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 therebecause 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, 'Evenhisfriend 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, 'thathewould have wished it. Then he will come to me.' I am doing my duty even if it be done without hope."
"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 therebecause 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, 'Evenhisfriend 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, 'thathewould 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 inthe 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
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 steamerCity 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. Sitdown 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. Thevia medialeads 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 thepeople—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 federatedstate 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 yourwork 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
TheCity of Berlinslowed 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 blueether. 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'sback. 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 thesotto voceof 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 withsand 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 figuredit 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'llask 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 impossiblebut 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 hadsupposed 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 roaredup 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 whathesaid 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 andwatching 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.Heliked 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.Heused 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.Henever 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 ofcunning. It was evident that she knew just what Gabrielle would say, but was unmoved nevertheless.
"What does 'engaged' mean in England? Whenheand 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.
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 thefine 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 theSavannah?"
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—butlet 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 politiciansquarrel 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 openedfor 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 theywere 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 considerablefact 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 templehe 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!
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 theNew York Mitrevery 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 heardyesterday 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 Iever 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 readthe 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 pastAldgate 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 atournedowithout 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 notdriven 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."