FIFTEENTH CHAPTERNOREEN CARDINEGH APPEARS AFTER MIDNIGHT IN THE BILLIARD-ROOM OF THEIMPERIAL—AN INEFFABLE REMEMBRANCE
Finacunecaught a train for Tokyo, after disembarking at Yokohama, an hour or two before the Cardineghs. He wanted to prepare the way at the Imperial for the coming of the dean and his daughter. It was dark when he reached Shimbashi station and crossed theGinzato the now-famous hotel. Certain of the English correspondents were gathered in the lobby, it being not yet time to dress for dinner. These Finacune beckoned to the billiard-room, and, standing at the head of the farthest table, glanced over the faces to be sure that none but the trusted British were present. Then he whispered impressively:
“Scene: the Bund at Shanghai, snowy twilight; time, five days ago. Looking out upon the darkening river, ‘... a face thin as a dead camel’s and yellow-white like coral!’ That’s one of his own sentences, and God pity or punish the sorrow of his face—as you like——”
“Cut out the scenario,” ordered Bingley. “Who was it?”
“The great frieze coat.”
Bingley was first to break the silence.
“Nice raw state of affairs,” he remarked savagely. “I s’pose he has caught on with one of those flutterednewspapers of New York. They are grabbing up anybody over here, even the remittance-men, so they won’t have to pay expenses out. Rather raw deal, I call it,—to be forced to ride with a traitor in this campaign.”
It was the austere Feeney who answered darkly, “Recall, ‘Horse-killer,’ that Routledge rides alone.”
“I can’t see yet why the secret service doesn’t delegate a man togethim,” Bingley whispered.
They had not heard that a venture of the kind had failed at Madras.
“There is a time for all things,” Feeney replied. “England never forgets a man like——”
“Are you quite sure of the face you saw?” inquired Benton Day, the new man of theReview. His tone was troubled. His work was cut out for him—to keep up the war-reputation of the old paper of fat columns.
“Surely,” Finacune said cheerfully, “unless the bottom dropped out of my brain-pan.”
Trollope sniffed ponderously, and was about to comment when the little man of theWordresumed:
“Also, I am permitted to say—and this with a great and sweet joy—that our dean, war’s own favorite, Jerry Cardinegh, came up with me from Shanghai on theEmpress, and that he will be here to-night with his daughter, Miss Noreen.”
The announcement was acclaimed.
“I heard he was coming,” said Feeney, “but how am I to meet the old champion—me, holding down his old chair-of-war on theWitness.”
“He’ll never think of it,” said Finacune. “Old Jerry is nearly out of sight—over the bay. He didn’t leave his state-room coming up—only let me see himonce. His daughter is with him day and night. The old man thought he’d like to get into the zone of war once more—before he goes out on the last campaign, where we all ride alone.”
It is to be observed that the littleWordman did not tell all he saw on the Bund at Shanghai.
The men repaired to the buffet to break the strain. Those were heavy days—those early February days in Tokyo. War was inevitable, but not declared. Tokyo was sort of pleased at her own forbearance. The vaccine of European civilization had worked with fullness and dispatch. Here was proof: the Russian minister had been allowed to clear, double-eyed and teeth still straight. The mobs in the street did not profess to understand the value of allowing the enemy to depart personally intact—but it was being civilized. The world was watching the young yellow nation’s first venture inhumanewar; after which, if she conducted herself prettily, the world would be pleased to admit her into the first flight of the powers, where all things having to do with economy, polity, expansion, revenue, and survival are done in a finished fashion. England was watching—and stood behind her. Japan must conduct herself in such a way as not to drag England into the conflict.
Japanese infants played soldiers; Japanese policemen played soldiers; rickshaw coolies, beneath the contempt of a soldier, dreamed of future incarnations when they should evolve into soldiers; Japanese merchants snuffled, rubbed their damp hands together, and wept internally because the Great Wheel of Fate had not skited them off into the military class, instead of among the low-brows of the shops. And the soldiers themselves—howthey strutted and performed in the streets, critically mirroring each other and bowing profoundly, blind to all glory and sorrow not of the soldier, and important as a grist of young doctors just turned loose with their diplomas among the ills of the world.... Aye, funny and pitiful, the young Power looked in its Western pants and guns.
What did England think—smiling back at the peace of her Indian borders—of these wee, wet-nosed, scabby-headed Islanders (with their queer little cruet-stands buckled between their kidneys), in full cry with “Banzai Niphon” from cape to cape? What England thought was not what England said, as she reserved the front pages of her daily press for Japanese victories—whether or no. Not exactly an ally in spirit was wise old England, but an ally in letterpress—the veriest Titan of a press-agent.... Funny and pitiable indeed was the ranting, tramping Japanese infantry in the streets of Tokyo—funnier than stage infantry—quite like string-pulled marionettes ofpapier maché; but let the truth be told, the truth that rises clear from the final adjustment of objects in the perspective: The oil of all the chlorates, nitrates, and fulminates filled those queer little kidney-cruets; and these same little Japanese infantrymen proved packages—papier machépackages, if you like—of lyddite, bellite, cordite, romite, hellite, and other boiled-down cyclones.
On one of those ugly gray afternoons of early February, Benton Day of theReviewreceived a cablegram from his chief in London, Dartmore. There are few men who would express themselves ironically by cable at theLondon-Tokyo rate of toll. Dartmore did it, and the message follows, with flesh and organs added to the cipher-skeleton:
TheReviewthought you would be interested to know that Japan has declared war and smashed part of the Russian fleet. This news from New York. Kindly inform Tokyo war-office, which I understand is just a step from your hotel.
TheReviewthought you would be interested to know that Japan has declared war and smashed part of the Russian fleet. This news from New York. Kindly inform Tokyo war-office, which I understand is just a step from your hotel.
Benton Day had come up from common things by strong, hard, well-planned work. He had known few defeats, and these cut deeply. The cable from Dartmore was the worst whipping of his career. Gray with shame, he sought the billiard-room of the hotel, where he found an animated group of British and American correspondents who had just heard the news—ten hours after it had been printed in London and New York. He found that Dartmore alone had taken pains to be ironical in the matter. The truth was exactly as ungetatable in Tokyo as in Mombassa—until the war-office chose to give it up. Benton Day was only to blame in so far as he was not a telepathist. This knowledge eased him greatly, but did not detract from his anger at Dartmore—an emotion which is bad for a young man to take out on his first big campaign. The little sentence in the cablegram regarding the fact that London had received the news from New York, held big interest for Feeney, the saturnine.
“Japan was busy last night,” he communed. “Her Mr. Togo smashed the Russians off Port Arthur, and her little Mr. Uriu, off Chemulpo. It’s about time,” he added with a trace of Indiana humor, “Japan was declaring war. But the thing that gets me is, how did New York know?... Finacune, my youngfriend, was it you who suggested something about the great frieze coat catching on with New York papers?”
Harrowing weeks at the Imperial followed, while armies augmented, navies fought in the dark, and the bearers of the light of the world made newspaper copy out of heathen temples and Japanese street scenes. Free lances fled to outer ports, there to hearken unto the tales of refugees and weary the world. And the names of these, the Japanese carefully ticketed to Failure, and severed from Opportunity forever.
The Blue Boar, Trollope, wore best of all. He bathed in many springs throughout the empire, peeked into strange quarters of both capitals, and ate and drank after the fashion of those who are formed of arcs and not of angles. From time to time he cabled his paper three words of hope, and eight words of expense account. Trollope strolled down the menus in all parts of Niphon—native and European menus—with fine relish, and waited serenely for the time when he should lean and harden in the field, his sleeves rolled up—one hand covering the strategy of armies, the other at a cable-end, and his sweating face reflecting the pink and pearly flush of fame.
It was not so with the others. Finacune was ragged and restless. The pale Talliaferro looked twice for his own shadow. Feeney’s dark fighting-face wasted and hardened, until it seemed hewn from a block of brown bone; and Trollope’s serene and changeless calm wrought upon Bingley’s nerves like an active poison.
These two did not pretend to speak at the last. The Horse-killer took on the look (his gray eyes were cold and immutable as corner stones, anyway) as if he wouldspur over a sea of dead men’s faces to get a big tale and a free cable. It would not have been so bad except that the London papers, coming in now with the first cables of the correspondents, showed a consistent garbling and distortion of their reports. Home writers occupied miles of space, placed Togo along with Lord Nelson, and Mutsuhito with Gladstone—a deep planned, conscienceless campaign of fact-mutilation for the extolling of Japanese character and mettle. New York, young in war-handling, was inclined to follow London’s diplomatic lead, against the reports of her own men. February and March ended before the first batch of the British correspondents were informed that they could take the field with Kuroki’s first army.
Feeney and Finacune remained in the billiard-room that last night at the Imperial, long after the rest had gone. These two men had pulled apart from the others in pulling together—the most florid with the dullest of writers; the showiest with the deepest. It had been an evening of rousing festivity. Possibly because these two had drunk less than the others; or possibly because their hopes for the field had been prolonged and mangled for such a length of time that they could not sleep now until they were actually booming down the Tokaido, Feeney and Finacune were billiarding idly after one o’clock in the morning and cooling the fever of the night’s stronger spirits with long, chilled glasses of soda, lightly flavored with Rhenish wine.
Jerry Cardinegh had come down for a moment early in the evening for a word of parting. For days none had seen him below; and only a few of his older friends were admitted to the big, dim room, overlooking thepark of the Government buildings—where a woman lived and moved, lost to light and darkness, and struggled every inch with the swift encroachments of the inevitable. Noreen’s father relied upon her, as upon air and a place to lie. God knows what vitality he drew from the strong fountains of her life to sustain his last days.
Incessantly active, Noreen Cardinegh was worn to a brighter lustre, as if fatigue brought out the fineness of her human texture—a superlative woman who held her place and her dreams. Finacune had loved her for years. He was closer to her own romance than any of her father’s friends; and the little man perceived with an agony of which few would have thought him capable, that his own chance was not worth the embarrassment of telling her. Indeed, Finacune told no one. This was his best room, and locked. Noreen Cardinegh was the image there, beyond words, almost an abstraction. ThisWordman was rather a choice spirit, if not a great one. He was thinking of Noreen now, as he knocked the balls around. She had appeared with her father earlier in the night, and had stood behind him under the old Moorish arch at the entrance to the billiard-room—darkness behind her, and a low table-chandelier in front....
Finacune was thinking, too, of the old man whom she had helped down-stairs to say good-by to the boys. Cardinegh had been his boyish ideal. He would not be seen again—and what a ghastly travesty was his last appearance!... Jerry had entered walking rigidly, his limbs like wood, a suggestion of chaos in the shaking, aimless hands; the shaven face all fallen about the mouth; all the stirring history of an earth-wise man, censored andblotted from the flame-rimmed eyes; the temples blotched with crimson and the mind struggling with its débris like Gilliat against sea and sand and sky. And the words the dean had uttered—nothings that meant death.
Feeney had just carefully and neatly made a three-cushion carom, with the remark that he could do it again on horseback, when there was a light, swift tread upon the stairway, a rushing in the hall, light as a blown paper, and Noreen Cardinegh burst upon them—half a torrent, half a spirit, indescribable altogether. The souls of the two men divined her message before she spoke, but their brains were slower. And their eyes were startled. To Finacune, it became an ineffable portrait—the frightened face, white as pearl and set in gold; the dark silk waist, unfastened at the throat; the red-gold hair dressed and wound seemingly in Mother Nature’s winds; the face refined in the whitest fires of earth; her eyes like twin suns behind smoked glass; and the lips of Noreen—lips like the mother of a prophet.
“Oh, come quickly!” she said, and was gone.
Finacune dashed up the stairway three at a stride, but he never overtook her—a fact for profound speculation afterward. She was bending over the edge of the bed, sustaining her father, when he entered. Cardinegh stared at him wildly for a second; then hearkened to Feeney’s footsteps in the hall. When the latter entered, the dean turned imploringly to his daughter.
“Where’s Routledge?” he gasped. “He said he’d come back.”
A single jet of gas was burning in the big room. With a nod of her head, Noreen signified for the men to answer.
“I haven’t heard from him, Jerry,” Feeney faltered.
“Eh, Gawd!—he’d better come quickly—or he won’t see old Jerry. I’m going out—not with you, boys—but afield. I want to see Routledge. He said he’d come back and bring his book—done under the pressure of British hate. I told you, didn’t I—he took the hate from me?... I told Noreen.... Feeney! Finacune!... It was I who gave the Russian spies the Shubar Khan papers!... Don’t leave me, Noreen. Pour me a last drink, Feeney.... Gawd! but I’ve travelled in the shadow of death for two years—afraid—afraid to tell—afraid of his coming back! I can see now—he wouldn’t come back!... I’m not afraid now—but I’ve had my hell two years.... You would have found it in my papers, Noreen. Show them to the men—cable the truth to London——”
“Jerry, Jerry,” whispered old Feeney, who was stricken, “did Ireland get the best of you at the last?”
Finacune nudged him angrily. “Jerry,” he exclaimed, “don’t go out with this stuff on your lips. We know you’re doing it for Routledge——”
The woman turned upon him, but did not speak.
“I did it for Ireland—but it failed!” Cardinegh answered. “These brown mongrels are fighting in Manchuria the Russians that England should have fought on the Indian border!... Eh, Gawd!—the dark has been long a-liftin’, deere—but it’s gone—and you know from me, without the papers!... Ah, Nory, child of my heart——” He was straining upward toward her face, as if he could not see her well. “... ’Tis your mother—’tis your mother—I’m off, darlin’——”
“The old toast,” Feeney muttered. “It came true—the toast we all stood to in Calcutta!”
The woman held but the ashes of a man in her arms, and they drew her away at last. They thought from the look of her face that she would fall, but she did not. Instead, she said with sudden swiftness:
“Here are the papers. He told me all, just before I called for you. I wanted you both to hear. It is true. You must cable to-night to the war-office in London—to the owners of your papers—to all those who know the story. Then the secret service must be told—lest they do Routledge-san further hurt. It must be done now. Tell the other men to cable before they go out. I will cable, too.... My father is guilty. We went back to Tyrone before the Bhurpal trouble—to the little town where he found my mother, in Tyrone. When he saw the British troops quartered on that starving, sunken little place—his mind gave way. He had the papers then, which he gave afterward to the Russian spies!”
All this the woman spoke before she wept.