The Temple of Sul, like that of Vesta, was circular, to represent the world; and in the centre of the temple stood the altar of the sacred flame, ever burning to symbolise the central fires of Mother Earth, just as the sun was deemed to be the centre of the universe.
There were nothing strange or unusual in freedom of conversation between the Priestess and the Sculptor—who, in former years, had added many decorations to the Temple. The virgin priestesses were permitted to receive the visits of men by day; by night none but women were suffered to enter their apartments, which adjoined the sacred building in which they ministered. Each priestess was pledged to continence for thirty years. During the first ten they were employed in learning the tenets and rites of their religion. During the next ten they engaged in actual ministrations. In the final ten years they were employed in training the younger vestals, and after the age of thirty they might abandon the functions of the temple and marry. Few exercised that option. Custom, when such an age was reached, had become ingrained, the impulses of youth frozen, and the honour paid to their office became more valued than the prospects of marriage.
The reverence shown to them was very great, but so also was the punishment that followed a lapse from the letter or the spirit of their duties. The least levity in conduct, the smallest neglect of ministerial duty, was dealt with by the Pontifex or the Flamens, and visited with great severity. The loss of virginal honour, or the failure to maintain the sacred fire, involved a penalty of inexpressible terror. The condemned priestess, placed in a litter, shut up so closely that her loudest cries were scarcely audible, was carried through the city in the order, and with the adjuncts, of a funeral procession, a journey of death in life—its goal the niche or narrow vault in which the living vestal was to be immured.
THE SCULPTOR'S STORY.
The dreamer knew these things, and still dreamed on. It seemed as if her own voice broke the silence:
"Fain would I know more of this same Paul of whom you speak."
Then she paused, but looks still questioned him. Presently the young Roman spoke again—
"My father, the centurion Julius, was charged to carry him to Rome, and I had planned to bear him company. We took ship to sail along the coasts of Asia; touched at Sidon and afterwards at Cyprus, the winds being contrary. Later we transhipped at Alexandria, and thus reached Crete. The seas grew dangerous, and the sailors feared. Scarcely had we sailed when there arose that strong, tempestuous wind they call Euroclydon. The ship, being caught, could not bear against the wind, and we let her drive. Then, near the island of Clauda, we were like to be driven on the shore; and fearing quicksands, we struck sail, and so were driven again. The tempest tossed us, and the ship was lightened. We cast adrift the tackling; but still the tempest held us; neither sun nor star appeared for many days, and all that time the ship was driven before the storm, until at length the shipmen deemed that we drew near to land. They sounded and found twenty fathoms. Again they sounded and found five fathoms less. Then, fearing we should be upon the rocks, they made all haste to cast four anchors from the stern, and waited for the day."
"The storm had lasted long?"
"For fourteen days and nights."
"And there were many in the ship?"
"Two hundred, three-score and sixteen souls; and everyone was saved. Land lay before us, though we knew it not. But we discovered close at hand acreek. So they took up the anchors, loosed the rudder-bands, hoisted the mainsail to the wind, and made for shore. She ran into a place where two seas met, and went aground. The forepart held and seemed immovable, but soon the hinder part was broken by the violence of the waves. The soldiers then would have killed all the prisoners, lest they should escape, but my father stayed their hands. Those who could swim sprang first into the sea. Others on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship, made for the land, and I, with all the rest, came safe ashore."
"The gods be thanked; the gods be thanked for that." The words came fervently from the Vestal's lips.
He turned on her and sighed. "What! still the gods?"
She pressed her hands upon her brow. "Is there no more to tell?"
He paused a moment. "Already I have told too much if told in vain. The island we had reached was Melita, and Publius, the chief man of the place, received us courteously. Paul healed his father of a grievous sickness, and many others also, ere we departed in a ship of Alexandria. We touched at Syracuse, and then at Rhegium, whence we went towards Rome. There many brethren greeted Paul with joy, and there in reverence and sorrow did I part from him."
"And he—this Paul himself?"
"Remains at Rome, having his own hired house, receiving all who come to him, preaching of the Heavenly kingdom, teaching with all confidence, of the coming of the Christ—no man yet forbidding him."
Deep silence fell between them, and the only soundcame from a droning that in Sulcastra never ceased by night or day—the voice of the rushing river as it poured across the weir.
Now they stood erect; each was tall and nobly framed; each face had beauty intellectual and physical. Yet in the sculptor's features and his deep-set eyes there was the look that visionaries wear, the stamp of those who nourish great ideals. The gaze the priestess bent upon him told a different tale. The dreamer knew this woman loved this man, while he, as yet, had found no passion in his soul for her. She raised her hand in gesture of adieu, and moved with slow steps towards the temple. Then, as if stirred by sudden impulse, she turned to him again.
"And this Paul—tell me—what teacheth he concerning women?"
"He teacheth that man is the image and the glory of God, and woman the glory of the man. That man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man: neither was man created for the woman, but the woman for the man. He commandeth that women keep silence in the Christian churches, and in all things be subject to their husbands, for the husband is the head of the wife."
"Then he forbiddeth not to marry?"
"Is not Paul the Apostle of Him who blessed the marriage feast of Cana?"
"In whom thou dost believe?"
"In whom I do believe," he answered steadfastly. "I tell thee that the banner of the Cross shall one day float above the capitol of Rome itself."
The priestess took two swifter steps towards him. "Then why, O Lucius Flaccus, hast thou built here an altar to our Goddess Sul?" She pointed to the pedestal beside them; and he, answering not a word,stretched forth his hand and drew away the covering that concealed the apex.
There, in the fading light, there stood revealed the hated emblem of the Christian Faith.
"A cross!" she cried, "a cross!"
The sculptor raised his eyes and clasped his hands:
"The Cross of Him who died for all the world!"
THE VESTAL'S FATE.
The spirit of the dream had changed. A sense of horrible foreboding agonized the dreamer. No longer did the sculptor and the priestess look down upon Sulcastra. Yet the dreamer knew all that had happened and was happening still.
The city was in tumult. The baths, the public schools, the temples were deserted. People thronged the streets. There was but one thing spoken of—an outrage on the goddess whom they all revered. Lucius Flaccus, the favoured sculptor of Sulcastra, son of Julius the centurion, had erected on the threshold of her temple an altar to the God-Man of the Nazarenes. Nor was that all. The sacred fire that should have been kept burning in Sul's temple had been suffered to die out, if indeed it had not been deliberately extinguished; climax of all—Verenia, priestess of Sul, had been found in the broad light of day kneeling with bowed head before the hated emblem that profaned the grove. Amazement had given place to fury. The cry went up for punishment—a cry redoubled when it became known that the augurs foretold dire calamity for Sulcastra and the citizens, as the inevitable consequence of an outrage so profane. The people feared the vengeance of the gods!
Yet there were some who kept a grief-stricken silence in the midst of all the raging of the citizens, for each of the offenders was well esteemed, and both belonged to honoured Roman families. The dreadful fate that lay in store alike for the sculptor and the priestess moved many hearts to awe and anguished apprehension. In each case the appalling penalty was as certain as the dawn of day. Lucius Flaccus would be carried to the rock of Sul, high on the steepest hill that overlooked the valley, and thence cast headlong on the rocks below. For Verenia, the priestess, a yet more awful punishment was prepared—the slow starvation of a living tomb.
The dreadful preparations were complete. The Vestal's grave was ready—a narrow niche in the massive stone foundations of the Temple—the temple of that goddess whose worship she had mocked. In this tiny cell was placed a pallet, a lamp that when lighted would burn for forty hours, and a small quantity of food. All knew what course the funeral ceremonies would follow. The Pontifex would read some prayers over the doomed priestess, but without the lustrations and other expiatory ceremonies that were used at the burial of the dead. When the last prayer had been uttered, the lictors would let her down into the vault, the entrance would be filled with slabs of stone, then covered up with earth.
The awful hours, the agonizing days, would slowly pass. The lamp would flicker and the light expire. Deep silence that no shriek could pierce would shut the buried vestal from the ken of all who loved her. The food would fail; then, slowly, hour by hour, and day by day, the dreadful sentence of the law would be fulfilled. No father, mother, lover, friend, could save the victim, or by one iota lessen thetorture of starvation, or that still greater torture of the brain to which her judges had condemned her.
Did not the crime of which she was convicted strike at the root of the religion of the people? The maintenance of the sacred fire as a pious and propitiatory observance was not peculiar to the Romans. The Hebrews held it a divine commandment: "The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar, saith the Lord; it shall never go out." Undying fires were maintained in the temples of Ceres at Mantinea; of Apollo at Delphos and at Athens; and in that of Diana at Echatan. A lamp was always burning in the temple of Jupiter Ammon. The ancient custom came from the Egyptians to the Greeks, and from the Greeks to the Romans, who had made it a vital, essential feature of their faith. Like the veil of Astoreth in the temple of the moon-goddess at Carthage; like the sacred shield which, as Numa Pompilius avowed, had fallen from heaven, the altar-fire of Sul safeguarded the domestic prosperity, the political wisdom, the military supremacy of Rome in Britain.
And this gross insult to the mighty goddess had been perpetrated in the midst of the festival; on the very eve of the ceremony of the blessed waters used specially on that occasion for purifying the temple of Sul. It was a local event of paramount importance, for then the statue of Sul was covered with flowers and anointed with perfumed oil. The Salii marched through the city carrying vessels, richly decorated and of beautiful design, containing water from the sacred spring. The feast lasted for three days, and during that time the Romans undertook no serious or important business. The banquets with which the festival was concluded were magnificent and costly. The edict of Numa Pompilius enjoiningreverence to the gods remain unrepealed. It was obeyed in Sulcastra as in Rome itself. Inscribed on tables of stone, it could be read in all the schools and temples:
"Let none appear in the presence of the gods but with a pure heart and sincere piety. Let none there make a vain show and ostentation of their riches but fear lest they should thereby bring on themselves the vengeance of heaven.
"Let no one have particular gods of his own, or bring new ones into his house, or receive strange ones unless allowed by edict. Let everyone preserve in his house the oratories established by his fathers, and pay his domestic gods the worship that has always been paid to them.
"Let all honour the ancient gods of heaven, and the heroes whose exploits have carried them thither, such as Bacchus, Hercules, Castor and Pollux. Let altars be erected to the virtues which carry us up to heaven; but never to vices."
These dread laws the sculptor and the priestess had impiously broken and defied.
The climax was at hand. A strange, loud clangour beat upon the ear, pierced by the wailing cry of weeping women. The dreamer heard the tramp of many feet; then saw a long and closely packed procession emerging from the centre of the city. Slowly and solemnly the multitude advanced. The first section of the great procession reached the narrower road which wound amid the trees that beautified the Hill of Sul. High up on the barer slopes of the great hill stood out the jutting rock from which the sculptor was to take his last long gaze upon the sunlit world. A band of lictors headed the procession. Behind them, with head erect, walked Lucius Flaccus on the road to death.
The trees swayed gently in the morning breeze,the birds were singing in the groves; the glory of the summer decked the land. Yet the tenderness of nature and all the splendour of the world seemed but to mock the tragedy of that slow procession. On every side was life, life, strong, abundant, free; but this one lonely man, bare-headed and white-faced, who climbed the hill, had done with life. With each step of the slow advance he drew nearer and nearer to the gate of death.
The second part of the procession was lead by twelve Salii, each of whom carried a shield on his left arm and a javelin in his right hand. They were dressed in habits striped with purple, girded with broad belts, and clasped with buckles of brass. On their heads they wore helmets which terminated in a point. From these men the clangour came. Sometimes they sang in concert a hymn to Sul; sometimes they advanced with dancing step, beating time with their javelins on their shields. Next came many mourners, women and children, weeping and wringing their hands as in a funeral procession; and then a closely-curtained litter, with priests on either hand followed by the Pontifex, magnificently habited and carrying a staff or sceptre in his hand.
Priestesses, with bowed heads and clasped hands, followed the Pontifex. Then came another body of lictors, followed by a miscellaneous multitude of citizens and their families; and, finally, a tall centurion leading a company of soldiers.
The road grew steeper, narrower, winding round the hill; and the first body of lictors, with their prisoner, had passed out of view of the company that followed, when suddenly arose a violent outcry and the clash of arms. The sculptor had turned upon his guard, seized a javelin from one of them, and mounted the steep bank beside the road. Thewhole procession halted in confusion. Disconcerted priests whispered and gesticulated; the crowd closed up and filled the narrow way from side to side.
"Romans! hear me!" The appeal, in high-pitched, fervent tones, came from Lucius Flaccus, and was not unanswered by the people:
"Hear him! let him speak!"
The lictors at the bidding of the Pontifex half turned, but being few in number were daunted by the strenuous cries of the excited crowd. The sculptor seized the moment of their irresolution and raised his voice again:
"Romans! spare her." He pointed to the litter. "You who have sisters, daughters, restrain your rulers from an act that would disgrace a barbarous nation."
Murmurs and conflicting cries were raised. The priests sent messengers to the soldiers at the rear of the procession. But the crowd, closer and closer packed, rendered it difficult for the messengers to pass. Above the tumult, the Pontifex cried in shrill excited tones: "The gods demand her death!"
Thus incited, many in the crowd shouted in assent, while others cried again: "Hear Lucius Flaccus, hear him!"
Once more the sculptor raised his voice: "The gods are names for priests to conjure with...."
For a moment indescribable tumult prevailed. The centurion sought in vain to force a way through the dense, now struggling, mass of people.
Again the sculptor made a passionate appeal: "I implore the aid of the Roman people. I call upon my fellow citizens to save a woman. To what purpose do we expose our lives in war? Why do we defend our wives and sisters from a foreign enemy if Rome has tyrants who incite the people to violentand vindictive acts? Soldiers in arms, do not endure these things! Free citizens, exalt yourselves by being merciful."
The frantic appeal now met with no response. Lucius Flaccus looked wildly round, despair and desperation in his face.
He raised the javelin, and for the last time his voice was heard:
"Then thus, and thus only, can I save her from a crueller fate!"
In an instant he sprang upon the lictors who confronted him, and, striking left and right, actually reached the curtains of the litter. A shudder of horror ran through all the crowd. The women shrieked. The people swayed and struggled, and the next moment it was seen that the sculptor had been beaten back, though not yet secured. He sprang upon a rock beside the road and raised the javelin high in air.
"Then, Romans, if infernal gods there be, let them accept another sacrifice!"
Down flashed the steel, the sharp point plunged into his heart; and, throwing out his hands, he swayed into the lictors' arms.
A dreadful silence fell upon the people.
Then from within the thickly-curtained litter came a despairing and half-stifled shriek.
With that wild, agonizing cry Zenobia awoke. The cry from the litter was her cry. It was her own voice that died away, and what was this mysterious sound—rising from the valley with the mists that melted at the break of day? The sound was the same that the sculptor and the priestess had heard nearly two thousand years ago; the voice of many waters as they swept across the weir, insistent, unceasing—the monotone of doom.
CHAPTER XI.
THE NEW AMAZONS.
On every side the continued rivalry between the sexes in their struggle for supremacy in national life was producing lamentable results. To this general evil now was added the new move inaugurated by the Vice-President of the Council in the matter of military training. The unfortunate illness of President Jardine had facilitated the schemes of that daring leader of the women, and it soon became apparent that preparations for enrolling large bodies of Amazons, though hitherto kept secret, in fact had been very far advanced before the memorable meeting at Queen's Hall.
Recruits flocked in from every quarter. The idea of military service or a military picnic for a few months in the Amazonian militia appealed to all sorts and conditions of girls and young women. Those who had reached the age when the resources or pleasures of home life had begun to pall, those who saw no chance of getting married, those who had met with disappointments in love and were stirred with the restless spirit of the times, those who rebelled against parental rule, domestic employments, or the monotony of days spent in warehouse or office, one and all caught eagerly at the idea of a course of military training in smart uniforms, with the possibility of encountering experiences and adventures from which parents and guardians had sought to withhold them.
Ready pens were at the service of the New Amazons. History and tradition were ransacked by industrious scribes in search of precedents and raw material for "copy." TheEpoch, (the unofficial press organ of the Vice-President) boldly vaunted the capacity of women to bear arms. Who would dare to deny that women were as brave as men? In modern times the Dahomey Amazons had been a force in being. An eminent professor had made researches which went to show that the Amazons of old were real warriors. Humboldt refused to regard American Amazons as mythical, and other trustworthy authorities had confirmed his view. Then there were the Shield Maidens of the Vikings, to whose existence witness was borne by historical sagas. The ancient literature of Ireland set forth as a fact that "men and women went alike to battle in those days." Did not a certain abbot of Iona go to Ireland to organise a movement against the custom of summoning women to join the standard and fight the enemy? In Europe, not so very long ago, the Montenegrins and Albanians called their women to arms in the hour of national extremity.
TheEpochpresented the 1st Amazons of England with a silken banner, embroidered with a representation of Thalestris the Amazonian queen, and pointed out that, however fabulous might be the achievements of the women warriors of ancient times, modern warfare need make no similar demands on the physical strength of woman. War had become a feat of science, rather than of endurance. It was no longer necessary for contending champions to engage in a trial of muscular strength. Macbeth and Macduff were not called upon to "lay on" until one of them cried: "Hold! enough." Battles were fought and victories won at long range. Thinred lines and Balaclava charges belonged to ancient history. And if by any chance it should come to fighting at close quarters, had woman shown herself lacking in courage, or even in ferocity in such encounters? Why, in every memorable riot in which the civil population had been in conflict with the soldiery, the women, again and again, had proved themselves to be the foremost in attack and the most fertile of hostile resource. Thus argued theEpochand other press advocates of the New Amazons, at the same time citing many instances of the prowess exhibited by individual women on fields of battle.
Vast numbers of young persons, supremely ignorant of life in its uglier and more dangerous aspects, thus encited, discovered that they were not, and could not be, happy at home all the year round. They wanted variety; they pined for change and excitement; and all of them were firmly pursuaded that they knew much better than their elders what was good for them. In their eyes all things were not only lawful, but all things were expedient. They stood up with stolid looks, deaf to remonstrances and appeals, and expressed an obstinate wish to join the Amazons. Numbers of them, being more self-willed than their parents, got their own way, and were enrolled; while still larger numbers were put back as physically ineligible, but with liberty, in some cases, to renew their application at a future time.
That the movement had "caught on" nobody could deny. That it was full of dangerous possibilities became more and more apparent every day.
Zenobia, who came to London to attend the Queen's Hall meeting, had returned to Bath to nurse her father, whose illness showed increasingly alarming symptoms. Linton Herrick, meanwhile, was notwholly without occupation, for there were sundry private conferences between his uncle and General Hartwell at which his presence was required. These discussions and reports became of the more importance in view of certain news from the East and of the complications likely to arise at home in the event of the illness of the President proving fatal.
Nevertheless, there were times when Linton found himself mooning about his uncle's house and garden in a state both of mental and physical restlessness. He missed Zenobia, missed a glimpse of her on the river, or a flash of her as she sped away in theBladudto London. They had met often, and it seemed to him as if they had known each other all their lives. He would have given anything to hear the yelping of her dog Peter next door, because it would have betokened the presence of Peter's mistress.
Before Mr. Jardine's departure for Bath, the young Canadian had sat with him and talked on many topics and on several occasions. The enormous strides which Canada had made, and was making, in the way of prosperity greatly interested the President. Linton, however, was astonished to find how little the man whom fortune had pitch-forked into a foremost position in England really knew about Colonial affairs. He frequently fell into amazing geographical errors, mistakes quite comparable with that of a certain Duke of Newcastle who announced with surprise to George II. his discovery that Cape Breton was an island.
Linton liked the President, not wholly for the President's sake, but partly for the same reason that he had developed a friendly feeling towards Peter the dog. The President, on his part, certainly had taken a fancy to him, and in those bedside conversations talked with far less reserve than he was in the habit of employing in conversations with Englishmen, particularly young Englishmen. These conversations gradually impressed Linton with the belief that this hardheaded and successful mechanic, who found himself, thanks to the strength of a numerous and well-drilled party, at the head of the State, actually was discovering his own deficiencies—the educational deficiencies, the intellectual deficiencies for which doggedness and powers of oratory were no true substitute. In a word, it seemed as if, in that time of inactivity and reflection which a bed of sickness enforces, Nicholas Jardine had begun to realise his own shortcomings as a ruler of men—his unfitness to direct the destinies of a nation great in history, and still great in possibilities of recuperation if only well and wisely led.
"If you should be down West, come and see me at Bath," were the President's parting words. "Indeed I will," said the young man heartily, and there was something in his eyes as he turned to say good-bye to Zenobia that made her colour. Nothing seemed more probable to both of them at that moment than that Linton would find himself down West, and nothing more certain than that there would be only one reason for his going there.
The young man had fought his way into Queen's Hall on the night of the great meeting, solely and wholly because he had heard that Miss Jardine was likely to be present. But he had no idea what line she was likely to adopt in reference to the momentous question under discussion. Yet the one drawback that hitherto he had found in her was her attitude, or what he feared was her attitude, towards the question of woman's ascendency. In the crush of the hot and noisy meeting, he had failed to seeZenobia on the platform, and when she rose to speak his feelings were strangely blended—of admiration at her bearing, and of dread less she might say something than ran counter to his own convictions. But her actual utterance astonished and delighted him; and the hostile method of the "Cat" provoked in him such feelings of fierce resentment as he had never felt towards womanhood before. Yet there was one sentence that fell from the Vice-President which caused him to be sensible of emotion of another sort. That sneering suggestion that the younger speaker must be in love excited him strangely. He felt an intimate personal concern in that scornful imputation. In love with whom?
And now he had ample time in his uncle's riverside house, with the empty dwelling and silent garden on the other side of the hedge, to ponder the same question. TheBladud, however, proved a great boon. It had been left at his disposal, and Wilton, the Jardine's engineer and skipper, was always ready to accompany him in an air trip. Wilton was a hard-featured little man with a soft heart and a shrewish wife, who kept the domestic nest in so spick and span a condition that poor Wilton could never take his ease at home, and therefore appreciated any good and sufficient reason for getting out of it.
Wilton confessed to Linton Herrick a treacherous thought. It concerned the wife of his bosom and the new Amazons.
"Seems to me," said the little man, "as this here scheme may be a good thing in a manner of speaking. There's girls, and, maybe, there's wives too, that wants a bit of a change. Well, that's right enough. Why not?"
"What do you mean?" asked Linton, wondering and amused.
"Wot I mean, under pervisions, mind, under pervisions...." Linton laughed, but Wilton was quite serious, his thoughts engaged in a great domestic problem, his hands busy with the machinery of theBladud, in which they were just about to go aloft.
"Well, it's like this, I wouldn't be for letting women jine a reg'lar army, but militia's different. They'd get a 'oliday at Government expense. When they come back they'd be more contented-like with their 'omes; and while they was away, well, there...." rubbing his head with a pair of pincers.
"And while they were away the men would have a quiet time, eh?" laughed Linton, who had heard of Wilton's family history.
"You've 'it it, sir, you've 'it it," said Wilton, without the vestige of a smile. "Not but what women has a lot to put up with, mind you; and there's times when they're as kind as kind. Still, wot I say is, a lot of 'em's never content unless they can have the upper 'and, and that's what's wrong with England."
Meanwhile, at Bath, the condition of Nicholas Jardine had given Zenobia cause for increasing anxiety.
In the hushed and tranquil days that sometimes come with October, the leaves fall of their own volition, and with scarcely perceptible sound. Their hour has come, and, with a faint whisper or rustle of farewell, one by one they flutter down to mother earth. Thus also, the leaves of human life are ever falling—the sighing souls of men, obedient to theimmutable design, passing from out the bourn of time and space.
In those last days, when the certainty of the end came home to him, Jardine, for the first time, began to ponder on problems to which he had scarcely given a thought in the active years of his remarkable career. Perhaps in the silence of the days, and in the deeper silence of the nights, he asked himself unconsciously those same questions which, thousands of years ago, the Son of Sirach had framed for all time in language so expressive: "What is man, and whereto serveth he? What is his good, and what is his evil? As a drop of water unto the sea, and a gravel-stone in comparison of the sand, so are a thousand years to the days of eternity!"
"All flesh waxeth old as a garment; for the covenant from the beginning is: Thou shalt die the death. As the green leaves on a thick tree, some fall and some grow: so is the generation of flesh and blood, one cometh to an end, and another is born."
"Every work rotteth and consumeth away, and the worker thereof shall go withal!"
One day the President startled Zenobia by asking for a Bible. She brought it wonderingly. He signed to her to read. And as she read to him, the sick man and his daughter looked up into each other's eyes with something like bewilderment.
"Father," cried the girl passionately, as she closed the Book, "Why did you keep it from me? Why did you do it?" The dying man looked into her face with troubled gaze, and whispered something very faintly. Was it the word "Forgive?"
A yet stranger and more terrible ordeal was in store for Zenobia. To her lot it fell to hear from her father's lips a confession that seared her to the verysoul. This confession presently was embodied in his will, which two days later he dictated to his daughter.
His mind was perfectly clear, though his hand could scarcely hold the pen. As a matter of precaution, he insisted that the doctor and the nurse should be the attesting witnesses. The will was sealed in an envelope, and placed under lock and key. When that was done, Zenobia, with set face, hurried to the nearest telegraph office and sent the following message to Linton Herrick:
"I implore you to come immediately. A matter of life and death."
Meanwhile, Jardine had settled his affairs, and finished with the business of life. Like the King of old, he turned his face to the wall. Yet startling things were occurring close at hand—strange occurrences within this very city of Bath. To others they were sufficiently alarming. Indeed, there had been something in the nature of a panic.
The first manifestation had taken place at the Grand Pump Room Hotel. The King of Bath, if he could have come to his realm again, would have encountered not a few surprises, and would have found the famous Hotel transformed beyond all recognition. The examples of London, Paris, and New York had been diligently followed. There was a stately Palm Court, with marble columns and gilded cornices. Oriental rugs and luxurious fauteuils had been lavishly provided. On a raised marble terrace, during the dinner hour, a stringed band furnished an undercurrent for the banal remarks of the diners. There were rooms in the Adams style, rooms in the Louis the Sixteenth style, a Charles II. Smaller dining Room, and a Smoking Room in the Elizabethan style—with ingle-nook and heavy ceiling beams in oak. But the peoplewho dined and chattered and smoked amid these surroundings were not Elizabethan, Stuart, or Georgian in style. They were the product of the twentieth century, and were of no style at all; they lacked repose and dignity; they were self-conscious, self-assertive; believers, and encouraged to believe, in the powers of the almighty dollar, hustlers and bustlers, who rushed hither and thither, and did this or that without knowledge and without appreciation, and solely for the purpose of being able to say that they had done it. Everything inanimate in this twentieth-century Bath Hotel was very beautiful. There were skilful imitations of Adams, Sheraton, and Chippendale; there were coloured marbles, trophies, garlands, ornamentation of all sorts in gilt and bronze; decorative panels, with consoles and mirrors everywhere,—everything being in elaborate imitation of something else and something older.
But in one corner of the Grand Dining Hall was one thing real and old—a fountain of Sulis water, which had been brought into a decorative niche and enshrined amid elaborate allegorical figures which nobody understood.
It was typical of England. She had gained in some ways, she had lost in many more. She had acquired electric appliances, telephones, and air-ships, but lost in grace and picturesqueness. Frequenters of Bath no longer wore wigs, laced coats, and buckled shoes. They no longer settled their little difficulties with the rapier. The ladies had discarded powder in any appreciable quantities, and patches altogether; but people of quality had vanished from the once familiar scene. Quantity had taken the place of quality everywhere. Money had proved the great key and the great leveller. There was a dead level in style and tone and appearance. Society had tobe taken in the mass, instead of in the class, and notabilities were far to seek.
Such were the people upon whom the panic seized, amid the clatter of knives and forks, the rattle of plates, and the popping of corks—inseparable accompaniments of thetable d'hôtedinner hour.
The visitors started to their feet with cries of dismay. An astonishing thing had occurred. The fountain of Sulis water in the grotto at the end of the great dining hall had suddenly burst its bounds! The pipes were forced from their position. Great volumes of orange-tinted, steaming water began to flood the room. The members of the string band, whose seats and music stands were placed among the ferns and palms, in immediate proximity to the fountain, grasped their instruments, and beat a precipitate retreat. Ladies, uttering shrill cries, jumped upon chairs. There was a scene of uncontrolled confusion. In a few moments, water, almost boiling, covered the floor to the depth of several inches, and male guests and waiters, carrying the ladies on chairs or in their arms, made all haste to escape into the vestibule.
At the same time the springs in the Roman baths displayed extraordinary activity. Everywhere the water rose in enormous and unprecedented volume. All the baths were hastily cleared of occupants and closed to the public, and the most astounding reports spread like wildfire through the city. The corporation officials speedily came upon the scene, and trenches were hastily cut for the purpose of carrying the overflow of water direct into the river. To the intense relief of everybody, in the course of a few hours the flood slackened.
Two days later, when people had begun to think there had been no sufficient reason for their fears,came other sounds and signs of abnormal activity in the earth itself. Faint tremors shook the surrounding hills, more especially Lansdown, and these signs were succeeded by sundry landslips, which sent many of the hillside residents flying in terror from their houses. A huge crack presently opened in the high plateau of the hill, and from this fissure arose at intervals strong puffs of curious, reddish-tinted vapour.
CHAPTER XII.
A SECRET AND A THUNDERBOLT.
President Jardine was dead.
Low lay the head, and still the form of the man of whom flatterers had often spoken as the uncrowned King—an Oliver the Second, the Cromwell of the Twentieth Century. His, indeed, had been the power symbolised by the ancient Crown, the Sceptre, and the Orb. The vanished majesty of great dynasties—the Normans, the Plantaganets, the Tudors, the Stuarts, and the House of Hanover—had but paved the way for the practical rule of this man of the people. Even yet, it is true, the jealousy of political parties had preserved—none knew for how long—the title of King for a descendant of Queen Victoria. But a grudging socialistic democracy had left the legitimate monarch little more than the dignity of an august pensioner. The King was shorn of regal authority, deprived of all real prerogative of royalty, and neither expected nor allowed to take any real part in the government of his shrunken empire.
And now that the lifeless hand of the President had dropped the real sceptre, whose hand was to take it up? Was the reign of woman to be inaugurated on new and bolder lines; or would man, in the nick of time, re-assert himself? The women had their leader in Catherine Kellick, a daring, unscrupulous and energetic champion. But where was the leader of men? Everywhere the lament was uttered: "Ifonly Renshaw were back at Westminster!" And everywhere the question was asked: "Where is he? Is it true he is still alive?"
Zenobia's telegram was delivered late at night, and in the absence of Wilton it was impossible to start immediately. Before daybreak on the following morning Linton was knocking at the door of his cottage, and in half-an-hour the little engineer had got theBladudinto working order.
It was very early, on a calm autumn morning, when Linton, at a sign from Wilton, stepped on board. TheBladud, rose rapidly into the air, but at first there was nothing to be seen. The atmosphere being charged with the vapour of the night, the air was warm, and the sky veiled with a misty curtain of cloud. In eight minutes they had risen a thousand feet, and the earth below was hidden from them by a woolly carpet of mist. Rising and rising still, at a height of 5,000 feet, theBladudemerged from the clouds, and away in the east was seen a long, long line, bright as silver. The day was breaking, and the shadows fled away. Every moment the great silver bar lengthened and broadened, a moving miracle of the empyrean, at which the young Canadian gazed in fascination and in awe.
But the marvel of marvels was to come; and it came swiftly, in that deep silence of the spheres, which is as the silence of Him by whom all things were made. Yes, all created things, thought Linton, filled with wonder—the earth beneath them, still partly hidden from sight, the limitless realms of the air through which they moved, and this great orb of day that was rising as if from the depths of some immeasurable crater. Presently the sun, as it climbed above the cloud rim, began to flood with pure and glorious light the rolling tracts of vapourthat surrounded them, like an illimitable molten sea, whose billows glowed and gleamed beneath the darting beams.
Higher and higher rose theBladud, a tiny speck in the midst of the immeasurable clouds, which ever broke and crumbled into new shapes and shreds in full light of the broadening sunshine. Already the morning mists below were in some measure dispelled, and through the breaking vapour glimpses of the earth became more plainly visible.
At a height of 9,000 feet, the surrounding oceans and mountains of vapour assumed a hue of roseate violet that far transcended the beauty of anything upon which Linton's eyes had ever looked before; while from the east a thousand golden rays—pathways of light and glory—were darted forth above the sleeping world. When they had reached a height of 13,000 feet, the air was almost clear, and far down below London became visible—London so mighty, yet now so insignificant! Linton could see a railway train creeping out of Paddington like some little caterpillar on a garden path. The steam from the engine was but a thin serpentine mist, like smoke from a man's pipe. Everything below was flat and dwarfed to one mean artificial-looking plane. Away East, the dome of St. Paul's seemed scarcely more important than a thimble. The Docks were merely an elaborate toy in sections; the rolling Thames a winding ditch; the ships like little playthings for young children. Yet the range of view had become enormous, and as the morning cleared Wilton pointed out hills and church steeples that were a hundred miles away.
In that solemn and wonderful hour Linton Herrick felt within himself, as Goethe did, the germs of undeveloped faculties—faculties that men must not expectto see developed in life as it is, so far, known to us. Yet there was the aspiration in his heart and soul. How glorious for the astral body to plunge into the aerial space; to look unmoved on some unfathomable abyss; to glide above the roaring seas; to mount with eagle's strength to heights unthinkable!
Looking upon the supernal grandeur of the sunrise, he realised that he was in the presence of God's daily miracle. It steeped his soul in faith and thankfulness.
Linton, guessing that the President wasin extremis, nevertheless had hoped to be in time to bid a last farewell to the taciturn man who had shown him much friendly feeling, and of whom, as Zenobia's father, he was anxious to think the best. But when theBladuddescended on the spacious lawn of the house on Bathwick Hill, the blinds were down. The whole place wore that sad and subtle air which impresses itself upon a scene of death. There was no need to ask questions. Linton understood.
A faint, half-hearted yelp from Peter was the first sound that greeted him. Presently, inside the darkened house, he awaited the coming of Peter's mistress.
The door opened very quietly, and Zenobia entered; a slim, sad figure, the blackness of whose dress in that dim light heightened the pallor of her face. Her hand was in his own. He looked into her eyes; the gaze of the lover softened and chastened to that of the tender and compassionate friend.
"You understand how much I feel for you," he said.
"Yes," she answered gratefully, "It was good of you to come. But, in a sense, it is too late."
He waited quietly for what she chose to say.
"I mean," she added "that I hoped you could come before ... before the end. But at the last it was sudden, so sudden."
"You have something to tell me. There is something I can do for you in your trouble?"
Zenobia paused for a moment. Then, with some effort and a faint tinge of colour coming to her cheeks, continued:
"If you had come while my father lived, I could have told him...." She looked down, and drew a long deep sigh of distress. "I could have told him," she then went on with greater firmness, "that you, if you were willing, could help us, though so late, to do an act of justice to another. Mr. Herrick, it grieves me to tell you...."
She turned away and rested her elbows on the marble mantelpiece, unable for the moment to proceed.
"Perhaps I know more than you suppose," he said very gently, "and, perhaps, I can guess the rest."
"No," turning towards him, "I won't ask you to guess. Why should you help me, unless I tell you all, everything—everything, fully and frankly? Will you read this?"
He look the paper the girl placed in his hands, but did not immediately unfold it.
"I am willing to do anything you can wish, asking no questions," he said.
She looked at him with eyes that seemed to shine with grateful tears.
"You are good to me. I have no other friends."
"I am your friend," said Herrick, not without a tremor in his voice, "yours to command, always and in everything."
For the moment she could not speak, but held out her hand to him impulsively. Holding the slim fingers tenderly, he bent and kissed them.
"That paper," she said, "is my father's will. Will you read it, please!"
Then she sat down and turned away her face.
Linton read the will. The sheets rustled as he turned them over. He folded and returned them.
"I knew something of this," he said quietly. "Now I understand all. You need tell me no more."
"Is Mr. Renshaw still living—is itreallytrue that he is still alive?" she said looking up anxiously.
"Quite true."
"Thank God. Oh! God be thanked for that!"
"It is not too late."
"Only too late for him to know and seek forgiveness."
"You mean your father?"
The girl bowed her head. Then she burst out vehemently: "It must not be softened down. I know, I feel, the horror, the wickedness of what was done. I must accept the shame, the punishment. The sins of the fathers must be visited on the children. It is the law of nature and the law of God! I want to make atonement; yet nothing can undo the past, the cruelty and wickedness of all those years of suffering and imprisonment."
"Renshaw will not harbour revengeful or vindictive feelings, I am sure of that," Linton answered soothingly. "He is a man of noble character, and a Christian gentleman."
"And it was he, a man like that, whom my father...." she paused, biting her trembling lips. "Oh it is horrible, horrible!"
"But he repented, he was sorry—the will proves it," said Linton.
"Yes, it is written there, a public confession, the dying declaration of his sorrow and his shame. There shall be no concealment. He did not wish it at the last. The truth must be made known to all the world."
"If Renshaw wishes it. But I do not think he will."
"Where is he now—is he ill, is he safe?"
"He is recovering, getting back his strength, in a monastery in Herm, one of the smaller Channel Islands. Arrangements are being made for his return to England at the right moment."
She stood up, interested and excited.
"Yes, yes?"
"A society has been formed—the members call themselves the Friends of the Phœnix. My uncle and General Hartwell are at the head of it. The aim is to restore Renshaw to power. He is the only man who can save the country in the present crisis."
"And you are helping—you are one of them?"
He nodded. "I am to bring him back to England in theBladudif I have your permission."
"Don't lose an hour," she cried, "don't lose an hour!"
"Not a moment, when the time is ripe. I am waiting orders. They will reach me here."
"If only my father could have known of this before he died."
She sighed and looked at him wistfully, then said appealingly: "You will come upstairs?"
Linton bowed his head and followed her. Upstairs in the room from which the President had looked out on the lights of Bath for the last time the sheeted figure lay upon the bed. They paused for a moment side by side. Then Linton gazed for the last time on the cold and rigid face of Nicholas Jardine.
Three days later, the sun, shining through the windows of the ancient Abbey church, fell upon sculptured saint and heavenward-pointing angel, revealed the lettering on many a mural tablet dedicated to long-departed men and women, illumined the sombre crowd of black-clothed worshippers, and gleamed on the silver coffin plate of the dead President.
Deep organ notes rolled beneath the fretted arches as choir and congregation, with heads bowed low, raised in mournful cadence the wail of theDies iræ.
Apart from the girl, by whose side Linton Herrick knelt, perhaps there were few present who really mourned for Nicholas Jardine. But, as people do at such a time, they mourned for themselves, they mourned for humanity; and recent local events—the strange convulsions of nature, with the apprehension of more terrible possibilities to come, served to accentuate the feelings of the worshippers. For the moment, at any rate, they believed in the life of the world to come. They recognised in the burial of the dead that dread passing through the gate of judgment to which man, frail man, has ever been predestined. The air was full of lamentations:
"Day of wrath! O day of mourning!See fulfill'd the prophets' warning!Heav'n and earth in ashes burning!Oh, what fears, man's bosom rendeth,When from heav'n the Judge descendeth,On Whose sentence all dependeth!Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth,Through earth's sepulchres it ringeth,All before the Throne it bringeth!"
Verse after verse the solemn litany continued:
"Ah! that day of tears and mourning,From the dust of earth returning,Man for judgment must prepare him;Spare, O God, in mercy spare him."
The funeral march pealed forth as the body was borne from the Church. Slowly the congregation dispersed, until at last only one figure remained, the solitary kneeling form of Zenobia.
Within an hour after Linton had left the cemetery, he received a telegram in cipher from Sir Robert Herrick. He gave immediate instructions to Wilton, and sent a message to Zenobia. She came to him at once.
Linton looked at her with troubled eyes. There was something infinitely pathetic in the aspect of this slim, fair girl with the sunny hair, on whose face suffering and distress of spirit suddenly had set so sad a stamp.
"Good-bye," she answered, "God grant that you may both come safely back. When Mr. Renshaw is in England, I must see him, I must tell him all."
With a final pressure of her hand, he turned away. However much his heart might be wrung at leaving her, however hard to keep back the words of love and tenderness that rose to his lips, he must be silent for the moment. There was a task to be performed. It was the hour for action. Great issues were involved. A national crisis was at hand.
That much Linton knew. But as yet he did not know that the crisis was to assume a double and appalling complexity. A thunderbolt had been hurled against England from an unexpected quarter. A swift and staggering blow, well timed in the hour of Jardine's death, had been levelled against the remaining pillars of her once proud Empire.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE RAID OF THE EAGLES.
It was the suddenness of the calamity that staggered humanity. One day not a cloud in the over-seas sky, and the next a catastrophe that petrified the nation. In London the hoarse croaking notes of the news-vendors—the ravens of the press—filled the streets and squares, and flaring placards, displayed in every quarter, attracted the notice of ever-increasing crowds. Men wrangled, and even fought, over copies of the papers, and edition after edition was reeled off to meet the enormous public demand. It was the news from Dover that created this unparalleled excitement. An inconceivable thing had happened. By means of crafty strategy, a mixed body of American and German troops had seized and were in possession of Fort Warden! Immediately the wildest and most conflicting accounts were in circulation. But, separating the chaff from the wheat, the more responsible of the London journals presently set forth a bald statement of the facts—facts that were alleged to be beyond dispute. The statements published by these papers, indeed, were said to be authorised by the Chiefs of the Intelligence Department at the War Office. Further details, however, constantly were coming over the wires, and it was known that large bodies of regular and territorial troops were being hurried to the aid of the garrison at Dover.
The first report, viz., that foreigners had obtained a foothold by means of the Channel Tunnel was officially contradicted. The simple truth was as follow: On the previous evening a Hamburg liner had entered the commercial harbour, and some hundreds of her passengers at once had landed on the jetty. There was nothing remarkable or suspicious in such an occurrence. The great German liner was a familiar and frequent visitor to the port. Though it was noticed that a large number of passengers came ashore, that circumstance was plausibly explained by the statement of the ship's officers, who said that something had gone wrong with her machinery. It would take the engineers two hours or more to put right the defect. What more natural than that most of the passengers should land and fill up the time by the inspection of the points of interest in the town? The harbour officials estimated that altogether some three hundred men had come ashore. They had the appearance of tourists. The evening was cold, and, wearing travelling caps and capes or ulsters, the visitors passed briskly across the jetty and disappeared, in little parties of eight or nine, into the town.
The townspeople, as they were putting up their shutters, noticed the strangers as they passed through the streets. It was remarked that they spoke to each other in low tones or not at all, also that they did not loiter or stare about them like ordinary sightseers. The general impression was that they had only landed to stretch their legs, and meant to climb the hill and then come back again. They certainly did climb the hill, but none of them returned. It was not until an hour later that an amazing rumour spread throughout the town. The story was brought by bands of excited Amazons belonging to those towhom Fort Warden had temporarily been given up for gunnery practice. Their pale faces and distraught appearance at once made it clear that something very serious had happened. Yet the townsfolk were incredulous. The thing seemed so absurd, so impossible! These girl-soldiers, they thought, were the victims of some monstrous practical joke or of hysterical hallucination. Who could possibly credit such a tale? But the Amazons, in trembling tones and with nervous gestures, declared that it was true. Their numbers rapidly increased; some of them came tearing down the Castle Hill in uncontrollable alarm. All of them, in one way or another, verified the amazing story.
It was this: A band of foreigners, comprising 150 Americans and 150 soldierly Germans, armed with revolvers, had "rushed" Fort Warden. The approaches were open at the time, and guarded by only a few artillerymen. It was visitors' day, and the visitors were departing as the foreigners arrived. The struggle was of the briefest. Those of the artillerymen who showed fight had been instantly shot down. The others had been secured, together with the chief gunnery instructor and the head of the chemical department—a non-combatant from whom the foreigners had violently forced such information as they needed. As for the Amazons themselves, they had not been maltreated—but, what was worse, many had been insultingly kissed or roughly caressed by the invaders. With all speed and no ceremony, they had been contemptuously bundled out of the fort—and here they were to tell the tale!
A staff-officer at the local head-quarters, to whom the report was carried by a breathless tradesman, lost no time in ringing up Fort Warden. For sometime there was no reply. He rang angrily again and yet again; at last came some unintelligible response. He swore irritably, and then roared an inquiry:
"Are you there? Who is it?"
Still no reply.
"Why don't you answer? What's this I hear about the Fort?"
The only answer was an inarticulate growl.
"Why the devil don't you speak? Who are you?"
Then, at last, came an intelligible response—in English with a strong American intonation:
"Guess you'd better come and see!"
How and why had this dastardly combined attack on England come to pass? The story can be briefly told. Great Britain had long been regarded by America as old and stricken in years—not merely as the old country, but as a country that was in its dotage—old and played out. America was young and lusty, and quite persuaded that the old folk at home were too feeble to retain the management of the old Estate. Already the United States, in the scramble for British possessions, had pocketed some nice little pickings. The West Indian Islands, the Bermudas and British Guiana, had been virtually surrendered to Washington. England for years, but in vain, had sought to placate this big and blustering branch of the ancient race whenever family friction had arisen. Again and again weaker members of the clan, poor relations, like Newfoundland, had been sacrificed to the demands of the United States. But some appetites are insatiable, some ambitions unbounded. A new order of American politicians had arisen, men who aimed at a great federation of the Anglo-Saxon race, with America not as the junior partner, but as the headand ruling spirit of that federation. When the possessor of a great estate becomes imbecile or lapses into second childhood his affairs are taken out of his hands—for his own good and for the due protection of his solicitous relations. That, argued the plotters, was just what was needed in the case of Great Britain. The indications of decrepitude had been slowly but, to keen observers, convincingly manifested during a period of more than thirty years. Thirty years ago Englishmen would have scouted the idea of an American invasion, or the idea of America in alliance with Germany against Great Britain. Monstrous! Was not blood thicker than water? Were not the American people our own kith and kin? Yes, but times had changed, while human nature had remained the same. America had become a cosmopolitan country. From all parts of Europe—and especially from Germany—men had emigrated to the United States. Thither, too, swarms of the yellow from China and Japan, had insidiously made their way in spite of opposition; and year after year the black population of the great continent had enormously increased, while the Anglo-Saxon birth-rate had rapidly declined. The British element in America thus had been absorbed, submerged. The old and consolatory theory of family ties, like other popular fallacies fondly cherished in spite of the march of events, at last had been convincingly exploded by the raid on Dover.
Signs of the coming times had not been wanting. England, fearing a German invasion, had kept her fleets in home waters. The great scheme of Imperial Defence, much discussed in 1909, had not been perfected. As far back as the earthquake of 1906 in Jamaica, the growing inability of England to look after her outlying possessions had been strikinglyinstanced. No British Squadron was near at hand in that hour of trial to succour the afflicted islanders. Was it not an American, not an English, Admiral who had come to the rescue of the British colony? Had not the English Governor been summarily suppressed by the Home Government because he had ventured sarcastically to point out that American assistance, however kindly meant, was not required, and had not been regulated by the accepted law of nations?
From that day forth—and there had been other similar examples—the more enterprising politicians of Washington took an increasing interest in British affairs, and dreamed dreams in which the old familiar colours on the map of the world—where once upon a time red was so predominant—underwent some radical and striking alterations.
Of course, there was one part of the British dominions, and that very near to the centre of British Government, in which America had taken the closest interest for more than a century. There was Ireland, the emigrated population of which had become part of the mixed population of the United States. The Irish vote, moreover, had become of increasing importance to those who wished to hold the helm at Washington; and, in truth, it was the old and long cherished idea of planting the American standard on Irish soil that gradually had led up to this daring exploit, the news of which the great guns of Fort Warden were booming out to all the world.
It was not really surprising that men with so marked an aptitude for commercial enterprise as the American wire-pullers should have turned covetous eyes towards the Isle of Erin. Ireland was the great junction for the ship-line between the Old Country and the New, an unexploited island of noble harbours, rich in mountain, lake, and river.
A certain Senator Hiram P. Dexter, a Prince of Tammany, who had become President of the United States, crystallised the idea thus:
"England had colonised America. Why should not America re-colonise depopulated Ireland. She could then dominate her former senior partner in the ancient British firm and make things hum!"
The idea was "cute," inspiring. Nevertheless, it was certain that, however anxious she might be for peace and quietness, Britannia could never tolerate another flag so near to her own centre of government. The line must be drawn somewhere. Hiram P. Dexter and his friends realised that for dominion in Ireland, even under the Jardine dispensation and in the reign of woman, England must needs fight, fight to the bitter end; unless, indeed, by some master-stroke of policy and daring she could first be disabled by the strong man armed.
Hence the plan of campaign—by unscrupulous strategy to seize the key of the castle, the stronghold of Dover; while, at the same time, the squadrons of the two Eagles menaced the coast of Ireland itself and landed troops at various points.
It was an infamy; it was a dastardly and fratricidal act; it was a combination worthy of Herod and Pilate! All these things were said. But history is not made or unmade by the aid of epithets. History reckons with great national forces, race problems, and the bed-rock of accomplished facts. Abundant precedents could have been cited, and nothing succeeds likes success. In this case, if the attempt should fail, it might be explained away as the mad raid of a band of freebooters. Those who survived might be nominally called to account, just as had happened fifty years earlier after the futile raid of a certain Dr. Jameson, and others, when one Krugerwas "King" of the Transvaal. In either event, whatever England might think and say of this stab in the back, there were millions in the States who would applaud the blow as smart beyond anything that had ever been attempted by American Presidents, and Hiram P. Dexter would go down to posterity as a Napoleon of enterprise—the man who realised that even America was not big enough in these mid-century days for the mixed peoples of the States; that the dominant race in that massed population needed more room to turn round in; more scope for hustling; fresh fields and pastures new for the feverish multiplication of the almighty dollar.
But there was another nation to be reckoned with.
The two greatest competitors for world-power and commerce were Germany and America. And Germany and America did not want to fight—at present. A system of mutual concessions—with mental reservations—better suited the provisional purposes of Berlin and Washington, at any rate for the time being. Clearly, nothing could be done by way of aggression in Europe without taking Germany into account. So the business-like President of the States had engineered with the Germans what brokers and auctioneers describe as a big "knock-out." They had come to an understanding—about England—an understanding provisional and tentative.
Again, thirty years ago Englishmen would have scouted such an idea. But nothing stands still. We ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour we rot and rot. So also with the Empires of the world. The law of the survival of the fittest operates in all created things. Britain herself had been one of the chief exponents of this immutable law. Not by means of Peace Conferences and a tentative reductionof armaments, coupled with pious platitudes concerning methods of barbarism—otherwise War—had her great Empire been built up. With the strong hand, in past times, we had belaboured effete and wealthy Spain. With force of arms we had driven from the seas Holland—once our great and powerful rival for the trade of the world. We had humbled Napoleon and the pride of France on the field of Waterloo. India had been taken with the sword. With shot and shell and reeking bayonet these and other things were done. And as we had done unto others, by reason of the necessities of national existence, so might we rationally have expected that others in their turn would do unto us.
History, though in our self-absorption we forget it, is full of dramatic surprises, and suddenly develops startling situations. The rise of Japan had been a staggering surprise—both for Europe and America, and, indeed, had become a great factor in the latest departure of American policy. There had been other shocks, and there were more to follow. Over all the white nations there hung a dark and ominous shadow, ever increasing, caused by the rise and rapid expansion of the yellow and black. The East was filling up, and inasmuch as Great Britain still held much coveted territory in the West, and had money in her banks, it was around and against the British Isles that the Spirit of Annexation still watchfully hovered—ready to pounce.
The raid at Dover—whether failing or succeeding—therefore must be viewed as a sign, a lurid, awful sign, of altered times. The hour was well chosen. Nicholas Jardine, the Man of the People, lay dead. The nation was in the throes of a domestic crisis, the Champion of the Women straining every nerve to take the dead President's place, and pursue a programme which would satisfy the special aspirations of her sex.