THE BEGINNING OF THE ODYSSEY
I
Bertie Morris was a very fair type of the American journalist, whose body goes to Paris while he lives, whatever may happen to his soul at a later period.
Thirty-one years of age, he knew the world backwards; was as much at home in Port Said as in Philadelphia; wrote as though kings were his boon companions and had settled the hash of more than one intrepid lady with polyandric tendencies. The product is purely twentieth century, and frequently has flaxen hair. Bertie was becoming bald in the services of theNew York Mitre. He was blessed with a proprietor who would have drawn blood out of a stone and then complained of its quality.
When John Faber left London, he went straight through to Paris, and there chose Bertie Morris for his guide. This young man had specialised in the Franco-German war, and knew the whole story of the Paris Commune intimately. Fired by the splendid opportunity of hob-nobbing with one of the richest men in the world (and of eating his dinners), Bertie set out gaily upon his fortunate pilgrimage. He hadhired an old soldier, by name Picard, who had served under General d'Arny when that worthy shot down the revolutionaries as though they had been French partridges; and with this fellow for a guide, he and John Faber set off for Belleville and Vincennes.
Bertie's vocabulary, it should be said, was chiefly exclamatory when he was not translating. He was a fluent Frenchman, and had an uncommonly sound knowledge of his subject. Listening to him in more restrained moods, Faber lived again those bloody days which had cost his father his life, and indirectly had established his own fortune. All the ferocity, the savage brutality, the hopeless idealism of the Commune came to be understood by him. Here had the trade by which he lived prospered greatly. It had dyed those stones with blood some forty years ago.
"Say, shall we begin with Belleville or the Bois?" Morris had asked him. He thought that it would be best to work round the city to his father's old house near the Jardin du Luxembourg. But first he had a question to put.
"What I want to know is this," he asked: "How did it all begin? What set a handful of red republicans trying to fight a country? It's a big thing to have done, anyway. What put it into their heads?"
Bertie Morris liked the subject, and entered upon it with true American zest.
"Why," he said, "war was at the back of it. You've seen the same thing in Russia. Peace keeps the lid on the pot of revolution; war spills the stew. There were just two or three hundred thousand descendantsof the old Jacobins in Paris, and when Napoleon III. was sent into Germany, they made up their minds to keep him there. Directly peace with Germany was signed, all the wild men came out. You had every kind of crank and others. There were big men and little, dreamers and red devils; they meant to govern Paris on the 'help yourself' plan, and they didn't begin so badly. But for Thiers and a few million sane folk behind him, I don't doubt they would have enjoyed themselves finely. As it was, what they divided were bayonets, and there were plenty to go round."
He rattled on, appealing often to the old soldier Picard and proud of his staccato knowledge. Faber listened with interest but said very little. He was trying, while they drove through the narrow streets to Père la Chaise, to realise what this Paris had been when his father lived and worked in it during the fateful years before the war of 1870. The first John Faber also had been something of a republican; had dreamed dreams of the millennium and of the rights of the proletariat. And the French had dragged him out and shot him for his pains. He had died protesting that he was an American citizen.
A big Mercédès car carried the pilgrims upon this journey, and its welcome in the black streets of Belleville was not blandly enthusiastic. Blue blouses at the doors of the wine shops spat upon the pavement and cursed the bourgeoisie; coarse women with skirts hanging about them like rags laughed brutalities and flung indecencies after them. There were pale-faced Apaches and white and callous children. It was inevitablethat these should suggest their forbears of 1870, and even the old soldier remarked the fact:
"They would burn Paris again to-morrow, messieurs—as I have seen it burned already. Ah! the terrible days!"
He tried to give them a picture of the fateful week—the last of the month of May and of the Commune. The Communards had been driven into the eastern labyrinth of the city then, he said, and in the anger of defeat had sent their women forth to burn this Paris which could not defend them. Since Nero fiddled, no such spectacle had been seen in Europe. The old man told them the story with eyes uplifted and hands clenched. He had become as a child, and these were the scenes of his youth.
"It was on the Tuesday night that they burned the palace of the Tuileries," he said. "The women went out with naphtha; I saw them running like devils through the streets and crying to one another to fire the houses. The day before that, the Hôtel de Ville flamed up. They say it was an accident, but—God knows. The 'Council of State,' the Bank, the Bourse, the Church of St. Eustache, all were burned those terrible days. There was one bank of the river a wall of fire on the Wednesday night; a man could have read his paper at Passy. It was as light as day, they told me, in the park at Versailles. All the streets were full of wild, screaming people; but if you went a little way toward the Bois you heard the cannon, you stumbled over the dead. What a butchery was that, messieurs! God help those who went out of their houses to see what the soldiers were doing!Ladmirault, Galifet, Vinot, Cissey—those were the names of the generals. They held their courts under the trees, in the cafés, at the street corners. It was sufficient to have worn a blouse, to be sorry for the dead, to express displeasure at what was being done—away went such a man or woman to the nearest wall. We are now coming to the Rue Lafayette. I was in this very street when my company seized the Communard, Varlin, and dragged him up to the Buttes Montmartre. They tied his hands behind his back and cut his face with their sabres while he walked. It was a horrible thing to see, messieurs! When he could no longer walk, they carried him until someone thought it time to kill him with the butt end of a musket. They say he was the cleverest member of the Commune—I do not know; I was only of the infantry of the line, and their politics did not concern me."
Faber listened to all this with the interest of a man who is obsessed by one dominating idea. This Commune had been the first attempt in modern times to set up the socialism of Marx—and in what had it ended? In a deluge of blood, and the derision of all sane people. He wondered what would have been the modern story of Paris if Félix Pyat and his fellows had been stronger than Thiers and the Versaillese. A consummate knowledge of modern politics reminded him that the blue blouses of France were still socialistic to the core, and that individualism sat upon a throne of straw. He had often thought that such fortunes as his own would never be made by generations to come; but that concerned him little, for he had no children. The reflection brought an image ofGabrielle Silvester to his mind. It was odd that he should think of her while the old soldier related these bloody scenes.
Bertie Morris, on the other hand, enjoyed himself immensely. He drove his tame millionaire as far up the Butte as he could, and even took him to the Rue Lepic and the Moulin de la Galette. He was a prize to be shown to artists and authors, poor devils who would dine that night for fifty sous and sell their masterpieces for as many to-morrow. This pilgrimage of the ateliers was not unwelcome to Faber, and was made at his own request.
"I want to hear of a man," he said, "Louis de Paleologue is his name."
"Where do you think he hides up?" Bertie asked.
Faber said that he had no idea.
"He was drawing for Gavarnie some forty years ago. I've never heard of him since, and I wasn't born then."
"Say, that's simple. Has he any grandfathers alive?"
"It's a fine story," was the quiet response. "I only learned it a year or two back, when I found some of my mother's papers. Louis de Paleologue was the man who took her over to America when General d'Arny shot my father. There was a pile of correspondence between them, and it does the man great credit. If I find him living I'll give him a million dollars, if he'll take them."
Bertie Morris whistled.
"You don't suggest a preliminary canter. Why not try it on the dog? He's willing."
"Most dogs are. My world is all barking. You find Paleologue for me, and see what Father Christmas puts in your stocking. He's the only man in Europe I ever did want to see outside my own business. It's natural that I can't find him."
"Can you tell me anything about him? Where did he live? What was he? For whom did he work? I'm right out for this, Mr. Faber."
Faber smiled.
"He was an artist who drew small pictures with a large genius. They say he worked for Hachette. The last letters speaks of his marriage—it must have been written many years ago. I cabled to Paris when it came into my hands, and the answer back from your office was that he had gone to the East. That means Paleologue was a Roumanian, and he's gone home. I suppose I shall have to follow him."
"It would be a bully trip, anyway. Why not do the Balkans in a motor? There was a chap here last month who had just come back. They didn't shoot him this time."
"Well, I guess they won't shoot me, either. I'm buying a yacht directly. Now, let's go and lunch. Your young Raphaels are rather greasy. I think I'd like to wash."
II
They lunched near the Bourse, in a flaring café whither the jobbers resorted. There were a few conspicuous women of the company, loudly dressed and aggressive in the true spirit of their commercial patrons.These liked neither English nor Americans, and said so by face and gesture. The jobbers themselves looked a gloomy troop, though whether depressed by their hopes of gain or surety of loss it would have been difficult to say. Had they known that John Sebastian Faber sat cheek by jowl with them, it would have been another story. How many a time had he, from his distant office in New York, set that same market hoarse with excitement, filled the streets with bawling madmen, and put ropes of pearls about the necks of the cocottes who now made inelegant grimaces at him when the clients had their backs turned. He thought of it with some pleasure over asole meringue. They would have been down upon him like a pack of wolves had they known him.
Bertie Morris enjoyed hisdéjeunerwith the satisfaction of a man who knows he is not paying for it. He had a programme for the afternoon, which was to be capped by a dinner at the Ritz Hotel, also at Faber's expense. It never occurred to him that he was not putting his companion under a large obligation, and the whole tone of his talk was autocratic, as one who should say, "I open all doors."
"We'll trot out to the Avenue de Nancy and see where the Versaillese came in," he put it cheerfully. "It was on a Sunday, Picard tells me, and the fraternity lot got a few shells for breakfast. They had just made up their minds that the millennium had come, when Vinot and Ladmirault turned up with the cannon. They had a good deal in common afterwards—chiefly explosive. I'll show you a house at Passy with a shell in the wall over the front door. The ownerwon't have it touched. It's right there, just where the Versaillese put it."
"A kind of keepsake. Do they remember anything about all this in Paris nowadays?"
"On the first of May, before they get drunk. I don't think it comes up at any other time. The century isn't interested overmuch in yesterday. It's all 'to-morrow' nowadays."
"I don't know that I quarrel with that. Half the people would commit suicide if it wasn't for to-morrow. We're a sort of recurring decimal, but we don't believe it."
"Say, then you don't believe overmuch in the 'destiny' department?"
"I do not. A few things are going on all the time—very few. The civilization of Babylon was pretty much the civilization of Rome; while Rome wasn't so very different from ourselves. There's a little levelling of the classes; but there's no longer a goal, either in heaven or hell. That means a soulless people."
"But it marches all the same."
"Where science leads it. There's the only clear thinking. What's the good of talking when men don't know why they're here, or what they are? When they had heaven and hell, they thought clearly enough. Your new gospel leads them into a morass. It couldn't very well lead them anywhere else. The things that go on evolve as we ourselves have evolved. All the politicians, parliaments, philosophers don't help them a jot. They were saying the same thing on the top of monoliths before the flood. We are driven—butwe don't know why or whither unless we believe, as all but the fools have believed, by Almighty God."
Bertie Morris helped himself to an orange salad.
"Say, why don't you write all this?"
"Because I've something better to do. My business is to make guns and to sell 'em."
The journalist pricked up his ears.
"There was some talk of a big contract of yours going through here. Is that right?"
"Ah! you'd pay something to know—and a good many more. Did they couple d'Arny to the talk?"
"Well, it's chiefly up to him. He's a lot of backers up against him in the Chambers. Jaurés says he's corrupt."
"He'd have to be in his job. We're all corrupt, for that matter. I believe that Walpole's right. I'd buy any man body and soul for a price."
"And women too—I don't think."
Faber laughed.
"No money is too much for a good woman," he said.
III
They followed the programme afterwards, driving right round the Bois and returning to the Jardin du Luxembourg.
The day had fallen bitterly cold again, and a light snow whitened the trees in the famous avenues. Paris took a romantic mantle and covered her pretty shoulders daintily. Habitués fled to the cafés and ensconced themselves in warm corners; fur-clad women sankdeep in the cushions of their motors; there were ridiculously dressed children scampering about the Bois and crying, "Dieu, comme il fait froid"—a fairy-like scene quite characteristic of a city which is rarely serious, and then tragically so. Through this Faber passed to his father's house. He had become silent and preoccupied—a man of few emotions, but of one which had never been absent from his life.
His father! How often he had tried to create the living man from the insufficient pictures of that time!
They had told him that John Faber was tall and Saxon haired—a cheery, business-like, unobtrusive fellow, very generous, far-seeing beyond his epoch. He had founded the house of Faber at Charleston, and had come over to Europe to learn Eastern methods. He was in Paris for the purpose of studying the new French artillery when the war broke out, and had lived for three months there, in the little house overlooking the gardens of the Luxembourg. Such was the man whom General d'Arny had shot in that very street, swearing he was of the Communards. A fever of anger fell suddenly upon the son as he remembered his mother's story. Good God, his own father! What years of affection they would have spent together but for that mad ferocity of the Commune! How the one would have helped the other! And the fortune—he would have poured it into his father's lap and waited for his words of pride. His father—shot there in that silent street—the man whom his mother had loved as woman rarely has loved in the human story.
He left the car at the corner by the Catholic Institute and walked down the Rue d'Assas to its junctionwith the Rue de Fleurus. Naturally, the condition of things had altered very much, and there were many new buildings in the vicinity. He discovered certain landmarks, but others had vanished into the limbo of the municipal gods and trim modern "blocks" had taken their places. For all that, he believed that he could identify the actual house in which these things had happened, and when he had located it, he knocked upon the door, and was answered by a trim old woman, who seemed much put out at the occurrence. Bertie Morris was quite equal to such an occasion. "Give her five francs," he said. It was done immediately.
"Who lives here now, madame?"
"Monsieur Brocas, the advocate—for many years, he and his mother."
"Is he at home?"
"He is at Lyons, m'sieur."
"And madame?"
"She is in the south."
"This gentleman with me is an American. His father and mother lived here forty years ago—before the war. Naturally, he would very much like to see the house."
"What is his name, m'sieur?"
Faber told her himself, and the tone of his voice seemed to awaken memories. She began to mumble something in the argot of the "Boul. Mich," and then bade him come in. The room clearly belonged to people who were fond of books when at home, and neglectful of them when away. It was all very untidy and dusty; the furniture handsome, but shown to pooradvantage. The very first thing Faber set his hand upon was a volume of Hawthorne's "House of the Seven Gables." His father's name was written beneath an English book-plate.
"Tell her," he said to Morris, "that this was once my father's property."
She did not seem at all interested, but she avoided their glances nevertheless, and seemed strangely afraid of them.
"You understand?" said Faber at last. "My father's book."
She nodded and answered him, to his surprise, in broken but comprehensible English.
"I was your mother's servant three years, m'sieur—a very little child. I am nearly sixty years old, but my memory is good."
"You remember my father, then?"
"If I remember him! Do children forget such things?"
"Were you here when he died, madame?"
She clasped her hands together almost as one in prayer. Her voice was a sing-song, like that of a child reciting a learned lesson.
"It was at nine o'clock on the Friday night. Ah! what a day, m'sieur! There had been cannon since the Sunday, and the streets full of mad people. I looked down from my window and saw the dead carried away. I was cold with a child's curiosity. When night came, m'sieur would not dine. He had been out all day helping the wounded, and all he would take was a little soup and wine. Then he went out again while madame and I were up in the front room watchingthe fires burn and listening to the cannon. M'sieur, the heavens opened that night! My soul shrank at the sight; I thought the end of the world had come. And I was but a child, and had lived such a little while."
She paused and breathed almost convulsively, as though suffering the terrible hours again. Faber watched her without flinching. His swift imagination moved out there in the streets where his father worked amid the wounded.
"And afterwards, madame—afterwards?" said Bertie Morris in French.
She looked up at him almost angrily, the thread of the inspiration of memory broken.
"It is so many years ago, m'sieur. I remember badly."
Faber stepped across the room and laid his hand upon her arm.
"How did my father die, madame? Remember, I am his son."
"So very like him, m'sieur; he seems to stand beside me once more."
"You remember the night—you cannot have forgotten it?"
"No, no; it is all here. The heart knows, but the tongue will not speak."
"Did you see him when they brought him in?"
She quivered, as though the scene had been yester-night.
"M'sieur, it passed so swiftly—death came to him while he walked. I saw Captain d'Arny upon a white horse—I heard m'sieur's voice—how well Iknew it! Then someone spoke in anger, a rifle was fired, madame ran from me, her tears choking her so that she could not speak to me. They brought monsieur in and laid him on the sofa; your hand is touching it now. I remember that his hand was in madame's, his eyes hurt by the bright light of the chandelier. He begged for a little wine and I went to the buffet; my hand shook, and I could not open the bottle. When we had found a glass m'sieur was dead. How shall I tell you more?—m'sieur was dead."
Her voice died down almost to a whisper; none of the others spoke for some minutes. It was still snowing, and a black cloud was over the city. Faber thought that it must have been just such a day when the Versaillese, drunk with victory, entered the Rue de Fleurus and found his father there.
Some of them still lived and remembered the night. General d'Arny was such a one, and they were to meet to-morrow.
IV
At the Ritz Hotel a few hours later, Bertie Morris studied a fine company with a critic's eye. He knew most of the people in the famoussalle à manger, and put himself up several pegs on the strength of his knowledge.
"Say, there are some glad frocks—what?"
Faber, who had a little bundle of papers in his hand, looked round and about for the first time. "All friends of yours?" he asked slyly.
Bertie showed a row of gold-rimmed teeth.
"Know most of them. Newspaper people must. That's young Mrs. Vanderbilt; the Countess Sobenski's next to her. Of course, you recognize Steel—and the Great Man. He's as good as he's great—a hundred and forty papers and more than one Cabinet Minister pretty fond of him. Beyond him is Sir Charles. Did you ever hear him speak? About the best hindleg man they've got over yonder. Oughtn't to have been an actor—he'd have run Canterbury better. Who the next lot are, can't say. The flaxen-haired one is a d——d fine girl—I don't think. Wonder who she is?"
Faber smiled. "She's a parson's daughter—no good to you. There's Sir Jules Achon and his daughter, but who the little girl in black may be, I don't know; she looks like a French girl."
"I'll ask Ellis; he's a 'Who's Who' here. Fine chap, Ellis, ought to have got the K.G.G. when he was in London."
"What's the K.G.G. anyway?"
"The Knight of the Grand Gorge—two pots crossed and a tumbler rampant. Puts Pommery in your thoughts. Suppose we do?"
Faber gave the order and the wine was served. Accustomed to the immense hotels of New York, he found the Ritz interesting chiefly by reason of its guests. The women were magnificently gowned, and many of them very pretty. Such a cosmopolitan company could hardly be found in any other hotel on the Continent; its united wealth would have financed a kingdom. Faber reflected with satisfaction that hehad the right to be there. His brains had earned him the title.
"About this parson's daughter," Bertie asked; "what's she doing in such a place as this?" He had grown curious, for Gabrielle Silvester was quite the most beautiful woman in the room.
"She appears to be eating at present."
"Yes, I know; but who are her friends?"
"The man is Sir Jules Achon. He's a big man—those who come after will hear of him. Have you read nothing of the Federation of Europe?"
"Not as much as the top dot of a semicolon. Who's going to federate?"
"It's his own idea. Kill war by commerce—you can't kill it any other way. Europe's paying ten per cent taxation as against America for her armies and navies. Make one federated state with no commercial barriers, and you knock the ten per cent down to two. That's Sir Jules's notion."
"You don't think there's anything in it?"
"So much that if I was British born, I'd give him a headline in dollars which would set the town talking. There's everything in it except the men. He's got the German Emperor, and he'll get the Tsar. It's the smaller fry who don't listen."
Bertie smiled.
"Your Venus with the tow-coloured topknot seems to be in that boat. She's looking at you all the time."
"Do you quarrel with her taste?"
"No; but you know her pretty well, then?"
"An impertinent question. She came over on the ship with me."
"And wants to go back the same way—eh, what? Well, I'd like to interview Sir Jules anyway. There ought to be a column story in him."
"Yes, he ought to be worth fifty dollars."
"Did you say he'd got the German Emperor?"
"I understand that's so; he's going down to Corfu to see him again. He'll get the thing through if I don't upset it."
"Why should you upset it?"
"Rattle up your brains and see the reason. I'm here to sell guns. While that man is dangling about an anteroom, kow-towing to menials, I shall be inside with the chief. It's common sense. I'm here to do business—he's here to prevent that kind of business being done."
"Is he going to take the peerless Saxon with him?"
"You seem rather hot on that scent."
"A d——d fine woman! Look at her arms! She's got a style you don't often find among Englishwomen. I can't see her feet."
"Ask the waiter to take away the table."
"I'll bet she takes fives. Her eyes are of the 'get there' sort. Can't you feel her looking this way?"
"I'm not conscious of any rise of temperature. If you've done looking, perhaps we'll smoke. They'll be coming out immediately."
"Then you'll introduce me?"
"Ah! I didn't say that. Is it brandy or Kümmel?"
"Oh, brandy—if you've got to talk to women."
They passed out into the corridor, and sat there near the band. The place was deliciously warm; it glowed with soft lights, and was redolent of the odoursof flowers. Superbly dressed women rustled by them; men, who had dined well, lurched past with their hands in their pockets and cigarettes in their mouths. The Hungarians played one of Lehar's waltzes—a scene of colour and of life reflecting the holy of social holies and of the almighty dollar. Presently Sir Jules Achon came out, followed by the three girls. Now, Faber recognised the third. She was Claudine d'Arny, General d'Arny's daughter.
The party was almost gone by before Gabrielle discovered him. She turned at once and held out her gloved hand.
"The wager," she said, looking at him very earnestly; "I appear to have lost."
"Well, there's nothing to pay anyway. Are you going through to the yacht?"
"Yes, to Naples. Sir Jules wishes me to see Italy and then the Adriatic."
"Full of pirates and wild men," said Eva Achon, who was by Gabrielle's side. "We shall all be carried away to a cave."
"I didn't know they had so much taste. How do you do, Sir Jules?"
Sir Jules was a little man with a wonderful head. He was sixty-four years old, but had the intellectual energy of a man of twenty. The East and the West were strangely blended in a countenance full of power and quiet dignity. A softer voice Faber had never heard.
"Very well, Mr. Faber. And you?"
"Always well—on paper. You are going through to Italy, I hear—you'll catch the Emperor, I think."
"I hope so. The promises encourage me."
"But the performances will be better. Any old fool of a minister can promise; it is a king who performs."
"You have read my pamphlet, Mr. Faber?"
"Every line—the greatest peace scheme—I was going to say, on earth. I'll change that: Out of heaven's nearer it!"
"Of course, it must come slowly, if it comes."
"All the best things come slowly. Man was about a million years about before he thought of microbes—this is a great affair; none greater. It would be the coup of the century if you brought it off. There could be nothing greater."
"I hope to do so. Are you staying here long?"
"As many hours as it will take me to teach a man my name. I may be at Corfu myself afterwards. I'm imitating you, and buying a yacht."
"The one luxury in the world—get a good one."
"There won't be any better when I begin."
The group passed on; Faber shook hands with Eva, but not with Claudine d'Arny. When Gabrielle's turn came, he held her hand in his for a brief instant and said:
"Well, how's the I.A.L.?"
"Waiting for your name," she replied. But she did not withdraw her hand.
"Will you give me the top of the bill?"
"In gold and purple."
"And printed on fine linen? Well, I'm not tempted."
"The day will come——"
He laughed and dropped her hand.
"That's Booth, the actor. Well, most of you are play-acting, anyway. Good-night, Miss Silvester, don't forget what I say."
She laughed and spoke in a lower tone.
"I will remind you of it at Corfu," she said.
The men watched them down the corridor before Bertie Morris became eloquent. He was not a little piqued that the girls had ignored him, while even Sir Jules had regarded him as one regards an ugly piece of china in a glass-case. A poor tribute, he thought, to the might of the pen.
"Well?" said Faber.
"A d——d fine girl, but cold as marble!"
"What makes you think so?"
"Voice, gesture, everything. Give her a chance, and she'd be up on a platform spouting."
"I don't think so. She's going to have many chances. What about the others?"
"The old man's daughter is just a bread-and-butter miss. I liked little Claudine d'Arny—as ugly as sin, but passion enough for a nautch girl."
"You remind me of her father. See here: I had a letter from him to-day. What would happen to-morrow if I published it—by accident? Here's a note of it."
Bertie read it carelessly; then with a journalistic interest:
"If you published that——"
"Or you did——"
"Same thing—I guess he'd be out of Paris in four-and-twenty hours."
"Ah, then I mustn't publish it—don't you be playing any journalistic tricks on me!"
"I don't think," said Bertie Morris.
And their eyes met.
GENERAL D'ARNY AND HIS DAUGHTER
I
General d'Arny lived in an old house in the Boulevard St. Germain, one of the few monuments still existing to the golden age of Récamier and the salons. He did not care a scudo for the literary and artistic associations of this gloomy mansion, but much for the fact that he paid little rent. Beaumarchais had lived there on the eve of his flight to Holland; the great rooms had known Fleury and his fellows, Balzac and Saint-Beuve—a very panel of genius written across the centuries.
It all meant very little to Hubert d'Arny, the bulk of whose fortune went into the trough at Panama; the residue into the hands of the jobbers on the Bourse. The general was notoriously a financial derelict; as notoriously a suspect to his many enemies in the Chamber.
He had married late in life—some years after the war—and his wife died in childbirth. One daughter, Claudine, was alternately the object of a maudlin affection and of sentimental regret. She cost a great deal of money, and had the indecency to arrive at a marriageable age. When Captain Issy-Ferrault, a sonof one of the oldest aristocracies in France, came forward, the general assented in spite of his democratic principles. The business of providing for the girl aged him pathetically. The newspapers said it was Morocco; but the trouble lay much nearer home.
As it chanced, John Faber arrived in Paris in the midst of the preparations for Claudine's wedding. He knew nothing of it; no one had guessed that he had any interest in the daughter of the French Minister of Artillery, or she in him. Claudine went to America at the invitation of the French Ambassador, whose children were her friends. When Faber was introduced to her upon the ship, she said frankly that she did not like him. His manners weregauche, and his eyes inquisitive. She avoided him with a sure instinct, being ignorant that he knew anything of her or her family. This was a great misfortune, for she had many qualities which appeal to men, and Faber was not the kind of man to remain insensible to them.
In Paris, upon her return, she entered the promised land of preparation. The general swore loudly while he signed the cheques, but signed them none the less. Dressmakers flocked to the Boulevard St. Germain, and their mouths were full of pins. Claudine was of a romantic temperament, but it could stoop to laces and fine linen. She argle-bargled with her father like a wench at a fair, and when he discounted the list, she declared that she would not be married at all. A scandal was the potent weapon in her armament. He could not have a scandal.
This extravagance of idea filled her bedroom to overflowing; to say nothing of other bedrooms. Shewould sit curled up amid a tangle of the most delicate draperies—transparencies which should have come from a fairy godmother; masterpieces in velvets and satins—she would wonder if life were long enough to wear them all. These things were hidden in her virgin holy of holies, but she ticked off the days which shut the door against the One Unknown, and often fell to a young girl's awe in the presence of the mysteries. Then came the last night of all—the maids had left her; the house was at rest. A dirty fluff of snow fell upon the streets of Paris. She was to be married at St. Eustache to-morrow!
Claudine undressed herself, and putting on the most wonderful of lace robes, she sat before a fire of wood and warmed her pink and white feet at the blaze. There should have been regrets at the life she was leaving: she might have dwelt with some affection upon her passing girlhood, and the home which had sheltered her. But she did nothing of the kind. Her thoughts were entirely devoted to St. Eustache and afterwards. What an exciting day it must be! Every friend she had would be in the church. One of the canons was to marry them, and afterwards there would be a great feast and many speeches in the old ballroom downstairs. At four in the afternoon, Justin's motor-car was to take them to the old château, near Rambouillet, where the first week was to be spent. She pictured the lonely drive over the whitened roads, through the forests—then the château, grim, old and moated. They would dine together—and then—then she would know what love was!
Her ideas were truly French, and English sentimentcould have offered them little sympathy. Perhaps Captain Issy-Ferrault stood to her less fortheman than foraman. She had been educated in convents where saintly women shuddered at the mere footsteps of their common enemy and provoked a thousand curiosities by their very holiness. Then had come a few short years of the world—it had taught Claudine that all life began from the hour when a man first took a woman into his arms and the Church blessed the proceeding. Afterwards there were other things. The first step was sufficient for her vigil that night.
Her wedding dress had been laid upon a little bed in the adjoining room. She went there on tip-toe as though afraid that someone might spy upon her while she touched the satin and laces with delighted fingers. Strong scents perfumed the room and the odour of blossoms. Claudine went and stood before a long mirror of the wardrobe and studied herself in many attitudes. She did not know whether she was really pretty. Justin, her fiancé, had paid her many compliments, and she tried to believe them. A greater source of encouragement was her figure—the fine rounded limbs, the pink and white of a young girl's skin. For an instant she remembered the ordeal of discovery which awaited her to-morrow; then with a light laugh, she returned to her bedroom. Other brides had suffered and survived—she took courage.
The priest had told her to say many things in her prayers—good man, he said them in his—but they were clean gone from her head at this time. The girlish romance of an English wedding was not forher. No gifts of sweet and silent hours were hers. She knew very little of Justin—he, less of her. He had kissed her but twice, and then apologetically. Yet to-morrow she would be his wife.
Stay, but was it to-morrow? She listened at the window and counted the church bells chiming the hour.
Twelve o'clock.
Her wedding was to-day.
II
The afternoon of the same day had found General d'Arny closeted with John Faber in a little room in the Avenue de l'Opéra. Here was the Paris agency of the great Charleston Company, and hither came d'Arny at his own suggestion.
A bent old man, not lacking dignity in a common way—dignity had gone to the journalistic dogs that afternoon. He entered the office trembling with excitement; he could not speak for some minutes, and when he did so, his tones rolled like thunder.
"It is finished," he said. "Read!" And he held out a paper with quivering fingers.
Faber watched him with half-closed eyes. He was thinking of another day, when this man, a mere captain of the Chasseurs-à-Cheval then, had ridden down the Rue de Fleurus and commanded his men to hunt out the Communards. Some forty years ago, and no doubt the soldier had forgotten every hour of it. None the less, the sword of destiny was poised and would fall.
"What shall I read?" Faber rejoined, after a littlespell of waiting. He knew every word his friend Bertie Morris had cabled to America, but his face was void of knowledge.
"Some talk of the deal," he ran on. "Well, I guess we expect it. Why should they keep quiet?"
The soldier pulled himself together, and taking the paper from the outstretched hand, he began to turn the leaves quickly.
"It is on page 3," he said. "Yes, that is it, if you would be good enough to read."
The clock ticked in a silent room for some minutes. Faber read the article to the end without moving a muscle of his usually expressive face. A great business man is often a great actor. He was one.
"There seems to have been a leakage," he said presently, and then, looking up, "Whom do you suspect?"
"I suspect! God in Heaven, what has suspicion to do with me?"
"I should have thought you were in the way of it—that is, if you take it seriously this side."
The old man wormed with impatience.
"TheSoirhas it; there will not be a paper in Paris without it to-morrow. Do you not see that it is, in effect, the letter I wrote to you on Tuesday last?"
"Who's to blame for that? I told you at the beginning not to write."
"Is it to be imagined that you cannot receive letters?"
Faber leaned over the table, and began to speak with some warmth.
"See here," he said, "you're a Minister of Artillery in Paris. You receive, I suppose, some three or fourhundred letters a day? Can you be responsible for them all?"
"But this was sent to you privately at your hotel."
"A foolish kind of letter at the best—I remember every word of it. You admit in so many words that our deal is for forty thousand francs, and stipulate that Captain Clearnay must have ten. Why couldn't you come round to me and say so?"
"I was three times at the hotel that day; you were absent on each occasion. It was urgent that Clearnay should be dealt with if the contract was to go through."
"Exactly what this newspaper man says. He calls it a second Ollivier case, I see. Well, I shouldn't wonder if it made as much noise."
D'Arny tortured himself into new attitudes.
"Good God!" he cried. "Don't you see my position?"
"Perfectly. I saw it from the beginning. You'll have to leave Paris awhile."
"Then the contract is lost?"
"I never thought it would go through, General. I wasn't such a d——d fool."
"But at least a word from you will save my name. You can deny the letter."
"I could deny it."
"Are you wishing to tell me that there is any doubt?"
"No doubt at all. Unfortunately, it was read, by mistake, in the Hotel Ritz the night it reached me. You should see Morris, of theNew York Mitre. He might do something for you."
The man rose, white as a sheet and broken. He may or may not have understood the nature of the trap into which he had fallen, but it was clear to him that John Faber could or would do little for him. He went out into the street to be offered a copy ofLa Guêpe, and to hear the newsboy cry the latest news of this surpassing jobbery.
A less consummate artist than Faber would have spoken of the Rue de Fleurus, and of what happened there forty years ago. Hubert d'Arny had not the remotest notion that the man who had ruined him was the son of that American citizen who had been shot by his orders at the crisis of the great debacle.
III
Paris licked its lips over the scandal, and then stood aghast.
The tragedy surpassed all expectation, and yet all admitted that there was no other course.
Hubert d'Arny was found dead in a little hotel at Passy that very night. He had blown out his brains upon the eve of his daughter's wedding. People thought rather of Claudine than of him. Much that would have been written and said was obliterated or hushed when she was mentioned. Who would break it to her? Such a blow had not been struck at the Republic since the Humbert scandal.
Faber knew nothing of the coming wedding, and he heard the news of Hubert d'Arny's death without emotion. There were primitive traits in his character which this affair made dominant. If pity urgedclaims, he thrust them aside when he remembered his dead father. "An eye for an eye—and for death, the dead." A sense of power and authority nerved his will and flattered a well-balanced vanity. After all, his brains and money had won this victory against all the shining armour of France. He perceived that the financier was, after all, the most considerable power in the world to-day. Kings can make war when the bankers will pay for it. He had been his own general and his money was his army. A stroke of the pen had laid one of the most powerful men in Paris dead at his feet—as vulgar tragedy would put it. A mind that had little subtlety and much common sense rose to no analytical attitudes. He had killed the man just as a Southerner shoots down a nigger—and of the two the nigger was perhaps the more deserving.
In this frame of mind, he was greatly astonished to receive a visit from Gabrielle Silvester very early on the following morning. He had even forgotten that she knew anything of his dealings with General d'Arny, nor did he immediately connect her with the tragedy of which all Paris was talking. She had come to tell him that the yacht was sailing, he thought; then he noticed that she did not offer him her hand, while her manner toward him was utterly changed—a chill womanly manner he could not mistake.
"Why!" he said. "Still in Paris?"
She avoided the question, and went straight to the heart of the matter.
"I have come to ask you, Mr. Faber, if you knew that Claudine d'Arny was to have been married to-day?"
He stepped back a pace and looked her full in the face. Rarely in his life had he flinched before man or woman, but the accusation stunned him.
"Was I aware? But how should I be aware?"
She drew nearer, her face aflame and her heart beating wildly.
"I must know this—please bear with me. I must have your answer!"
"It has been given you. I knew nothing."
She seemed dazed and not a little helpless now. Seating herself upon the edge of a chair near the fireplace, she began to speak her thoughts aloud.
"The secret is yours and mine. I would have told nobody. For you, it must be a hard thought to the end of your life. She was to have been married to-day. Will you tell me that if you had known it, it would have made a difference?"
He debated that, standing with his hands in his pockets, but his face grave enough.
"Nothing would have made any difference between that man and me. He shot my father. Very well—he had to pay, sooner or later. But I don't think it would have been to-day, if I had known."
She was silent a little while. Then she said:
"I can think of nothing but such simple things. If I had stopped to tell you in the hall of the hotel—just that—there would not have been to-day! It was one of those chances that do not recur. I thought everyone knew that Claudine was to be married."
"The last thing a man knows about any woman who is a mere acquaintance. Have you seen her to-day?"
She shivered.
"I dare not go—I dare not!"
"She has relatives in Paris?"
"I suppose so—friends would put her to shame. Does it matter when he is dead?"
"He was a rogue, or I would have spared him. He tried to cheat me from the start. I found nothing I could fix upon—and I looked for it!"
She would not consider it from that point of view.
"This will always be in your life and Claudine's. Time cannot alter judgments of this kind. It will grow with the years. I am very sorry for you, Mr. Faber."
He resented it; the patronage of women rarely failed to anger him.
"Leave me to my own affairs. I take the responsibility. I've taken a good many in my time. The girl's to be thought of. Who was she going to marry?"
"Captain Issy-Ferrault. I hardly know him: an officer of cavalry, they say."
"Poor, I suppose, as most of the kind?"
"I cannot tell you."
"When will she marry him now?"
"Oh, surely, you understand?"
"I understand one thing: he's going to marry her."
"A child would know that it's impossible!"
"Then I am wiser than a child. Will you let me have his address—to-morrow, say?"
"I am leaving Paris to-morrow."
"Then one of my clerks will get it. Shall we meet at Corfu?"
"I don't know," she said. "I came to tell you that I never wished to see you again."
"You haven't told me so. It shall be at Corfu."
She did not answer or hold out her hand. He knew that a barrier had risen up between them and his pride was quickened.
He would marry this woman because she had judged him.
BOOK II
THE PLAYERS
A RACE FOR AN EMPEROR
I
There were two yachts on the Adriatic Sea waiting for an emperor.
One lay in the harbour of Fiume; the other at Trieste. The emperor himself was still at Potsdam, and none of the newspapers seemed to know when he would sail.
Sir Jules Achon was a man of infinite patience and superb tenacity. Few but his intimate friends knew much about him. He had amassed a great fortune as a shipbroker, and now with advancing years, he devoted the bulk of that fortune to this tremendous project of European Federation. Yet it was all done without any claptrap whatever. The newspapers had hardly heard of it. There was no writer of eminence to take it up. Sir Jules worked in great places, but he worked silently. Already his scheme had the approval of kings and emperors. He had gone to St. Petersburg with a recommendation to the English Ambassador which opened all doors. But for a dramatic accident of destiny, the Tsar would have been his first patron. Three ministers knew his scheme, and two of them were warm supporters of such a transcendentproject. The third saw in it a danger to the diplomatists, which self interest could not tolerate. "This will make an end of us," he had said. Sir Jules agreed that it was so. That very night Ivolsky obtained an audience of the Emperor, and besought him to withdraw his patronage. The others were too late by a few hours, and who shall say how far that accident of time and space has affected the immediate destinies of Europe?
For the common peace projects, beating of pacific drums and waving of fraternal flags, Sir Jules cared not at all. He believed that international peace could come only upon a basis of common European interests. His scheme would have established free trade between the kingdoms. Wars arise chiefly from commercial disputes; commercial disputes are the first fruits of tariffs. Let the commercial incentive be wanting and disarmament may begin. A gradual process needed many years for full attainment—but it could begin to-morrow if the conditions were fulfilled.
He talked very little of all this to those with him on the yacht. It was, in effect, a young people's party and a merry one at that. Dr. Joe Burrall had come from Putney, a braw man of thirty, who had rowed for Cambridge. Douglas Renshaw, a gunner whose occupation had gone, came because he was asked, and was asked because he was sure to come. He had taken to the Stock Exchange recently as a wire-haired terrier to the gorse, and Sir Jules had put a small fortune into his pocket. He knew a little geology, and declared his intention of studying Slav. So far theonly word he had picked up was "hijar," and he was not very sure to what tongue it belonged, though he used it frequently as an expression of joy.
These two with Gabrielle Silvester were the guests of Sir Jules and his daughter upon theWanderer, the fine steam yacht which had so often invaded the superb mysteries of the Western Mediterranean. They understood their host's ambitions, but rarely spoke of them. When it was learned that there was a doubt about the Emperor going to Corfu after all, they looked upon it as a personal rebuff, but did not discuss it except apart. All kinds of excursions kept them busy. They visited the unsurpassable islands of the Adriatic, became learned about Zara and Sebenico and matchless Ragusa, the incomparable Republic, defying East and West alike during the centuries. Local interests attracted them; they saw much of these savage peoples; were ashore for many a frolic; lived in a blaze of sunshine and an atmosphere wholly medieval.
Gabrielle's voyage to America had been her first world experience beyond the walls of meticulous suburbia. This new adventure fascinated her beyond measure. She felt that she had really begun to live. It were as though the passion of the East stirred in her normally cold blood and left her panting. Destiny had snatched her up from the ruck to put her in high places. Far from surrendering to the enervating suggestions of this sunny sea, they forced her mind to considerable ambitions—and with them all the name of John Faber would associate itself despite the memories. This was contrary to all she had determined inParis, and put her to some shame. She felt that she had no right to see such a man again, that he was a social pariah, without pity or any title to the meanest respect. And yet he would creep into the scheme of her ambitions, and she understood in some way that without him they were meaningless.
II
It was a great surprise to Gabrielle when the launch returned to the yacht one afternoon in the second week in December with her father and Harry Lassett on board. This was one of Sir Jules' great surprises—one in which Eva had a part. Silvester was very tired after his long journey across Europe, but Harry was very full of it. They were greeted by Douglas Renshaw with a "hijar"; by Sir Jules with that quiet smile which betokened pleasure in the company of his friends.
"I had no idea you could get away," he said, "or I would have asked you in London."
Silvester said that he had no idea of it either; an American had come over from Yonkers and was taking his services for a fortnight. Harry admitted that for his part he could always get away, which, as Joe Burrall remarked, was an advantage as useful in debt as in matrimony.
This was a sunny day, an ideal day of southern winter, and they all took tea beneath the awning of the promenade deck. With Harry, Gabrielle was a little constrained and uneasy. She was glad to have him there, and yet felt that in some way his presencewas a douche upon her schemes. He spoke of the little world of outer London, not of the wider horizon to which she looked. She had built a tower of her imagination which Harry Lassett would never climb. Indeed, he would have derided it as he had done her American friendship. With her father it was different. She had a long talk with him in his cabin before dinner and she learned again how much importance he had attached to her diplomatic success with John Faber.
"It would send me to Yonkers with better credentials than any Englishman ever carried across the seas," he said. "Think of it—John Faber with us! The man who has done more than anyone alive to make war possible in our time."
"You will never get him, father. It would be a great wrong against the truth if he came in."
"Why should it be wrong, Gabrielle?"
"For many reasons. He believes that all our dreams are sentimental moonshine; he never could be in earnest—how should he be when he does not believe?"
"Is it not possible to put our view so convincingly that he must believe?"
"Are we convinced ourselves? Is it very real to us?"
"It is very real to me. I think it must be to every man of culture."
"How many that would exclude. Nelson could not have been a man of culture."
He looked up, pained.
"Faber has been talking to you."
"No, I have been talking to myself. I think withyou that war is a very great crime against humanity, but, after all, God allows it."
He sighed and began to sort out his papers.
"There is a great deal which seems to be permitted. It is another way of saying that mankind has been left a great work to do. We are fortunate if we are called to bear the smallest burden. I think disappointments should be numbered among them."
"Oh! I agree with you. And, of course, I shall still hope for Mr. Faber's name."
"If you think it a wrong, that would be an inconsistency."
"Not altogether; it might be a great victory. He is a man with whom you can argue."
"Then I hope you will see him again at Corfu."
Gabrielle did not answer that. Her own words accused her in some way.
A great victory! A woman's victory! What would that mean in this case? For the moment she let ambition run away with her and imagination reared fine castles. They went down with a crash when she heard Harry Lassett calling her. She made some excuse and went out—just as she had gone when Harry called below her window at Hampstead.
III
A superb night with a fine round moon found them aft upon the deck, gazing over the lights of Fiume to the vine-clad hills beyond. A wonderful stillness upon land and water gave place from time to time to sounds most musical—the lingering notes of sonorous bells,the lilt of Italian song, the splash of unseen oars, and the music of ships. Lanterns shone about them, the lanterns of steamers at anchor and of the Austrian fleet. Against a glorious horizon the sails of feluccas would take fantastic shapes; the stars grouped themselves in joyous brilliancy. There were many houses upon the distant hillside and they stood there as beacons, speaking to the ships and the sea in a tongue which all understood.
Sir Jules and Silvester were in the smoking-room at this time having what Harry called "a pow-wow." Eva played sentimental themes upon the great organ in the drawing-room; the doctor and Douglas Renshaw were ashore for the good of the populace. Gabrielle, herself, set deep in a deck chair with Harry Lassett at her feet. He smoked a great pipe and talked St. Moritz. There had been trouble with his trustees, and he was not sure he could get out there this year.
"So, you see," he said, "I came along when the old chap asked me."
"A most candid way of putting it; there could have been no other reason in the world."
"Oh, I say, puss! That's nasty now."
"Not at all. To qualify candour is a crime. Well, you can't go to St. Moritz. What then?"
"I didn't say I couldn't go. I said that old Ben Stuart, my trustee, was playing the fox with me. He says I overdrew a hundred and ninety last year, and it can't go on. As if it was his own money!"
"Do you disagree with his accounts?"
He laughed.
"Arithmetic's no good to me. I was a bit of aflier at Ananias and Dido at school, but I could add up a column every time and make it different. I ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer—eh, what? Surely, you don't mind?"
He nestled his head against her knees as though this kind of comfort were some solatium. Gabrielle was thinking of John Faber and of what his opinion would have been of such an admission.
"I suppose life isn't worth living unless you go to St. Moritz?"
He detected no irony.
"How's a man to keep fit in our beastly country?—then, there's habit. I believe in doing to-morrow what you did yesterday—don't you? If I stop in England, it's covered court tennis, nothing more! How's a man to go through the winter on covered court tennis?"
"The survival of the fittest. Whatever will become of you on the yacht?"
He puffed stolidly.
"That's vegetation. I can lie on my back with any man—I'm a plus two at it. A man's year should include a month of it. Then I'm orderly; I know just what I'm going to do during the next two seasons, as sure as the moon and stars: cricket, four months; two months' shooting; a bit of hunting if I can get it in, and if I can't, then some pat ball on the links. What more do you want?"
"Are you putting the question to me?"
"I wasn't—but I will!"
"Oh, I should want a lot more: to begin with, a definite object."
"Ah, you're a girl. My opinion of men with definite objects is that they are generally bores."
"But the country would not get on without them, would it?"
"Don't believe such nonsense, puss. Who's the greater man: Asquith or Foster? Would you sooner be Lloyd George or Bobs? Who's doing more for England—the man who helps to beat the Australians, or the lawyers who put threepence on the income tax? You ask the average man, and see what he says."
"The average man has not much brains; he is the servant in the house of intellect. I should never consult him about anything."
"Puss, I know what you're thinking about—it's that popgun man."
"Rather inconsequent, isn't it? You wouldn't average Mr. Faber?"
"No, I suppose he's clever enough. He makes money. Old Baker, our head at school, always used to say that the faculty of making money was one of the most contemptible. But it's useful, I admit."
"Oh, yes, we all admit that, and show our contempt of the faculty by worshipping the possessor."
"Do you worship John Faber?"
"Collectively, yes; individually, not at all."
He thought upon it.