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 inthe 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 myname 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.
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 thebusy 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 endingever 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 theNew York Herald—it has also been in the EnglishTimes, 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'sfiancéhas 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 thesalle 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 willfollow, 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 littlerestraint, 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.
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 tosuch 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 findle 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 thatin 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 outof their lodgings. Howhewould 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 whenhewas 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 toPunch, 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? Sheentered 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 afesta. 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 theWanderjahre, 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 daysdrifted. 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 andstucco; 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 coulddo 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.
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, andthrew 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 thevoiturier, and called him. When I said that it was to Brighton, he laughed—thegaminthat 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 thegare. I did not know that you must go by the railway to Brighton, and he laughed when I asked him—but thefacteurwas there, and he said I was on time. So I came right along—andecco, 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—justbiffed 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 otherpeople 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.Hesaid 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.Hehad 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 awayto 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 wouldgo. 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. Theréclameof 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 likeGordon 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 passedher 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 theSavannahwas 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 nothesaid 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 marryus 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.
"Heused to say that it would be so, if ever I loveda 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.