The Project Gutenberg eBook ofSwords Reluctant

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofSwords ReluctantThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Swords ReluctantAuthor: Max PembertonRelease date: May 22, 2013 [eBook #42763]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by David Edwards, Ernest Schaal, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWORDS RELUCTANT ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Swords ReluctantAuthor: Max PembertonRelease date: May 22, 2013 [eBook #42763]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by David Edwards, Ernest Schaal, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)

Title: Swords Reluctant

Author: Max Pemberton

Release date: May 22, 2013 [eBook #42763]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Ernest Schaal, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWORDS RELUCTANT ***

Published in London under the title of

"War and the Woman"

Max Pemberton

Author of "The Fortunate Prisoner," "The Garden of Swords," etc.

"Peace hath her victoriesNo less renowned than war."

Milton:Sonnets.

"I, in this weak piping time of peace,Have no delight to pass away the time,Unless to see my shadow in the sun."

Shakespeare:Richard III.

G. W. Dillingham Company

Publishers New York

Entered for Copyright May 29th, 1912

under the title of

WAR AND THE WOMAN

G. W. Dillingham Company

under the title of

SWORDS RELUCTANT

Swords Reluctant

ANDREW CARNEGIE

non exercitus

neque thesauri præsidia regni sunt,

verum amici

The Author would make acknowledgments to Sir Max Waechter and to Sir Francis Trippel for the generous help given to this book and to its purpose. While the characters in it are entirely fictitious, the scheme for the Federation of Europe is wholly due to Sir Max Waechter's initiative. This scheme has obtained favour at the Courts of the Continent and is warmly approved by many in this country, who realise how inseparably the Peace question is allied to that of the national finance.

Book I.—The Challenge

CHAPTERPAGE

1.Gabrielle Silvester Writes a Letter11

2.A Man of Destiny20

3.Between Heaven and Earth30

4.The Beginning of the Odyssey45

5.General d'Arny and his Daughter67

Book II.—The Players

1.A Race for an Emperor81

2.Louis De Paleologue91

3.The Damnable Mountains101

4.The Burning of Ranovica114

5.A Strange Voyage133

6.Goodwill Toward Men156

Book III.—Aftermath

1.The Memorable Winter173

2.Of Love but not of Marriage193

3.After Ten Days203

4.Cinderella219

5.The Man of the Moment234

Book IV.—Merely Men and Women

1.After the Debacle247

2.The Shadow is Lifted263

3.The Marigolds to the Sun272

4.Surrender and Afterwards284

5.Two Ships upon the Sea306

BOOK I

THE CHALLENGE

SWORDS RELUCTANT

GABRIELLE SILVESTER WRITES A LETTER

Gabrielle returned from the Town Hall where the meeting was held, just after ten o'clock, and was glad to see the fire burning brightly in her room. She remembered that she would never have thought of such a luxury as a fire in her bedroom prior to her visit to New York.

All agreed that it had been a very successful meeting, and that real, convincing work had been done. She herself could say, in the privacy of her own room, that the excitements of such gatherings had become a necessity to her since the strenuous days in America, and perhaps to her father also.

How changed her life since she first set foot on the deck of theOceanicand began to know a wider world! England had seemed but a garden upon her return and its people but half awake. She had a vivid memory of the rush and roar of distant cities, of strange faces and new races, but chiefly of a discovery of self which at once frightened and perplexed her.

Would it be possible to accept without complaintthe even tenor of that obscure life in Hampstead which she had suffered willingly but seven months ago? She knew that it would not, and could answer for her father also. A call had come to him and to her. She had been sure of it at the meeting, but of its nature she had yet to be wholly convinced.

Gordon Silvester, the most eloquent preacher among the Congregationalists, had gone to America at the bidding of a famous millionaire, there to bear witness to the brotherhood of man and the bond between the peoples. The achievement of the great treaty between America and the Motherland had drawn together the leading intellects of the two countries, and had culminated in that mighty assemblage in New York which had stood before the altar of the Eternal Peace and closed, as it believed for ever, the Temple of the twin-headed Janus. With the minister had gone Gabrielle, his only child, and thus for the first time during her three and twenty years had she seen any world but that of the suburban parish in which Gordon Silvester laboured.

It was a bitter cold night of the memorable winter with which this story is chiefly concerned.

Gabrielle wore furs, which had been purchased in Quebec, and a hat which some upon the steamer had thought a littleoutréfor a parson's daughter. These furs she had just laid upon her bed, and was busy unpinning her hat when her father knocked at the door and asked if he might come in. She thoughtthat he was more excited than he was wont to be in the old days, and there were blotches of crimson upon his usually sallow cheeks.

"I am just going to bed," he said in a quiet tone; "if you want anything to eat, let Jane know. The room was very hot, I think—my head is aching."

She turned with her hand still among the curls of her auburn hair, a wonderfully graceful figure for such a scene.

"You must be very tired, dear," she said very gently. "I have never heard anything more beautiful than your speech."

He took a step into the room, his hand upon the door.

"Then you think it was a success, Gabrielle?"

"I don't think at all about it; it was what Mr. Faber would have called 'electrical.'"

He let go the door, and then shut it behind him.

"Ah!" he said, as though thinking upon it, "if we could have had Faber with us."

She laughed, showing the superb whiteness of her teeth.

"The lion and the lamb. Why do you attach any importance to him?"

He crossed the room to an arm-chair and sat there, poking the fire.

"He is one of the men who can make peace or war," he said. "Sir Jules Achon agrees with me. Popular sentiment goes for much, but the men who control the destinies are the financiers."

"But, father, how could Mr. Faber control this particular situation?"

"He could set a great example of forbearance. Is he not rich enough?"

She came and sat by him near the fire. It was yet early in the most memorable winter that England has ever known, but the cold had become intense.

"I saw so little of Mr. Faber on the ship," she said reflectively; "he appeared to me to be a man who could move mountains ... with somebody else's arms, to say nothing of somebody's else's spades."

"Was that your only impression of him?"

"Oh! force—hardly of character, perhaps—that and his restlessness. Why did everyone talk of him? Was it because he is worth eleven millions of money? Was that all that could be said of him?"

"A very good reason nowadays. They say he has a contract with the French Government for five millions of the new rifles. Permissible exaggeration makes him the arbiter of peace or war. Did he not give you that impression?"

"I hardly think so; he was mostly concerned about his boarhound's dinner. As far as I remember, he considers our party just harmless lunatics. I made him confess as much one day."

Silvester passed by the admission.

"He goes on a fearful journey," he said, falling unconsciously to the pulpit manner. "Of course such men know a great deal. He believes that there will be war in Europe in six months' time, and that our country will be concerned. Did he not tell you that?"

"I think not, father. He was too busy asking me to arrange the roses in his cabin."

"Ah! I remember them, pink roses everywhere in early December. What a feminine display!"

"But not a feminine subject. I have never met a man whose character impressed me so clearly. He has only begun in the world—those were his own words."

"Well, then, why should he not begin with us? Sir Jules believes that nothing would make a greater stir than his joining our Committee."

"Then why don't you ask him yourself? He's in London until the end of the week."

Silvester did not speak for some minutes. He seemed to have become a little shy of this outspoken wide-eyed daughter of his, who evaded the issue so cleverly.

"I wish you'd write, Gabrielle."

"To Mr. Faber?"

"Yes; you seemed very good friends on the ship. I believe he'd join if you asked him."

She shook her head.

"I don't believe it would make any difference who asked him. I'll write, if you wish it."

"Yes," he said, rising abruptly, "write now before you go to bed. You're sure you are not hungry?"

Gabrielle laughed lightly.

"I have left all my vices in America," she rejoined, "being hungry in the witching hours is one of them."

III

Her boudoir overlooked the great well wherein London lies. Though the moon was in the first quarter, the night was wonderful in stars, and the air quiveredwith the virility of frost. She could see St. Paul's and the City spires; the Carlton Hotel lay more to the west, and was hidden behind the slopes of Haverstock Hill. There was no snow, for this frost was black as iron.

Just below, were the winding walks to which the pilgrims came in search of Keats. She had read the sonnets and tried to understand them, but candour compelled her to say that she preferred Tennyson. Sometimes she thought her whole interest in literature to be an affectation; but undoubtedly she was addicted to erotic poetry and the fire of Swinburne would burn in her veins. All this, too, was hidden from her father, who occupied himself but little with her affairs, and believed that her interests were entirely his own.

Girls of twenty-three are usually fervent letter-writers and Gabrielle was no exception. She had furnished folios of gossip that very day for her friend, Eva Achon, who had been her intimate upon the ship. But when it came to writing "John Sebastian Faber, Esq.," her pen trembled upon the paper. How impossible it seemed to say anything to which such a man would listen. She depicted him as she had last seen him upon the deck of theOceanic, stretched on a sofa-chair, and smiling at her philosophy. "Letters answered themselves," he had said. He got through life on cables and confidence. There was not a private letter in fifty which said anything worth saying. He had proposed a league for the suppression of private correspondence, and begged her to be one of the vice-presidents. She remembered her own disappointment that he had not asked her to write to him.

So it was no easy thing at all to begin, chiefly because she feared his irony and was quite sure that her letter would achieve nothing. Half-a-dozen sheets of good "cream laid" note were destroyed before she could get her craft launched and she was still in harbour so to speak when she heard her name cried out in the street below, and opening the window immediately, discerned Harry Lassett with skates upon his arm.

"Is that you, Gabrielle?"

The cold was intense and filled the room with icy vapour. She shivered where she stood, and drew her dressing-gown close about her white throat.

"Whatever are you doing, Harry? It's nearly eleven o'clock."

"I know that. We've been skating on the Vale. There'll be grand ice to-morrow. Won't you come? You must!"

"I haven't got any skates!"

"Oh, send into town for some. I'll go myself if you'll throw me out an old boot. You don't mean to say you're going to miss it?"

She shook her head and tried to shield herself behind the heavy curtains.

"I fear I'll have to go visiting to-morrow."

"What, those American dollars again! No! They're spoiling you; I thought you had done with that nonsense."

"I did not say they were American. I am going to Richmond to see Eva Achon."

"Oh, hang Eva Achon. We shall have bandy, if it holds. Throw me out that boot, and I'll go away.Your people go to bed in the middle of the day, don't they? It's all locked up like a prison down here."

"I am not in bed, Harry. I am writing a letter."

"American, of course?"

"Of course," and she laughed at him. Then the boot was found, and tossed out.

"How's that?" he asked—a man who had played for Middlesex and the 'Varsities could not have asked any other question.

"Let me know just how much they are, and I will send it round in the afternoon. Father promised me a pair to-night. I'm glad you can get them for me."

"Right oh! We shall skate on the Vale directly I return. Dr. Houghton of Grindelwald wants me to have a pair of his blades. You'd better have the same. They're grand!"

"Anything you like, my dear Harry, if they'll keep me warm. I shall be a pillar of ice if I stand here."

"Like Lot's wife! Was it ice, by the way? Well, good-night, then; or shall I post the letter?"

"That's splendid of you. I'll just finish it. But I'll have to shut the window."

"Imagine me a sentry doing the goose step. Will you be long?"

"Just two minutes, really."

He kissed his hand to her when she shut the window and began to stamp about to warm himself. They had been lovers since children, and were still free. Harry Lassett's three hundred a year "in the funds" just permitted him to play cricket for the county and to spend the best part of the winter at St. Moritz. He had not thought much about marriage.

Gabrielle's two minutes "really" proved to be an exact prophecy. Haste bade her throw both preface and conclusion to the winds. She just wrote:

"Dear Mr. Faber,"My father would be very pleased if you would become one of the Vice-Presidents of the International Arbitration League. Will you let me say 'yes' for you?"

"Dear Mr. Faber,

"My father would be very pleased if you would become one of the Vice-Presidents of the International Arbitration League. Will you let me say 'yes' for you?"

And that was the letter Harry carried to the post for her.

Vanity promised her an answer. It would come over the telegraph wires, she thought.

A MAN OF DESTINY

John Sebastian Faber had a suite of five rooms at the Savoy Hotel, and, as he said, he lived in four of them most of the time. The room which he did not occupy was devoted to three secretaries.

Gabrielle found him at his desk in an apartment which should have been a drawing-room. The windows looked out upon the Shot Tower and showed him the majesty of Westminster. There was a litter of American journals upon a round table at his back and copies of the EnglishTimes, much mutilated by cutting. He wore a black morning coat, and would have been called well-dressed by an American tailor.

His was the "clean-limbed" type of man who is such an excellent product of the sister nation—moderately tall, suggesting virility and immense nervous energy. Someone upon the ship said that he "snatched at life," and that was no untrue description of him. But he had also picked up a little sum of eleven millions sterling by the process, and that kind of snatching bears imitation.

A footman brought Gabrielle to the room, and Faber sprang up immediately, brushing back curly brown hair from his forehead. It was evident that he expecteda somewhat protracted interview, for he wheeled a low chair near to his own before he held out his hand to her.

"Why, now, I'm glad to see you. Sit down right here and let us talk. A long way in from Hampstead, isn't it? Too hot, perhaps; well, then, we'll have the steam turned off."

"Oh, please!" she said, casting loose her grey furs—he had already regarded her from a man's first aspect and approved the picture—"I have been walking down the Strand and the air is so cold. It's delicious in here—and what roses!"

"Ah! that's where I blush. I always have roses wherever I go; didn't your lady from Banbury Cross do the same thing with the music? Well, I get as far off that as I can—most music. Wagner's good if you're up against a man. You never hear him crying 'Enuf.' Well, now, that's right. So you want me for the I.A.L.—or, rather, your father does. Why didn't he ask me on the ship?"

He swung back in his chair and looked her over from head to foot. She had always been a little afraid of the sensitive eyes, and they did not fail to magnetise her as heretofore. It was possible, however, to be very frank with such a man; she spoke with good assurance when she said:

"Oh! I suppose he didn't think of it."

"You mean that he didn't know enough about me? Why, that's fair. I dare say he heard my name for the first time that night I ran the charity concert for him. Guns and the gospel don't go well together, my dear lady, not in civilized parts. Your father won'twant rifles until he goes to China to turn the great god Bud inside out. I'll let him have a consignment cheap when he's starting."

She thought it a little brutal, hardly the thing he should have said; but his good humour was invincible, and she forgave him immediately.

"The fact is," he ran on, "your father is a good man, Miss Silvester, and I'm a merchant. Where we come together is in admiring a certain fellow passenger who ran the ship and will run other ships. There we're on common ground. Now say what you like to me and I'll hear it, for I've just twenty minutes at your disposal, and you may count every one of them. To begin with the I.A.L.—does your father remember that I'm a gunmaker?"

She was vastly puzzled.

"I think he knows it in a vague way. The captain of theOceanicsaid you were building the new American navy—is that quite true?"

"It would be in a prospectus. My house builds one of the new cruisers, and some of the destroyers. Guns are the bigger line. I've come to Europe to sell guns. Did they tell you that also?"

"Yes, I think everyone knows it."

"Then why come to me? Would you go to the keeper of a saloon and ask him to help you to put down the drink? He'd tell you that drink made George Washington, just as I tell you that guns made your Lord Nelson. Would the Admiral have joined your I.A.L.?"

"Oh," she said, with womanly obstinacy, "then you still think there is no alternative but war?"

He laughed and began to make holes with his pencil in the blotting pad before him.

"It's just as though you asked me if there were no alternative but human nature. Why isn't the world good right through? Why do murder and other crimes still exist on the face of the earth? Would a league suppress them—a decision at Washington that there should be no more sin? I guess not. If a man knocks me down before lunch, I may go to law with him; if it's after and there's been any wine, I'll possibly do my own justice and do it quick. War is as old as human nature, and if we are to believe that a God rules the world, we've got to believe also that man was meant to go to war. Shall I tell you that some of the noblest things done on this earth were done on the battlefield? You wouldn't believe me. Your father thinks George Washington a son of the devil, and Nelson a man of blood. I've heard that sort of thing from the platform, and it's turned me sick. Your I.A.L. is a league for the manufacture of lath-backed men. Do you think the world will be any better when every man turns the other cheek and honour has gone into the pot? If you do, well, I'm on the other side all the time. War may go, but it has got to change human nature first. Tell your father that, and ask him to think about it. I wonder what text he'd take if a troop of cavalry camped in his drawing-room to-night. Would the I.A.L. do much for him? Why, I think not."

She smiled at his wild images, and thought that she would demolish them simply.

"You speak in fables," she said, "it's like the nonsensein the panicky stories. There is no one in England nowadays who seriously believes in that kind of war. I do not think you can do so yourself. Now, really, did you ever see a battlefield in your life, Mr. Faber?"

He looked at her with eyes half shut.

"I was in Port Arthur the night the ships were struck. I saw the big fighting at Liaoyang. Go back farther and I'll tell you stories of Venezuela and the Philippines, which should be written down in red. I'm a child of war—my father died at a barricade in Paris three days before the Commune fell. A diamond of a man saved my mother and took her out to America, where I was born. There's war in the very marrow of my bones—I live for it as other men for women and children. Should you ask such a man to join such a League? I'll put it squarely to you. Now tell me the truth."

The intensity of the appeal startled her. The method of her life in the parsonage at Hampstead would have prompted a platitude of the platforms, some retort about the progress of humanity, and the need for social advance. But it seemed impossible to say such things to John Faber. Her courage ran down as ice before a fire; she was wholly embarrassed and without resource.

"Come," he repeated, "you owe me the admission. Should the request have been made to me?"

"No, indeed—and yet I will not say that anyone would be dishonoured by it."

"Did I suggest the contrary?"

"I think your idols false."

"They are the idols of human nature—not mine."

"We could say the same of the primitive savages. Why should we have advanced beyond the battle-axe and the club?"

"Not the political clubs—see here, is there any real advance when the knife goes deep enough? Suppose a thousand English women were butchered in China—or I'll make it Turkey—would your father be for the I.A.L.? If he were, the people would burn his pulpit!"

"It only means that we must educate."

"We're doing it all the time. Does education make your burglar sing psalms, or does it teach him to use oxygen for burning open the safe? I think nothing of education—that way. Who are the best educated people in Europe? The Germans. Are they coming in to the I.A.L.?"

"My father hopes that much may be done by the understanding between the ministers——"

He laughed rudely, brutally.

"All the sheep baaing together, and the wolf sharpening his teeth on the national grindstone. I've no patience to hear it."

"Then I certainly will not repeat it."

A flush of anger coloured her cheeks, and her heart began to beat fast. She was conscious of a rôle which fitted her but ill, and was no reflection of herself. How much sooner would she have been downstairs among the well-dressed women who were beginning to flock into the restaurant for lunch! This man's brutal logic threatened to shatter her professed ideals, and to leave her vanity defenceless. She remembered at the sametime what the meaning of the triumph would be if she won him. All the country would talk of that!

"You are not offended with me?" he said in a gentler tone. "I'm sure you won't be when you get back home and think of it."

"I shall try to think of it as little as possible."

"As your countrymen are doing. If there was more than half-an-ounce of the radium of common sense in this kingdom at the present moment, some people would be thinking very hard, Miss Silvester——"

"Of what?"

He rose from his chair, thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets, went over to the window and stood looking out.

"They would be thinking of the frost," he said.

"Perhaps it is too cold to think about it!"

He laughed.

"Well said and true. Did you read in theTimesthat there is ice in the English Channel for the first time for twenty years?"

"I never read theTimes——"

"Then don't begin if you would remain a woman."

"Is she, then, unworthy of it?"

"Not at all—it is unworthy of her. It tells the truth!"

"Oh, I grant that that is embarrassing sometimes. We were speaking of the frost."

"And the fables. The fable, written by a great German, is about to freeze the English Channel and the North Sea! Ice from the Humber to Kiel! Portsmouth frozen up. An ice carnival at the Thames' mouth. Do you believe in fables?"

She stared at him amazed.

"What would happen if this one were true?"

"Oh," he said, "you had better ask the I.A.L."

She was silent a little while, then she said:

"Your bogies are wonderful. Are there many in your life?"

"More than I count."

"They are lucky then?"

"Yes, for one of them sends you to my rooms to-day."

He had never spoken to her in this way before, and the tone of it found her amazed. Hitherto the man of affairs and the woman of the useful vanities had been speaking; but John Faber had changed all that in an instant. She felt his wide eyes focused upon her with a sudden glance which burned. He had taken a step toward her, and for a moment she feared that some mad impulse would drive him to forget the true circumstance of their meeting, and to suppose another. She felt her heart beat rapidly—a true instinct warned her to act upon the defensive.

"I think we were talking of another kind of bogy," she said quickly—"women deserve a new chapter."

He laughed a little hardly, and turned upon his heel.

"The goose awoke and the Capitol is saved. Well, about this frost?"

"Oh, I shall hope for a thaw."

"That's what your I.A.L. is doing all the time. Tell them that John Faber wishes them well, and will sell them a hundred thousand rifles any time they are reconsidering the position. Perhaps I shall meetyou when I return from Paris. We can put the contract through then."

She shook her head, trying to hide the annoyance of the rebuff.

"I don't suppose I shall ever see you again," she said.

"I'll bet you a thousand dollars you do, either in Paris or Berlin."

"Why should I go there?"

"Because your little friend Claudine d'Arny will see that you do."

"Oh, that was only an acquaintance on the ship. I had forgotten her."

"My memory is better. I have been chewing her father's name for twenty years."

"Do you know him, then?"

It was his turn to laugh—with the silent anger of a man who remembers.

"He gave the order for my father to be shot. I don't think I'll forget him."

She hardly believed him to be serious. There he stood, smiling softly, one hand deep in his trousers pocket, the other toying with his roses. He had just told her what he would have told no other woman in England, and she thought him a jester.

"Is this one of the fables?"

"Certainly it is. I am going to Paris to write the moral."

She watched his face curiously.

"But, surely, if General d'Arny gave any such order, it was in his official capacity."

"As I shall give mine—in an official capacity."

"Then you have not forgiven him?"

"It is for that very purpose I am going to Paris. That and one other."

"To sell your guns—I read it in the papers."

He smiled—in a kindly way this time.

"I'll give you twenty guesses."

"But I am hopeless at riddles."

"Then I'll solve this one for you. I am going to Paris to give one million dollars to the man who took my mother to America—if I can find him."

"I hope you will succeed—and I wish I knew the man."

He liked this, for it was the first really girlish thing she had said. Perhaps even at that stage Faber read her wholly, and believed that it was good for her to see "common sense in curl papers," as he put it. He might even have led her to talk of her father and her home had not the inexorable secretary knocked upon the door at that very moment. The summons brought him to "attention," as the call of a sergeant to the new recruit.

"Time is unkind to us," he said. "I must go down to Throgmorton Street to make a hundred thousand dollars. Well, we shall meet again in Paris or Berlin. A thousand dollars for your I.A.L. if we don't. Remember me to your father, please. Is he likely to accept that call to Yonkers, by the way?"

"I don't know," she said quite simply; "he is so ignorant about American money."

John Faber smiled at that. Gabrielle went down the Strand blushing furiously, and wondering why she had said anything at once so honest and so foolish.

BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH

Clad in an alpaca coat, which had long since lost its lining, and in carpet slippers very much too large for him, Gordon Silvester awaited his daughter's return to the house in Well Walk. The luncheon bell had rung a second time, and God alone knew what was in the mind of Agatha, the cook. Silvester feared this woman greatly, especially in those frequently recurring seasons when her madness ran to taking the pledge.

It was a quarter past two when Gabrielle returned, and they should have lunched at half-past one. The minister's anxiety was above all meats, and in his curiosity to know what had happened he forgot the sainted martyr below stairs.

"Well, is he willing, my dear?"

Gabrielle drew a chair to the table; she carried a couple of letters in her hand, and glanced at their envelopes while she spoke.

"Oh, my dear father, it was quite hopeless."

Silvester sighed, and took up his knife and fork. It was a terrible descent from the millennium to mutton; but, after all, he ate but to live.

"I feared it would be so. Well, we have done ourbest, and that is something. Did he give you any reasons?"

"One tremendous reason—he calls it human nature."

Silvester helped her to a fair cut and himself to two. He was already eating when he took up the subject again.

"This movement will be stronger than his argument," he said. "What people call human nature is often little more than the animal instinct. I can conceive no nobler mission for any man. We cannot expect this particular class of man to see eye to eye with us."

"There was never any chance of it, father. He believes that war is the will of God, and he does not hesitate to say so."

"Would he have us to believe that typhoid fever is the will of God—or smallpox? We are stamping those out. Why not the greater plague?"

Gabrielle sighed.

"I wish you had been there to argue with him, father. A girl is at such a disadvantage."

"Naturally, with such a man. I don't suppose John Faber ever knew one really human weakness since he was a child. Did he say anything about me, by the way?"

"He mentioned you several times. I told him about the call to Yonkers."

The minister's eyes sparkled.

"That is a subject I would gladly take his advice upon. What did he say about it?"

"Very little, I think."

"Was it favourable to my going?"

"I don't think he expressed an opinion either way."

"It would have been a great help to me had he done so. Sometimes I feel that I have a great work to do in America. This Peace Movement is the finest thing in the story of the whole world. Christ Himself has taught us no more beautiful idea—His own, as we must admit. There is a true sentiment in America; but a pretence of it here, I fear."

"Are you quite sure of that, father?"

"Of what, my dear?"

"Of the true sentiment in America. Mr. Faber said on the ship that he hoped to sell five hundred thousand rifles for Mexico before the trouble was over. Is that a true sentiment?"

"I believe it very foreign to the real wishes of the American people."

"He doesn't; neither do the Germans. They say all this talk of arbitration is so much humbug to prevent us adding to our navy, and to allow President Taft to occupy Mexico."

"That is in the yellow press, my dear; you should not listen to it."

"Anyway, Sir Jules Achon thinks it true. May I read Eva's letter? I expect she reminds me of my promise to go there to-day."

"You know that we have a meeting of the Girls' Friendly Committee to-night?"

"Oh, father, can't they do without me for once? I don't often stay away."

He helped himself to an apple tart, and made no reply. Gabrielle read her letter, and her cheeks flamed with excitement.

"What do you think?" she said. "Sir Jules isgoing on his yacht to Corfu, and he wishes me to go with them."

"To go upon his yacht!" The astonishment was very natural. "That is very kind of him."

"Douglas Renshaw is going, and Dr. Burrall. Eva says they will call at Lisbon and Gibraltar, and perhaps at Genoa. What a splendid trip!"

Her eyes were very bright with the vision, and her lips parted in excitement. Not only was this a respite from the monotonous days, but a respite which she would consider regal. She was going upon a pilgrimage into the old world as she had gone into the new. And with the promise there flashed upon her mind a memory of John Faber's wager. He would meet her in Paris or Berlin!

"It is indeed a very remarkable opportunity," said her father presently. "Sir Jules Achon is a greater man than your American. He has more ballast, and quite as much money."

"And he has not come to Europe to marry an English woman."

The minister looked at her covertly. A secret thought which had sent her to the Savoy Hotel whispered an accusation in his ear, and found him guilty. He would have given much to know just what passed between Gabrielle and John Faber. Perhaps he saw also that his daughter had never looked so well. Undoubtedly she was a beautiful woman.

"Yes," he said at last; "I don't think Sir Jules will marry. You must accept this invitation, Gabrielle."

"But what am I to do for frocks?"

"Can't you wear those you took to America?"

"My dear father, they were mostly summer dresses."

"Well, Corfu is a summer resort. I forget what the winter temperature is—something abnormal. Unfortunately, they have just opened a gambling saloon there. Wherever nature is most beautiful, there men turn their backs upon her."

"Sir Jules is hardly likely to do that. He is going to Corfu to try to meet the German Emperor. You know he has a great idea—the Federation of Europe. He says that commerce is the only key to the peace of the world."

"A faith rather in the Jews than the Divine gospels."

"Oh! I think not—a faith in good common sense, father."

Silvester shook his head.

"He will not associate himself with us," he said, a little sadly. And then, "They tell me he is a very rich man."

"Just the reason why I must have some frocks if I go to Corfu."

She was not to leave for Richmond until the end of the week, and when lunch was over she was reminded of Harry Lassett's promise by the advent of that boisterous sportsman and his expressed determination to take her at once to the Vale of Health pond, where the ice was "top-notch." There Gabrielle found herselfamid a knot of very suburban but friendly people, whose noisy cordiality forced her to remember that this rather than the other was her true sphere.

Harry Lassett had been down to St. James's Street to get her skates, and they fitted her to perfection. The scene was inspiriting and full of colour. All about them lay the whitened heath; London beneath a veil of sunlit fog in the hollow. So keen was the splendid air that every nerve reverberated at its breath. Such frost had not been known in England since oxen were roasted whole upon the Thames in the early days of the nineteenth century.

She was a good skater, and had often accompanied Eva Achon to Princes during the previous season. Harry Lassett waltzed divinely, and while waltzing upon boards was anathema to Gordon Silvester, waltzing upon the ice seemed to him a harmless diversion. He even came down to the brink of the pond and watched the merry throng at play; but that was before dusk fell and the great bonfire was lighted, and those who had merely clasped hands discovered that a more binding link was necessary. Silvester saw nothing of the outrageous flirtations. He would have been sadly distressed had he known that Gabrielle herself was among the number of the sinners. She was, in fact, one of the ringleaders.

Why should she not have been? What pages of her life written in the dark room of a shabby parsonage forbade that freshet of a young girl's spirit, here gushing from the wells of convention which so long had preserved it? Silvester, all said and done, was just a successful Congregational minister. His sincerityand natural gifts of eloquence had pushed him into the first rank of well-advertised special pleaders. By this cause and that, the doors had been opened to him; and with him went Gabrielle to the ethical fray. If her heart remained with those whom the world would have called "her equals," she was but obeying the fundamental laws of human nature. Millionaires and their palaces; my lord this and my lord that, thrust into the chair of a cause for which they did not care a snap of the fingers—what had Silvester's house in common with them? Reason answered nothing; he himself would never have put the question.

So here was Gabrielle like a child let out of school. The long afternoon found her pirouetting with Harry Lassett, or with other disorderly young men of a like nature; the swift night discovered her in a sentimental mood, with all thought of multi-millionaires gone away to the twinkling stars. A brass band had begun to play by that time, and a man was selling baked chestnuts. A pretty contrast that to the Savoy Hotel.

Their talk had been chiefly ejaculatory during the afternoon, but the twilight found them mellowing. Harry still harped upon America, and with some disdain; and now, at length, his contempt found expression.

"Did you see that American chap all right?" he asked her in an interval of the riot.

She admitted the guilt of it.

"Do you mean Mr. Faber?"

"The fellow you met on the ship—Apollo and theliar; the man who talked about eleven millions sterling."

"Yes, I saw him. How did you know I was going?"

"Oh! I was in the Savoy myself this morning. I'm thinking of buying the place."

"Then you propose to settle down?"

"Or settle up. What did you want from the Stars and Stripes this morning, Gabrielle?"

"An impertinent question. Why should I tell you? Why do you want to know?"

"Because I have the right to know."

"The right, Harry—the right!"

They were over at the eastern corner of the pond, shadows sheltering them. Harry Lassett's "six foot one" towered above her five feet five, and made a woman of her. He had the round, "apple" face of a boy of twenty-four, vast shoulders, limbs of iron. His eyes were clear and lustrous, and his hair jet black. There was every quality which makes a quick, physical appeal to the other sex, and now, perhaps not for the first time, Gabrielle became acutely conscious of it. This was something totally apart from schemes for the world's good; something with which millionaires, were they British or American, had no concern whatever. Ten years of a boy and girl friendship culminated here. She tried to withdraw her fingers from Harry's grasp, but could not release herself; his breath was hot upon her forehead; she quivered at his touch, and then stood very still.

"Why have I not got the right? Who has if I haven't?"

"The right to what?"

"To warn Apollo off. Gabrielle, I'm in love with you—you know it."

She looked up; his eyes devoured her.

"What is the good of our being in love?"

"You don't mean to say you are thinking of the beastly money?"

"Harry!"

"Well, then, don't ask me. I've three hundred a year, and I'm going with Barlean in Throgmorton Street when the cricket season's over. That's a half-commission job, and my cricketing friends will rally round. If I tour Australia next year, they'll pay my expenses, and I'll make them pretty hot. We could be married when I come back, Gabrielle."

She laughed, and half turned her head.

"It's quite like a fairy story. And so mercenary! It's just like a business deal."

"Well, your father will ask for a balance sheet, and there it is—totted up by 'Why not' and audited by 'Expectation.' Why don't you say something about it?"

"Do you want me to say that you will always be my best friend?"

"Family Reading—go on. Love and respect and esteem. I'm d——d if I stand it. This is what I think."

He slipped his arms about her, and kissed her hotly upon the lips. She had never been kissed by a man before, and the swift assault found her without argument. She was conscious in a vague way that prudence should have made an end of all this upon the spot. Yet there was a physical magnetism beforewhich she was powerless; an instantaneous revelation of life in its fuller meaning, of a sentiment which had nothing to do with prudence.

"Harry!" she cried, and that was all.

"Gabrielle, you love me—I feel that you do when you are near me."

"How foolish it all is—how mad!"

"I won't have that rot. Why, you are part of my life, Gabrielle."

"Of course, we are very old friends——"

"If you say any word like that I will take you out into the very centre of the pond and kiss you there. Come along and skate now. I feel quite mad."

He caught her in his arms, and they went whirling away. The red-nosed man with the cornet played the "Merry Widow" until his whole body swelled; there were harsh tones of cockneyism, silver laughter of boys and girls, the whirr of good skates cutting the ice. And above all a clear, starless heaven, such as London had not known for many a year.

"How long will you be away with these Achon people, Gabrielle?"

"I don't know; we are going to Corfu to see the German Emperor."

"Don't bring him back with you. He'd never get on with fools. Isn't it all rather out of the picture?"

"What do you mean by that, Harry?"

"Well, your trotting about with millionaires, hanging on to the skirts of other people's ambitions. It can't last. Some day soon, these doors will be shut. There'll be nobody at home when you call."

"That would not trouble me. I go because my father wishes it; and, of course, I like Eva."

"She's rather a jolly girl, isn't she? They're a different class to that Faber man. He's just an adventurer."

"Who has managed to make himself necessary to two continents. I wish you knew him. You'd be the first to bow down."

"To eleven millions! I might if he handed over one of them. That must be the fly in his ointment. I don't suppose he has a friend in the world who doesn't want to get something out of him."

"Do you include me in that category?"

"Well, you wanted his name. I knew he'd laugh at all that peace rot. It's the greatest humbug of the twentieth century, and I admire the German Emperor for his courage. He and Kitchener are the two greatest men in the world to-day. Now, don't you think so?"

"I don't think anything of the kind. If there is any one conviction in my life that is sincere it is this. You know it, Harry."

She was very earnest, and he would not wound her. Gabrielle Silvester could dream dreams, and some of them would put great intellects to shame. Harry knew this and admired her in the mood; he altered his own course at once.

"Of course I know it. But tell me, what did Faber say?"

"Oh, very little—he spoke about the frost."

"Wants to skate with you, eh?"

"I think not. He is full of bogies. The English Channel and the North Sea are to be frozen over."

"Great idea that. We shall skate all the way to Paris! Dine at the Ritz and curl afterwards. What a man!"

"No, really—what he fears is a panic in England if the sea should really freeze."

Harry thought about it for some minutes in silence. Presently he said:

"I don't believe it could happen. He was chaffing you."

"I think he was."

"But if it did happen—by gad! what a funk some people would be in!"

"The valiant people—who believe in war in the abstract."

"Now you're ironical, Gabrielle."

"No," she said; "I'm only hungry."

III

It was very dark in Well Walk when they arrived before her father's house.

Harry had fallen to a sentimental mood, and would talk about their future just as though it had all been settled in the beginning of things, and was as unalterable as the course of the planets. She began to think that his love for her was very real, and not a mere ebullition of a boyish sentiment. Long years of her childhood seemed to be lived again as he put his arm about her and told her of his happiness.

"You knew it all the time, Gabrielle. You never had any doubt about it. Of course, I loved you. Tell me so yourself. Let me see it in your eyes."

She laughed, and told him, as the situation seemed to require, not to be foolish.

"Father will be waiting for me. What shall I say to him?"

"That I am going to marry you directly I return from the Australian tour."

"Why frighten him prematurely? There are thousands of pretty girls in Australia."

"That's beastly of you. Deny it, or I will kiss you again."

"Oh, Harry, my cheeks will be so red."

"Say it's the frost. I must kiss you, Gabrielle. There—little cat! Why do you wrestle with me?"

"Because I feel that we are just two children playing."

"But you'll never play with any other child—swear that to me, Gabrielle."

"My dear Harry, that would be the most childish thing of all. Now, you must say good-night, I hear my father."

He held her for an instant in his arms, and she trembled. When at length he strode off in his masterful and imperious way, her father stood in the porch and called her. He had seen nothing of this curiously "worldly" scene, and was full of a letter he had just received from the Archbishop of Canterbury. This invited him to a Conference at the Mansion House, and he pointed out with satisfaction that it had been written at the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth.

"This movement may not bring all the nations in, or make them dwell together in harmony and peace, he said, "but it will certainly bring peace to thechurches. Of course, they will ask me to speak, Gabrielle."

"When is it for, father?" she asked him.

"In ten days' time—at the Mansion House."

"You will have to get a typewriter; I shall be at Richmond."

"I think it is better. I should not like Sir Jules or Mr. Faber to know that you do such work, Gabrielle."

"Oh," she said with a light laugh, "I don't think they would be shocked, father. They are both self-made men."

"Yes, but self-made men rarely like self-made women. It's the way of the world. If we go to America——"

"But you do not intend to accept the call from Yonkers, father?"

He shook his head.

"A man might do a great work over there. My imagination is sorely tempted. I am altogether at a loss."

She was too tired to take up the ancient arguments which this threadbare question had provoked. Later on, in her own bedroom, she sat before a brisk fire, and tried to take stock of the varied events of that busy day.

Vaguely out of the mists there emerged the truth, that two men had made love to her, and that one was a man who might presently rule the Western world. She could look down a vista of fable land to a future surpassing all expectations of her dreams, and believe that at a word she might enter in. The obverse ofthe medal was Harry Lassett and the story of her youth. This lad had crept into the secret places of her heart. She still trembled at a memory of his kisses. With him, life would be meticulous—a villa and a trim maidservant. His scheme of things could embrace no great idea; and yet he, too, was a popular hero, and great throngs would go to Lords to see him play. Gabrielle knew that she loved him; but she doubted if her love would prove as strong as the dreams.

It was midnight when she undressed.

The weather had turned much warmer. She opened her window to discover that it was snowing, and that the snow melted as it fell.

The fables were already discredited. It seemed almost an omen.

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