot. You'd have thought
+they made France and that Charlemagne was a bagman. When he was through
+with his talking, I just put the cinch on him with the remark that he
+wasn't writing history books but contracts. He pumped me like a
+tax-gatherer to learn the why and wherefore of it all; but the most I
+could tell him was that an old friend of Claudine's was determined to
+see her through and that good hard dollars expressed the measure of his
+determination. There I left it, and that's what he signed upon. He'll go
+to Cannes and marry her directly public opinion will let him do it. They
+are to live in London, I understand. He's a good sportsman and is out
+after the English shooting and fishing, so I told him to get a house in
+the shires, and he promised to do so. Claudine's money will tie him up
+all right--and as for that, I should think a girl with those eyes could
+hold most men. You may take it, Faber, that the matter is settled--as,
+of course, it was bound to be--after your generosity."
+
+Faber brushed the suggestion aside as one which hardly concerned him. He
+was pleased by the news and his pride stirred at the suggestion of
+power, the reality of which he began to understand. Who but a man of
+vast fortune could have repaired such a tragedy as that? He looked
+Destiny full in the face and laughed at its omens.
+
+"I've bought most things," he said, "but this is my first deal in
+husbands. Well, I'm glad the little girl is on the road again. Isn't
+this Issy-Ferrault rather a hustler in his way? I heard him well spoken
+of when I was in Paris; they say he's an aeroplane on the road or in the
+air. Do you know of it?"
+
+"Oh, there's some talk. He was with Blériot a month or two back. The
+French army does not sleep much nowadays--a pretty wide-awake lot
+without any whiskers on their ideas. Issy-Ferrault is one of the
+aviation detachment. I suppose he'll be flying on his own account now if
+he can keep out of the arms of that black-eyed little girl. But he
+won't, if I'm any judge of women. She'll stick like the best glue; she's
+just the sort."
+
+"Then you haven't altered your opinion of her since we left Paris?"
+
+"Guess not; nor of your flaxen-haired Venus either. You don't tell me,
+by the way, what's become of her."
+
+"She's gone to London to get married."
+
+Bertie opened his eyes very wide.
+
+"To get married! Who's the man?"
+
+"He's a boy--knocks balls about and considers himself famous. Just one
+of these British boys, nice voice and manners, and legs like the Moses
+in the pictures. I don't think you would have named him for her choice
+in twenty guesses, but there it is. They've been billing and cooing on
+the Adriatic for a week, and now they've gone to do it in London.
+They're a difficult proposition, Bertie."
+
+Bertie, watching him shrewdly, guessed the same.
+
+"Is she in love with him--real?"
+
+"Ask me something else. She's a woman, and being a woman, many sided.
+One side likes being kissed on the lips by twenty-two, who must be
+big-limbed and masculine. The other sides are turned toward various
+objects--ambition, money, and a woman's common vanities. She's at an age
+when they turn like a wind vane, and as often. If he catches her in a
+calm, he'll marry her."
+
+"But if he doesn't--well, that's in the air. You were speaking of Rupert
+Trevelle a while back. He's over there in the corner yonder. Shall I
+introduce him?"
+
+Faber looked up and saw a man of about his own age, faultlessly dressed,
+and accompanied by two pretty women in the smartest gowns. Trevelle, by
+his looks, should either have been a major of a smart cavalry regiment,
+or in "the diplomatic." He had jet black hair and a fierce moustache,
+large manners and a habit of authority. His party, like their own, had
+just finished dinner, and presently they all found themselves in the
+lounge where mutual introductions were made.
+
+"My friend, Mr. John Faber, of Charleston, the Baroness von Hartmann,
+Lady Florentine. This is Mr. Rupert Trevelle, of whom Sir Jules Achon
+has spoken. So now we all know each other and may get down to business."
+
+Bertie placed chairs for the party, and with one of his characteristic
+"Shall we's," he ordered coffee and liqueurs. Faber found himself
+between Trevelle and the baroness--a woman with a milk-white skin she
+was at no pains to conceal, and a method of crushing her handkerchief in
+a fat hand which was quite deadly with young men. She spoke little
+English, but that was sufficient to convey to the somewhat reserved
+American an intimation of possible weakness under pleasant conditions
+and of her own indifference to the absurdities of some modern
+conventions. Trevelle, on the other hand, had great news, and he
+bestowed it as gracious manna upon a field of fertile flirtation.
+
+"They are talking of you at the Embassy to-night," he said.
+
+Faber merely retorted, "Why, is that so?" and edged a little farther
+from the baroness.
+
+"Indeed, it was very much so. You know that you are to have the White
+Cross of Prussia?"
+
+"That's fine news. Has Sir Jules got anything?"
+
+"Nothing whatever. They don't give white crosses for ideas, more's the
+pity. Jules Achon is a great man--the world will find it out some day."
+
+"The sooner the better for its credit. What you have to do, Mr.
+Trevelle, is to educate the people; but I'm telling you nothing new. You
+know that as well as I do."
+
+"Most certainly I do; I have told Sir Jules so some ten thousand times.
+He has a great idea, but he must have public opinion behind it. The
+people make war to-day, not the princes."
+
+"But princes have a say in it, sure."
+
+"They do when the people are willing that they should. At present the
+popular mind is pretty well where it was fifty years ago. Look at the
+reputation you bear in Berlin. Why? Because you have made an instrument
+which allows the German to kill his enemies as he has never been killing
+them before."
+
+"You are saying, vat?" asked the baroness, impatient of neglect. "You
+are telling Mister Faber to kill ze enemies?"
+
+"Of his own sex, madame," retorted Trevelle immediately.
+
+"Then he is not like ze Spanish king, who do not kill his enemy because
+he have killed him already. I should be afraid of this friend of yours;
+he have nothing but killing in his mind--he live to kill, is it not so?"
+
+"Oh!" said Trevelle, "you must ask the ladies about that."
+
+The baroness shook her head.
+
+"We was all to go to the Alcazar to see the Russian dancers. Why do we
+stay? I am all hot. I would get far from here--all hot, and yet they say
+dat in England is joost one good big cold, so cold dat ze nose is freeze
+off the face. Shall we go to dance, Mr. Trevelle?"
+
+Trevelle said, "Certainly." He had heard of the terrible winter they
+were having in England, and was glad not to be in London.
+
+"The Thames will be frozen right over," he told them, "the first time
+since the beginning of the nineteenth century. I suppose there is
+something in this story of the weakening of the Gulf Stream after two
+years of drought over yonder. Anyway, it's extraordinary. I wonder what
+would happen if the Channel froze----?"
+
+"Ah!" said Faber, "a good many people would wonder then, and some of
+them would be in Berlin. I don't think Sir Jules's stock would stand
+very high if that happened, Mr. Trevelle."
+
+"But you think it quite impossible?"
+
+"Which is to say that I dictate to Nature. Well, I don't think I should
+do that at my time of life."
+
+They all laughed, and went off to the Alcazar, where a Russian woman
+danced divinely, and was followed by a red-nosed man, who broke plates
+to the great delight of an immense audience. Faber was not displeased to
+find himself with these two pretty women in a box, where all the world
+could see him; and it occurred to him before he had been there very long
+that the house had recognised him, and that he was being pointed out to
+other pretty women in the seats below. Certainly, this visit to Berlin
+was becoming a famous thing in its way. It compelled him to understand
+the meaning of that fame he had won for himself and the homage paid both
+to him and to his house. A glamour of life, unknown hitherto, but very
+dazzling, could influence even so balanced a judgment and so cynical a
+student of humanity. Hardly one of the women, rustling in silks and
+velvets, bedizened in jewels--hardly one of them to whom he might not
+have thrown the handkerchief, if he would. The knowledge flattered his
+pride, and set him thinking of Gabrielle Silvester. Well dressed and
+wonderful as these women were, Gabrielle would have held her own among
+them all. He thought of her as destined to rule amid a glitter of jewels
+and an incense of roses. There was no house in all Europe she could not
+grace, he said.
+
+A vain thought. She was engaged to a fool of a boy, who could play
+cricket; and that very night upon his return to the hotel, he found a
+letter from her in which she confessed to the folly without excuse.
+Harry wished for an early day. He had altered his plans, and thought now
+that he would not go to Australia.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+Faber read the letter in a deep chair by the fireside--in his private
+room at the Metropole. Bertie Morris, meanwhile, had the English
+newspaper and a very large whisky and soda. Both men had caught the
+Berlin habit, and lived rather by night than by day. The hotel itself
+was then, at a quarter to one in the morning, beginning to amuse itself
+seriously.
+
+Gabrielle wrote a pretty hand, round as her own limbs, precise as her
+own habits, with here and there a fine flourish to denote a certain want
+of stability. It was to be expected that she would make early mention of
+her charge; but she dwelt so insistently upon what Maryska de Paleologue
+had done that she must have presupposed an interest beyond the common.
+And then there was the postscript--a word of real alarm or of deep
+design. Faber readily granted the former, and would have nothing to do
+with the latter. Gabrielle was transparently honest in all that she said
+and wrote.
+
+    "We arrived in London after a bitter journey," the letter ran,
+    "the frost has returned, and the cold is dreadful. I am afraid
+    Maryska feels it very much after Ragusa, and is not grateful to
+    us for bringing her to such an inhospitable country. The streets
+    of London shone like rivers of ice as we drove through, and even
+    my father now admits that there is something in a taxi. What
+    Maryska does not understand is your threatened journey to
+    America, and your unkindness in leaving us all with so brief a
+    farewell. She is very strange here, and she is entirely without
+    friends--though Harry has done his best to cheer her up, and has
+    really developed surprising powers as a private entertainer.
+    Perhaps the cold and the fog have affected her spirits unduly--I
+    would not make too much of it, but she is undoubtedly changed
+    since we left Venice, and the change is not for the better! This
+    much you ought to know.
+
+    "Of course, it is much too early yet to speak of the house. We
+    are all at Hampstead in the old home, and it seems difficult to
+    believe that so much has happened in so short a time. I refuse
+    to allow that Christmas Day falls next week, and that in twelve
+    days we shall be ringing the old year out. If anything could
+    convince me it is this bitter cold, this biting cruel weather,
+    which is like nothing England has seen before, and I hope will
+    be like nothing that is to come after. Here at Hampstead, they
+    say the ice is inches thick upon the ponds--I can hear the whir
+    of the skates from my windows, and everyone who passes is
+    dressed like a grizzly bear. Maryska has seen a severe winter in
+    America, and suffered terribly there because of the cold. So you
+    will understand how anxious we are about her, and how very
+    watchful it is necessary to be.
+
+    "My father says she is the strangest compound of oddities he has
+    ever encountered. It is a description which does less than
+    justice to an original character. Of religion she has none. Her
+    god is an oath--nothing more: and yet to say that she is without
+    a deep capacity of feeling would be untrue. Some of her ideas
+    are fantastic--I suppose the orthodox would call them barbarous.
+    She has a locket about her throat with a miniature of the
+    Crucifixion after Francesco. I know that she has painted out the
+    face of Christ, and made a crude likeness of her father in its
+    place. Her trunk is full of his drawings--there are hardly any
+    clothes, poor child, and we shall have to fit her out directly
+    she is well enough. By that time we should know where we are to
+    live, if I can persuade my father to see the house agents. He
+    has a morbid idea that he will commit some great mistake, and I
+    should not be surprised if he took a good many houses before the
+    New Year.
+
+    "The only other news is that Harry does not now think that he
+    will go to Australia. He appears to be capricious in his new
+    ideas, and is ready to insist upon a crisis in our affairs. This
+    is so wholly unexpected, that I do not know what to say about
+    it. The foundations of the Temple are not laid, and it would be
+    terrible if the building fell. I suppose it is all very serious,
+    and I should consider it in that light, but I remain an enigma
+    to myself, and am content to let the future speak for itself.
+
+    "Oh, how cold it is--how cruelly cold! I can write no more, even
+    by a warm fireside. Perhaps Maryska will write herself
+    soon--horrible thought, I have yet to learn if the child can
+    write at all. When she reads, she terrifies me with the
+    possibilities. Her acquaintance with the most dreadful words is
+    a daily fright to me! She speaks Italian and French quite
+    fluently, and another language which my father does not
+    recognise, but thinks may be Roumanian. He brought a professor
+    of Oriental languages from one of the Universities here
+    yesterday, but the poor man was utterly at sea. I am sure he did
+    not understand a single word of what she said--none knew that
+    better than clever Maryska!
+
+    "She is asking for you every day, and I must tell her that you
+    are going to America. It is a heavy burden upon my poor
+    shoulders. Yesterday she said, 'Even _his_ friend has gone
+    away.' So, you see, she knows that you were his friend, and I am
+    sure that will not be unwelcome to you.
+
+    "Believe me, with all our kindest regards,
+
+                   "Dear Mr. Faber, yours sincerely,
+                                              "GABRIELLE SILVESTER."
+
+    "P.S.--The news is not so well to-night. We have had another day
+    of the damp cold, and I am seriously alarmed for her. Have we
+    done right to bring such a hot-house plant to England at all?
+    She is asking for you again even as I write, for she knows that
+    it is written. 'Tell him,' she says, 'that _he_ would have
+    wished it. Then he will come to me.' I am doing my duty even if
+    it be done without hope."
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Bertie Morris drained his glass and then folded the paper he had been
+reading with great nicety. The journalistic habit inspired a restless
+curiosity which would probe even the intimate affairs of his friends. He
+knew that the letter was of great importance, and was almost indignant
+that his great friend did not speak of its contents.
+
+"Well," he said, with a pretence of a yawn, "I suppose it's time for me
+to be trotting. See you to-morrow, anyhow."
+
+Faber thrust the letter into his breast coat pocket and lighted a new
+cigar.
+
+"If I am here, why, yes; maybe I'll not be here."
+
+"You'll not be here! But haven't you an appointment with General
+Heinstein, to say nothing of the Count?"
+
+"An excellent pair; they can amuse my man of business. I guess I'm going
+to England."
+
+Bertie whistled.
+
+"You don't toe the mark for any ceremony, Faber. What about this White
+Cross?"
+
+"Let them hang it round the neck of the little girl at the Alcazar. I've
+seen the Emperor, the one big man in this country, perhaps the one big
+man in Europe, unless you care to name Kitchener. The others are no good
+to me."
+
+"Then you'll be going sure?"
+
+"Not sure at all. See me in the morning, and I'll write the bulletin.
+Just at the moment I'm thinking about it."
+
+"Well, I hope you won't go, anyway. If you do, so long."
+
+He put on his hat slowly as though still hoping to hear the reason why.
+That the "flaxen-haired Venus" had something to do with it Bertie Morris
+was convinced; and being a mere man, conviction amused him. Had Faber
+said a word to invite his confidence, he would have spoken freely
+enough. What was this multi-millionaire, who might marry where he
+pleased in any famous family in Europe, what was he doing in the
+company of a mere parson's daughter? Here, in Berlin, Bertie could
+have named half a dozen high and mighty personages, beautiful women
+with wonderful swan-like necks and the blood of bountiful barons in
+their delicate veins, who would have packed their traps like one
+o'clock had John Faber but dropped a handkerchief in their path. And
+here he was, restless and uneasy and stark indifferent to his social
+opportunities in the German capital, just because a tall girl with
+flaxen hair had preached sermons upon peace to him, and rubbed in the
+moral with some meaning glances from far from inexpressive eyes.
+Bertie could not make head or tail of such primitive passions, and he
+gave up the business as incomprehensible.
+
+He had left Faber upon a note of interrogation, and to the man chiefly
+concerned it was a perplexing note enough. Should he go to England
+because this little waif of the world had called him, or should he leave
+her to forget, as forget she must before many weeks had run? If he went,
+he would recreate for himself all those difficulties he experienced when
+in the presence of Gabrielle and of her sometimes inexplicable charm.
+That she was drifting, drifting into the marriage with Harry Lassett, he
+would not deny. The tragedy of her life might be the consummation of
+that marriage based upon the passion of an hour and doomed to perish as
+swiftly. Dimly he perceived the truth about himself and about her. Both
+had been tempted by a physical instinct--both were born to a destiny
+more spiritual. He himself had stood for an instant toward Maryska de
+Paleologue as Gabrielle towards this very human boy. And the child had
+called him "an old, old man," awakening realities with her words and
+opening his eyes as no other had dared to do.
+
+Long he debated it, perplexed beyond experience. Should he go to
+England, and if he did, what then? Day did not help him, nor the early
+hours of a busy morning. It was not until he had lunched that they
+handed him a cable from Gabrielle, and he knew that the argument was
+ended.
+
+"She is very much worse. I think you had better come."
+
+So the cable ran. He caught the night mail, and was at Ostend upon the
+following morning.
+
+
+
+
+                                BOOK III
+
+                               AFTERMATH
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+                          THE MEMORABLE WINTER
+
+
+                                   I
+
+The leap into the dark is made willy-nilly by every passenger who steps
+upon a mail boat at night and asks no preliminary question concerning
+the weather.
+
+What a spectacle it is of ease buffeted by necessity at the harbour
+station; of luxury driven out howling to the rigour of a raw and
+relentless atmosphere; of gregarious humanity sent as sheep to the
+slaughter or the satiety of the elements. Here comes the train blazing
+with lights. The passengers wake from their unsettled slumbers to
+de-wrap and thrust anxious faces from the carriage windows. They call
+for porters in many tongues, and porters often enough are not vouchsafed
+to them. There is a dreadful confusion upon the platform--the strong
+pressing upon the weak, the helpless giving place to the cunning, the
+rich wondering that they cannot bribe the sea. So we go to the ship
+lying as a phantom at the wharf. She must laugh at all this humanity so
+suddenly uncoddled. It is little to her whether the night be fine or
+windy. She has no rugs to cast aside, and the porters can do nothing for
+her.
+
+Faber was an expert traveller, and his man, Frank, a paragon. He found a
+cabin reserved for him upon the steamer _City of Berlin_, and was
+surprised when making his way below to rub shoulders with Rupert
+Trevelle, the last person he believed to be on the train from the
+capital. Trevelle, old hand that he was, admitted that he had been
+caught napping this time, and was without a berth. It was the most
+obvious thing to offer him one.
+
+"Come right along with me--I always book a second bunk, and you're
+welcome to it. You didn't say last night you were going across?"
+
+"I hadn't heard from Sir Jules then. It's his business which is taking
+me. He's thinking of going to St. Petersburg."
+
+"A wonderful man, sir!--this appears to be our den. Come right in, and
+when the ship starts we'll get some cigars and some claret if they've
+any aboard. Ever try claret against sea-sickness? It's the finest thing
+in the world! I'll give you a dose just now."
+
+Trevelle laughed, and began to dispose his things about the cabin. It
+was the best on the ship, and the beds looked inviting enough. He,
+however, had the Berlin habit, and would gladly make a dawn of it. It
+was a wonderful piece of good luck that he should have happened upon
+this amazing man, who went through the world on the magic carpet of
+luxury. Trevelle determined that John Faber was the man for him.
+
+"I don't know about claret, but a little rye whisky would suit me very
+well. You're going through to London, of course?"
+
+"As the crow does not fly this odd weather. Sit down and take your boots
+off. I'm Western enough to know the road to comfort, and boots don't
+carry you far along it. We'll make ourselves snug while Frank is putting
+the fear of God into the steward. Go right slick, my boy, and let us
+hear the sound of corks. We shall want all the warmth we can get before
+we make Dover harbour."
+
+Trevelle assented to that. He had already lighted a cigar and was deep
+down in an unprotesting bed. Soon glasses rattled in the cabin, and the
+well-desired music of corks was to be heard. The steamer moved slowly
+from her moorings: they had sailed.
+
+"So Sir Jules is going to St. Petersburg? Does it strike you as not a
+little extraordinary that this great man, who has the sanest ideas about
+the peace question of anyone alive, should be wandering about Europe in
+this way, knocking at every door like a weary evangelist? To me, it's a
+sad sight, sir. I wish I could do something to make it better."
+
+"I, not less," said Trevelle. "Do you think, though, that the world is
+very much in love with sane ideas just now? I don't. You hit the
+multitude either with fact or fiction. The _via media_ leads nowhere.
+Sir Jules says to these people, 'I can give you peace, but my scheme may
+take twenty years to mature.' So they think in a twenty years' measure!"
+
+"Meanwhile the other man, who says 'Here is the millennium, take
+it!'--he is on the first floor. None the less, I would go on if I were
+Sir Jules. He's got a real good thing. When he's advertised it long
+enough, the public will know it's real good, and he'll get a hearing. I
+said and I repeat: 'Educate the people--the others wouldn't let you
+educate 'em, if you could.'"
+
+Trevelle laughed at that.
+
+"I wish you'd come in yourself," he said, falling suddenly to great
+earnestness. "By gad! that would be a coup for Sir Jules! Have you ever
+thought about it, Mr. Faber? You are one of the few who could really
+help him. Why not come and form an international committee? You could
+work the American end yourself--no one better! I'm sure it must be some
+interest to America to see a final settlement in Europe, even if she has
+to make sacrifices to obtain it. Now, won't you think of it?"
+
+Faber seemed very much amused. He had expected this request from one or
+the other, but he recognised now that Sir Jules had been too shrewd to
+make it. Why, the very essence of his scheme was an assault upon
+American enterprise. It required this undaunted hustler to put the thing
+in plain terms--he liked Trevelle none the less for his effrontery.
+
+"I'll think of it all right," he said, still smiling; "perhaps I can see
+myself upon an American platform telling my fellow countrymen that the
+only way to keep Europeans from cutting each other's throats is to tax
+our goods another twenty per cent. That's the pith of Sir Jules's
+proposal. Free trade in Europe as a federated state--no more internecine
+rivalry. All brothers, except when the United States are on hand. You
+save your war bills because you fight for commercial reasons nowadays,
+and there won't be any commercial rivalries there. Well, I don't think
+it would do on my side, great as it is here. Make a federated state of
+Europe, if you like, but my countrymen would sooner federate Christ and
+His disciples. That's an honest truth, sir. I do believe my country is
+averse to war, because Almighty God has taught her to be so. I am
+thankful that it should be so, and yet I don't put human nature on too
+high a pedestal, and I believe America would fight to-morrow if a slap
+in her face rang loud enough. That's why I go on making guns for a
+living. I don't want to see men shot any more than any other man; but I
+do hold that the fighting instinct is deep down in the heart of every
+man, and that you will require some centuries yet to root it out. My
+gospel's there in so many words--I'm too old to alter it, and some of
+you will say I make too much money out of it."
+
+Trevelle expected nothing less, but he still persisted.
+
+"What then of the others--of Carnegie and the arbitration movement, and
+all that? Do you turn your back on them also?"
+
+"I never turn my back on brains wherever I find them. These earnest men,
+some of them men of genius, are educating the people of the whole world.
+I wish them God-speed! They are as truly defending their country as the
+man who holds a rifle. Their enemy is the brute beast, born in us from
+the beginning. They have to cast out devils--there's one in every man's
+story, but the best of us keep him under. It's just because there are
+others that men like myself are necessary. We bring brains into the
+argument--no country was yet saved without them, or ever will be."
+
+"Which is as much as to say that you do your work in your own way.
+America first in your mind all the time."
+
+"All the time, sir, except when I go to England, as now, to do what I
+can for those who may have need of me."
+
+"Privately, of course, Mr. Faber----"
+
+"Both privately and publicly, Mr. Trevelle, if the occasion should
+arise."
+
+"Ah," said Trevelle, "you are thinking what might happen if this frost
+should bring a panic."
+
+"I am thinking of nothing else, sir."
+
+
+                                   II
+
+The _City of Berlin_ slowed down very much as they drew near to Dover,
+and even those in the private cabins became aware that something unusual
+was happening. Loud cries were heard from the bridge, and then heavy
+blows upon the steel plates--repeated while the ship shivered and
+trembled, and the dullest intellect awakened. As it was not yet light,
+none of those who ventured from their beds to the decks could make much
+of the circumstance; but when dawn broke, the state of affairs was
+revealed, and surely it was significant.
+
+Faber had not closed his eyes during the first four hours of the
+passage, and he and Trevelle went out to the upper deck together
+directly the light broke. They were off the Goodwins then, upon a sea so
+still that the rising sun made of it one vast and silvered mirror. From
+an almost cloudless sky above a powder of snow fell, as showers in
+summer from the blue ether. Not a breath of wind appeared to be
+stirring; the air was like ice upon the cheek; the whole atmosphere
+ominously still.
+
+The men had lighted cigars, and they walked aft to peer down into the
+white water and learn what secrets it had to yield. An old salt,
+round-barrelled and full of wise saws, a man who had spent a long life
+upon that narrow sea which girds the silver isle, edged up to them, and
+for once in a way uttered sentiments which had not possible half-crowns
+behind them. He was genuinely astonished; "took all aback," and not
+ashamed to say so.
+
+"It's ice, gentlemen, that's wot it were. I seed it with these eyes, and
+I've been looking down into that waterway nigh four and forty year. Ice
+off the Goodwins: d----n me, who'd believe it?"
+
+"I guess some of them will have to believe it," said Faber dryly,
+"unless the weather keeps them out. You don't see any sign of a break,
+eh, my friend?"
+
+"I don't see no sign at all, sir, not as big as a man's hand. The wind's
+from north by east, and little to speak of. Who's to change it? Would
+you kindly tell me that?"
+
+"Oh, don't look at me," exclaimed Trevelle with a laugh. "I'm not a
+bagman in weather. So far as my memory goes, there was a good deal of
+ice in the English Channel somewhere about 1820, and a very little in
+the year 1887--I've read it somewhere. You don't remember that, my man?"
+
+The old fellow spat into the sea with some contempt.
+
+"As much ice as you could put down a woman's back. I remember 1887 well
+enough. The Thames was nigh froze, and there was a fringe of summat they
+called 'ice' right round by Herne Bay and all the way to Dover. But this
+here's more than a bucketful, gentlemen--by gosh! it is."
+
+He jumped involuntarily as a floe, some yards wide, struck the steamer
+and set the metal reverberating. All on deck ran to the side and watched
+the dirty ice bobbing like a human thing in the vessel's wash, and then
+drifting upon the tide over toward Cape Grisnez. Hardly had it passed
+when the captain rang an order from the bridge, and the ship went to
+dead slow. Another floe had been sighted ahead, and it was large enough
+to provoke greater wonder; a mass of black ice as though coming down
+from a considerable field over yonder towards the land. The ship passed
+by this and began to swing round to make Dover Harbour. The cold seemed
+to be increasing with every knot they made. Such an experience upon the
+English shore was within the knowledge of no living man.
+
+"I've been up to the ice-blink twice, and I was in Alaska three years
+ago," said Trevelle. "This beats anything I have seen, easily. What
+would you say the temperature was, Mr. Faber?--phenomenal without
+doubt."
+
+"About as many degrees below zero as you can get into a common swear
+word. Look yonder on the shore. Is that ice or am I dreaming it?"
+
+"It's ice right enough! Hi, my man, that's ice by the harbour wall,
+isn't it? Good God, what a sight! In the English Channel, too!"
+
+The sailor enjoyed this spontaneous tribute to the eccentricities of
+nature. He thought he would catch them upon an exclamation sooner or
+later, and he did so triumphantly.
+
+"The harbour's going to be froze," he said sardonically; "they'll be
+cutting of it with sardine-openers--at least they were a-talking about
+it. You could walk as far as the bathing machines gin'rilly git out. I
+dare say you'll see some of 'em a-doing it now if your eyes are good
+enough. They tell me it's the Gulf Stream what's responsible. Well,
+d----n the Gulf Stream! say I, and that's all about it."
+
+His peculiarities produced no other effect than the _sotto voce_ of a
+chaplain's lady, who thought that he was a very wicked man. The others
+were far too much interested in the unusual appearance of Dover Harbour
+and the environs to take any notice of such emphasis. Early as it was,
+groups of boys and lads sported with hard ice which ran right round the
+seawall, and even floated in great lumps in the mouths of the basins.
+Rills of waves ran, not upon a beach of shingle, but over the frozen
+waters, spreading as molten silver and often freezing as they ran. There
+were effects of the frost most bizarre--buoys covered with the hoar,
+ropes of ice where ladders stood, vast stalactites as of pure crystal
+from the roof of every walled bay into which the sea ran. The cold,
+still air breathed upon all as with the breath of the Arctic wastes. The
+town of Dover was frozen out from the heights of the Castle Hill to the
+very depths of its meanest streets.
+
+They went ashore over a gangway dusted with sand that they might obtain
+a foothold upon it. They had thought that it would be warmer off the
+sea, but when the train moved away and they crossed the frozen fields of
+Kent, a new rigour penetrated the ill-warmed carriages and seemed to
+search their very bones. At Dover newsboys had cried the morning papers
+with the latest news of the phenomenal frost and of the rumours of a
+great strike of transport workers following upon it. It seemed to be the
+one topic of conversation in the train and out of it. Great experts in
+meteorology had been interviewed in London, in Vienna, in New York. They
+agreed that England was suffering this abnormal spell because of the
+reduced flow of her old friend, the Gulf Stream. There could be no other
+logical conclusion, and the best that could be said was that the
+severity of the visitation was the soundest argument for its speedy
+disappearance.
+
+Trevelle read all this out to his companion in the reserved compartment
+which carried them to Victoria. He seemed willing to be impressed by
+such authorities and was amazed to find that his companion differed from
+him absolutely. Faber confessed that he had looked for such a winter in
+England and would have been surprised at any other. His manner had
+become a little restless again, and he was very anxious for the journey
+to terminate.
+
+"We are going to have a lively time in London," he said. "I guess I'll
+be caught in this pit after all, and pretty warm it will be for some of
+them. Do you know how much wheat your country wants every week to feed
+its people, Mr. Trevelle? I've figured it out, and it seems to me it's
+somewhere about five million bushels; that's wheat alone, to say nothing
+of an Englishman's roast beef and what goes with it. Well, I suppose
+you've food enough in the country for three weeks at a press. Perhaps
+you have and perhaps you haven't. Let this frost hold and the strike
+continue in my country, which I hear is likely, and you're going to see
+the biggest panic in London you ever saw in all your life. I had a
+notion of it when I was last here and I mentioned it to some of them.
+Professor Geikie, of St. Louis, first put it into my head as long ago as
+last October, when he was taking observations of the Gulf Stream for the
+Shippers' Institute of the southern ports; he noticed this check in the
+flow. 'Let it go on,' he said, 'and they'll have a winter in Britain
+which will be memorable.' I knew the professor and put my money behind
+him. You've got the winter, and you're only at the beginning of it. God
+knows when it will end or how, but I'd be glad to be out of this country
+if I could, and that's sure. It's too late to think of that, now,
+however."
+
+"Do you seriously believe then that the wheat supply from your side will
+fail?"
+
+"It's failing already--the cables tell me so. Great extremities of
+temperature are as sure a call to discontented labour as the spring to
+the cuckoo. Let this go on a week and there'll be something like a
+national panic. Then you'll see who believes in universal peace, and I
+guess you'll see it quick. For my part, if I were a free agent, I'd pack
+and be off to-night. But I'm not a free agent, and there's work for me
+to do; mighty serious work, I know. Perhaps I'll ask you to help me.
+You're just the man for the job. You step quick, and don't talk on the
+road."
+
+"It doesn't concern the weather, of course?"
+
+"It concerns the people, Mr. Trevelle. I'll tell you when the time
+comes. We are in London now, I think. My address is the Savoy Hotel.
+Send me yours there. To-night I'm off to Hampstead to see a little girl.
+She's just out of Ragusa, and it's to be imagined what this means to
+her. The north is merciless to the south in that respect. I'm afraid of
+the news I shall hear; more afraid than I can say."
+
+He fell to silence suddenly as the train crossed Cannon Street bridge
+and the face of the river was disclosed. A drizzle of snow had begun to
+fall again, and many hummocks of block ice floated beneath the bridges.
+Such a night had not been seen since Victoria was Queen and Melbourne
+her Minister. They entered the station to the raucous shouts of the
+newsboys, crying the latest tidings of the frost.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+In the suburbs, there was little real understanding of the momentous
+truth.
+
+Kensington, Paddington, and Hampstead were frozen out, but their young
+people enjoyed the predicament. Weary water-men plugged the mains and
+wondered if Christmas half-crowns would compensate them for the trouble.
+Plumbers left footprints on the silks of time and had become great
+personages. The roads were like iron; the wood pavement impossible but
+for the sand which covered it. Even the meanest wore some kind of shabby
+furs, while the well-to-do were so many bundles of fine skins, from
+which rubicund jowls peeped out.
+
+Faber went to the Savoy Hotel and rested a few hours in his room before
+going on to Hampstead. There were a few of his own countrymen there and
+they, oddly enough, spoke of a mild winter in Eastern America and a
+general absence of severity throughout the States. He learned with some
+surprise that his meeting with the Emperor had been made known to New
+York and was considered a triumph of a personal kind--though it had
+given offence in some religious circles and was supposed to be
+antagonistic to the peace idea. He determined to confute this without
+loss of time, holding, as he did, the firm faith that the Kaiser was the
+one great instrument of peace in the western world, and had the sanest
+ideas upon the subject. For the first time in his life, there was a
+trouble of the conscience concerning his own business and the mission
+upon which it had sent him. Was he, in truth, an obstacle to a gospel
+which had begun to obsess the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race? He knew
+that the charge was false and his pride resented it warmly. He desired
+peace absolutely--what forbade him to prepare the nations for war?
+
+It was growing dark when he set out for Hampstead, and there were many
+lights in the little house in Well Walk when he arrived there. A very
+ancient parlourmaid, who would have served Rembrandt for "a head,"
+opened the door and told him that Mr. Silvester was at home. She added
+also that she had supposed he was the doctor, and plainly conveyed her
+disappointment that he was not.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "the young lady is no better, then? Well, I'm sorry for
+that!"
+
+"Indeed, and ye may be, sir. We think it's new-monica."
+
+He shook the powdered snow from his boots and went into the hall.
+Gabrielle, hearing footsteps, ran out on the landing above and looked
+over the banister.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Faber--how good of you--how glad she will be!"--and
+saying all this in a breath, she came down the stairs and held out her
+hand.
+
+"So, there's no great danger after all," he rejoined.
+
+She looked surprised. "Why no danger?"
+
+"Because you come to me smiling. Well, I'm anxious, anyway. Shall I be
+able to see her?"
+
+"Of course, you will. She is asking for you always. Please come right up
+at once. Oh! there I am, speaking your language--how ridiculous it must
+sound to you?"
+
+"I guess it makes me feel at home. Is this the room--will she be ready,
+do you think?"
+
+"She heard you at once. She has been counting the hours."
+
+Her soft fingers knocked twice and they went in. The room was small, but
+it had been furnished with a great elegance. He was glad to see some
+beautiful white flowers on a little table by the bedside, and a basket
+of fine grapes with them. The note of it all was pure white, with rich
+red curtains and pictures in gilt frames. The bed had dimity hangings
+with great red roses for a pattern. A fire of logs roared up the chimney
+and a thermometer was hung upon the wall by the mantelpiece.
+
+"Hallo! Maryska, my dear!" he said, going to the bed and pressing her
+thin fingers with his own. He thought her terribly changed: the black
+eyes shone as those of a famished animal; the face was very white; the
+breathing laboured; the hands hot to the touch. But she smiled at him
+nevertheless and tried to sit up.
+
+"I've got the marsh fever," she said, as though satisfied by her own
+diagnosis, "it's your ship that did it. Why did you leave me in this
+damnable country when I was ill? Don't you hate it as much as my father
+did? Oh! I think you must, you really must."
+
+He was a little taken aback, and sat at the bedside before he answered
+her. Gabrielle nodded as who should say, "Now, you would like to talk to
+each other." Then she slipped away, and closed the door softly. The
+crackling of the logs and the ticking of the clock were loud sounds in
+the cheery room.
+
+"Why!" he exclaimed at last, "you surprise me, Maryska. I thought your
+father liked England?"
+
+She shook her head almost fiercely.
+
+"I'd tell you what _he_ said if she would let me! She says it's wrong.
+Why should it be, when my father said it? He called England--but there,
+it hurts me, boss. Oh! it hurts me so much!"--and with that she flung
+herself back on the pillow, warm tears of the memory in her eyes.
+
+He perceived that she had no business to be talking, and for some time
+he sat there, holding her hand and watching her. What a child she was,
+and with what justice had she called him from the platform of her age,
+an "old, old man." The tragic irony of his attempt to bring happiness
+into the life of the man who had befriended him struck him anew and
+would not be silenced. How little money could achieve when destiny
+opposed! He reflected that brains were the greater instrument and fell
+to wondering if brains had helped him in his dealings with Maryska.
+
+"Feeling any better, my dear?" he asked her by and by. She turned upon
+her side and looked at him with eyes pathetically round.
+
+"I should be all right if I could get away from England, Mr. Faber. Do
+you think that you can take me?"
+
+"Of course, I'll take you, Maryska. Where would you like to go to, my
+dear?"
+
+She thought upon it, biting the sheet with fine white teeth. Her white
+cheeks flushed with the effort.
+
+"I would like to live in a city where there are many lights--in Paris, I
+think. _He_ liked Paris. He said it was a bit of a hell, and he liked
+it. I told the wolf man with the whiskers that, and he said, 'Oh, hush,
+hush!' Why did he say that, Mr. Faber?"
+
+"Because, my dear, he's a clergyman, and your father was what we call a
+Bohemian. They don't say such words amongst our people. You mustn't be
+offended with them, Maryska; you must try to do what Gabrielle tells
+you."
+
+She looked up, her suspicion on an edge.
+
+"Are you going to marry Gabrielle?"
+
+"Why, how can you ask me that?"
+
+"Because I think that you are."
+
+"What would she want with 'an old, old man' like me?"
+
+Maryska reasoned it out.
+
+"You are not so old when you are with her. Besides, I am getting used to
+you. It is your looks which I don't like. You are not really so old, are
+you?"
+
+"I'm not forty yet, my dear."
+
+"And how old is Harry Lassett?"
+
+It was a surprising question, and he turned sharply when he heard it.
+
+"Don't you know that Harry Lassett is going to marry Gabrielle?"
+
+She bit her lips and half sat up in bed again.
+
+"I don't believe that. They say so, but it's wrong. You can't make any
+mistake in those things. _He_ used to beat me when I asked him; he
+wouldn't let me talk about it, but I know. It's something which changes
+your life. It is not that awful thing I saw in the streets of Ranovica.
+God Almighty! none of those girls will ever have a lover now, will they,
+Mr. Faber?"
+
+The child's eyes were staring into vacancy as though she saw a vision
+beyond all words terrifying. Here in this silent house remote from
+London's heart, the unnameable hours of war were lived again both by the
+man and the girl. John Faber's soul shivered at the hidden meaning of
+these words of woe. Had not his act carried Louis de Paleologue's
+daughter to the hills? Was he not responsible for what had been? And he
+was a servant of such a nation's instruments--a servant of war in its
+lesser aspect as in its greater. He did not dare to look the truth in
+the face. The judgment of God seemed to be here.
+
+"We won't speak of the things which are dead, Maryska," he said at
+length. "The men you name are like the beasts; it is well to leave them
+in their kennels. Your life begins again with me. I'll take you to Paris
+directly you are able to bear the journey. Can I say more?"
+
+"Will you, Mr. Faber? I could bear the journey any time--now, this
+minute, if you would take me."
+
+"My dear child, you are not fit to go. We must nurse you many days yet."
+
+"That's what the doctor says. _He_ never liked doctors. They were
+all--yes, knaves, he said, and the other word which Mr. Silvester hates.
+Why should I be kept here for these men?"
+
+"Because this time they are right, my dear. It's too cold for anyone to
+go out of doors. What's more, the sailors are on strike, and so we
+couldn't go if we wished. You'll be well when the thaw comes, and then
+I'll take you."
+
+"Will Harry Lassett come too?"
+
+It troubled him to hear the reiteration of this idea. The anxiety with
+which she regarded him, her eyes so big and round, her breathing so
+laboured, her cheeks so flushed--this anxiety added not a little to his
+own.
+
+"Why do you bring that young gentleman into it?" he asked her. "How can
+he go with us? Hasn't he got his duties to do here, my dear? What would
+Gabrielle say if she heard it? Wouldn't she be put out, don't you
+think?"
+
+The round, dark face assumed an air almost of cunning. It was evident
+that she knew just what Gabrielle would say, but was unmoved
+nevertheless.
+
+"What does 'engaged' mean in England? When _he_ and I were in Paris, a
+lot of them came to the studio. They would be engaged for a little
+while, and then there would be others. Jeannette Arrn had three lovers
+while I was there--Henri Courtans was the last. Was she engaged to him?"
+
+It was very earnestly put, and it embarrassed him. What a life the child
+had lived; what an education had been hers! And now he feared that the
+inevitable had come to be. Thrown into the society of the big-limbed
+boy, she had immediately fallen in love with him. This should have been
+looked for, and it would have been if he had realised a little earlier
+the nature of her birthright and its consequences. She was born in a
+land where passion is often uncurbed and the blood runs hot in the
+veins. Religion had done nothing for her; those who would educate her
+must begin at the very beginning. He himself felt totally unfit for the
+task. And she had refused already to live with the Silvesters, at any
+rate in England.
+
+"Has Harry Lassett spoken to you about going to Paris?" he asked upon an
+impulse. She shook her head.
+
+"I wish he would. I wish he would ask me to go away from her."
+
+"Don't you think it would be very unkind to Gabrielle to go with him
+even if there were no other reason?"
+
+"I don't think that. She wouldn't care."
+
+"She is going to be his wife."
+
+"Yes, and that is why I hate her."
+
+No further question could be asked or answered, for Gabrielle entered
+the room at the moment, and immediately the child hid herself in the
+bedclothes and would not speak another word.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+                      OF LOVE BUT NOT OF MARRIAGE
+
+
+                                   I
+
+"You'll stay to dinner?" she asked, as they went down to the
+drawing-room together a little later on. It was very warm and snug
+there, and the deep red shades upon the lamps appeared to him
+particularly English. They had few such suggestions of home in his
+country.
+
+"Why," he rejoined, "if it will not be putting you out."
+
+"We have some pea soup and a sole. My father is Popish enough to eat
+little meat, but that is for his stomach's sake--as Timothy was to drink
+wine. Of course, the baby cannot eat anything at all. Did you think very
+badly of her, I wonder? Is she really as ill as the doctors make out?"
+
+"Tell me how ill the doctors make her out, and I'll say what I think.
+Anyway, it isn't pneumonia yet. I've seen too much of it to be scared by
+that particular spook. She's a bit of congestion of the lungs, and she's
+worrying herself into a fever. The rest's doctor's talk--what they take
+a fee to say."
+
+She smiled, and went on busying herself about the room. The fire light
+showed all her height and the fine contour of well-developed limbs.
+Every movement was full of grace, he said. Gabrielle Silvester could
+have taken her place in any society in Europe. For an instant, he
+thought of her as the bejewelled hostess of a Fifth Avenue mansion, and
+that thought returned later on.
+
+"It is good to hear you," she said with a light laugh. "Everyone who
+comes to a sick house seems to think it necessary to speak in a morbid
+whisper. They expect to look sorrow in the face on the doorstep. Of
+course, she has been very ill--dangerously ill, I think. Our bringing
+her to England was a very great mistake; even father knows that now."
+
+"Then she isn't very happy here?"
+
+"Very far from it. Did she say anything of it to you?"
+
+"Why, yes; she asked me to take her away by the next train."
+
+"I thought she would; was it back to Italy?"
+
+"No; to Paris--and what's more, she wants Harry Lassett to be of the
+party."
+
+He thought it necessary to tell her this: he had debated it while
+sitting there and watching her graceful movements about the room. His
+own act had committed Maryska to her charge; his own words must warn her
+of a possible danger. Upon her part, however, the whole thing was
+treated without concern, merely as the odd whim of a capricious child
+who was sick. She surprised him very much by her attitude.
+
+"Harry amuses her," she said without turning, "he can be so atrociously
+vulgar. An accomplishment, is it not, when it brings a little sunshine?
+They have been the best of friends, and he comes here every day with
+some present or other for her. It is all quite pretty, and I am very
+grateful to him."
+
+"Then you would approve of his coming on my yacht?"
+
+"If he could go, yes; but I know that it is quite impossible. He has
+developed a surprising interest in his business; he is in town every
+day. It's really most wonderful!"
+
+"May I ask what his business is, by the way?"
+
+She looked a little pained.
+
+"He gets money from the people who sell stocks and shares--the jobbers,
+don't you call them?"
+
+"That's the name, to be sure. So he goes down to the city to watch them
+making money for him. It's a joyous employment, sure; it won't make him
+bald!"
+
+Gabrielle did not like the tone of this at all, she bridled instantly.
+
+"I dare say that Mr. Lassett is very well content with it. Don't you
+think that we might be?"
+
+"Why, certainly, I do. That's just what was in my thoughts just now. If
+he's so well occupied in London, he won't mind your taking a little
+holiday with me----!"
+
+"With you! How odd it sounds!"
+
+"Odd, or even; I mean every word of it. Will you come to Florida on the
+_Savannah_?"
+
+She hesitated and flushed. There are some tones of a man's voice a woman
+never mistakes. Let him lie to her, and she may be wholly convinced;
+deceive her by vain promises, and she will believe him--but let him
+touch the tonic of a lover's chord, and her instinct is immediately
+attuned. Gabrielle knew that John Faber was about to make love to her.
+It came as a bolt from the blue.
+
+"Why should I go to Florida in your yacht? Do you propose to take
+Maryska there?"
+
+"I do indeed--and you also!"
+
+"As her nurse, I suppose?"
+
+"No, as my wife!"
+
+He bent forward and watched her closely. She had been standing by the
+piano, the aureole of the lamp about her flaxen hair, making pure gold
+of its silken threads. For an instant she trembled as though some
+strange chord of her nature had been touched. Then, very slowly, she
+crossed the room and sat in the chair upon the other side of the
+fireplace. A warm light played upon her young face now; she was, indeed,
+a beautiful woman.
+
+"Why do you ask me to be your wife when you know I am engaged to Harry
+Lassett?"
+
+"Because I believe it is necessary to your happiness and mine."
+
+"Just a guess at reasons then. If I believed it, I would say it is a
+want of compliment to me. But I don't believe it. You are masterful and
+would brush aside all obstacles. If I were not a woman with some faith
+in things, you would do so. I happen to be that--perhaps to my sorrow.
+No, indeed, I could never be your wife while I believe in the reality of
+my own life, and the good of what I work for. You must know how very far
+apart we are."
+
+"In what are we apart? In causes which politicians quarrel upon. I guess
+that's no reason. Does a man love a woman the less because she believes
+the earth is flat? If he's a fool--yes. A wise man says, she is only a
+woman, and loves her the more. Gabrielle, I don't care a cent for your
+opinions, but I want you very badly."
+
+She sighed heavily, and raised herself in her chair.
+
+"My opinions are my life," she said quietly. "I have built a temple to
+them in my dreams. How it would come crashing down if I married you!"
+
+"I'll build it, anyway--it's a promise. You shall have your temple if it
+costs half a million. They won't miss me there if I find the money. I
+shall be proud enough of my wife the day it is opened!"
+
+"Caring nothing that she could only speak of money. Oh, don't pursue it;
+don't, don't! All my years have been a schooling against such things as
+are dear to you. There are a hundred interests in my life I have never
+dared even to mention to you. This home, my father's work--do they not
+say 'no' for me? I should be a burden to you every day; you would have
+nothing but contempt for me."
+
+"If a man were fool enough to base his unhappiness on his wife's
+goodness--why, yes. Don't you see that I may admire all this, and yet
+differ altogether? Isn't it one of the reasons why I ask you to be my
+wife, that I know how much reality and honest faith lies behind all you
+do? You haven't considered that--you'll have to before it's done with.
+I've a habit of getting my way; you'll discover it before I am through!"
+
+The taunt turned her patience to defiance.
+
+"No," she said, standing up as if impatient of it all, "I shall discover
+nothing, Mr. Faber. I intend to marry Harry Lassett in February!"
+
+"Ah! then I'll have to begin upon that temple at once. Have you thought
+about the plans of it?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Do not spoil my dreams--there is the bell. I think it must be Harry,
+for my father has a key."
+
+She went toward the door, he watching every step she took. Was it the
+face of a woman going to meet her lover, the face of an ecstasy, or of a
+painter's dream? The prosaic man deemed it to be neither.
+
+And yet he believed that she would marry the boy.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+Gabrielle believed that also, but it was a vague thought, floating amid
+a medley of reproaches and vain longings.
+
+She had gone to her bedroom at eleven o'clock, when the night-nurse came
+on duty, and the quiet house was hushed to sleep; and there she sat
+before a great fire listening to the footsteps of the skaters who passed
+by, or the chime of bells upon the still air.
+
+What momentous thing was this which had happened to her to-day--what
+flood of fortune which had swept by and left her to a woman's reckoning?
+Was it not the thing which she had conceived in dreams most sweet--the
+hope which her father had not been ashamed to utter, the golden shore to
+which her eyes had been turned in hours of vain imagining? In a
+twinkling the gates of great promise had been opened for her, and she
+had refused to enter in. A word, and all the power and place of money
+would have been at her command. She had been silent--the coach of
+opportunity had rolled by and left her alone.
+
+She would have been less than a woman if some blunt truths had not
+emerged from this labyrinth of changing ideas. It is true that Faber had
+offered to make her Maryska's guardian, an obligation she was to share
+with her father to their mutual benefit. No money was to have been
+spared. They were to take a great house in London, and furnish it
+regardless of cost. The gates of that narrow social enclosure which
+money can open were no longer to be barred to them. Luxury of every kind
+was to be at their command--but all as recipients of a comparative
+stranger's benevolence, and as the servant of his whims. It would be
+different as his wife, for these things would have come to her then as a
+right.
+
+She was but a minister's daughter, but these are democratic days, when
+money builds altars whereat even the ancient houses worship. Men are
+made peers because they have so much money to put on the political
+counter, or were famous as makers of jam and vendors of good provisions.
+All sorts of vulgar personages crowd the royal precincts and wear a
+William the Conqueror air, most ridiculous to see. The old titles of
+birth and breeding are hardly recognised; unrecognised absolutely where
+women are concerned. Gabrielle looked at herself in the glass, and knew
+that she would have gone far in this latter-day hurly-burly they call
+society. She had all the gifts, youth, beauty, wit; she was found
+sympathetic by men and they were her slaves whenever she appeared among
+them. She could have built a social temple, and there would have been
+many worshippers.
+
+And for what had all this been put aside? For the love of a man, or for
+the trick of an imagined sentiment? Harry Lassett made a purely physical
+appeal, but she was hardly aware of the fact. Faber had said that she
+was drifting into the marriage, and this idea occurred to her when she
+sat alone in the silence of the night. The years had conspired to bring
+this impasse, from which there was no escape but by marriage. She
+believed that the opportunities of the day would not recur, or if they
+did recur, that she must give the same answer.
+
+He would build her temple and lay the first stone, perhaps upon the day
+she became Harry Lassett's wife.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+John Faber himself had thought very little of this wonderful building
+when she had first mentioned it to him; but the idea began to obsess his
+mind as he returned to his hotel.
+
+To say that he was greatly impressed by Gabrielle's refusal of his offer
+is to express his feelings upon that matter somewhat crudely. There are
+women's moods which hurt a man's pride, but heal it as quickly. His
+early astonishment gave place anon to a warm admiration for her
+principles. They must be something more than mere professions, after
+all, and were so real that she had refused one of the biggest fortunes
+in the world because of them. This of itself was a considerable fact
+which dwelt in his mind. He had discovered few great characters in the
+course of his busy life, and was tempted to believe that Gabrielle
+Silvester was one of them.
+
+Her passion for Harry Lassett, if it existed, was a more difficult
+matter. The man of forty, who has never married, is prone to some
+sentimentality where calf love is concerned. Well as he may disguise it
+from the world, there is a bias towards a lover's Arcady; a tenderness
+for the secret groves which he will never confess. The mere man goes out
+to the witching hour of the young life. He has mad moments when he rages
+against his lost youth, and would regain it, even at the cost of his
+fortune. One such moment Faber himself had known when he went out with
+Maryska to the hills. It would never recur; he had mastered it wholly
+even before they returned to Ragusa; but he could credit Gabrielle with
+a similar weakness, and wonder how far it would wreck her story. Let her
+marry Harry Lassett, and the first chapters of a pitiful tragedy surely
+were written. He was quite certain of that.
+
+With this was some new estimate of his own position. He could be no hero
+in the eyes of such a woman. From that standpoint his appeal to her must
+be quite hopeless. There had been nothing of the dashing cavalier in his
+record, nothing but the mere amassing of money; no glamour, no public
+applause. Women like all that and forget much else when it is there. He
+had not done the "great good thing" which Maryska, the untutored child,
+had promised him he might do. Was it too late even yet? This temple he
+would build at Gabrielle's bidding, must it stand as the perpetual
+witness to the futility of his own attainments?
+
+And so, finally, and merging into the one great thought was his own
+awakening love for a beautiful woman. He no longer doubted this.
+Admiration was becoming a passion of desire, which might lead him to
+strange ends. He saw her as she sat by the fireside, the warm light upon
+her eloquent face--he heard her sympathetic voice, watched the play of
+gesture, the changing but ever-winning expression. He would have given
+her every penny he had in the world that night to have called her his
+wife. It came to him as an obsession that he could not live without her.
+
+For thus do men of forty love, and in such a passion do the years often
+mock them!
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+                             AFTER TEN DAYS
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Bertie Morris was a man who rarely knocked upon any doors, and
+certainly, had he stooped to such a weakness, it would not have been
+upon the door of his very democratic patron, John Faber, who was never
+surprised to see him whatever the hour or the place.
+
+"So it's you, my boy! I thought no one else would butt in at this time
+in the morning. Well, and what brings you now? I thought you were in
+Portugal!"
+
+Bertie Morris, who smoked a cigarette which had the obliging quality of
+rarely being alight, sat down by his friend's bedside and thrust his
+felt hat still farther upon the back of his head.
+
+"Guess I came over last night--the hotel clerk said you were visiting.
+Say, I must have a talk with you. Benjamin has cabled Paris for the
+news, and he's got to have it. You know Benjamin, sure! Well, then, you
+know what you've got to do."
+
+Faber knew Benjamin Barnett of the _New York Mitre_ very well, but the
+process of "doing it" seemed to amuse him. He sat up in bed and called
+for his man, Frank, who had been brushing his clothes in the bathroom.
+
+"What time is it, Frank?"
+
+"A quarter past nine, sir."
+
+"Then go and order half a dozen Bass's ale for Mr. Morris, and bring me
+my coffee."
+
+The journalist offered no objection whatever to this drastic
+prescription, and when the beer was brought, and coffee, with hot-house
+grapes and other fine fruit, had been set at the bedside, he drained a
+glass to the dregs and then spoke up.
+
+"Benjamin says the strike on their side is going to keep wheat out of
+England for a month. You're the man most concerned in that, for a word
+from you could end it. It's because your Charleston people went out that
+the others followed. What I'm thinking is that you're hoist with your
+own petard. You must tell me if it's true or false?"
+
+Faber was out of bed by this time, dressed in a wonderful Japanese
+kimono which gave him the appearance of a theatrical mandarin. He was
+always amused by Bertie Morris, and generally ready to help him. Now,
+however, he seemed at a loss, and he walked to the window and looked out
+before he gave him any answer whatsoever.
+
+What an unfamiliar spectacle he beheld from these high windows of the
+Savoy Hotel! The River gave promise of soon being frozen from bank to
+bank. Great lumps of shining ice protruded from its black face, and
+thousands of idlers were ready to play in the arena this memorable
+winter would create for them. Far away, to Westminster and beyond, the
+scene suffered no change, the river of ice flashed in the wan sunlight
+of the bitter day. He had heard yesterday of a pageant the city would
+prepare, and here this morning were the outposts; jovial men who waited
+to prepare the theatre, hew down the hummocks, and make many a broken
+path straight. An ox would be roasted whole upon the Thames to-morrow,
+and many a keg of good beer broached. The citizens themselves watched
+the strange scene from the banks and the bridges, thousands of them in
+black lines--well-to-do and ill-to-do; men and women about whose glowing
+bodies fortune had put fair furs; wretched out-of-works who shivered in
+the cold and had hardly a rag to cover them. Stress of weather could
+break many a barrier; there would be little caste in England when a few
+weeks had run.
+
+Faber regarded the scene for a little while in silence; then he took up
+the conversation at the exact point where Morris had left it.
+
+"Does Benjamin name me in this?"
+
+"Be sure he does; you're the marrow of it. What's Faber going to do with
+the wheat he's cornered? That's what he asks. I don't suppose you'll
+tell him, and so I ask also. What are you doing in corn?"
+
+"I'm buying it, Bertie. I began about a month ago when the weather first
+did stunts. Of course, you don't say that. For Benjamin the news is that
+I happen to hold a number of steamers at Liverpool and in the Thames,
+and that the men on strike there won't unload them. Say I'm a d----d
+unlucky man, and leave it there."
+
+"I'll do that, sure. The British public won't, though. Guess you're out
+for a big scoop this time, John. I'm d----d if you're not the quickest
+flier I ever saw at any game you like. Selling it, I suppose to the
+philanthropic agencies? Is that the line? They pay a hundred per cent.
+to feed the hungry, and you look on and bless 'em! What a story for
+Benjamin! How he would put the ginger in!"
+
+"Dare say he would. I know Benjamin. The philanthropic agency business
+is in his line. He met Miss Silvester, I think, when she was over. Does
+he know that she's at the head of this good Samaritan flare? Has he
+heard of the national committee with her name among the four hundred?
+I'd say something about that if I were you; it's the 'homes of the
+people' lay, and goes down every time."
+
+"I don't think--a committee for feeding the people and a minister's
+daughter at the head of it. Shall I tell 'em they must buy the corn from
+you in the end at a forty per cent. rise? By gosh! that laugh would be
+on time, anyway."
+
+"Why, it would, certainly. But you may leave my name out there. Say I
+take a serious view of the situation, and if the frost holds, I look for
+something like a panic."
+
+"Then you don't think the government can feed them?"
+
+"I have no doubt about it whatever. If you'll come with me by and by,
+I'll show you such scenes in London as you may not see again if you
+lived the lives of your great-great-grandchildren. It's war and no war.
+When some fool gets up and cries that the Germans are sailing from Kiel
+you'll have pandemonium. There's sure to be one before the week is out.
+I open my papers every morning and expect to read the news. I tell you
+we are going to see something and see it quick. Let Benjamin understand
+that. I don't suppose you'll forget to point out to him the advantage of
+having such a brilliant man upon the spot. You won't be backward in
+coming forward, my boy."
+
+Bertie assumed a meek look which served him very well upon these
+critical occasions when he interviewed a great personage for the purpose
+of taking away his character. A pleasant "I don't think" was his only
+comment upon the impertinence of the observation; but for the rest even
+his conventional imagination was impressed. John Faber was not the man
+to be wasting his time upon mere speculations. When he indulged in the
+luxury of a guess, a fortune usually lay at the back of it.
+
+"Are you meaning to say that there is any real danger of this same
+invasion?" he asked rather timidly. "Benjamin would like to hear you
+about that; you're the first man he'd send to if he thought the game was
+on. Do you think it yourself, now?"
+
+"I think nothing of the kind. The Germans are not madmen. They've got
+the sanest man in Europe at their head, and he is not likely to do
+stunts with the Gulf Stream holding the stakes. What the Britisher has
+got to fear is the consequence of war without its actuality. He's had
+that to fear any time these ten years. Now that wheat is cornered, and
+the shipping trade has fallen foul of the sailors, there is a flesh and
+blood bogey behind it. By gosh! he's frightened. I know it, and so do
+the newspapers. The Cabinet met last night and the King sent for
+Kitchener afterwards. They know there where the shoe pinches, and they
+see other bogeys. Let this frost hold, let hunger get a grip on the
+people over yonder, and there isn't an institution in Great Britain
+which will last a week. You can tell Benjamin as much, though there's no
+need to say I said it."
+
+He had become unusually serious, pacing the room while he talked, and
+often looking out at the frozen river. Shrewd interviewer that Morris
+was and blessed with an excellent memory, nevertheless these things were
+big enough to be made a note of on the spot, and he took paper and pen
+for the purpose. That was the moment, however, when a servant came in to
+announce Mr. Rupert Trevelle, and immediately afterwards Faber fell to
+earnest talk with this famous diplomatist who was Sir Jules's right
+hand. There was nothing left for the journalist to do but to drink up
+the beer--a task he performed with alacrity.
+
+To be sure, his curiosity was provoked not a little by the vivacity of
+the talk to which he listened, and when a little later on Faber
+apologised for taking his guest into the adjoining room to discuss some
+private business, the journalist prevailed against the man, and stooped
+without hesitation to the methods of Mary Jane. Bertie's ear fitted the
+keyhole very well, and he did not mind the draught overmuch. What he
+heard seemed to interest him very much. And the greater merit of it was
+that it had not been told him in confidence.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+The three men left the hotel in a private car some hour and a half
+later, and told the driver to go past Aldgate to Commercial Road East.
+They all wore heavy fur coats and were put in good spirits by the vigour
+of the day and the stillness of the frosty air. London looked her best
+that morning. The whiteness of her roofs, the iron hardness of her
+roads, blue sky above and a kindly sunshine to make a rare spectacle of
+the gathered snow--never had she worn a fairer aspect. Even the
+Americans felt at home and needed but a blizzard to deceive them
+utterly.
+
+The cheerful aspect of London chiefly impressed the imagination of the
+people in the West End at this time and they had got little beyond it at
+this stage. They talked in the clubs of the newspaper canards and
+pooh-poohed them. It was true that the rivers were frozen, but it was
+ridiculous to suppose that the severity of the frost would endure. As to
+the food-supply, what did it matter to men who could order a sole à la
+Victoria or a _tournedo_ without causing the club steward to lift an
+eyelid? The frost was phenomenal, but it would in due course be followed
+by a thaw. Meanwhile, those d----d bakers were charging a shilling a
+loaf, and making a fortune by other people's necessities. It was a
+scandal with which any but an incompetent Radical government would have
+known how to deal.
+
+Such a pleasant way of regarding things was universal through the West
+End, where business went on much as usual, and only the newspapers
+displayed the vulgarity of agitation. It is true that the cold caused a
+seeming bustle upon the pavements; but this was merely the cold, and the
+old gentlemen, who trotted vigorously where yesterday they walked, were
+not driven to such antics by the bakers, but by the bitterness of the
+weather. Not until the car had carried the three men past Aldgate
+Station to the junction of the Commercial Road, was there any evidence
+whatever of that menacing spectre the wise men had dreaded. Then it came
+upon them without warning--a procession of the social derelicts with a
+red flag for their banner.
+
+"Hallo, now!--and what do you call this?" Faber asked, as the car came
+to a standstill and the mob pressed about it. "Is this a dime show, and
+do we get you?"
+
+Trevelle, a little shaken by the attentions of his neighbours, who had
+climbed upon the footboard to look at him, declared that they were the
+"out-of-works."
+
+"Just one of the usual January processions--I expect we shall see a good
+many before we are through."
+
+"I guess they look ugly, anyway--see that fellow with the lantern jaw
+and the club? It will want a pretty big baker to stop him if he's
+hungry!"
+
+"We are stopping him by food--the government must help us."
+
+"And buy Faber's corn?" chimed in Morris, "he's about two or three
+hundred cargoes to sell--at a price," and he laughed as though it were
+the finest of jokes. Trevelle, however, was too busy with his neighbour
+on the footboard to say anything at all. A swarthy ruffian with a ragged
+crimson tie had grabbed at his watch and chain, and discovered a fifteen
+shilling enamelled timepiece, which annoyed him.
+
+"A ---- fine gentleman, you are--I don't fink!" and he went off,
+rattling the money-box, which he had dropped for the purpose of this
+assault.
+
+It was an aggressive procession--long, disorganized, revolting in
+aspect. Men of all ages had set out upon the long march to Trafalgar
+Square, where they would demand of the government work or bread. You may
+see the same any winter; but this winter of surpassing cold had given
+the wolf's jowl to many who were pleasant-faced without it, and the fire
+of hunger shone from many eyes. A few girls of brazen mien walked by the
+ragged coats and occasionally danced a few steps to keep themselves
+warm. With them went grandfathers and grandsons; old men, whose backs
+were bent by the labours of distant years; mere lads looking for a row
+with the "coppers."
+
+"What do those fellows think they will do?" Faber asked of Trevelle. He
+had seen the same kind of thing in his own country--but there, as he put
+it, the club of the policeman was more powerful than the brotherhood of
+man. Trevelle admitted that it was so. He had been three days in New
+York. Therefore, he knew it must be so.
+
+"If the frost holds, they will loot the shops. They've done it before
+with an embryo Cabinet Minister to lead them. I tell my journalistic
+friends that they are going to do a finer thing than they have ever done
+before--they are going to help the mob to loot Bond Street. We are on
+the top of a volcano; we have been really, for twenty years. The wonder
+is that we have never discovered it before."
+
+"Meaning to say that the volcano is now about to take a hand in it!
+Well, Bertie here will be on the spot if there's any looting to be done.
+I guess the side-track won't see much of him."
+
+Morris was rather flattered.
+
+"I was up among the lakes one winter," he said, "and I saw the wolves
+pull down a buck. He came out of the woods like a race-horse on the
+straight. There were twenty snarling devils at his heels, and they had
+eyes like live coals. Presently one jumped at the buck's throat, and you
+could not have struck a match before the others had fixed their teeth in
+him. He bleated for about two minutes; then he was so many gnawed bones
+on the ice. Well, that's what I think of the social system sometimes.
+Let the cold get a cinch on those particular wolves, and you'll count
+some bones! It has got to be--hunger is going to make it so!"
+
+No one contradicted him, for the scenes on the side-walk were too
+engrossing. All Whitechapel appeared to be abroad that day as though
+curiosity drove it out of the mean houses. Wan women stood at their
+doors seeking vainly for some tidings which should be carried to the
+famished children within. Hulking labourers took their leisure with
+their broad backs supported by friendly posts. Paradoxical as the thing
+seemed, the public-houses were beset by fierce mobs of ruffians, both
+sexes being fairly represented in the mêlée. By here and there some
+anxious philanthropist in a black coat moved amid the throngs, and spoke
+words of good cheer to all. There were ministers of religion whose faith
+knew nothing of new theology but much of bread.
+
+Through this press, by many a filthy street, the car conveyed the
+strangers to their destination. This lay some way down the Commercial
+Road and was officially in Stepney. Long before they reached it, the
+increasing throngs spoke of its whereabouts. A vast mob of the hungry,
+the homeless, and the desperate strove to reach a square-fronted
+building over whose doors were written in golden letters the words "The
+Temple." A shabby structure of dull red brick, this day it had become a
+house of salvation to the multitude. And high above them, upon the
+topmost step of a stairway which led to its unadorned halls, stood
+Gabrielle Silvester speaking to the people.
+
+She was dressed from head to foot in grey furs, and her flaxen hair
+showed golden beneath the round cap of silver-fox which crowned it. The
+excitement of her task had brought a rich flood of colour to her round
+girlish cheeks, and her eyes were wonderfully bright. The nation's
+tragedy had dowered her with a rare part, and finely she played it. All
+this publicity, this movement, this notoriety of charity was life to
+her. She worked with a method and an energy which surprised even her
+most intimate friends. In Stepney they had come to call her "Princess
+Charming"--a title taken from their halfpenny stories and apt for them.
+Whenever she drove, men doffed their caps, while the eyes of the women
+filled with tears. This very day she was feeding the people even as
+Christ, her Master, had fed them. And, looking on with new wonder and
+pleasure, was the man who knew that she was necessary to him--she and
+none other.
+
+The car came within a hundred yards of the Temple and then was held up
+by the press. Faber called a sergeant of police, and slipped a sovereign
+into his hand.
+
+"Get us up to the door and there's another," he said, and immediately
+five sturdy policemen drove a way through the hungry throngs with
+shoulders hardened by such tasks. The car followed them slowly, and as
+it went Faber threw silver among the people. It was a mad act, for they
+fell upon it like wolves, and when the police had quelled the riot, two
+of those who had come to the Temple for bread lay stark dead upon the
+pavement.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+There were two long counters running down the centre of the Temple, and
+between them lay piles of new crisp loaves. Many servers handed them out
+to whoever asked for them, and continued so to do until the day's supply
+was exhausted. It was a study to watch the faces of those who came for
+relief--cunning faces, pitiful faces, the faces of mean desire. Some of
+these people would go out with their bread and return immediately for
+more, trusting to the press to remain undiscovered. Others were given to
+wild words of thanks; but these were few, and in the main it would seem
+that natural greed dominated other thoughts.
+
+Gabrielle shook hands with Faber a little coldly; her manner toward
+Trevelle was cordial; she hardly noticed Bertie Morris. A habit of
+authority is easily assumed by some women, and it sat upon her
+gracefully. With unfailing dignity, she moved amid her assistants,
+directing, criticising, applauding them. When the mere man ventured a
+word of suggestion, he perceived very plainly that he was no hero in her
+eyes.
+
+"Why," Faber remarked, "have you nothing in the ticket line? Do they all
+come in here on the nod?"
+
+"Absolutely. Why should we have tickets?"
+
+"Well, I've seen one old woman stow away five loaves since I came in. Is
+that your idea of it?"
+
+"Oh, we can't stoop to trifles. And we have so much to give away. Mr.
+Trevelle is so wonderful. He has done a beautiful thing."
+
+"A good collector, eh? So he's doing it all?"
+
+"Indeed, and he is. It would not last a day without him. We are coming
+to a time when the others will have no bread to give away. He says that
+we can go on for weeks and weeks."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder. Trevelle is a bit of a hustler, anyway. I suppose
+you've no time to tell me the news?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, almost impatient of the mere cynic who could
+watch all this and say nothing in its favour.
+
+"She is much better--of course, you are thinking of Maryska? I don't
+think she wishes to go to Italy now."
+
+"Then you will take that house we spoke of?"
+
+"I will talk to you about it when all this is over. If you could only
+live a few weeks among these people! And they say it is but the
+beginning. There will be downright starvation soon. Thousands dying in
+the very streets."
+
+"Just because God Almighty has sent an extra turn of winter. Well, you
+are doing fine things, anyway. This is better than the Temple we spoke
+of."
+
+"Why is it better?"
+
+"Because there are brains behind it. They are the only things which
+count in the story of great causes--brains and money. I put them in
+their proper order."
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed; "of course you think of the money."
+
+"How can I help it? What is feeding these people? Bread! But you don't
+buy bread with a stone."
+
+She smiled.
+
+"There will be always money for those who really suffer. I count upon
+Mr. Trevelle for all that. He is a miracle."
+
+And then she said:
+
+"I suppose he has begged of you?"
+
+He brushed the question aside.
+
+"Trevelle knows me better. You don't come to rich men unless you have a
+proposition. What are all these people to me? I didn't starve them,
+anyway. Why should I give them money?"
+
+She thought him quite brutal, and went away presently to speak to some
+of "her guests," who had nearly fallen to blows on the far side of the
+hall. The heaps of bread were vanishing at an alarming rate, and the sea
+of faces beyond the doors of the building declared its tragedies of want
+and hope. In many a street in Stepney and Whitechapel that day the
+bakers had no bread to sell. Men told you that the government were at
+grips with the affair, but could any government compel men to work when
+they had the mind to be idle? A panic of threatened starvation drove the
+women to frenzy--the men to oaths. There is always hope in the meanest
+house; but there could be no hope if this frost endured and England were
+paralysed by strikes. So they fought for the gifts of the Temple, the
+strong triumphant, the weak to the wall.
+
+"Guess you will have to lay on those tickets," Faber said to her when
+next she came round to his side of the room. She listened, now impressed
+by the reason of it.
+
+"We could feed ten times the number," she said--"it is awful to turn
+them away!"
+
+"Why not take your Temple across the road? I saw an empty factory as I
+came along; rent that, and see that each man and woman comes but once a
+day. Trevelle will do it for you."
+
+She said that it must be done, and went away to speak to the unwearying
+aide-de-camp about it. Later on, with hardly another word to him, Faber
+saw her enter a plain hired carriage and drive off through the streets,
+followed by a howling mob whose moods were twain: gratitude on the part
+of some, rage and disappointment of others. She was going down to Leman
+Street to the children's institute there, Trevelle said; but he did not
+suggest that they should follow her.
+
+"By the lord Harry! you've let me in for something!" he protested,
+mopping a perspiring face when Gabrielle had gone. Faber replied that he
+would let him in for a good deal more yet. "Anyway, you're a hero in her
+eyes," he said--and as he said it, he reflected once more upon the
+meaning of that quality to women, and how far he seemed, from its
+possession where they were concerned.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+                               CINDERELLA
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Gordon Silvester's mission to the East, as he would call his work beyond
+Aldgate, was really a charity of ten years' standing, and one that often
+proved a thorn in the flesh to Gabrielle, who, at heart, had no great
+love for poor people.
+
+When the memorable winter came, it was a natural thing to use the
+resources of this mission for the purposes of that undiscriminating
+charity the season required; and so we had the Temple (suggested by
+Rupert Trevelle and other organizations not less useful). Silvester
+himself went into this work with the ardour of a man of twenty. His
+sermons at Hampstead were masterpieces of eloquence; his labours at
+Stepney would have wearied a giant. The national necessity demanded
+heroism--there will always be many in England to answer such a call when
+it comes.
+
+Gabrielle herself had been handicapped somewhat by Maryska's illness;
+but the child responded quickly to the devoted care bestowed upon her,
+and youth emerged triumphant. Her every whim gratified, as Faber
+dictated, she was nevertheless often alone in the little house now, and
+many were the solitary hours she spent there. Harry Lassett alone saved
+her from despair; and so much did she come to rely upon him, that she
+would send a note round by hook or by crook whenever Gabrielle went out,
+and sometimes when she was at home.
+
+One of these letters went up the fifth morning after Faber's visit to
+the Temple. Silvester was to address a big meeting at the Mansion House
+upon that day, and Gabrielle to open the factory as a second centre for
+the distribution of bread. Maryska, who heard with impatience all this
+talk of things she failed utterly to understand, sulked for an hour in
+the lonely house, and then dispatched a letter by a friendly butcher to
+Harry's rooms, near the Holly Bush Inn. To her great joy, he came at
+once, wrapped in a monstrous fur coat and evidently amiable. This little
+waif from the unknown was already growing into his life, though he would
+have been angry had his oldest friend told him as much.
+
+"Hallo, little Gipsy!--and what's up this morning?" he asked, as he came
+like a great bear into Silvester's puny dining-room. "Gipsy" was his
+favourite name for her, and she liked it well enough.
+
+"Oh!" she said, "they've all gone praying again, Harry--they're not fed
+up with it, even yet! I'm sick of this house! Oh! I'm d----d sick of it,
+Harry. Won't you take me out?"
+
+He always laughed at this trick of strong expression, caught by the
+child from a Bohemian father; an anathema to Gabrielle and the Reverend
+Gordon. Harry rather liked it, for it seemed to him somehow that he was
+talking to a man when he and Maryska were alone together.
+
+"Why, Gipsy!" he cried, taking both her hands, "you do look blue, upon
+my word! Where do you want to go to now? Where shall I take you if we
+have a spree?"
+
+She thought upon it with a quick and serious glance aside.
+
+"To a café!" she said at length. "Let us go and eat bouillabaisse at a
+café! _He_ always did when the drawing had tired him. Let us melt the
+old pot, and drink it--that's what he used to say!"
+
+"But, Maryska! If I haven't got any money?"
+
+She laughed at that.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, "I've got lots! Here's a whole bank-note. Cannot we buy
+bouillabaisse with that, Harry?"
+
+Harry took the bank-note and perceived with astonishment that it was for
+no less a sum than one hundred pounds.
+
+"Guess Papa Faber gave you this, now, didn't he? Generous old daddy,
+too. Have you seen him lately, Gipsy?"
+
+She was a little troubled by his question.
+
+"He came--it would be many days ago. He is going to take me back to
+Italy. Why do you say he is generous? Was he not _his_ friend?"
+
+"Do you mean your father's? Well, but we don't always give a lot of
+money to the daughters of our friends--not in this country, anyway! You
+ought to think yourself very lucky, Maryska!"
+
+She did not understand that.
+
+"He is very old," she said. "Once I thought that he looked at me as
+other men do--as you do sometimes, Harry! It was when I first saw him at
+Ragusa. Then it became different! He took us to Ranovica, and I saw
+dreadful things. Jesus Christ, what things I saw! Oh! if you had
+known--but I try to forget them now. _He_ would wish that--he never let
+me speak of yesterday."
+
+Her eyes were very wide open and shining; the expressive face spoke of
+woe most piteous. And this memory of suffering affected the boy also,
+destitute of sentiment as he was in a general way. He stooped suddenly
+and kissed her warm lips.
+
+"Never mind, Gipsy dear! You've got some jolly good friends, and old
+Papa Faber will see you through. I know he means to, for Gabrielle told
+me so. Just think of it!; one of the richest men in the world your
+godfather! Aren't you in luck?"
+
+She smiled. Money, by hook or by crook, had been Louis de Paleologue's
+gospel; how could she forget it?
+
+"He's in love with Gabrielle," she said, making no shadow of a
+resistance to his kisses, but rather lifting her lips to his, "I know
+it, and so does she! Why aren't you angry with them, Harry--don't you
+care? Doesn't it make any difference to you?"
+
+"Oh," he said with just a touch of hardness in his voice, "I'm not going
+to be jealous of an old bounder like that. He's old enough to be her
+father. Let's go and spend some of your money, Maryska. Does the doctor
+say you may go?"
+
+She made a wry grimace.
+
+"_He_ used to say doctors were----But no, I mustn't tell you. I hate
+them! How can they know what's inside us and why we feel it? Of course I
+shall go! Why are you such a fool?"
+
+He gave way with a shrug, and she went up to get her furs. It was a
+clear day with little wind and a fine red sun. The frost had not broken,
+and these two went down toward a city over which loomed the menace of a
+peril terrible beyond imagination. But of this the suburbs said nothing.
+Here and there a baker would have a flaring bill in his window; there
+were advertisements and appeals upon some of the hoardings, but few
+stopped to read them. Such idlers as gathered at the street corners had
+long exhausted the only topic of conversation and smoked in silence when
+they did not beg in companies. "Bread, for the love of God!" was the
+chant of gangs of impostors whose corduroys were no ornament to streets
+of red brick. 'Buses, trams and taxis seemed quite unaware of a crisis.
+The newspapers alone were hysterical. They were covered with flaring
+black headlines.
+
+Harry had engaged a taxi, and he took her for a drive round Hyde Park
+before going on to the Savoy Café for luncheon. There were a few
+horsemen in the Row, but they looked cold enough, and Maryska, who had
+seen the Italian cavalry ride, thought but little of their performance.
+For the most part, the big houses in the West End were left to Jeames
+and his humours. It would have been unfair to the owners of these to say
+that panic had driven them away. They were just wintering at Cannes or
+Monte or Aix as they always did. Out there, the news from England seemed
+very dubious; it was almost impossible to believe that such consequences
+had attended the severity of the winter. Here in Western London, the
+intensity of the cold, the relentless winds, the bitter weather taught
+men to incline an ear to every rumour. Perhaps even the sanest critic
+experienced a new sensation when he stood apart and asked himself if it
+were true that the sea might freeze from Calais to Dover. A menace of an
+unknown peril troubled all; the East End alone gave tongue to it.
+
+They went down St. James' Street and turned into Pall Mall. Here their
+taxi was held up by a howling mob, indulging in the ancient and amusing
+pastime of breaking the windows of the clubs. Did a politician as much
+as show a nose at a window-pane and a shower of stones rewarded long
+years of salaried labour or unfeed eloquence. Was he not one of those
+who pocketed the profits the bakers were making?--and if he did not, was
+he not, at any rate, "capital in a black coat"; and where would you have
+a better target? The hulking youths, who rattled their money-boxes
+offensively in every face, cared much about beer and little about bread,
+but that little had become rather a grim reality these later days. They
+saw men, and, women, too, dying, down East of absolute starvation--the
+ghosts of the "might be" stood at their elbow and whispered "Better the
+jewellers' shops than the mortuaries." And to Bond Street they went,
+adding to their numbers quickly and uttering bolder threats. "Bread or
+death!" An odour of beer was the incense to this prayer.
+
+Maryska regarded these gangs of loafers with inquiring eyes. She had
+seen nothing of the kind in any country, and they excited her contempt.
+When she asked Harry why none of them carried guns, his laughter seemed
+to her quite silly.
+
+"The police would never let them do that in Austria," she said
+emphatically. "Each side would have guns and they would kill each other.
+The English are afraid, I think. They should not let such people be in
+London."
+
+"But, Gipsy, don't you know this winter is killing them by thousands?
+Haven't you read it in the newspapers?"
+
+"Oh!" she said. "He would never believe what was in the newspapers. He
+said it was--but you would be angry. Are we going to have bouillabaisse
+soon? I am dreadfully hungry; I could eat a man, truly I could."
+
+"Then I mustn't take you where any man is. This is the Strand, the place
+a lot of your people come to. Do you see that sign over yonder? We are
+going to eat there."
+
+"But, Harry, it's a tailor shop! Oh, you little beast! You would not
+take me to a tailor's shop? You can't mean to take me there!"
+
+"Cheer up!" he said, squeezing her arm, "they cut very well," and so
+they drove into the courtyard, and seeing the actresses in weird furs at
+the door of the café, Maryska leaped down from the taxi and laughed with
+pleasure.
+
+"I could kiss you if it were English," she said.
+
+Evidently she was of the opinion that it was not English, and so no more
+on that point was said.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+Her idea was still a café chantant, and the Savoy met it badly.
+
+She had seen a number of well-dressed women in Berlin, in Madrid, and in
+Paris; but these, apparently, had belonged to the undesirable classes,
+and she could hardly believe that any showy creature in the
+neighbourhood of the ancient hospice of the Fratres de Monte Jovis--a
+fraternity unknown, may be, to the courtly Gustave--could be of any
+other kidney. Twenty times during the elegant repast must Harry say, "Do
+shut up, Gipsy!" and as often must her eyes express wonder. What had she
+done?
+
+There were odd moments when the mere girl in her came out with a bang,
+and the boy blushed up to his ears. She laughed uproariously at two
+waiters who cannoned each other off the soup, and when a clumsy fellow
+dropped her box of chocolates on the floor, she was after it in a
+twinkling and down on her paws like a cat. This was a depressing
+interlude which alarmed her conventional cavalier. Harry hated "scenes"
+with the distaste habitual to the Englishman of strait laced manners.
+
+He forbade her to smoke, moreover, and that was a grievance. She had
+smoked cigarettes since she could remember anything at all, and were not
+other women, especially the daughter-in-law of a personage famous in
+great circles, were not they smoking? Maryska knew nothing about
+palaces, but much about tobacco, and this was a question which nearly
+led to the resignation of the Cabinet.
+
+"I shall tell the waiter to bring me a cigar," she exclaimed at last,
+resting her pretty face upon her clasped hands and dealing him out a
+look which was feline in its intensity. Harry gave up the contest at
+that and ordered her a little box of Russian cigarettes upon the spot.
+
+"What would Mr. Silvester say?" he asked her. He might as well have
+talked of the weather.
+
+"I don't care a ----, and if you provoke me, I will say it. Am I a
+little, little child that the priests shall beat me? Give me a liqueur,
+and I will call you a good boy. If you do not, I will go away."
+
+He did not wish her to go away, and he gave her the liqueur. When, at
+length, he escaped, she besought him to take her to "the café chantant,"
+and for very importunity they went over to the Coliseum. Here both the
+_Connaisseuse_ and the child were in evidence. She called the echo of a
+tenor "a beast," was dreadfully bored by a comic sketch, but enraptured
+by the "plate-breakers." When a Russian _danseuse_ appeared, her eyes
+sparkled, and all her body swayed to the rhythm of the graceful
+movements. She would like to be a dancer--she said so.
+
+"When I leave the Silvesters, I will come to the man who owns this
+theatre, and ask him to let me dance. How much will he give me for that,
+Harry?"
+
+He was watching the Russian when she spoke, and hardly noticed it--but
+she persisted, and would be heard.
+
+"I used to dance for _him_, sometimes--after we had been to the cafés
+together. He played the fiddle--oh, so badly!--and he said I was born to
+it. Why should I not dance when those Silvester people are tired of me?"
+
+The man said, "Oh, rot!"--but chancing to look at her presently, he was
+startled to see the expression upon her face, and the evidences of an
+ecstasy she could not conceal. The music had entered into her very soul.
+She bent to it; seemed to suffer a trance because of it, while her eyes
+watched the scene as though this were a house of visions. Harry Lassett
+wondered; she was, indeed, an extraordinary child. When the ballet was
+over, and they were in the cab again, he told her so.
+
+"What about this dancing nonsense? Did you say your father put it into
+your head?"
+
+"I used to dance for him--very well, _he_ said. I would like to be that
+woman, Harry! The Russian one, with the diamonds in her hair."
+
+"Don't be a fool, Maryska! She's been dancing ever since she was four, I
+suppose. I expect she's got a husband who drinks champagne and thrashes
+her with a horse-whip. If you tried that game, they'd laugh at you."
+
+She leaned back upon the cushions of the cab, and looked straight before
+her.
+
+"No one laughs when I try to do things. I know what I am saying. I could
+dance as well as the Russian woman, and they would give me a lot of
+money. Why should I not do it? I have no one who cares for me! Mr. Faber
+is going to America--the Silvesters do not like me because I am tired of
+praying. There, I shall come to the theatre, and they will keep me."
+
+Harry was not a sentimentalist, very far from it; but the restrained
+dolour of this confession made a curious appeal to him, while, at the
+same time, the childishness of it exasperated him. Was she not in
+reality one of the most fortunate women in London that day? Her failure
+to realise what John Faber's friendship meant was incomprehensible, and
+yet it could not be disputed that she did fail to realise it.
+
+"Look here, Maryska!" he said emphatically, "you don't want me to be
+angry with you, do you, now?"
+
+"No," she said very quickly, "not you, Harry." And she laid her hand in
+his. He did not repulse her, but went on with the argument.
+
+"If you don't want me to be angry, talk sense! Faber has adopted you,
+and he is one of the richest men in the world. Very well, you'll never
+want for anything on this planet. You're going into life on a good
+pitch, and the bowling is bilge. I expect they'll speak of you as a
+famous heiress presently, and half the men in London be after you!
+What's the good of romancing, then, or pretending you don't understand?
+I'm sure you understand just as well as I do--and if it were me, I'd
+knock up a century, certain! Don't you think you're rather foolish,
+little Gipsy?"
+
+She shook her head, and put her arms about him in a gesture she could
+not control.
+
+"No," she said, "I am very lonely, Harry!"--and she spoke no other word
+until the cab drove up to the house in Well Walk.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+These excursions were no secrets between a boy and a girl, and Maryska
+would recite every detail of them upon her return to Hampstead. She was
+spared the necessity upon this occasion by the appearance in the road of
+another taxi, bringing Silvester and Gabrielle from Stepney. The four
+met upon the pavement, and immediately fell to a narrative of events. So
+much had been done, Gabrielle said; it had been a day of triumphs, and
+they had been achieved by Rupert Trevelle in the face of great odds.
+
+Harry looked at his fiancée while she was talking of her success, and he
+could not but realise that the recent days had changed her greatly. She
+had won dignity, he thought, and a new outlook upon life, which could
+not be a transient influence. There was in her manner towards him a
+sense of superiority, which the inferior intellect resented; while her
+good-natured badinage upon his "holiday" suggested anew his inability to
+play any serious part in the grave affairs which now occupied her. But,
+beyond this, was her utter indifference to his attempts to make her
+jealous, and he knew that she hardly listened to him when he spoke of
+Maryska and the theatre.
+
+"She wants to be a dancer! Oh! every child wants to be that some time or
+other. Were you not going to be an engine-driver yourself when you were
+seven? You told me so."
+
+"Yes, but she's a jolly lot more than seven, and if you don't look out,
+she'll catch and bowl the three of you."
+
+"My dear Harry, that is nonsense. Are you going skating to-night?"
+
+"Yes, if you are coming."
+
+"I can't. Mr. Trevelle is going to dine with us."
+
+"What! hasn't he done talking yet? Someone ought to take away the key.
+That man is wound up!"
+
+"At any rate, he is the life and soul of things. He's got nearly twenty
+thousand pounds for us in five days."
+
+"I'll have to borrow a monkey of him. Is your tame millionaire coming
+also? They say in the papers that he's been sent for by the Cabinet! Is
+he going to sell some of his wheat cheap, or what?"
+
+Gabrielle froze perceptibly.
+
+"I have seen very little of Mr. Faber. It is not to be supposed that he
+is interested in what we do. They say he is going to America from
+Queenstown. All the steamers are to sail from there next week."
+
+"If the strike lets them! Is Maryska going with him?"
+
+"I don't think so; we are to have charge of her. Won't you come in, or
+must you go? I am perishing here!"
+
+"Oh!" he said with chagrin, "I must go, as usual"--and he lurched off
+down the street without even offering his hand to her.
+
+The truth was that he was angry both with himself and with her. Brief as
+their odd engagement had been, he knew that it had been a great mistake.
+He felt vaguely that his brains were no match for hers, and that she was
+coming to understand the fact. And then there was his new attitude
+towards Maryska. How strangely the child could influence him! He
+remembered almost every word she had said since they set out for the
+Savoy together. The memory of the many _faux pas_ she had made was so
+humorous that he stood upon the pavement to laugh at them again. There
+followed a recollection of the moment when she had put her arms about
+him, and he had kissed her. His whole soul had gone out into that kiss!
+The warm lips upon his own, the hands which thrilled him, the hair
+brushing his face lightly--all had moved him in a transport of desire he
+could not resist. And he was engaged to Gabrielle! His step quickened
+when he remembered it, and he tried to sweep the inevitable accusation
+aside. He was engaged to Gabrielle, who trusted him. A silent voice
+asked, was it cricket?--and he could make no answer.
+
+In his own rooms, by the Holly Bush Inn, the hag who robbed him had
+stirred up a splendid fire in the grate and set the teacups for two, a
+suggestion which caused him some irritation. Here was his holy of
+holies, chiefly devoted to cricket bats and tennis rackets. The walls
+were decorated by a number of "groups" of the teams for which he had
+played, including two English elevens against Australia, and at least
+six which had opposed the Players. Elsewhere, and chiefly upon the
+writing table at which he rarely wrote, were smaller pictures, including
+one of Gabrielle which had been taken in New York, and another which he
+called "the Flapper" portrait. The latter showed a chubby-faced child of
+fourteen with her hair down her back, and legs of such ample proportions
+that she might have been in training as an athlete. The picture had been
+his ideal for many years, but he regarded it a little wistfully now.
+When he sat down to tea, he took with him a little book between whose
+leaves was a miniature of Maryska, done by her father some three years
+ago. Such an exquisite painting had never been in his possession before.
+It had been one of her few treasures, and yet she had given it to him.
+
+Louis de Paleologue had painted this in Paris, intending to sell it; but
+Maryska stole it when he was at the café one day, and neither threats
+nor persuasion had robbed her of it subsequently. It showed her head and
+shoulders, a veil of gauze about her, and a Turkish cap upon her head.
+The note of it was the passionate intensity of the girl's eyes, glowing
+like jewels in the picture, but with a depth of human feeling art is
+rarely able to convey. For the rest it might have been a miniature of
+the Bologna School and it had all the virtues of colour of which those
+masters were capable. Harry understood its value, and he thought that he
+knew why Maryska had given it to him. He did not ask himself why the
+gift had been kept secret, or why he had no courage to speak of it to
+Gabrielle.
+
+He was at the stage when he knew that something must be done, and yet
+would consent to drift upon the tide of circumstances. The inevitable
+had happened, and this boy and girl, thrown by the chance of confidence
+into each other's society, were lovers already. What the future had in
+store neither dared to ask. Vanity and John Faber were driving him into
+a speedy marriage with Gabrielle, and they had spoken already of the
+week previous to Lent. This was to say that in five weeks' time he would
+be her husband. It seemed impossible to contemplate. Harry drank his tea
+with his eyes still upon the picture of Maryska.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+                         THE MAN OF THE MOMENT
+
+
+                                   I
+
+It was quite true that Faber had been summoned to Downing Street;
+equally true to declare that not even the wit of that engaging Paul Pry,
+Master Bertie Morris, would have divined the nature of the interview.
+
+Perhaps good common sense might have helped him had he trusted to such a
+cicerone rather than to his ears.
+
+Here was the head of one of the most famous engineering firms in the
+world held prisoner in London during these days of national tribulation.
+The house of John Faber and Son had achieved colossal undertakings in
+all quarters of the globe. Its transport mechanism was beyond question
+the finest in existence. The genius of it was known to be the man who
+had recently sold some millions of rifles to Germany--a man accredited
+by rumour with such sagacity that he had cornered the wheat-market
+during the earliest days of this memorable winter. The latter proceeding
+did not help his popularity in England, though it was ignored by the
+politicians who invited him to Downing Street. In a word, they desired
+to know how he was going to bring his wheat into England.
+
+Faber was some hours at the conference, and directly it was over he left
+London with Rupert Trevelle, and set off for Liverpool. Unusually quiet
+and obviously troubled by a "brain fit," he delved into a mass of
+newspapers while the train rolled on over the frozen fields, and it was
+not until they had passed Crewe that he laid the paper aside and
+addressed a remark to his ready friend.
+
+"I guess London is pretty well like a rat pit just now; at least these
+newspaper men make it so. Hunger's a useful sort of dog when his dander
+is risen. I suppose Miss Silvester has found that out already?"
+
+Trevelle, who smoked an immense cigar, and wore a fur coat with a
+wonderful collar of astrachan, rose to the occasion immediately.
+
+"We are living on a volcano," he said. "The government knows it, and
+others must guess it. I am waiting every day to see the shell burst and
+the lava come out. We want imagination to understand just what is going
+on in England at the present time. That is where we are short. All the
+way down here, I have been looking at these cottages and asking myself
+in how many of them the children have no bread this night. My God! think
+of the women who are bearing the burden--but, of course, you are the man
+who has thought of it. I wonder sometimes how much you would have made
+but for certain things. You didn't buy corn to give it away in Stepney,
+Mr. Faber; that wasn't in your mind a month ago. I'll swear you had very
+different intentions."
+
+"No need to swear at all. I'm not a philanthropist; I never was. I
+bought that wheat because the cleverest weather man in New York promised
+a winter which, anyway, would make the market sure. I went in as any
+other speculator. How I am coming out is a different proposition. They
+don't seem to think much of me in England--not by what these writers
+say. I guess if I were a prize fighter, I'd be doing better business in
+the popularity line."
+
+Trevelle was a little upset about it.
+
+"It can all be put right in a day if you wish it."
+
+"But I don't wish it."
+
+"I know you don't; you are wanting the girl to have the credit of it."
+
+"Why not? It's a bagatelle to me. And the game will soon be up. I can
+feed a few thousands in London, but I can't feed a nation. Either I send
+a cable to Charleston surrendering to my men or I do not. If I do, it
+will cost me half my fortune; if I don't and this frost holds, you'll
+see red hell in England before twenty days have run."
+
+"Then the rumours about the strike breaking at Liverpool are true? There
+is something in them?"
+
+"There is everything in them. The government can deal with this side if
+I deal with the other. It's up to me in the end and I must say 'Yes,' or
+'No.' If I say 'Yes,' all America will laugh at me--if I don't, well
+who's to charge me? That's the situation, that and your own people, who
+are going to give the politicians their day. I tell you, it's a
+considerable proposition and is going to make me older before I have
+done with it."
+
+He was unusually earnest, and his manner forbade any inquiry as to what
+had happened in Downing Street, a matter Trevelle's curiosity would have
+probed if it could. To be candid, this polished gentleman, who
+indirectly had brought the fact of Faber's presence in England to the
+notice of the government, was immensely pleased by the part he had
+played in the stirring events of recent days. Not a lover of money, but
+a persistent seeker after social credit, when it could be gained by
+worthy ends, Trevelle had won distinction in twenty ways: as a founder
+of boys' camps, an officer of Territorials, and a promoter of some
+schemes which had become national. And here he was in these critical
+days by the side of the man whose genius might well be the salvation of
+his fellow-countrymen.
+
+Then entered Liverpool a little late in the afternoon, and went at once
+to the scene of the strike. It was bitterly cold weather, but nothing to
+justify the fearsome stories which had delighted London for some days
+past. The strike itself appeared to be the result as much of lack of
+work as of any fundamental discontent; starvation had been busy here,
+and the fruits of starvation were now to be reaped. As in London,
+haggard gangs paraded the streets and clamoured for bread; there were
+turbulent scenes in the darker quarters of the city, and not a little of
+that unmeasured mischief which ever treads upon the heels of want. An
+interview with the men's leaders convinced Faber that America alone
+could unlock the doors of this compulsory idleness, and it set his own
+responsibility once more in a lurid light. Let him cable that message of
+surrender and the end would be at hand; but in that case his own people
+would call him a genius no more and Wall Street would deride him. He saw
+himself as the enemy of the British people, dominant in victory and yet
+upon the eve of a defeat which never could be retrieved. And if this
+befell him a woman must answer for it--an ancient story truly.
+
+From Liverpool he journeyed to Fishguard, thence to the south coast. A
+greater rigour of the frost was here, and it was possible for the
+dreamer to understand some of those fears which had haunted the timorous
+during the eventful days. Perhaps a man of large imagination might have
+been justified in looking across the still seas and asking himself what
+would befall the island kingdom if the prophets were justified.
+
+At Dover, even John Faber dreamed a dream and did not hesitate to speak
+of it to Trevelle. Sleeping lightly because of the bitter cold, he
+imagined that the Channel had become but a lake of black ice in which
+great ships were embedded, and that far and wide over the unbroken
+surface went the sledges of the adventurous. Driven to imitate the
+leaders in this fair emprise, he himself embarked also upon an ice-ship
+presently, and went out into the night over that very silver streak
+which had been the salvation of England during the centuries. The white
+cliffs behind him disappeared anon in the mist; a great silence fell all
+about; he passed an ice-yacht moving before the lightest breeze, and she
+was but a shadow picture. Ultima Thule and the frozen wastes were here.
+
+It was a dream of the darkness, and it carried him many miles from the
+English shore; he perceived that the coastwise lights blazed out as
+usual, and he could discern in the far distance the magnificent beams
+from Cape Grisnez and nearer to them the splendid message of the
+Forelands. A phantom light upon his own ship was powerful enough to cut
+a golden path over the frozen sea and show him its wonders and its
+solitudes. Here where great steamers went westward to the Americas,
+eastward to the city's ports; here where many thousands crossed daily at
+the bidding of many interests; here a man might stand alone and hear no
+other sounds than that of the freshening winds of eventide or the
+groaning of the ice when the sea refuses its harbourage. A weird, wild
+scene, stupendous in its suggestion, an hour of Nature's transcendent
+victory. And yet but a dream of his sleep, after all.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+Such was the vision which reality supported but ill.
+
+There was ice in the southern harbours, but there had been ice there
+before, and nothing but the imagination of discerning journalists had
+bridged the peaceful seas and put upon the frozen way the armies of the
+invader. Faber perceived immediately that a few of his ice-dredges from
+Charleston could undo any mischief that Nature had done, and he sent a
+cable to America there and then, as a sop to the fears of the timorous
+rather than a measure of real necessity.
+
+It was odd how, through it all, this man whose name was known to so few
+Englishmen had become the arbiter of the nation's destiny. He held the
+bulk of the wheat which could be shipped from the West if the men who
+loaded the ships were willing; with him lay that "Yes" or "No" which
+should unlock the gates and bid a starving population enter the
+granaries. Once in his younger days he had heard a preacher who took for
+his text the words, "Sell that thou hast," and he remembered how that
+this man had declared the need of an all-embracing sacrifice once in the
+course of every life. The words haunted him, and could not be stilled.
+He had become as a King or Emperor of old time who could make war or end
+it by a word. Irony reminded him that he was an apostle of war, and that
+a sentiment which would deride it had no place in his creed. Why, and
+for whom, should he beggar himself to serve this people? His financial
+empire would come down with a crash if he surrendered now--he believed
+that he would never surrender, and yet he sent a compromising cable to
+America that day.
+
+This was just before Trevelle and he returned to London through a
+country which seemed to have no other thoughts than the pleasures of the
+frost. Everywhere the villages kept carnival upon the ice with merriment
+and music and the pageantry of snows.
+
+To Faber this seemed a wonderful trait in the national character, and
+not to be met by Trevelle's cheery reminiscence of the gladiatorial
+salute. These people had not saluted the frost because they believed
+that they were about to die, but because they thought that the national
+intellect would enable them to live. It had been the same during the
+Boer War and far back during the Crimea. Beneath the veil of tribulation
+lay the enduring faith that the nation would emerge, purified by the
+ordeal and greater for the knowledge of its own strength.
+
+"You see yourselves worrying through, and that's all you care about," he
+said, as the morning train carried them to London, and the daily papers
+were strewn about him like the monstrous leaves of an unhealthy plant:
+"the skin of this nation is the thickest on the globe, and perhaps its
+most wonderful asset. When you do get into a panic, you show it chiefly
+in the smoking-room or over the dinner-table. This time you've the
+biggest chunk to chew I can remember, and yet you are only beginning to
+see how big it is. The mob is teaching you something, and you'll learn
+more."
+
+He took up a journal from the seat, and passing it over to Trevelle,
+indicated some immense headlines.
+
+"See, here! the crowd has burned down your Temple, and is asking for
+another to keep 'em warm. That's British right through, I guess, and
+something to go on with. It's just what a man should expect when he
+turns philanthropist on his own account. You give them what they want,
+and they are mad because they want it. It's a pretty story, and you
+should read it. It will certainly interest you."
+
+Trevelle took up the paper and read the report to the last line.
+Yesterday at five o'clock, an enormous rabble had surrounded the factory
+by Leman Street, and there being no one in charge who could deal with
+them, the hooligans had set the place on fire and burned it to the
+ground. From that they had gone on to other pleasantries, chiefly
+connected with the philanthropic agencies in the East End. A mission had
+been burned at Stepney; a boys' institute at Bethnal Green. There was
+hardly a baker's shop in the locality which had not been looted, while
+some of the larger stores were but shattered ruins. The report added
+that a vast horde of ruffians, numbering at least two hundred thousand
+men, was then marching upon Pall Mall, and that troops were being
+hurried to London. It was altogether the most sensational affair since
+the beginning of the frost.
+
+"Poor little Gabrielle!" said Trevelle, thinking first of the woman.
+"I'm glad she wasn't there. This will be an awful blow to her!"
+
+"Not if she's got the common sense I credit her with. Women's ideals are
+not readily shaken, and Miss Silvester has some big ones, which are
+permanent. I'll see her to-day, and we'll know what's to be done. Tell
+her as much when we get to London."
+
+"If there is any London left to get to----"
+
+"Oh! there'll be a nook and corner somewhere. Your fellows have a genius
+for dealing with mobs. I would back the police in London against all the
+riff-raff east of St. Paul's. But they'll do some mischief, none the
+less--and even this may not help us for the moment. Do you guess what's
+in that cable, Mr. Trevelle--why, how should you? And yet it might mean
+more to your people to-day than ten million sovereigns, counted out on
+the floor of Westminster Hall!"
+
+He held up the familiar dirty paper upon which the Post Office writes
+the most momentous of messages, and then showed his companion that it
+had come from Queenstown.
+
+"The men on my side have given in," he said, adding nothing of his own
+act in that great matter, "the steamers will be sailing inside
+twenty-four hours. It's a race, sir, between me and the worst side of
+your nation. And I guess I'll win."
+
+"If you do," said Trevelle earnestly, "there is nothing our government
+can do to repay the debt."
+
+"Unless they teach the people the lesson of it; do you think it is
+nothing to an American to see this great country at the mercy of the
+first food panic which overtakes her? I tell you, it is as much to my
+countrymen as to yours. Teach them that they have a precious possession
+in this island kingdom, and you are doing a great work. I shall be a
+proud man to have a hand in it----"
+
+"You certainly will have that. It's a lesson we all need. I don't think
+I could have repeated it myself, but for these weeks. Now, I know--and
+the man who knows can never forget."
+
+He fell to silence upon it, and regarding the drear country from the
+blurred window, perceived a barren field and a drift of snow falling
+from a sullen sky. Yet sore afflicted as she was, he remembered that
+this was Mother England, and that he and countless others had been but
+ungrateful sons in the days of her glory.
+
+Would it be otherwise when the shadows had passed?
+
+Ah! who could tell?
+
+
+
+
+                                BOOK IV
+
+                          MERELY MEN AND WOMEN
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+                           AFTER THE DEBACLE
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Gabrielle was at her club in Burlington Gardens when the news of the
+riot in Stepney was brought by her father. She determined to go back at
+once that she might know the worst.
+
+"How can they say such things?" she protested while a footman helped her
+on with her furs, and her father watched her humbly, as latterly it was
+his wont to do. "Why! everything is going so well, father. I had a
+perfect ovation this morning; it was nearly half an hour before I could
+get away from the people. Why should they have done this?"
+
+Silvester said that he could not tell her. All that he knew he had
+learned by the mouth of a messenger, who had been dispatched headlong
+from Stepney and came panting with the news.
+
+"You should not have listened to Mr. Faber, my dear. He is an American,
+and he does not understand our people. The ticket idea was quite wrong.
+It led to many jealousies, and now to this. The people think there is a
+great store of bread in Leman Street, and that it is being given only to
+our friends. I am sorry the story got abroad, very sorry! Charity cannot
+discriminate in such times as these."
+
+He would have gone on to preach quite a little sermon to the hall porter
+and the footmen, who told each other afterward that the young lady gave
+it to him "'ot"--but Gabrielle, amazed and chagrined beyond all
+experience, immediately ordered them to get a taxi and drive without any
+delay to Stepney. It was then about seven o'clock of the evening; a
+bitter cold night with a wraith of snow in the air. The West End seemed
+entirely deserted at such an hour--even the music-halls had no queues at
+their doors, while the theatrical managers complained dolefully of their
+financial sorrows. London had awakened to the truth of the situation at
+last, and London was frightened. Even the unobservant Silvester could
+realise the omens of menace, and say that the city was in peril.
+
+"I don't know what it means," he told Gabrielle, as they drove, "but I
+passed a regiment of cavalry as I came here, and it was going toward
+Oxford Circus. Do you notice how many police there are about, and
+mounted police? There is hardly a shop in the West End which is not
+boarded up. Perhaps they are wise--this has taught them what lies on the
+other side of Aldgate, and it is a lesson they should have learned a
+long time ago. My own opinion is that we are upon the brink of a
+revolution; though, of course, I would not say as much to any of these
+newspaper people!"
+
+"If you think it, father, why not say it? Surely the day has gone by for
+the old foolish ideas. The government has left the people to starve, and
+must take the consequences. We have done our best, but we are not
+policemen. I feel tempted to go back to Hampstead and having nothing
+more to do with it. Think of the ingratitude, the shame of it all--and
+we have worked so hard!"
+
+"You should not have listened to Mr. Faber, my dear; I said as much at
+the beginning. He is very ignorant of English people; it was a mistake
+to listen to him."
+
+"You didn't think that on the steamer, father, when we came over from
+America. You were his bravest advocate; you called him one of the
+world's geniuses, I remember it."
+
+Silvester admitted it.
+
+"I hoped much from him. If we could have won him, it would have been the
+greatest victory in the cause of peace we have ever achieved. I fear now
+he must be called our evil genius. He has undoubtedly sold all those
+rifles to Germany, and that is to say that we shall have the old foolish
+scares again and very soon. A man like that is a terrible instrument of
+mischief. I think we shall have to dissociate ourselves from him
+altogether when the little girl is well enough to leave us."
+
+Gabrielle sighed as though all these things had become a burden on her
+mind. An innate sympathy for John Faber prevented her saying what
+otherwise it would have been a truth to say. How much he could have done
+for them had he chosen to do it! His money would have helped them so--an
+inconsequent thought, for her charities had never wanted money.
+
+"He was certainly wrong about the tickets," she admitted. "I know Mr.
+Trevelle thought so, but he gave way. If it is really true that he is
+keeping bread from the people to serve his own ends, nothing bad enough
+can be said about it, but I want to know that it is true. It has been
+very unkind of him to do nothing for us when he might have done so much.
+My opinion of him is greatly changed; I do not think he is really our
+friend."
+
+Silvester was quite of that opinion also.
+
+"He made us such extravagant promises. A house in the West End,
+motors--every luxury. I really thought he was quite serious when I left
+Ragusa. Sir Jules Achon did not wish us to go. He knows these people; he
+thought I was ill-advised to give up Yonkers for such vague promises. I
+wish I had listened to him now; he is still on those delightful waters,
+far away from all this. We should have been with him but for our foolish
+generosity."
+
+Gabrielle avoided the difficult subject. She must have been a little
+ashamed of it when she remembered the gifts John Faber had lavished upon
+them already and the concern he displayed for Maryska. The conversation,
+indeed, carried her back to a somewhat commonplace reality from which
+she had emerged to win this temporary triumph as a ministering angel in
+the East End. And now they had burned her Temple and the idol was cast
+down. Her father would send Maryska away, and they must return to the
+old humdrum life. John Faber and his riches would pass as a ship of the
+night. Harry Lassett and the dead leaves of a withered passion remained.
+
+"Oh," she said at last, "how vain is all we do! How vain, how hopeless!
+We are just like ants crawling about the earth and trying to set
+ourselves up for gods. We talk of peace and war, of good and evil, of
+what we shall accomplish and what we have done, and then down comes the
+great flat foot of circumstance and out we go. I lose the power even to
+hope sometimes. Why should we not let things drift? Who is the better
+for our work?"
+
+Her father would not agree to that.
+
+"Every stone cast into the lake of the world's ills is an asset in
+humanity's balance sheet," he said. "You have cast many, Gabrielle, and
+will add to the number. Look out there at those poor people. Is it all
+vain when you remember how many of their kind you have succoured? This
+American hardness is no good influence; I wish we could shake it off
+forever. Indeed, it were better so."
+
+"We shall do that," she said quietly. "Mr. Faber will not be many days
+in England when the frost will let him get away."
+
+He remained silent. They had passed Charing Cross, and now their way was
+blocked by a vast torchlight procession of women, debouching upon the
+Strand from the neighbourhood of the Old Kent Road. It was a sorry
+spectacle, for here were young and old, white-haired women with their
+backs bent toward the earth which soon would receive them; drabs in rags
+who flaunted their tattered beauty in the face of every male; quiet
+workers whose children were starving in garrets; women from mean streets
+who had never begged in all their lives; children who wondered if the
+end of the world had come. Headed by a lank harridan who wore a crimson
+shawl and carried an immense torch, these miserables tramped stolidly
+toward the West End, seeking God knows what relief from the shuttered
+houses. And after them went a dozen mounted policemen, good-humoured,
+chubby-cheeked fellows, who had never wanted bread and were never out of
+patience with others less fortunate.
+
+A thousand expressions were to be read upon the faces of this haggard
+crew, and not a little fine determination. Here would be a woman reeling
+in drink; yonder a young mother hardly strong enough to walk the
+streets. There were sluts and shapely girls, creatures of a shabby
+finery, and hopeless woebegone figures of an unchanging poverty. From
+time to time wistful glances would be cast up at the lighted windows of
+the houses as though succour might be cast down thence. All moved with
+rapid, shuffling steps, an orderly concourse which concealed the forces
+of disorder. By here and there, some of the younger members broke into a
+mournful song, which was checked at intervals to permit of the exchange
+of coarse wit with the passers-by on the pavements. The whole throng
+seemed driven relentlessly on toward a nameless goal which must break
+their hope when at last they reached it.
+
+"Isn't it dreadful to see them?" said Gabrielle when the last of the
+procession had passed by and traffic in the Strand was resumed once
+more. "This sort of thing affects me terribly; it makes me feel sorry
+that there are women in the world at all. Think of the children of such
+creatures! What can we hope for them?"
+
+"It is the children for whom we must work," rejoined the father. "I
+should think of England with despair if it were not for the children."
+
+Worthy man! Despair had always been among the wares in his basket; and
+yet, how often had this unhappy British people gone laughing by with
+never a thought for him or his melancholy gospel?
+
+
+                                   II
+
+The menace of the streets was not less when the women had passed by and
+the traffic flowed again.
+
+London was full of wild mobs that night; of savage men and men made
+savage by hunger, and they were drifted to and fro upon the shifting
+seas of authority and stranded on many a relentless shore. There was
+riot, too, and upon riot, pillage and the incendiary. Now for the first
+time since the winter set in, hunger drove even the orderly to the West
+in the wild search for the food the East could not give them. Long
+through the dark hours, in Bond Street, in Piccadilly, by Hyde Park,
+away in the remotest suburbs, sleepers were awakened to listen fearfully
+to the tramp of feet and the hoarse voices of the multitudes. Those who
+had the curiosity to look from their windows beheld a sky quivering with
+light, a glorious iridescence above many a flaming building the rioters
+had fired. It was the beginning of the end, men said; a visitation of
+Almighty God against which all were impotent. Who shall wonder that
+those whose faith was sure prayed for the salvation of their country in
+that hour of her need?
+
+There were enormous crowds about Aldgate, and the taxi containing
+Gabrielle and her father made but slow headway. When at last it entered
+Leman Street, they perceived in an instant the whole extent of the
+disaster; and so irreparable it seemed that the girl's pride broke down
+utterly, and she shed bitter tears of shame and grief. How she had
+worked for these people! What a heroine they had made of her! This very
+morning there had been a kind of triumphal procession from the old
+Temple to the new. She had been followed by a vast concourse of thankful
+people, who cheered her as she went; while the bishop had addressed the
+throngs from the doors of the mission, and spoken of the "noble lady,"
+whose services to them had been priceless. This was just eight hours
+ago, and now there were but reddening ashes where the workers had stood
+to give the children bread.
+
+The cab made its way to the doors of the wrecked building and an
+inspector of police received them. The few who had been admitted within
+the barriers were evidently ashamed of what had been done, but quite
+unable to apologise for it. The inspector put it down to the hooligans.
+
+"We breed too many of them in these days, sir," he said, "the country
+finds it out when there's hard times, and God knows they're hard enough
+now. It must have been set afire after Mr. Gedding had locked it up for
+the day. There were flames as tall as chimneys coming out of the roof
+when I was called."
+
+This was a man who took tragedy as a matter of course, and would have
+used the same words if St. Paul's had been burned. When asked if the
+incendiary were taken, he replied that he was not, but that acting upon
+"information received," he hoped to make an arrest before morning. His
+anxiety for the "young lady" was real, and he advised that she should
+return immediately to her home.
+
+"Now that there's this spirit abroad, I'll answer for nothing at all,"
+he said; "you'd be better the other side of Aldgate, and that's certain.
+There's nothing but a pack of foreign cut-throats in the streets
+to-night, and no man is safe. Just you take my advice, sir, and come
+back in the morning, when they've had time to cool awhile. This is no
+place for the young lady, whatever it may be for us."
+
+Silvester agreed with him, but he found it impossible to influence
+Gabrielle. She seemed strangely moved by the melancholy glamour of the
+scene; by the savage figures shadowed in the after-glow; by the
+reddening skeleton of the Temple which stood up so proudly a few hours
+ago. To-morrow there would be but a pit of ashes, where to-day a
+sacrifice had been offered to the nation. She suffered profoundly when
+she surveyed this wreck of her handiwork, and it seemed to her that her
+work among the people was done.
+
+"Let us go on to the old Temple," she said with what resignation she
+could command, "if they have burned that also, then I will return with
+you, father, for I can do nothing more."
+
+Silvester disliked the idea of it. He would have been pleased enough to
+have been back in his little study at Hampstead, where he might have
+composed a sermon upon "ingratitude," as an obstacle; but he had long
+been schooled to obedience when his daughter commanded, and so they
+re-entered the cab and drove to the old Temple. A silent multitude
+watched them as they went, but none cheered. The bitter cold night
+either sent people to their houses, where they might shiver upon heaps
+of rags, or it drove them to the open street where many a huge fire had
+been kindled that the outcasts might warm themselves. Hereabouts you
+would often see a whole family lying upon a filthy pallet of straw, and
+so huddled together for warmth that it had the appearance of some
+fearsome animal which had crawled from the darkness to the light. The
+shadows gave pictures more terrible, husbanding the dying and the dead.
+Starvation abetted the rigour of the winter. Nature waged war here in
+these silent alleys, and no sound attended her stealthy victories, which
+were multitudinous.
+
+In London beyond "the gate" there were other anxieties, but these poor
+people knew nothing of them. War and its menace: the chimera of fabled
+foes crossing the black ice in endless columns; cannon rumbling where
+ships had sailed; England no longer an island, her ramparts of blue
+waters gathered up; her gates thrown open to any who would affront
+her--if the West End discussed all this covertly and as though afraid,
+the East knew nothing of it. Here the danger was not of to-morrow, but
+of to-night! The peril, ever present, fell upon them now at the bidding
+of the natural law. For the first time since the outcasts of the world
+had found sanctuary beyond Aldgate, their city of refuge had been unable
+to feed them. And now hunger bade them go forth to the land of promise,
+so near, so rich in all they needed. Shall we wonder that starving mobs
+gathered in every square; that the courts were full of desperadoes with
+murder in their eyes; that even the honest would listen and admit that
+this or that might be done?
+
+Upon the other side were the police and the soldiers, many thousands
+hidden prudently from the eyes of the mobs. If the Government could do
+little to feed these people, it could, at least, protect the people who
+were fed for the time being, at any rate. Commanded by the "man of
+iron," the cavalry were marched hither and thither, but always to form a
+cordon about the dangerous areas. Special drafts of constables came from
+the distant suburbs to overawe poor devils whose greatest crime was
+their hunger. Stepney was besieged by authority, fearful that men would
+go out to get the children bread, and ashamed that bread should be
+withheld. Here had Nature's war become one of a civil people, paying a
+debt they long had owed to their exacting creditors, "Want of
+Forethought and Economy." The sword of a foreign enemy would have been
+the lesser peril--it was evident enough now to everyone!
+
+Through such scenes, by the dark and dangerous streets, went Gabrielle
+to the ancient Temple. She found it occupied by busy missionaries, who
+knew neither night nor day while the work of mercy must go on. In and
+out they went as they returned from some mean house, or set off for
+another. Dawn found them still at work, the terrible dawn when the
+country waited for the verdict in Nature's court, and even the dullest
+had come to know that this was an island kingdom.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Faber and Trevelle reached Stepney early on the morning of the following
+day. Gabrielle was still at the Temple and while she had expected the
+visit of the resistless "inspiration," as she had come to call Trevelle,
+John Faber's advent was unlooked for.
+
+"We heard you were burned out, and came along at once," he said, in the
+best of humours. "I guess you'll want all the masons you've got, Miss
+Silvester, and want 'em on time. That old factory should take five days
+to put up if you go the right way about it. If it were me, I'd leave it
+where it is, and make 'em toe the line among the ashes. That would teach
+them to behave themselves next time. You can't burn the house that's
+been burned already, and if they want to warm themselves, coal is
+cheaper. Say, write that upon what's left of the door, and you'll have
+the laugh on them, sure!"
+
+She was chagrined at the tone of it, but none the less, she seemed to
+understand that he wished her well.
+
+"If we rebuild, where is the money to come from?" she asked him,
+helplessly. "And what is the good of it if there is no bread to give the
+people? My father says the end is coming. What have we to hope for if
+that is the case?"
+
+"You have to hope for many things, my dear young lady--the weather for
+one of them. Your good father is a little premature, maybe, and is prone
+to believe what the newspapers tell him. The end is coming sure enough.
+It's not the end he looks for by a long way."
+
+He glanced at Trevelle, and they smiled together. There had been great
+news from Queenstown that morning. Why should they withhold it from her?
+
+"The fact is," said Trevelle, "the strike in America is over and the
+wheat ships are sailing. You read your evening paper to-night and see
+what it says. We have brains amongst us and they are busy. That's what
+we've been asking for all along, in peace or war, not the dreamers but
+the brains. And we've got 'em, Miss Silvester, we've got 'em!"
+
+He snapped his fingers, an habitual gesture, and seemed thereby to imply
+that he, Rupert Trevelle, had laid down a doctrine which henceforth must
+be the salvation of the British people. Gabrielle, however, heard him a
+little coldly though she was full of wonder.
+
+"I did not think you were so interested in this matter," she said. And
+then, "Will you, please, tell me why the men in Liverpool are striking
+still?" When the scientific exposition had left her more in doubt than
+ever, she asked of her work once more. "Then it is no good going on here
+if the wheat will come in," she said; "our task will be finished then,
+will it not, Mr. Faber?" He shook his head at that and told her of his
+fears.
+
+"It will be a slow business. I advise you to stand by yet awhile. If we
+get the cargoes slowly, as we shall have to do, the price of wheat will
+still stand high, and that's no good to these people at all. Take my
+advice and go on with what you are doing. The country owes you
+something, sure, and it is just beginning to find that out. Did you see
+your pictures in the halfpenny illustrateds, this morning? I like those
+fine; I've got 'em here somewhere, and I mean to keep 'em."
+
+Trevelle thought it wise to move away at this point, and they were left
+together in the great bare hall of the Temple, whither the people would
+soon be flocking for bread. A winter sun shone cold and clear through
+the wide window above them; then voices echoed strangely beneath the
+vault as though they were tricked by a mutual self-restraint to an
+artificiality of tone foreign to them. This man had come to love this
+woman passionately, and he was about to go to his own country, never to
+return.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, surprised and delighted when she beheld the pictures,
+"what a dreadful guy they have made me! Now, don't you think this sort
+of thing ought to be stopped?" He shook his head as though she had
+disappointed him.
+
+"I never knew a woman yet whose picture was in a newspaper who didn't
+say they had guyed her. The thing seems well enough to me, and I must
+keep it for a better. Say, now, you know, I'm going away the first mail
+that sails. Will you give me a better portrait or must I take this one?"
+
+Her spirit fell though she did not dare to tell him why. He was going,
+and the building her hope had raised must come crashing down. With this
+was her feeling that in some way he had failed her in the critical
+hours. There were men who cried out upon his astuteness, made manifest
+in the hour of crisis, but she had never heeded them.
+
+"If you really think that you will remember my name when you are in New
+York again----" Her hesitation was the complement of the obvious, and he
+smiled again.
+
+"It will be a new name. Let's hear how it sounds. Mrs. Harry Lassett!
+Well, I don't like the sound of it overmuch, but I suppose it's not my
+say. The wedding, I think, is for next month, is it not?"
+
+"For the week before Lent. You will not build me a Temple now; it would
+be a mockery!"
+
+"Why, as to that, if it's a Temple for brains, I don't know that we
+mightn't build it after all. That's what your country needs, Miss
+Gabrielle. All the brains at work to educate the people. Sentiment will
+carry you a very little way upon the road. Let your Temple go up to the
+men with brains."
+
+"Ah!" she said, "I think we are all beginning to understand that. Even
+my father says that universal peace will be won by the intellect not by
+the heart of the nation. You will see him before you go, of course?"
+
+"I shall try to; it will be a misfortune for me if I do not."
+
+"And Maryska?"
+
+"Ah, there you get me into harbour at once. I've been thinking over what
+Mr. Trevelle has told me about your difficulties, and I guess I'd better
+see you out of them by taking Maryska to New York. Does that seem to you
+a wise thing to do?"
+
+Her face became very pale, her thoughts seemed distant when she said:
+
+"Quite wise; she will never be well in England."
+
+"Or happy?"
+
+"Ah, who can say just what happiness is?"
+
+"True enough," he replied. "We look up and down the street for it, and
+sometimes it is on our own doorsteps all the time. We say that we were
+happy yesterday, and talk of happy days to come when to-day may be the
+happiest of our lives. Some of us are not born for that ticket, and it's
+human nature which shuts us out from it. Who knows, you and I may be
+among the number."
+
+"An auspicious thing to say, remembering that I am to be married next
+month."
+
+"Pardon me, I should not have said it. It's like one of your Lord
+Salisbury's 'blazing indiscretions.' You are taking the line which your
+welfare dictates that you shall take. You have thought this out for some
+years, I don't doubt, and you say, there is just one man in the whole
+world for you. Well, that's a bid for happiness any way. I'll put a
+motto to it when I cable you on your wedding day."
+
+He held out his hand, and she took it. Their eyes met, and he knew that
+he read her story.
+
+"The Temple," he said; "I guess you'll want me to help you open that. If
+you do, I'll come."
+
+"Shall I write to Charleston?"
+
+"Yes, to Maryska de Paleologue, who is going to keep house for me."
+
+Her hand fell from his and she said no more. The doors of the Temple
+were already open that the hungry might enter in.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+                          THE SHADOW IS LIFTED
+
+
+                                   I
+
+When a woman has drifted into an engagement imposed upon her by years of
+friendship, it is rare that she has the courage to break the bonds,
+however irksome she may find them.
+
+Gabrielle knew that she was drifting into this marriage with Harry
+Lassett, and yet her will was paralysed. The baser appeal had passed as
+a menacing wave upon a strange sea, and all that was left was the
+troubled waters of the seemingly inevitable. Her love-making had been so
+many hours of a dead passion, which no pretence could reanimate. She had
+posed as the fond mistress of a man whom her coldness gradually repelled
+until his pride revolted. Held in his arms, treated still as the child,
+kissed upon her lips, all her sentiment appealed to by his ardour, she
+tried to say that this was her destiny, beyond which she might not look.
+Hundreds had drifted as she into that desert of the waters where no tide
+of life emerges nor harbours of a man's love are to be found. She had
+been tricked by circumstance, and delusion must be paid for by the
+years.
+
+Be it said that this was chiefly an aftermath of the busy weeks. While
+the shadow lay upon England, the fame of her work had blinded her to the
+true meaning of the promise Harry Lassett had won from her in an
+irresponsible hour. Swiftly, upon the tide of the national misfortune,
+she had risen to notoriety; been applauded in the public press and named
+as a heroine for her work at Stepney. When that work was ended; when
+England awoke one day to the thunders of a thanksgiving more real than
+any in her story, then she learned for the first time by what means her
+triumph had been won, and whose hand had guided her through the
+darkness.
+
+The letter came from Paris, one of the very first the mails brought in.
+Well she remembered afterwards how that there had been a bruit of the
+passing of the frost many days before the deliverance came. Crowds who
+had learned to say that the American engineer, John Faber, had been the
+master mind during the terrible weeks; that his were the wheat ships now
+coming into the ports; that his genius and his money had accomplished
+miracles--these crowds heard with new hope of his promise that the
+weather was breaking, and the end at hand. Waiting patiently during the
+momentous hours, London slept one night through a bitter frost to awake
+next day to a warm south wind and a burning sunshine. Never shone sun so
+kindly upon a people which mourned its heritage. The oldest became as
+children in that hour of deliverance. The church bells rang for a peace,
+not with men, but with God.
+
+The island home! God, what it had meant to them all in the past! And
+they had dwelt in ignorance; blind to their possession; regardless of
+the good sea which sheltered them; of the ramparts which were their
+salvation. Now, as in a flash, they perceived the truth: the gifts were
+returned to them; the meanest knew that he was free. In a frenzy which
+the circumstances may have justified, men took train for the seaports
+and watched the passing of the ice. They stood upon the high cliffs and
+beheld the sun shining upon the open waters; lakes of golden light at
+the heart of the ocean--a widening girdle of security their country had
+put on. The loftiest imagination could not soar to the true heights of
+this revelation, or embrace it wholly in the earlier hours. The dullest
+were dumb for very fear that the Almighty would but trick them after
+all.
+
+In London, it was as though the whole people took one great breath
+together. Just as upon the conclusion of a peace, the church bells were
+rung and the City illuminated. Vast crowds poured from the houses, and
+gave themselves up to the most childish manifestations of joy. There
+were scenes to disgrace the story; scenes to lift it to great nobility.
+But yesterday, it had seemed to some of these revellers that they were
+no longer the inhabitants of an island which the strongest power would
+hesitate to assail. All the tradition and glory of the kingdom had gone
+out of it--to return in a twinkling at the passing of the frost.
+
+Gabrielle could hear the church bells ringing in Hampstead, but the
+theme of their chime was less to her than the letter which Eva Achon had
+written to her from Paris--a girlish, gossiping letter, full of
+inconsequential chatter about absurd people, and ending ever upon the
+tonic chord of the masculine scale. Eva's Odyssey had been full of
+event, but she had returned to Paris as a maiden Helen, torn by
+imagination only from the phantom bridegroom of her dreams.
+Incidentally, and as though it had to do with a fair in a remote
+country, she spoke of the great strike and of the man whose name was
+upon every tongue.
+
+"My father thinks very highly of Mr. John Faber," she wrote. "He would
+very much like to work with him. I wrote to Rupert Trevelle about it,
+but he seems too busy to remember me now. It was so like an American to
+spend all that money on charity and leave the people to think he was a
+scoundrel. The truth came out from Mr. Morris, who made what he called a
+'great story' and sent it to America. I am sending you the cutting from
+the _New York Herald_--it has also been in the English _Times_, I think.
+All the English people here are gone mad to know Mr. Faber now--they say
+he is one of the cleverest men in the world, and one of the kindest. All
+the same, my father says his brains are better than his money, and when
+you come to think of it, I suppose that must always be the case. Even
+he, rich as he is, could do little for that poor artist, Louis de
+Paleologue, and now there comes the news from Montey that Claudine's
+_fiancé_ has been terribly hurt at the aviation meeting there, and is
+hardly expected to live. So you see, dearest Gabrielle, his money seems
+to bring ill-luck to everyone; but when he works, there is no one like
+him. If only he would help father, how much he could do for the world!
+But, I suppose, he is going back to America, and we shall see him no
+more.
+
+"And that reminds me. Isn't it provoking how many people we never see
+any more! I have had a delicious flirtation here with a fair man whose
+name I don't know. We passed each other on the stairs of the hotel
+nearly every morning, and one day I dropped my bag, and he picked it up
+and spoke to me. I was frightened to ask anyone who he was, and I never
+saw him in the _salle à manger_, but he used to pass me on the
+stairs--oh, quite six or seven times a day after that; and we had such a
+jolly time. Then, suddenly, he went away, never said a word to me or
+wrote any letter. I shall never see him any more--_mais tout bien ou
+rien_, if it were always to be on the stairs, I am glad that he is
+gone."
+
+
+                                   II
+
+A tinkling gong called Gabrielle to lunch, and she found her father
+alone in the dining-room. A mutual question as to Maryska's whereabouts
+revealed the fact that she had not been seen since breakfast and that
+none of the servants had news of her. Once or twice before, when Harry
+Lassett had been cajoled into some wild excursion, Maryska had spent
+most of the day out of doors; but both Silvester and his daughter seemed
+to think that this was not such an occasion, and they were troubled
+accordingly.
+
+"I really fear that it is time that Mr. Faber took charge of her,"
+Silvester said, as he sat down wearily. "She is very self-willed, and we
+have no hold over her. Would Harry be responsible for this, do you
+think?"
+
+"How can he be? Is he not at Brighton? I hardly think that even he would
+keep the child out without a word to us."
+
+Silvester looked at her shrewdly. That "even he" suggested a train of
+thought which had been forced upon him more than once latterly.
+
+"Do you think it is wise for Harry to take her out at all, Gabrielle?"
+he asked. "We treat her as a child, but is she one really? I hope our
+confidence is not misplaced. We should incur a very grave responsibility
+if it were."
+
+Gabrielle did not like Maryska, and was hardly one to conceal her
+prejudices.
+
+"We should never have consented to receive her, father. It was all done
+in such a hurry; I think we were the victims of our own good nature. Who
+is she? Where does she come from? A gipsy girl, perhaps, and one who
+dislikes our country, and us. It was sentiment upon Mr. Faber's
+part--altruism at our expense. Of course, he talks of taking her
+ultimately to New York. But is he likely to do that? Do you believe
+that?"
+
+"I must believe it or say that he has not written the truth. There was a
+letter from him this morning--you will find it on my study table. He
+wishes us to keep her at least for a time and until he can make some
+provision for her in America. It will be possible for him to sail
+to-day, he thinks, if Sir Jules Achon arrives from Cherbourg. He appears
+to want to see Sir Jules very much before he goes."
+
+"Then Maryska remains, father?"
+
+"For the present, yes."
+
+"And that is the last we are to see of our friend? Well, our castles
+come tumbling down, at any rate. We have been his builders, but he
+leaves us a wretched house. I think you would be wiser to go to
+Yonkers."
+
+"I think so, too--when you and Harry are married."
+
+"Need Harry and I enter into the matter? I am thinking all the time of
+the way these clever men make less clever people their dupes. Sometimes
+I say that what I need to make a success of my life is the help of a man
+of genius. I felt it every day when Mr. Faber was here. It was to stand
+upon a rock and laugh when the sea flowed all around. And you need it
+too, father. Think of all that good men might do in the world if they
+had brains such as his behind them. He preaches all his sermons from
+that text. Brains will save the people, the country, even religion. I am
+sick of sentiment; it accomplishes nothing. We have meetings and
+speakers, and conferences and discussions, and the world just goes
+laughing by, like a boy who passes the open door of a schoolroom. What
+have we done since we left America? How have we helped our great cause?
+You know what the answer must be. We have done less than nothing, while
+a stranger has made our people think and learn."
+
+He was much taken aback by her outburst, and a little at a loss. A man
+of high ideals, he knew how hopeless was the task of uplifting the
+people, and yet hope and endeavour were the breath of life to him.
+
+"Oh," he said, "I won't say that we have done nothing. This dreadful
+winter is just what has been needed to make the people think. A reaction
+will follow, and we shall go to them with a message of peace they cannot
+resist. I am sure the truth will come home to all now. It will be easy
+to say that God Almighty did not create mankind for the shambles. What
+astonishes me, Gabrielle, is that in this twentieth century it should be
+necessary to preach such a doctrine at all. When you consider what
+universal peace would mean in every home in the country, what it would
+do for the poorest, how it would help the children, I am altogether at a
+loss. The thing is an incredible anachronism giving the lie direct to
+Christ and His gospel. And we are powerless to cope with it; we seem to
+address those whose hearts are of stone."
+
+"Then why do you address them? That is just what Mr. Faber asks. Why not
+turn to those who can lead the people? If the great names of Europe and
+America were behind you, the millennium would come. I myself would hope
+more from two such men as Sir Jules Achon and John Faber than from all
+the sermons in the world. But I have become a very practical person,
+father. I think sometimes I am growing terribly masculine."
+
+"You always used to be, Gabrielle. I remember when you were the greatest
+tomboy in Hampstead. That, by the way, was before your engagement to
+Harry. Do you know, my dear girl, I wonder sometimes if marriage is your
+destiny at all."
+
+"If not marriage, what then, father?"
+
+"Public work. The practice of the ideas you have just been pleading to
+me."
+
+Gabrielle shook her head. She spoke with little restraint, and in a way
+that astonished him altogether.
+
+"I don't agree with you. I believe in my heart that I am destined to
+love and marriage. If it is not so, I may do something mad some day.
+Sometimes I long to get away from all this; but it must be with a man
+who can lead me. I shall never marry Harry--I wonder that I have not
+told him so before. Perhaps I should have done so had it not been for
+these awful weeks. Do you know, father, that I find life in opposition
+to every convention you have taught me since I was a child? There are no
+fairy godmothers in the world. Our guardian angels might be gamblers who
+throw us headlong into the stream and make wagers about our condition
+when we come out. We have to decide the most momentous questions when we
+are still babies and understand nothing about them. In the end it comes
+just to what Mr. Faber says, our brains make or mar us; and neither you
+nor I have any brains to speak of. Let us leave it there, father. I am
+growing really anxious about the child, and must know the truth. If she
+is not with the Bensons, I don't know where she is."
+
+He assented, moved to some real anxiety by her obvious alarm. They wrote
+a note and dispatched it to the house of their friends the Bensons, who
+had shown much kindness to Maryska, but the afternoon had merged into
+evening before any answer was brought to them.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+                        THE MARIGOLDS TO THE SUN
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Maryska had been out and about London with Harry Lassett upon more than
+one occasion, and this had been to the knowledge and with the approval
+both of Silvester and of Gabrielle. Both had known Harry for many years,
+and he had become almost as the son of the house. Their own duties
+carried them so much abroad during the terrible days that they were well
+content when the young man did what he could to amuse the child during
+the long hours; and they used to hear of the mutual escapades with the
+interest they would have bestowed upon two children come home from
+school and eager for the holidays.
+
+Here their trust went out wholly upon their own plane of honor and
+convention. The boy had been to a public school and to Cambridge. He was
+of a type which three hundred years of a great tradition have moulded
+finally and left as a corner-stone of the national society. A firm faith
+in the blessings of domestic freedom had always been characteristic of
+Silvester's teaching. Trust your sons, and they will not fail you, he
+had said.
+
+But, if he knew that Harry had taken Maryska to such places as a young
+woman of her age (and one who was a stranger to the City) might visit,
+he would have been astounded and dismayed had he known that she had gone
+to Harry's lodgings, and latterly had made a practice of visiting him
+there. This was concealed by both as a secret between them of which no
+whisper must be heard. It was the first scene of an act of drama
+speedily to follow. Maryska would never forget that day. They had been
+to Madame Tussaud's, where a wretched group of people were sheltered
+from the cold, and tried to forget the shadow which lay upon the City.
+Returning towards five o'clock, Maryska had told him that she knew the
+truth about England at last, and that it was the arctic land of which
+her dead father had told her.
+
+"They come here in little ships," she said, "and it is to find _le Pôle
+Nord_. There was a café of that name in Dijon, and once when we were
+very poor I danced there and got money for him. He beat me when he found
+it out, and that night I hated him, and went back to dance once more.
+That is what a girl should do when a man beats her! Ah! I shall run away
+from you yet, _bête sauvage_."
+
+He laughed in a great boyish way, and drew her arm the tighter within
+his own. How good it seemed to have these bright eyes looking up into
+his own, to hear the little savage prattling, and to know that she was
+happy. Though the kingdom of England had perished that night, these two
+would not have cared a scudo. The eternal voice of youth called them,
+and they bent to it as "marigolds to the sun."
+
+"Do you think I shall beat you, Maryska? Is that in your head? You are a
+rum little devil, I must say!"
+
+She took it rather as a compliment.
+
+"I do not know what you will do when you are angry. The English are
+difficult to understand. I think they are afraid of women. Mr. Silvester
+runs away when I stamp my foot. I have heard him shut his door when I
+come down the stairs. _Bon Dieu!_ what a cat of a man--and he is a
+priest, and the people do not know that he is afraid of women! Shall we
+go to your lodgings, Harry--shall I make you some coffee there? It will
+be ripping,--and they would be so angry if they knew. Let us hurry on,
+for it is late--to your lodgings, I say."
+
+He was a good deal taken aback, and argued with her while she trotted by
+his side; all her strength returned, all her youth triumphant. To his
+rooms! That was a new proposition, to be sure. And what would Gabrielle
+say if she knew of it?
+
+"Look here, Maryska, people will talk if you come to my lodgings!"
+
+"Will they not talk if I stop away?"
+
+"They'll say rotten things. I shouldn't like to have them said about
+you."
+
+"But, Harry, do you always live alone in your rooms?"
+
+"I don't take ladies there, Maryska."
+
+She was amazed.
+
+"It is not wicked to be with you in the street, then, but wicked in your
+rooms. _Ecco!_ what a country! And all the people are frozen and the
+wind eats them up, and they are so frightened of us they lock us out of
+their lodgings. How _he_ would have laughed! Why, all the ladies in
+Ragusa came to his room, and he would sing and laugh all day. It was not
+wicked there! He would not have done it when I was with him, if it had
+been."
+
+He tried to tell her that countries have different customs, and that
+what is done in the south may not be done in the north with impunity.
+But she was wholly unconvinced, and the spice of daring being added to
+the dish of her thoughts, she led him insensibly towards Holly Place and
+not towards Well Walk as they approached Hampstead.
+
+"Just to see what this wicked place is like, Harry. Surely, I may stand
+at your door and see you go in? They will not punish me, these horrid
+English, for that. Oh, yes, I shall stand at your door and see you go
+in, and you will give me some wine. Do you know that we have nothing but
+syrup at the Silvesters'? Oh, _mon pauvre_! it is all ice inside as well
+as out. I go thirsty all day--there was wine always when _he_ was alive,
+and now there is none! I shall wait upon your doorway until you give me
+a little wine, Harry."
+
+This idea pleased her very much, and she danced and sang her way through
+the silent streets upon it. Even the searching cold of the early night
+did not affright her, nor those suggestions of loneliness and isolation
+which usually attended her journey northward. She was going to see
+Harry's rooms and to drink some wine when she got there! The fact that
+he had nothing but good Scotch whisky did not enter into her
+calculations.
+
+As for Harry, the proposal annoyed him at the beginning, but grew upon
+his sympathies as they went. He tried to follow her logic, and to think
+that it would be absurd to treat her otherwise than as a child. What
+harm could there be after all, and was not her view of it safer than his
+own? The Silvesters were too busy looking after impossible people in the
+East End to do their duty by this little exile. What forbade him to
+treat her as a sister? Upon this there came tumbling many a picture of
+that bewitching apparition as sympathy could frame it. What a riot she
+would make in his puny lodging! And how good it would be to watch her
+swinging her shapely legs on the edge of his pet arm-chair! She filled
+the whole house with visions already.
+
+They marched up Heath Street forlorn, wind-swept, and deserted, and came
+at last to his door. He remembered how easily she took possession of the
+place, marching here and there as though she were its mistress--setting
+this or that in order instantly; tidying his desk; looking reproachfully
+upon his joyous negligence. When a lean landlady asked her genially if
+she would take a little tea, she answered immediately, "No; you are to
+go to the café for the wine, Mr. Harry will give you the money!"
+
+And Harry gave it, as though it was the best of jokes, and one in which
+he must now play his part.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+The first of many visits--how soon it was forgotten, that others more
+intimate should be remembered!
+
+She came almost every day during the final week of the tribulation, and
+would sit with him, smoking his cigarettes and drinking his claret as
+though his house had been a café! He discovered that she had many
+talents, was a rare dancer of the wild, uncouth dances of the East, and
+could draw with a wonderful sense of portraiture. Her pictures of
+Silvester should have gone to _Punch_, but her portraits of Gabrielle
+were full of feeling. One day, when she had been sitting upon the arm of
+his chair, using his broad back for an easel, she asked him, à propos
+nothing at all, if he were in love, and when he looked at her astonished
+she seemed insistent.
+
+"Are you in love with her, Harry? Why do you not answer me?"
+
+"Why, you know that I am. Aren't we going to be married, little Gipsy?"
+
+She put the pencil down and laid her head quietly upon his shoulder.
+
+"I shall never believe it; you do not love her--she is nothing to you."
+
+"Oh, come, Gipsy! What do you know about it?"
+
+She sighed, but did not raise her head.
+
+"If you loved Gabrielle Silvester you would not let me come to this
+house."
+
+"Why not, Gipsy?"
+
+"Because I love you, Harry."
+
+So there it was, in a flash, and both her arms were about his neck and
+her lips hot upon his own. She loved him and had no shame in the avowal.
+Destiny gave him to her. The little wild girl who came God knew whence,
+was not this her haven at last? She entered into her heritage fiercely
+as one who would not be dispossessed.
+
+Of course, Harry treated it as a good joke, or perhaps attempted so to
+treat it. He could not resist her kisses and made no effort to do so;
+but when she had calmed down a little and he had pulled her on to his
+knees so that he could look deep into her black eyes, he said:
+
+"We mustn't tell Gabrielle about this; we mustn't say a word just yet,
+Gipsy."
+
+She thought about it, pulling at the button of his vest.
+
+"Do you wish to love me in secret, Harry?" she asked presently. He
+laughed again at that, and said it would be a good joke.
+
+"Gabrielle will never marry me; I know that, Gipsy. She's gone on your
+American friend, and is too proud to tell him so. Our affair was all a
+mistake. Time will put that right, and then you and I will be free.
+Let's keep it secret, and have the laugh of them all. Will you do that,
+Maryska?"
+
+Her eyes were wide open; she made an effort to understand.
+
+"You do not forbid me to love you, Harry?"
+
+"Certainly not; aren't we pals?"
+
+"I may come here just when I like?"
+
+"As long as Silvester doesn't get mad about it."
+
+She thought upon this, but half satisfied.
+
+"Will you take me to Paris some day? I want so much to go to Paris.
+There is life there--life, life, life! One sits in the door of the hotel
+and sees all the world. These English people make me hate them, but I
+love the French as my father did. They said in Paris that he was a great
+artist; I know it was true. He could have compelled all the world to say
+so if he had not been so idle. There were whole weeks in Ragusa when he
+lay in bed; sometimes we had no food in the house; then he would paint,
+and I would go with the picture to the Jew with the beard and bring the
+money home. That night was always a _festa_. It was better in Paris,
+where he had many friends who would come and say, 'Work, beast!' and he
+would laugh at them and take up his brushes. You know that he was a
+prince in his own country, Harry? Once when he was very ill, he told me
+so and gave me some papers. That was at San Gimignano--oh! so many years
+ago. When he got better he took them away again, and we travelled and
+travelled, just like two gipsies, together upon the lonely white roads.
+At last we reached Granada, where there is a mountain with gipsies,
+running in and out of their holes like the rabbits in the forest. We
+lived with them a month and he painted many pictures; then we took ship
+and went to Italy, and he was so ill that I knew we should never go over
+the white roads together again. Ah, dear God! what a life I have led!
+and now you--you are the only one in all the world, Harry."
+
+She hid her face from him and put her arms about his neck again. Her
+passionate story moved him strangely and seemed to set her in a new
+aspect before him. Was it possible that this waif was what the dead
+artist had proclaimed her to be? Beneath all the sorry veneer of the
+_Wanderjahre_, would he find at last the grains of nobility and of a
+precious birthright? That would mean very much to a man of his
+temperament; to one whose whole career had taught him to esteem these
+things. The mystery of it all fascinated him strangely--she frightened
+him in such moods as this.
+
+He did not promise to take her to Paris, but, comforting her with fair
+words, they went round together to Well Walk and he saw Gabrielle for a
+few brief moments. The talk between them was quite commonplace, but, as
+often before, the name of John Faber quickly crept into it. Harry turned
+his heel upon that, and went back to Holly Place in high dudgeon.
+
+"Good God!" he said. "That man again!"
+
+Why did she not tell him frankly that her ambition lay here and would
+not be rebuffed?
+
+
+                                  III
+
+He had been very proud of Gabrielle in the old days, and was proud still
+in a vain boyish way. He knew that she was a beautiful woman, and could
+suffer chagrin when he admitted that the measure of her intellect was
+far beyond his own. A sportsman and little else, all this cant of
+movements and causes and social creeds stirred him to ebullitions of
+temper of which he was secretly ashamed. Nothing but the influence of
+years forbade him to say that both of them had made a great mistake, and
+that he must end it. He resolved to do so after Maryska's avowal, but
+his courage was not responsive. He could not bring himself to what must
+seem in Gabrielle's eyes but a vulgar affront upon her loyalty--and so
+the days drifted. In the end he made up his mind to leave London for a
+week or so and trust to new scenes for inspiration.
+
+By all accounts John Faber was about to sail from England, and, having
+altered his plans at the last moment, Maryska had been left with the
+Silvesters--to her great grief but not to Gabrielle's dissatisfaction.
+Harry knew little of the circumstances, for his friends at Hampstead
+were secretive, and latterly had become unaccountably vague in all their
+plans. That John Faber's departure was a great disappointment to them
+Harry guessed, though his vanity suffered by the admission. He knew now
+that things must come to a head between Gabrielle and himself directly
+he returned to London, and the very fact kept him in Brighton. It would
+have been good to be alone but for his longing after Maryska. He missed
+her every minute of the day--there was hardly an hour from dawn to dark
+when her image did not arise before him and her black eyes look into his
+own.
+
+Brighton had always interested him in the old time, but he found it
+insupportably dull during this brief and almost penitential vacation.
+His club, one of the "brainiest" in the country, as he used to boast
+elsewhere, was filled by earnest men who could discuss nothing but the
+passing of the frost and the danger which the country had escaped almost
+miraculously. Standing upon the breezy front, where a warm south wind
+rattled the windows of the old houses, it seemed impossible to believe
+that a man might have picked ice from that very shore but a few short
+weeks ago. Now Brighton was as ever a compound of stones and stucco; of
+square lawns and of wide windows as methodical; of a tumbling sea, and
+elderly gentlemen in weird waistcoats to gaze upon it.
+
+All these had plans for their country's salvation, and few of them did
+not mention the name of John Faber at some time or other. Harry would
+sit in the corner with the old priest, Father Healy, and listen
+contemptuously to the talk of one who, as he said, had earned
+immortality by cornering the wheat market and then giving away a few
+sacks for the sake of making a splash! When the kindly old priest would
+say, "Come, come! he has done very much more than that," the good
+sportsman admitted that perhaps he had; but he would invariably round it
+off by saying, "Well, he's gone now, anyway!" and would ask upon that:
+"What are we going to do to help ourselves; that's what I want to know?"
+
+It opened fine possibilities of debate in which many joined. The
+militant section had but one panacea: "We must prepare for war!"
+Civilians, equally confident, harped upon a system of national
+granaries, and asked what imbecility of the national intellect had
+prevented us building them before? "Provisions against a siege," they
+said.
+
+The priest was almost alone in desiring that a siege should be made
+impossible.
+
+"Build granaries of goodwill, as John Faber has advised you," he said.
+"Let the builders be your best intellects. There is no other surety!"
+
+Harry liked the doctrine, but had not the wit to support it with
+success. He was constantly depressed, and even the cheery spirits in the
+billiard-room could do little for him. The futility of his flight and
+the cowardice of it became apparent as the days rolled by. Why had he
+left London and what was he doing in this place? Was not Maryska alone,
+and was she the one to be left safely to her own devices? He began to be
+afraid for her, and to say that he must return. His courage shrank from
+the ordeal, but his desire would face it.
+
+And that was the state of things when, without any warning at all, "the
+little gipsy" came to Brighton, and, presenting herself immediately at
+his rooms, declared with conviction her intention not to depart
+therefrom without her lover.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+                        SURRENDER AND AFTERWARDS
+
+
+                                   I
+
+She looked very tired; there were deep black lines beneath her eyes, and
+her dress was muddy. Incidentally she told him that she had walked from
+the station--a feminine coup to deceive possible adversaries, and one
+greatly to her liking.
+
+Harry occupied a bedroom and a sitting-room in that Boulevard St.
+Germain of Brighton, Oriental Terrace, opposite the club. The
+sitting-room had a window, from where you could see the pier if your
+neck were long enough; the bedroom was dark and gloomy, and suggestive
+of the monastic habit. Neither apartment had any ornament to speak
+of--the pictures wounded the gentlest critic; the chairs were
+mid-Victorian and covered in leather. Yet when Maryska came, he would
+have sworn that this was a house of Arcady. One wild question he put to
+her: one loud word of remonstrance which brought the tears to her eyes.
+Then she was in his arms, her heart beating like a frightened bird's,
+all her nerves quivering when her lips sought his own.
+
+"Maryska, what have you done?"
+
+She snatched her hat from her tousled hair, and threw it on the shabby
+sofa. Squatting upon the corner of the table, her luggage in her hand,
+she tried to tell as well as laughter and tears would permit.
+
+"It was after breakfast--Gabrielle had gone down to the church to see
+the organist. I ran out with all my money in my purse, and went round to
+Holly Place. She would not tell me where you were until I frightened
+her--_Dieu de mon âme_, what a woman she was! But I stamped my foot, and
+I said the things he used to say, and then she wrote it down for me. At
+the bottom of the wide hill I saw the _voiturier_, and called him. When
+I said that it was to Brighton, he laughed--the _gamin_ that he was! But
+I was angry once more and I got into the carriage, and I would not get
+out again. That seemed to please him. He said that he would vote for
+women, and he took me to the _gare_. I did not know that you must go by
+the railway to Brighton, and he laughed when I asked him--but the
+_facteur_ was there, and he said I was on time. So I came right
+along--and _ecco_, I am here! Are you glad that is so, _bête sauvage_?
+Are you not pleased that I have come to you?"
+
+He had not an idea what to say to her. The world seemed to be turned
+upside down in an instant. There was no such town as Brighton in all the
+kingdom. How the sun shone into that gloomy room! What diamonds of light
+were everywhere! He had come suddenly to the palace of his dreams and
+the mistress of it was here. And yet his talk must be a commonplace. The
+whys and wherefores would not stand aside even in an hour pregnant of
+such wonders.
+
+"Do you mean to say you bolted, Maryska--just biffed off without a word
+to anyone? My hat! what will the Silvesters say? What shall we tell them
+when we go back?"
+
+She swung a little bonnet by the strings and shrugged her shoulders
+determinedly.
+
+"Do you suppose I am going back to that house? _Jamais de ma vie_--I am
+here, and I shall stay. If you do not want me, please say so. I have
+money and I shall do very well. It is there, and you can count it; the
+American is my friend, and he has given me money always. So, you see, I
+do not wish you to work for me; and when the money is all spent, I will
+go out to the cafés and they will let me dance. Then we shall do very
+well, you and I, Harry, but not in such an apartment as this. _Dio di mi
+alma!_ was there ever so dreadful a lodging? And you have lived here
+three whole days as the woman told me! Three days in such a
+house--_madre mia_, what a life! But now we shall go away to the hotel
+until the money is spent. Say that we shall go, and make me happy, for
+you know that I could not live here. Will you not say it, Harry--please,
+at once?"
+
+She put her arms about his neck again and kissed him, while her round
+eyes looked deeply into his own. He was her lover, and all her creed,
+learned in the nomad's church, taught her that she was sacred to him and
+he to her. Upon his side was the swift realisation that he must play the
+game. He would take her back to London immediately. There was no
+alternative.
+
+"I'd say anything I could to please you, Maryska, but don't you see that
+we must think of what other people will say? Why, we're not even
+engaged, little Gipsy, and if we went to a hotel together, all the
+idiots we know would shout at us. I can't have that for your sake. If we
+were married, it would be different. Let's go to London at once, and
+tell the Silvesters what we mean to do. Now, don't you see, it's the
+very best thing we can do?"
+
+She did not see, but sat there, a rueful picture, with fifty golden
+sovereigns on the table beside her and all her worldly possessions in a
+little unopened parcel. A terrible fear of the return to the gloomy
+house in Hampstead consumed her. Her eyes filled with tears.
+
+"I will never go back," she said coldly; "if you do not want me, Harry,
+I will go where no one shall ever see me again. If you love me, why
+cannot you marry me? I am ready to go to the priest this instant. _He_
+said it was all d----d palaver, but I do not refuse to go because of
+that. Take me now, and I will be your little gipsy wife. Do you not wish
+it, Harry?"
+
+Of course he wished it, and yet what should he say to her? Being a mere
+man and knowing something of such a nature as this, her threat had a
+meaning he did not dare to ignore. What if she refused to go to London
+with him? Would people blame him? He heard already the horrible malice
+of those who would declare that he had decoyed her from her home. The
+world, so far as it concerned him, would say that he was a scoundrel;
+his whole life had taught him to care for such censure when the greater
+issues were at stake. Oh! she had put him in a pretty fix; and yet he
+loved her and had discovered that he could not leave her though ten
+thousand railed upon him.
+
+"Don't you understand, Gipsy," he protested in despair, "these things
+cannot be done just like that? I'm going to marry you, and no one alive
+shall stop me. But I can't do it in five minutes. We shall have to get a
+licence and swear we've lived in Brighton heaven knows how long. Then
+there's the church people to see--and, of course, the Silvesters must
+know. It would be shabby to keep them in the dark. My dearest, why do
+you cry? Don't you see I can't make it different just because I love
+you? Won't you understand?"
+
+She looked up at him through her tears.
+
+"You do love me, Harry?"
+
+"More than anything on earth, little Gipsy. So help me God! it's true. I
+couldn't leave you now if I wanted to. Put your arms round my neck and
+tell me you believe it. There, just like that--and don't say another
+word about going away, or I don't know what will happen to you."
+
+He pulled her on to his knees and held her close to him. She had twenty
+schemes in her head, but the one she liked best was the suggestion that
+her fifty pounds would bribe the priest to an immediate ceremony. For
+herself, the thing was of little account. _He_ had taught her that it
+did not matter as long as a man loved a woman, and beyond that was a
+knowledge of the world almost terrible in its savage conceptions of
+right and wrong.
+
+"In my country," she said naïvely, "we go away to the hills when we are
+in love, and no one thinks we have done wrong. I have seen dreadful
+things, Harry; I saw them at Ranovica when 'the boss' went there with my
+father. Oh! do not think I am the simple baby that you English like
+their wives to be. The world was very unkind to him and to me.
+Sometimes, for many days together we have slept at the hotel of the
+Belle Étoile, and he would sell our clothes for bread. Once, at
+Perpignan, we were put in prison, and I did not see him for a week. It
+was there he met a fellow-countryman who bought us from the judge and
+took us to Scutari. His relations were great people, but he would never
+ask anything of them, he was too proud. Some day, when you and I are
+rich, we will go to Bukharest and tell them who we are. Perhaps we will
+walk all the way, as he and I did from Dijon to Nîmes, when the money
+was gone. Dear heart! what a walk it was, and all the acacias were
+blooming and the scent of the hay in the fields and the white farms at
+night--and, yes, the old abbé who was so gentle and good. He called me
+'little daughter'--it was near Valence, and I know that if you and I had
+gone to him, he would have married us. Perhaps, if you cannot bribe the
+priest here, we will take the steamer and go now. Oh, how good it will
+be in the warm hay when the sun shines! And we could get money at the
+cafés and perhaps in Bukharest; it would be true what he told me, and
+his friends would be a little kind. Will you not take me, Harry? Shall
+we not go to the sun together, away from this dreadful country? Oh, how
+happy I would be! How my life would be changed if you would go. Dearest,
+will you not do it when Maryska asks you?"
+
+She pressed her hot cheek upon his hand and held his hands as though she
+never would release them. If her confessions startled him, he perceived
+in them an acquaintanceship with life and its realities far surpassing
+his own. He had led a humdrum existence enough apart from his cricket;
+but here was one who could lift the veil of romance as no story-book had
+done. The word pictures of the joyous life moved him strangely by their
+suggestions of a freedom which was all-embracing; of a garden of love
+whereon the sun would ever shine! And from that, it was like him to
+tumble suddenly to realities and to remember the loaves and the fishes.
+She must be very hungry, he thought. What course more obvious than to
+take her to the hotel, and to give her some food?
+
+"By Jove! I forgot all about it," he cried, lifting her on to her feet,
+and so snatching at her hat. "We'll go to the Metropole and have some
+grub, Gipsy! Aren't you hungry, little wild cat? Don't you think you
+could eat me? Come along, then. It will be time to talk about all this
+afterwards. We can wire the Silvesters as we go; let 'em do what they
+like, Gipsy. I shan't part with you now; never again, I swear."
+
+She shook her head, and was but half satisfied. The kindly minister of
+the gospel stood to her for an ogre who would make light of the Belle
+Étoile, but much of that ancient office beginning with "Dearly beloved,"
+and ending with the ecclesiastical blessing.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+Gordon Silvester was a man who had lived forty-five years of his life
+without excitements, and had then been plunged into them headlong.
+
+It was a great thing for a man, whose only diversion hitherto had been
+the weekly disputations with the deacons or the quarterly disagreement
+with the organist, to find himself suddenly upon public platforms, cheek
+by jowl with the great men of the world, who pleaded for the supreme
+blessing which could come upon humanity, the blessing of peace. The
+notoriety had fallen to the plodding minister after many years, and
+henceforth he had been up to his eyes in the papers, the pamphlets and
+other paraphernalia of the pacific propaganda. The _réclame_ of it all
+delighted him. He became almost a hustler, and was at war with every
+whisper which deplored the ancient habit and the paths of ease.
+
+There were many worries, to be sure. Bishops would send mere archdeacons
+to his meetings. His letters to the Press were shockingly mutilated. He
+had the suspicion that certain worldly millionaires merely considered
+him a pawn in the game, and were quite unwilling to admit that Hampstead
+was the hub of the universe. Upon this, came the gradual conviction that
+his daughter, Gabrielle, was the real agent of much of the fame that he
+won, and that his meetings were a success or a failure in just such a
+measure as she chose to make them. If this had been the case before the
+great tribulation, he found the position even more intolerable when the
+danger was past. All England spoke now of fact and not of theory. The
+demand for brains to save the nation from another panic was universal.
+Men said that arbitration had become as much a necessity as vaccination.
+You could not starve thirty-seven millions because the frontier of a
+swamp must be delimited or a possible mine in a bog be possessed! The
+phantoms of the living death had hovered over the country during the
+terrible weeks and the lesson had been learned. But for that
+master-mind--the mind of the great American, whom destiny had sent in
+the critical hour--the end of all things had come! It was supererogatory
+now to preach mere platitudes from ancient platforms.
+
+So Silvester fell a little to the background and suffered an unmerited
+obscurity. The common ills of the domestic life cropped up again, and
+must be doctored. He had to pay rents, rates and taxes, and to remember
+that Gabrielle was about to marry a boy whose income, at the best, could
+not be more than five hundred a year. And she might have done so well!
+Some recollection of his old time ambition upon the steamer filled him
+with vain regrets now that John Faber had left England. The compensation
+was a cheque for £5,000, to be employed to Maryska's benefit until she
+should set out for New York. Meanwhile she was to remain at Hampstead to
+learn all that Silvester could teach her of the social amenities and the
+elemental faith. An unstable patronage, to be sure, but very
+characteristic of that restless brain. Silvester paid the cheque into
+his bank, and declared he would do his best. Three days afterward he
+knew that he could do nothing at all.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Harry sent the telegram from the General Post Office at Brighton at
+half-past two exactly. It was laconic, and evaded the issue somewhat
+cleverly.
+
+"Maryska is at the Metropole Hotel at Brighton with me. All well. Return
+as soon as possible."
+
+He had written it when fortified by the child's black eyes, and some
+excellent Rudesheim she had insisted upon drinking. It was all up
+between Gabrielle and him--it had been all up long ago, and well enough
+for both of them that it should be. She would marry the American and
+spend his money like one o'clock! Harry was sure of this, though he had
+some qualms when he remembered that Faber had sailed from Southampton
+and intimated very plainly that the date of his return was distant.
+
+It was wonderful how frankly he and Maryska discussed this very matter.
+The daughter of Louis de Paleologue knew little of the sacrament of
+marriage but a great deal of the sociology of the studio. Her doctrine
+recognised the passion and the pathos of love, but the bonds it inspired
+were personal, and had little to do with the priest. If a man did not
+love a woman, he left her and sought another. There were neither scenes
+nor scruples. Sometimes the woman would rage fearfully for a day, but
+her anger soon passed and calm fell. In this case she did not think
+there would be any anger, and she was right. There was merely
+humiliation.
+
+Verily a heavy blow fell upon that little house in Hampstead when the
+telegram came. It was so like Gordon Silvester with his large faith in
+human nature, and his habit of making a fetish of a public school
+education; so like him to believe it all mere high spirits and to
+declare that the pair of them would be home to dinner. Gabrielle knew
+the truth from that moment. The ship that drifted upon the ocean of a
+"boy and girl" infatuation had come to harbour. She would not hide it
+either from her father or herself, whatever the cost to her pride.
+
+"I expected nothing less!" she said to Silvester, when he ran into her
+boudoir with the telegram and tried to make a jest of it. "It was in the
+child's blood. We cannot be responsible."
+
+Silvester threw himself into an arm-chair, and began to swing a leg as
+was his habit.
+
+"Responsible for what? Don't you see it's a childish freak? Of course,
+they ought not to have done it. I must cut down all this liberty now
+that Faber has gone. She's to give me an account of her day, and no
+going out at all unless you or I know. Really, it's too bad of Harry!"
+
+Gabrielle went to the window, still holding the telegram in her hand.
+Her lips quivered, but she spoke apparently without emotion.
+
+"At least, he will behave honourably," she said. "I have no fear upon
+that point. He will marry her at once, father; he cannot do less."
+
+Silvester laid back his head upon the cushion and surveyed a ceiling not
+ill-painted by a one-time zealous amateur.
+
+"Marriage is a great institution, my dear; I don't find it a fitting
+subject for jest."
+
+"Oh, my God!" she said, wheeling about and facing him so suddenly that
+he sat bolt upright. "Don't you see what it means? Has it not been going
+on under our very eyes? And you talk of a 'boy and girl' escapade! I
+tell you they are madly in love. She sees no one else when he is
+there--he cannot take his eyes off her. Why, they are married already
+for all I know--or you care," she added with almost savage emphasis.
+
+The outburst frightened a man by no means blessed with much pluck where
+women were concerned. Silvester turned as white as a sheet. It was as
+though a pit had been opened at his feet, and he had looked in to see
+enormities.
+
+"You don't mean to tell me--God forbid!" he gasped. "You don't mean to
+tell me that this is sin, Gabrielle? You don't think that, surely?"
+
+"I don't know what to think," she said in despair. "It is our business
+to act at once. You must go to Brighton. What will Mr. Faber say if you
+don't? Telegraph to Southampton in case the yacht has not sailed. Have
+we no responsibilities? Oh! don't you see? It's madness, madness! And
+it's our fault. Both of us are to blame. We have just gone our own ways
+and left them to themselves. What else could have come of it when they
+were lovers?"
+
+He stood before her utterly abashed.
+
+"My dearest girl," he said, "I will go to Brighton at once."
+
+And then he said:
+
+"But it's of you I should be thinking. God bless you, Gabrielle!"
+
+
+                                   IV
+
+He left by the half-past four o'clock train from Victoria, and did not
+return that night. When he was gone, Gabrielle shut herself up in her
+own room, and asked herself what new thing had come into her life.
+
+A turn of fortune had cast her down from the heights to the old abyss of
+the suburban monotonies; and now it had put this affront upon her. She
+perceived already what sport the teacup brigade would make of it, and
+how her pride must suffer just because of the very littleness of her
+surroundings. All Hampstead would point the finger at her, and there
+would be kind friends in abundance to offer their sympathies. Thus had
+her destiny punished the brief hours of an infatuation for which her
+youth had been responsible. As others, she had known a day when she had
+desired the love of man and had desired it passionately. Thus had she
+come to be the betrothed of one who had never loved her, and for this
+she must repay.
+
+She had thrown aside much, to be sure, to fall upon such a penalty. John
+Faber would have made her his wife could she have escaped the meshes of
+a net she herself had tied. He would have lifted her above all these
+sordid creeds of a puny society to the heights of freedom and of
+opportunity. She believed that she could have risen with him and upheld
+a position his money would have won for them. She saw herself the
+mistress of a splendid house; heard her name in high places; believed
+that she was born to rule and not to serve. And opportunity had passed
+her by for this. The man who would have ennobled her had sailed for
+America, and she did not believe he would return. In any case, she did
+not dare to think of him now. As she had sown, so must she reap.
+
+Something of an intolerable despair afflicted her now, and drove her to
+silent tears. The stillness of the house, the measured chiming of the
+church bells, the monotonous fall of footsteps upon the pavement, how
+they all suggested the round of the insufferable days she must live! It
+had been so different a month ago, when her name had been honoured and
+her activities abundant. How full her life had been then, when many had
+honoured her, and she had gone proudly in and out among the people. Such
+an opportunity could not recur; and she reflected that it had been made
+for her by one who had been willing that she should wear the laurel his
+brains had won. He was on the Atlantic now, and all must seem but an
+episode in his story.
+
+Here, perchance, she did herself less than justice; for her aims had
+been noble and her faith quite honest. She had desired the supreme gift
+of peace upon earth, and much that she had done was the fruit of an
+enthusiasm which had brought this very shame upon her. She would not
+think of it now nor remember her sacrifice. Enough to say that the night
+of her hopes had come down, and that the day would never dawn again.
+
+So the long hours passed wearily. At eight o'clock there came a telegram
+from her father in vague terms, but such as she had expected:
+
+"Am doing all possible. Everything will be well. Shall not return yet.
+Writing."
+
+She crumpled the paper in her hand and fell to wondering what the
+message meant. Had Silvester discovered such an escapade as his faith
+discerned or something of which he would not speak? She knew not what to
+think, but remembered her last words to him, that he should telegraph to
+John Faber in case the yacht had not sailed.
+
+In case it had not sailed!
+
+Her face flushed and her heart beat faster when she repeated the words.
+
+And yet, God knows, it could matter little to her whether the _Savannah_
+was still in Southampton Water or had passed the Lizard Light upon its
+way to the great Atlantic.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+The lunch at the Metropole was altogether different from any lunch Harry
+had eaten in all his life. It was as though something had transformed
+Brighton in a twinkling, making of its commonplaces a paradise, and
+melting its shadows in a rain of gold. Never had he realised what a town
+it was: how bright, how inspiring, and how typical of a joyous life. And
+this is to say that a pride of possession had come upon him so that he
+walked proudly by Maryska's side--he who had known hundreds of pretty
+girls, and had flirted with many of them. Now the recklessness of a
+young passion took charge of the situation, and would not be denied. The
+tears had passed from the child's face, and the sun shone down upon
+them.
+
+"We shall go to Paris to-night," she said triumphantly, "and afterwards
+to Italy. _Bien entendu_, you do not wish to tease me any more, Harry.
+It is all over, is it not--this gloomy England and all the sad people? I
+shall never see them any more, shall I?"
+
+He laughed loudly, so that many in the room turned their heads to look
+at him.
+
+"But, Maryska," he rejoined, "we're not married yet, my dear. How can I
+take you to Italy when we are not married?"
+
+She thought upon this, her pretty head poised upon her hand. For herself
+that would have been no obstacle at all, for had not _he_ said that
+marriage was something which the priests did to keep the wolf from the
+door? Harry, however, must be considered, and for his sake she would
+think about it.
+
+"You shall pay the priest and he will marry us," she said at length.
+"Show him the money and he will not turn us away. It is not necessary to
+show him too much at the commencement. Afterwards you can put more upon
+the table, and he will see it. That is what my father did when his
+friend, the Abbé of Dijon, wished that I should be confirmed. He wanted
+to paint a picture in the church there, and he said that it did not
+matter a damn one way or the other. So, you see, it can be done, Harry;
+and what you can do in Dijon, you can do in England. Go to the priest
+and learn if I am not wise."
+
+"Oh!" he cried, laughing as he raised his glass, "you are the last word
+in originals, and that's sure! Don't you know that there are twenty
+things to be done before people can be married in England? It's almost
+easier to get hanged. No priest would marry us unless he had a license,
+Maryska. I suppose I can get a special in two or three days, but we
+shall want all that. Meanwhile, had you not really better go back to
+Hampstead?"
+
+Her spirits fell. The rose-bud of a mouth drooped pathetically. She did
+not believe a word of it, and was driven to the thought that he
+renounced her after all! Thus she came upon the borderland of a scene
+even in the dining-room of the great hotel, while he shrank in despair
+from the task of persuading her.
+
+"I will never go back to Hampstead; I will throw myself into the sea
+first!"
+
+"Don't talk rot, Maryska. You know I want to do the best I can for you."
+
+"Is it the best to send me away when I love you?"
+
+"I'm not sending you away; I'm only keeping you out of the reach of
+silly tongues."
+
+"What do I care for them? What does it all matter if we love?"
+
+"It won't matter for more than two or three days. After that, we'll go
+to Italy."
+
+"Then I shall stay in Brighton by your side until the permit arrives. I
+will never go to Hampstead again, so help me God!"
+
+"Oh, but you mustn't swear! Let's talk about it after lunch, dearest
+girl. I want just to look at you and see you happy. Do you know you're
+frightfully pretty, Maryska?"
+
+She flushed with pleasure upon that. Many a man had called her pretty in
+the old days; but she shrank from their words then, knowing well what
+they meant.
+
+"_He_ used to say that it would be so, if ever I loved a man. I have
+been so lonely since he died, and that has made my face sad. Now it is
+different. I do not mean to be sad any more. I shall go to Italy, and we
+will laugh in the sun together. Cannot it be to-day, Harry? Here is the
+sea, and there are the ships. Let us take one and sail away! We can
+think of the priest in France, where there are many who will be glad of
+our money. Will you not please me, _sauvage bête_? Then take me upon the
+ship immediately."
+
+He could not answer it. The problem became more embarrassing every hour,
+and when lunch was done, and they were out on the parade together, it
+began to seem beyond his wit altogether. Not for a kingdom would he have
+brought tears to those bright eyes again. How prettily she babbled at
+his side; how quick, how clever, how beautiful she was! A pride of
+possession prevailed above all prudence, and drove him far from
+considered resolutions. He was content to go, hand in hand with her--God
+knew whither!
+
+In the end, it all came back to the priest. Let them see the priest! He
+knew but one priest in Brighton, and that was the excellent Father
+Healy, with whom he had fraternised at his club. Divine inspiration. Let
+them call upon him.
+
+
+                                   VI
+
+Father Maurice Healy lived up at the back of the town in an old
+windmill, skilfully transformed and built about so that it had become a
+veritable bungalow, with more than one pleasant room and a little chapel
+which his lady friends declared was too divine for words. He had been
+smoking his afternoon cigar, when the amazing pair burst in upon him,
+and never in all his life had he laid down good tobacco to listen to a
+tale so wonderful!
+
+"Ye'll have to wait," he said dryly. "I've no power to marry ye at all
+as the State understands the term. Ye'll get a special licence, and then
+come to me. 'Tis wise advice, my dear, that ye should go back to your
+friends in London until things can be put straight. Make up your mind to
+that. I'm no better off in securing you to legal marriage than any man
+ye may stop in the street. Mr. Lassett knows that well, and he'll have
+told ye as much."
+
+Harry nodded his head in unison with the words as though this was just
+the counsel he had expected. Maryska, thinking that she knew priests
+well, clasped her precious bag firmly in both her little hands and
+looked the enemy squarely in the face.
+
+"We will pay you money," she said with much dignity. "I have ten pounds
+here, and you shall have it. What you say does not matter to us at all.
+We are not frightened of the judges, Harry and I. If you marry us
+to-day, we shall go away to Italy, and the gendarmes will not find us.
+He has said that I must go back to Hampstead, but I will never do so. I
+will kill myself if you do not marry us. Harry knows that it is true,
+and that is why we have come here. Perhaps, if you married us, he has
+some money and will add it to mine. There are other priests, but we do
+not wish to go to them. Oh, sir, will you not do it for those who love?
+Will you not make us happy? It is nothing to me this ceremony, but to
+him it is so much. And I have the money here; I will show it to you if
+you wish."
+
+She began to fumble with the bag while the good father and Harry
+regarded her with an amazement beyond all words. Never had Maurice Healy
+heard such an address or seen so pretty a bargainer in that little room.
+And the horror of it all--her ignorance, her childish faith, her frank
+confession! He was as clay in her hands already--and she, a heathen.
+
+"But, my dear young lady, 'tis far from understanding ye are," he gasped
+at length; "not a penny of your money would I be touching anyway. Don't
+you see I can't marry ye because the law will not let me? 'Tis not me,
+but the Parliament that has the making of it. Ye must take your money to
+them."
+
+Maryska looked at him almost with pity. Harry's appeal to her might as
+well have been addressed to the stucco walls of the bungalow.
+
+"I do not believe you," she said; "you have a little church there, and
+you can say the words. The money will buy you many things that this poor
+house is in need of. Please to marry us at once, and then we can go and
+be happy. Oh, sir, if you knew what it was to love! But priests do not
+know that; they have no hearts. You will let us sail to Italy without
+your blessing, and will remember it afterwards. Is it kind of you to do
+that when you think that you serve God?"
+
+"But, my child, I will give ye my blessing freely; 'tis to marry you I
+am unable."
+
+"We do not care for that; nothing matters to us but our love. We go to
+Italy to forget this dark country and its people. If you will not do as
+we wish, we shall ask no other. Is it for religion to refuse us, father,
+when we have come here as the Church would wish us to do?"
+
+"God be good to me!" he cried in despair, "but I don't know what to say
+to you, and that's the truth. I'll see your husband, my dear, and have a
+talk to him. Will you come into the dining-room while I have a word with
+ye, Mr. Lassett? 'Tis beyond all argument and reason--God knows it is."
+
+She did not demur, and they went away, leaving her before a superb
+crucifix, which seemed to speak of the country for which she sighed. The
+argument between the good father and the equally good sportsman was both
+long and at times explosive. "Nothing easier," said the priest, "than to
+take her back to London and be married in three days' time." "Nothing
+more impossible to do any such thing," urged Master Harry, who thought
+that he knew the patient. She would never go to London, and if she were
+left alone in an hotel at Brighton, he would not answer for her. Had she
+been an Englishwoman, the whole situation would have been impossible.
+But she was just a waif and stray from the wilds of Bohemia, and her
+creed had been learned under the kindly stars. Would Father Healy take
+charge of her until a licence could be got? The father said "No," most
+emphatically; he would have no woman in the house. What, then, did he
+suggest?
+
+Of course, they were both very frightened of her, and they spoke in low
+tones as though she might burst in and accuse them. Impossible to face
+that little fury and declare, "There is nothing to be done." When Harry
+suggested that common humanity would marry them and trust to the licence
+afterwards, Father Healy asked, "Would ye have me in prison?" None the
+less, both plainly perceived now that it must be done. A licence could
+be obtained immediately, and the civil marriage celebrated at the office
+of the registrar. The good father, vague about the law, followed Harry
+back to the room with a protest on his lips. It was none of his
+doing--and yet he did it after all. And Harry must swear solemnly, and
+she must follow with her pledged word, not to leave Brighton until the
+affair was made legal. Oh, the change in her when she knew the truth!
+
+So they got the priest's blessing before the little altar in the
+oratory, and when the brief ceremony was over, they went away together,
+back to his rooms. But they were no longer gloomy rooms, for now the two
+saw nothing but each other's eyes, and little it mattered to them that
+the oleographs were mid-Victorian and that the mahogany chairs matched
+them. Maryska had found the heart of a new world, and she dwelt there
+for just two hours in good content until there came a knock upon the
+door, and Gordon Silvester, tired, pale, and wonderfully earnest,
+entered softly into their paradise and began to speak of men and cities.
+
+"I have telegraphed to Mr. Faber," he said. "He must know immediately."
+
+Maryska laughed in his face.
+
+"He is on the sea," she said. "You will have to send the telegram which
+flies."
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+                         TWO SHIPS UPON THE SEA
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Faber had expected such a telegram; but he had not thought that it would
+be so longed delayed.
+
+He told Gabrielle once upon a time that she was drifting upon a tide
+which would carry her to unhappy seas; but he himself had been doing the
+same thing since his work in England was finished. This was a man who
+had learned to love a woman, but was a very novice, none the less, in
+all the arts of love.
+
+Had it been a business affair, with what zeal would he not have plunged
+into it? Being far from that, a situation in which the whole soul of the
+man was at stake, he did as the woman had done--drifted upon the tide of
+circumstance, and was content to wait.
+
+Be sure that he had read the secret of Harry Lassett's passion for
+Maryska almost at the beginning. Because of it, he left her in the
+little house at Hampstead, and would have sailed to New York without
+her. If Harry had the courage, he would cut the knot, and the treasure
+ship would float upon a kindly stream to the harbour already prepared.
+But would he have the courage? One excuse and another kept Faber at
+Southampton, but the news did not come. The order to weigh anchor had
+been given, and recalled a dozen times in as many days. The yacht would
+have been in the Solent that very night, but for Gabrielle's
+instructions to her father. "Telegraph Mr. Faber," she had said. He
+received the message while he was writing to Sir Jules Achon in the
+little cabin which served him for library, and there being no train to
+serve his purpose, the fastest motor-car in Southampton was on the road
+to Brighton within the hour.
+
+It was half-past eleven when he reached Oriental Terrace, and five
+minutes later when he burst in upon a dismal company. Having taken
+possession of "the assets of respectability," Gordon Silvester had
+refused to budge an inch; and having exhausted his homilies upon
+"honour," "the married state," and the "scandal of the whole
+proceeding," had fallen to a sullen silence. Harry and Maryska, no less
+obstinate, declared their intention of remaining in Brighton until a
+registrar had married them, and then of leaving for Paris immediately.
+An appeal to the girl to consider her obligations toward John Faber met
+with the characteristic answer that she recognised none. She was sorry
+for this a little later on when Faber himself appeared just like a fairy
+godfather to a scowling Cinderella. His coming gratified her vanity; his
+dominant will never failed to subdue her. She remembered the hours they
+had spent together upon the road to Ranovica and all they had meant to
+her.
+
+"Why, little girl, and what has been going on here, now--and Mr.
+Lassett, too? I guess I'm on time for the party anyway. Will someone
+just tell me what it's all about before we begin? Don't move, Mr.
+Silvester. I'd have you all be comfortable and I'll light a cigar if
+Miss Maryska doesn't mind. Now, will no one tell me the story?"
+
+Maryska ran to him just like a child to a father. He was plump in an
+arm-chair with her by his side before a man could have counted ten, and
+she lit his cigar with a little hand which trembled while it held the
+match.
+
+"Harry and I are married!" she said, "you must not be very cross; _he_
+would not have been. We went to the priest this afternoon--then that man
+came, and will not go away! Will you send him away, please? We do not
+want him here."
+
+Even Silvester laughed at this; all the conventions went into the
+melting-pot at the bidding of the child. It would have been impossible
+for Melpomene herself to have resisted her. The minister puffed hard at
+his pipe, and forgot her ingratitude. John Faber stroked her hair, and
+said to himself that her love had changed her wonderfully.
+
+"Why, my dear, that's not very kind to your good friend nor to me!" he
+said gently enough. "Don't you think you might have told us something
+about it all? Perhaps we should have been able to help you if you had
+come to us. Was it right to keep us all in the dark like this?"
+
+Of course, Harry blurted out that it was all his fault, and that she was
+not to blame. There were three speaking at once presently, and all the
+while Faber had Maryska's arms about his neck. They had not meant to do
+it all--circumstances drove them; they thought that he had gone away. To
+which was added the truly feminine dictum that they could not help
+loving each other, and were not to blame. When Silvester obtained a
+grasp of the situation, and declared that she must have known she was
+doing wrong, Maryska responded that she did not care a d----n; which
+finished the worthy pastor, and sent him in high dudgeon back to his
+hotel. It was nearly midnight, and he feared that he would be locked
+out!
+
+When he was gone, Faber took Harry aside and had a long talk with him.
+This was a very different affair, and set every nerve in the young man's
+body tingling. To begin with, there was the charge upon the honour of
+the man. Why had he not had it out with Gabrielle? A man who cannot talk
+straight to a woman, whatever the circumstances, is worth very little in
+the world. Then, what did he propose to do? To keep house and wife and
+children upon his paltry three hundred a year? What selfishness was
+that; what a confession of idleness and vain folly! He, Faber, would let
+Maryska remain with no man who would not work himself for her, and bring
+ambition to his task. Harry should have twelve months to justify
+himself! If he needed capital, it was there--but he must prove his
+worth. "Show me," said Faber, "that you earn five hundred pounds
+honestly at the end of twelve months, and I will make it five thousand!"
+Failing that, he swore very solemnly that he would have Maryska back
+with him at Charleston, and defy the consequences. "She'll be glad to
+come," he said; "she's just the kind to discover whether a man has grit
+in him or no--and God help you, if you haven't."
+
+To the little wife, his farewell was in a kindlier mood altogether. She
+must know that she had a friend in him always; send for him whenever she
+was in trouble. He would try to cross the Atlantic to see her sometimes;
+the years were speeding, and he did not mean to work as hard as he had
+done. He would have her always in his thoughts, his fellow traveller
+upon the drear road of death. The present that he gave her brought the
+hot blush to her cheeks. Oh, the days of joy it would buy in the south,
+where the sun would shine upon her life. She kissed him again and again.
+"_He_ will know that you have made me happy," she said.
+
+He saw her last through the uncurtained window, showing her treasure to
+Harry. The boy drew her close and kissed her. They were alone at last.
+
+But John Faber returned immediately to Southampton, through a sleeping
+country for which his genius had done much in the days of tribulation.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+Sir Jules Achon's yacht was in dock when Faber awoke late next day, and
+he learned with some surprise that it had reached the Solent yesterday,
+and was anchored a little while in Portsmouth harbour, until, indeed,
+Rupert Trevelle went aboard with news of the _Savannah_. Then Sir Jules
+sailed for Southampton immediately, and so the master minds met at last,
+each with his own story of the tremendous days. Faber thought the
+baronet a little worn by his labours; but his zeal was unchanged, and he
+still looked toward that goal of life where the peace of the world
+should be won. The Tsar, he said, was still unwilling to come in; but he
+had obtained much encouragement at the minor courts, especially those of
+the south-east of Europe. For England herself, he had little hope in the
+matter. The old imagination had failed his countrymen. The petty issues,
+not the greater, were discussed in the market place.
+
+"This should be a story of three kings," he said, "and they must
+recreate the world. In your country, you have built an altar to humanity
+which never can be cast down. We learn slowly in Europe, for we are
+blinded by the glitter of ancient arms. In more material things, the
+shopkeeping instinct is the foe of progress. When I can throw down the
+commercial barriers, I can cast out war. The field is mighty, but the
+labourers are few. If I were not already in my sixty-fourth year, I
+would hope to see the noblest day in the story of man. As it is, I can
+but sow and leave those who come after me to reap."
+
+Faber said that none of them could hope to do more.
+
+"We are up against the animal instinct, and that is as old as Eden. You
+know my view. If peace is to be won for humanity, it will be by the
+brains and the money of those who lead humanity. This country has had a
+terrible fight, and everyone is crying out for this or that to be done.
+I shouldn't wonder if it all ended in nothing being done. Men talk the
+old platitudes the while they read their newspapers and ask what Germany
+or Spain has the intention of doing. I don't blame the war party, for it
+is its business to make war. God knows, I've seen enough of that to last
+me a lifetime, and when I go back to New York, it will be to live on the
+hill-top. But others will carry on my business, and it will have to be
+carried on. The day when any European nation disarmed for reasons of
+sentimentality would be the last day of its freedom. We must deal with
+facts as they are; we cannot run ahead of the great company of men, for
+assuredly we shall fall if we do."
+
+Sir Jules was in accord with all this. He spoke fervently of what the
+big men were doing. Andrew Carnegie and Taft and Bryce at Washington. An
+atmosphere was being created, but he feared its artificiality. Commerce
+was the key, he repeated; remove the commercial bias and the day was
+won. For Faber's promise to become one of the presidents of the
+Federation League, he was very grateful. "You have done much for this
+country," he said; "your name will mean a great deal to me."
+
+They fell afterwards to talking of their more domestic affairs. Sir
+Jules said that his daughter Eva had gone to Winchester to lunch with a
+friend, but he expected her to dinner. The same hesitation which had led
+Faber to defer his departure upon so many recent occasions, now prompted
+his acceptance of the suggestion that he should join the party, and he
+went over to the _Savannah_ immediately to dress.
+
+"I'll weigh to-morrow anyway," was his word at parting. "My skipper
+doesn't like these waters in the dark, and I've got to consider him.
+Eight o'clock, I think you said, Sir Jules? You'll be alone, of course?"
+
+"My daughter and I; it will be a pleasure to both of us."
+
+
+                                  III
+
+The night fell warm and murky with a soft and southerly breeze.
+
+All the lanterns of the ships in Southampton Water shone clear and
+steady as Faber paced the quarter-deck of the _Savannah_ until it should
+be time to keep his appointment.
+
+A month ago how different the scene had been--the frost everywhere; the
+frightened people; the menace of a peril from which the bravest shrank.
+Now this had become a scene of England's maritime habit--a scene wherein
+the great steamers moved majestically, their sirens hooting, their crews
+to be welcomed home or bidden God-speed, as the occasion demanded. In
+the background were the red and green lamps of the railway, the busy
+streets of the town, the coming and going of citizens whose day's work
+was done. As a tempest drifting, the storm had passed. The ramparts
+beloved of the nation had made of this again an island kingdom.
+
+John Faber dwelt upon such thoughts for an instant, but anon they turned
+to a woman. Would he leave England and seek no more to reason with
+Gabrielle Silvester? Would he be justified in going to her in an hour of
+some humiliation? He had no young man's impetuosity, no virile passion
+of love which would break all barriers rudely. A real and generous
+sentiment toward her, the belief that she was for him the one woman in
+all the world had become a habit of his life. She would be the ornament
+of any man's home. Her dignity, her wit, her womanliness--in what
+precious jewels would he not set them if she had but come to him? And
+all this might have been if Harry Lassett had had the courage to tell
+her the truth and the little witch of Ragusa had been as other women.
+Now, all had been put to the hazard. It might be that all was lost.
+
+The boat came alongside at last, and he went aboard. It was very silent
+all about him, and when he heard a woman's laugh, coming from the deck
+of a ship, he wondered that it should seem to speak to him across the
+waters. The _Savannah_ herself lay warped to the quay of the dock, but
+they put a ladder down for him, and he climbed it slowly. A steward said
+that Miss Achon was in the boudoir, and he went there--to see neither
+Sir Jules nor his daughter, but another figure and one whose wide eyes
+expressed all the hope and the fear of that tremendous encounter.
+
+"But," cried Gabrielle, "Eva told me that you had sailed."
+
+"Ah!" he said, refusing to release her hand, "she's not the first of
+your sex who always tells the truth."
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
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+                           Transcriber Notes:
+
+Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Passages in bold were indicated by =equal signs=.
+
+Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
+
+Throughout the document, the oe ligature was replaced with "oe".
+
+Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the
+speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
+
+Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
+unless otherwise noted.
+
+On page 42, a quotation mark was added after "harmony and peace,".
+
+On page 96, a double quotation mark was added before the single
+quotation mark in "'Don't".
+
+On page 98, a single quotation mark after "go?" was replaced with a
+double quotation mark.
+
+On page 134, "could no nothing" was replaced with "could know nothing".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Swords Reluctant, by Max Pemberton
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42763 ***