Swords Reluctant
by Max Pemberton · English · Gutenberg #42763 · 453,180 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Swords Reluctant
Author: Max Pemberton
Release date: May 22, 2013 [eBook #42763]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWORDS RELUCTANT ***
Swords Reluctant
Published in London under the title of
"War and the Woman"
By
Max Pemberton
Author of "The Fortunate Prisoner," "The Garden of Swords," etc.
"Peace hath her victories
No 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._
[Illustration]
G. W. Dillingham Company
Publishers New York
ENTERED FOR COPYRIGHT MAY 29TH, 1912
UNDER THE TITLE OF
WAR AND THE WOMAN
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
UNDER THE TITLE OF
SWORDS RELUCTANT
_Swords Reluctant_
TO
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._
CONTENTS
Book I.--The Challenge
CHAPTER PAGE
1. GABRIELLE SILVESTER WRITES A LETTER 11
2. A MAN OF DESTINY 20
3. BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH 30
4. THE BEGINNING OF THE ODYSSEY 45
5. GENERAL D'ARNY AND HIS DAUGHTER 67
Book II.--The Players
1. A RACE FOR AN EMPEROR 81
2. LOUIS DE PALEOLOGUE 91
3. THE DAMNABLE MOUNTAINS 101
4. THE BURNING OF RANOVICA 114
5. A STRANGE VOYAGE 133
6. GOODWILL TOWARD MEN 156
Book III.--Aftermath
1. THE MEMORABLE WINTER 173
2. OF LOVE BUT NOT OF MARRIAGE 193
3. AFTER TEN DAYS 203
4. CINDERELLA 219
5. THE MAN OF THE MOMENT 234
Book IV.--Merely Men and Women
1. AFTER THE DEBACLE 247
2. THE SHADOW IS LIFTED 263
3. THE MARIGOLDS TO THE SUN 272
4. SURRENDER AND AFTERWARDS 284
5. TWO SHIPS UPON THE SEA 306
BOOK I
THE CHALLENGE
SWORDS RELUCTANT
CHAPTER I
GABRIELLE SILVESTER WRITES A LETTER
I
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 the
_Oceanic_ and 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 complaint the 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.
II
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 little _outré_ for 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 thought that 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 quivered with 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
the _Oceanic_, 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?"
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.
CHAPTER II
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 English _Times_, 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 expected a 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't want 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 the _Oceanic_ said
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 nonsense in 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 same time 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 the _Times_ that there is ice in
the English Channel for the first time for twenty years?"
"I never read the _Times_----"
"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 meet you 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.
CHAPTER III
BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
I
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 our best, 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 is going 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."
II
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 herself amid 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 sincerity and 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 the liar; 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 before which 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 the churches. 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 of the 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.
CHAPTER IV
THE BEGINNING OF THE ODYSSEY
I
Bertie Morris was a very fair type of the American journalist, whose
body goes to Paris while he lives, whatever may happen to his soul at a
later period.
Thirty-one years of age, he knew the world backwards; was as much at
home in Port Said as in Philadelphia; wrote as though kings were his
boon companions and had settled the hash of more than one intrepid lady
with polyandric tendencies. The product is purely twentieth century, and
frequently has flaxen hair. Bertie was becoming bald in the services of
the _New York Mitre_. He was blessed with a proprietor who would have
drawn blood out of a stone and then complained of its quality.
When John Faber left London, he went straight through to Paris, and
there chose Bertie Morris for his guide. This young man had specialised
in the Franco-German war, and knew the whole story of the Paris Commune
intimately. Fired by the splendid opportunity of hob-nobbing with one of
the richest men in the world (and of eating his dinners), Bertie set out
gaily upon his fortunate pilgrimage. He had hired an old soldier, by
name Picard, who had served under General d'Arny when that worthy shot
down the revolutionaries as though they had been French partridges; and
with this fellow for a guide, he and John Faber set off for Belleville
and Vincennes.
Bertie's vocabulary, it should be said, was chiefly exclamatory when he
was not translating. He was a fluent Frenchman, and had an uncommonly
sound knowledge of his subject. Listening to him in more restrained
moods, Faber lived again those bloody days which had cost his father his
life, and indirectly had established his own fortune. All the ferocity,
the savage brutality, the hopeless idealism of the Commune came to be
understood by him. Here had the trade by which he lived prospered
greatly. It had dyed those stones with blood some forty years ago.
"Say, shall we begin with Belleville or the Bois?" Morris had asked him.
He thought that it would be best to work round the city to his father's
old house near the Jardin du Luxembourg. But first he had a question to
put.
"What I want to know is this," he asked: "How did it all begin? What set
a handful of red republicans trying to fight a country? It's a big thing
to have done, anyway. What put it into their heads?"
Bertie Morris liked the subject, and entered upon it with true American
zest.
"Why," he said, "war was at the back of it. You've seen the same thing
in Russia. Peace keeps the lid on the pot of revolution; war spills the
stew. There were just two or three hundred thousand descendants of the
old Jacobins in Paris, and when Napoleon III. was sent into Germany,
they made up their minds to keep him there. Directly peace with Germany
was signed, all the wild men came out. You had every kind of crank and
others. There were big men and little, dreamers and red devils; they
meant to govern Paris on the 'help yourself' plan, and they didn't begin
so badly. But for Thiers and a few million sane folk behind him, I don't
doubt they would have enjoyed themselves finely. As it was, what they
divided were bayonets, and there were plenty to go round."
He rattled on, appealing often to the old soldier Picard and proud of
his staccato knowledge. Faber listened with interest but said very
little. He was trying, while they drove through the narrow streets to
Père la Chaise, to realise what this Paris had been when his father
lived and worked in it during the fateful years before the war of 1870.
The first John Faber also had been something of a republican; had
dreamed dreams of the millennium and of the rights of the proletariat.
And the French had dragged him out and shot him for his pains. He had
died protesting that he was an American citizen.
A big Mercédès car carried the pilgrims upon this journey, and its
welcome in the black streets of Belleville was not blandly enthusiastic.
Blue blouses at the doors of the wine shops spat upon the pavement and
cursed the bourgeoisie; coarse women with skirts hanging about them like
rags laughed brutalities and flung indecencies after them. There were
pale-faced Apaches and white and callous children. It was inevitable
that these should suggest their forbears of 1870, and even the old
soldier remarked the fact:
"They would burn Paris again to-morrow, messieurs--as I have seen it
burned already. Ah! the terrible days!"
He tried to give them a picture of the fateful week--the last of the
month of May and of the Commune. The Communards had been driven into the
eastern labyrinth of the city then, he said, and in the anger of defeat
had sent their women forth to burn this Paris which could not defend
them. Since Nero fiddled, no such spectacle had been seen in Europe. The
old man told them the story with eyes uplifted and hands clenched. He
had become as a child, and these were the scenes of his youth.
"It was on the Tuesday night that they burned the palace of the
Tuileries," he said. "The women went out with naphtha; I saw them
running like devils through the streets and crying to one another to
fire the houses. The day before that, the Hôtel de Ville flamed up. They
say it was an accident, but--God knows. The 'Council of State,' the
Bank, the Bourse, the Church of St. Eustache, all were burned those
terrible days. There was one bank of the river a wall of fire on the
Wednesday night; a man could have read his paper at Passy. It was as
light as day, they told me, in the park at Versailles. All the streets
were full of wild, screaming people; but if you went a little way toward
the Bois you heard the cannon, you stumbled over the dead. What a
butchery was that, messieurs! God help those who went out of their
houses to see what the soldiers were doing! Ladmirault, Galifet, Vinot,
Cissey--those were the names of the generals. They held their courts
under the trees, in the cafés, at the street corners. It was sufficient
to have worn a blouse, to be sorry for the dead, to express displeasure
at what was being done--away went such a man or woman to the nearest
wall. We are now coming to the Rue Lafayette. I was in this very street
when my company seized the Communard, Varlin, and dragged him up to the
Buttes Montmartre. They tied his hands behind his back and cut his face
with their sabres while he walked. It was a horrible thing to see,
messieurs! When he could no longer walk, they carried him until someone
thought it time to kill him with the butt end of a musket. They say he
was the cleverest member of the Commune--I do not know; I was only of
the infantry of the line, and their politics did not concern me."
Faber listened to all this with the interest of a man who is obsessed by
one dominating idea. This Commune had been the first attempt in modern
times to set up the socialism of Marx--and in what had it ended? In a
deluge of blood, and the derision of all sane people. He wondered what
would have been the modern story of Paris if Félix Pyat and his fellows
had been stronger than Thiers and the Versaillese. A consummate
knowledge of modern politics reminded him that the blue blouses of
France were still socialistic to the core, and that individualism sat
upon a throne of straw. He had often thought that such fortunes as his
own would never be made by generations to come; but that concerned him
little, for he had no children. The reflection brought an image of
Gabrielle Silvester to his mind. It was odd that he should think of her
while the old soldier related these bloody scenes.
Bertie Morris, on the other hand, enjoyed himself immensely. He drove
his tame millionaire as far up the Butte as he could, and even took him
to the Rue Lepic and the Moulin de la Galette. He was a prize to be
shown to artists and authors, poor devils who would dine that night for
fifty sous and sell their masterpieces for as many to-morrow. This
pilgrimage of the ateliers was not unwelcome to Faber, and was made at
his own request.
"I want to hear of a man," he said, "Louis de Paleologue is his name."
"Where do you think he hides up?" Bertie asked.
Faber said that he had no idea.
"He was drawing for Gavarnie some forty years ago. I've never heard of
him since, and I wasn't born then."
"Say, that's simple. Has he any grandfathers alive?"
"It's a fine story," was the quiet response. "I only learned it a year
or two back, when I found some of my mother's papers. Louis de
Paleologue was the man who took her over to America when General d'Arny
shot my father. There was a pile of correspondence between them, and it
does the man great credit. If I find him living I'll give him a million
dollars, if he'll take them."
Bertie Morris whistled.
"You don't suggest a preliminary canter. Why not try it on the dog? He's
willing."
"Most dogs are. My world is all barking. You find Paleologue for me, and
see what Father Christmas puts in your stocking. He's the only man in
Europe I ever did want to see outside my own business. It's natural that
I can't find him."
"Can you tell me anything about him? Where did he live? What was he? For
whom did he work? I'm right out for this, Mr. Faber."
Faber smiled.
"He was an artist who drew small pictures with a large genius. They say
he worked for Hachette. The last letters speaks of his marriage--it must
have been written many years ago. I cabled to Paris when it came into my
hands, and the answer back from your office was that he had gone to the
East. That means Paleologue was a Roumanian, and he's gone home. I
suppose I shall have to follow him."
"It would be a bully trip, anyway. Why not do the Balkans in a motor?
There was a chap here last month who had just come back. They didn't
shoot him this time."
"Well, I guess they won't shoot me, either. I'm buying a yacht directly.
Now, let's go and lunch. Your young Raphaels are rather greasy. I think
I'd like to wash."
II
They lunched near the Bourse, in a flaring café whither the jobbers
resorted. There were a few conspicuous women of the company, loudly
dressed and aggressive in the true spirit of their commercial patrons.
These liked neither English nor Americans, and said so by face and
gesture. The jobbers themselves looked a gloomy troop, though whether
depressed by their hopes of gain or surety of loss it would have been
difficult to say. Had they known that John Sebastian Faber sat cheek by
jowl with them, it would have been another story. How many a time had
he, from his distant office in New York, set that same market hoarse
with excitement, filled the streets with bawling madmen, and put ropes
of pearls about the necks of the cocottes who now made inelegant
grimaces at him when the clients had their backs turned. He thought of
it with some pleasure over a _sole meringue_. They would have been down
upon him like a pack of wolves had they known him.
Bertie Morris enjoyed his _déjeuner_ with the satisfaction of a man who
knows he is not paying for it. He had a programme for the afternoon,
which was to be capped by a dinner at the Ritz Hotel, also at Faber's
expense. It never occurred to him that he was not putting his companion
under a large obligation, and the whole tone of his talk was autocratic,
as one who should say, "I open all doors."
"We'll trot out to the Avenue de Nancy and see where the Versaillese
came in," he put it cheerfully. "It was on a Sunday, Picard tells me,
and the fraternity lot got a few shells for breakfast. They had just
made up their minds that the millennium had come, when Vinot and
Ladmirault turned up with the cannon. They had a good deal in common
afterwards--chiefly explosive. I'll show you a house at Passy with a
shell in the wall over the front door. The owner won't have it touched.
It's right there, just where the Versaillese put it."
"A kind of keepsake. Do they remember anything about all this in Paris
nowadays?"
"On the first of May, before they get drunk. I don't think it comes up
at any other time. The century isn't interested overmuch in yesterday.
It's all 'to-morrow' nowadays."
"I don't know that I quarrel with that. Half the people would commit
suicide if it wasn't for to-morrow. We're a sort of recurring decimal,
but we don't believe it."
"Say, then you don't believe overmuch in the 'destiny' department?"
"I do not. A few things are going on all the time--very few. The
civilization of Babylon was pretty much the civilization of Rome; while
Rome wasn't so very different from ourselves. There's a little levelling
of the classes; but there's no longer a goal, either in heaven or hell.
That means a soulless people."
"But it marches all the same."
"Where science leads it. There's the only clear thinking. What's the
good of talking when men don't know why they're here, or what they are?
When they had heaven and hell, they thought clearly enough. Your new
gospel leads them into a morass. It couldn't very well lead them
anywhere else. The things that go on evolve as we ourselves have
evolved. All the politicians, parliaments, philosophers don't help them
a jot. They were saying the same thing on the top of monoliths before
the flood. We are driven--but we don't know why or whither unless we
believe, as all but the fools have believed, by Almighty God."
Bertie Morris helped himself to an orange salad.
"Say, why don't you write all this?"
"Because I've something better to do. My business is to make guns and to
sell 'em."
The journalist pricked up his ears.
"There was some talk of a big contract of yours going through here. Is
that right?"
"Ah! you'd pay something to know--and a good many more. Did they couple
d'Arny to the talk?"
"Well, it's chiefly up to him. He's a lot of backers up against him in
the Chambers. Jaurés says he's corrupt."
"He'd have to be in his job. We're all corrupt, for that matter. I
believe that Walpole's right. I'd buy any man body and soul for a
price."
"And women too--I don't think."
Faber laughed.
"No money is too much for a good woman," he said.
III
They followed the programme afterwards, driving right round the Bois and
returning to the Jardin du Luxembourg.
The day had fallen bitterly cold again, and a light snow whitened the
trees in the famous avenues. Paris took a romantic mantle and covered
her pretty shoulders daintily. Habitués fled to the cafés and ensconced
themselves in warm corners; fur-clad women sank deep in the cushions of
their motors; there were ridiculously dressed children scampering about
the Bois and crying, "_Dieu, comme il fait froid_"--a fairy-like scene
quite characteristic of a city which is rarely serious, and then
tragically so. Through this Faber passed to his father's house. He had
become silent and preoccupied--a man of few emotions, but of one which
had never been absent from his life.
His father! How often he had tried to create the living man from the
insufficient pictures of that time!
They had told him that John Faber was tall and Saxon haired--a cheery,
business-like, unobtrusive fellow, very generous, far-seeing beyond his
epoch. He had founded the house of Faber at Charleston, and had come
over to Europe to learn Eastern methods. He was in Paris for the purpose
of studying the new French artillery when the war broke out, and had
lived for three months there, in the little house overlooking the
gardens of the Luxembourg. Such was the man whom General d'Arny had shot
in that very street, swearing he was of the Communards. A fever of anger
fell suddenly upon the son as he remembered his mother's story. Good
God, his own father! What years of affection they would have spent
together but for that mad ferocity of the Commune! How the one would
have helped the other! And the fortune--he would have poured it into his
father's lap and waited for his words of pride. His father--shot there
in that silent street--the man whom his mother had loved as woman rarely
has loved in the human story.
He left the car at the corner by the Catholic Institute and walked down
the Rue d'Assas to its junction with the Rue de Fleurus. Naturally, the
condition of things had altered very much, and there were many new
buildings in the vicinity. He discovered certain landmarks, but others
had vanished into the limbo of the municipal gods and trim modern
"blocks" had taken their places. For all that, he believed that he could
identify the actual house in which these things had happened, and when
he had located it, he knocked upon the door, and was answered by a trim
old woman, who seemed much put out at the occurrence. Bertie Morris was
quite equal to such an occasion. "Give her five francs," he said. It was
done immediately.
"Who lives here now, madame?"
"Monsieur Brocas, the advocate--for many years, he and his mother."
"Is he at home?"
"He is at Lyons, m'sieur."
"And madame?"
"She is in the south."
"This gentleman with me is an American. His father and mother lived here
forty years ago--before the war. Naturally, he would very much like to
see the house."
"What is his name, m'sieur?"
Faber told her himself, and the tone of his voice seemed to awaken
memories. She began to mumble something in the argot of the "Boul.
Mich," and then bade him come in. The room clearly belonged to people
who were fond of books when at home, and neglectful of them when away.
It was all very untidy and dusty; the furniture handsome, but shown to
poor advantage. The very first thing Faber set his hand upon was a
volume of Hawthorne's "House of the Seven Gables." His father's name was
written beneath an English book-plate.
"Tell her," he said to Morris, "that this was once my father's
property."
She did not seem at all interested, but she avoided their glances
nevertheless, and seemed strangely afraid of them.
"You understand?" said Faber at last. "My father's book."
She nodded and answered him, to his surprise, in broken but
comprehensible English.
"I was your mother's servant three years, m'sieur--a very little child.
I am nearly sixty years old, but my memory is good."
"You remember my father, then?"
"If I remember him! Do children forget such things?"
"Were you here when he died, madame?"
She clasped her hands together almost as one in prayer. Her voice was a
sing-song, like that of a child reciting a learned lesson.
"It was at nine o'clock on the Friday night. Ah! what a day, m'sieur!
There had been cannon since the Sunday, and the streets full of mad
people. I looked down from my window and saw the dead carried away. I
was cold with a child's curiosity. When night came, m'sieur would not
dine. He had been out all day helping the wounded, and all he would take
was a little soup and wine. Then he went out again while madame and I
were up in the front room watching the fires burn and listening to the
cannon. M'sieur, the heavens opened that night! My soul shrank at the
sight; I thought the end of the world had come. And I was but a child,
and had lived such a little while."
She paused and breathed almost convulsively, as though suffering the
terrible hours again. Faber watched her without flinching. His swift
imagination moved out there in the streets where his father worked amid
the wounded.
"And afterwards, madame--afterwards?" said Bertie Morris in French.
She looked up at him almost angrily, the thread of the inspiration of
memory broken.
"It is so many years ago, m'sieur. I remember badly."
Faber stepped across the room and laid his hand upon her arm.
"How did my father die, madame? Remember, I am his son."
"So very like him, m'sieur; he seems to stand beside me once more."
"You remember the night--you cannot have forgotten it?"
"No, no; it is all here. The heart knows, but the tongue will not
speak."
"Did you see him when they brought him in?"
She quivered, as though the scene had been yester-night.
"M'sieur, it passed so swiftly--death came to him while he walked. I saw
Captain d'Arny upon a white horse--I heard m'sieur's voice--how well I
knew it! Then someone spoke in anger, a rifle was fired, madame ran from
me, her tears choking her so that she could not speak to me. They
brought monsieur in and laid him on the sofa; your hand is touching it
now. I remember that his hand was in madame's, his eyes hurt by the
bright light of the chandelier. He begged for a little wine and I went
to the buffet; my hand shook, and I could not open the bottle. When we
had found a glass m'sieur was dead. How shall I tell you more?--m'sieur
was dead."
Her voice died down almost to a whisper; none of the others spoke for
some minutes. It was still snowing, and a black cloud was over the city.
Faber thought that it must have been just such a day when the
Versaillese, drunk with victory, entered the Rue de Fleurus and found
his father there.
Some of them still lived and remembered the night. General d'Arny was
such a one, and they were to meet to-morrow.
IV
At the Ritz Hotel a few hours later, Bertie Morris studied a fine
company with a critic's eye. He knew most of the people in the famous
_salle à manger_, and put himself up several pegs on the strength of his
knowledge.
"Say, there are some glad frocks--what?"
Faber, who had a little bundle of papers in his hand, looked round and
about for the first time. "All friends of yours?" he asked slyly.
Bertie showed a row of gold-rimmed teeth.
"Know most of them. Newspaper people must. That's young Mrs. Vanderbilt;
the Countess Sobenski's next to her. Of course, you recognize Steel--and
the Great Man. He's as good as he's great--a hundred and forty papers
and more than one Cabinet Minister pretty fond of him. Beyond him is Sir
Charles. Did you ever hear him speak? About the best hindleg man they've
got over yonder. Oughtn't to have been an actor--he'd have run
Canterbury better. Who the next lot are, can't say. The flaxen-haired
one is a d----d fine girl--I don't think. Wonder who she is?"
Faber smiled. "She's a parson's daughter--no good to you. There's Sir
Jules Achon and his daughter, but who the little girl in black may be, I
don't know; she looks like a French girl."
"I'll ask Ellis; he's a 'Who's Who' here. Fine chap, Ellis, ought to
have got the K.G.G. when he was in London."
"What's the K.G.G. anyway?"
"The Knight of the Grand Gorge--two pots crossed and a tumbler rampant.
Puts Pommery in your thoughts. Suppose we do?"
Faber gave the order and the wine was served. Accustomed to the immense
hotels of New York, he found the Ritz interesting chiefly by reason of
its guests. The women were magnificently gowned, and many of them very
pretty. Such a cosmopolitan company could hardly be found in any other
hotel on the Continent; its united wealth would have financed a kingdom.
Faber reflected with satisfaction that he had the right to be there. His
brains had earned him the title.
"About this parson's daughter," Bertie asked; "what's she doing in such
a place as this?" He had grown curious, for Gabrielle Silvester was
quite the most beautiful woman in the room.
"She appears to be eating at present."
"Yes, I know; but who are her friends?"
"The man is Sir Jules Achon. He's a big man--those who come after will
hear of him. Have you read nothing of the Federation of Europe?"
"Not as much as the top dot of a semicolon. Who's going to federate?"
"It's his own idea. Kill war by commerce--you can't kill it any other
way. Europe's paying ten per cent taxation as against America for her
armies and navies. Make one federated state with no commercial barriers,
and you knock the ten per cent down to two. That's Sir Jules's notion."
"You don't think there's anything in it?"
"So much that if I was British born, I'd give him a headline in dollars
which would set the town talking. There's everything in it except the
men. He's got the German Emperor, and he'll get the Tsar. It's the
smaller fry who don't listen."
Bertie smiled.
"Your Venus with the tow-coloured topknot seems to be in that boat.
She's looking at you all the time."
"Do you quarrel with her taste?"
"No; but you know her pretty well, then?"
"An impertinent question. She came over on the ship with me."
"And wants to go back the same way--eh, what? Well, I'd like to
interview Sir Jules anyway. There ought to be a column story in him."
"Yes, he ought to be worth fifty dollars."
"Did you say he'd got the German Emperor?"
"I understand that's so; he's going down to Corfu to see him again.
He'll get the thing through if I don't upset it."
"Why should you upset it?"
"Rattle up your brains and see the reason. I'm here to sell guns. While
that man is dangling about an anteroom, kow-towing to menials, I shall
be inside with the chief. It's common sense. I'm here to do
business--he's here to prevent that kind of business being done."
"Is he going to take the peerless Saxon with him?"
"You seem rather hot on that scent."
"A d----d fine woman! Look at her arms! She's got a style you don't
often find among Englishwomen. I can't see her feet."
"Ask the waiter to take away the table."
"I'll bet she takes fives. Her eyes are of the 'get there' sort. Can't
you feel her looking this way?"
"I'm not conscious of any rise of temperature. If you've done looking,
perhaps we'll smoke. They'll be coming out immediately."
"Then you'll introduce me?"
"Ah! I didn't say that. Is it brandy or Kümmel?"
"Oh, brandy--if you've got to talk to women."
They passed out into the corridor, and sat there near the band. The
place was deliciously warm; it glowed with soft lights, and was redolent
of the odours of flowers. Superbly dressed women rustled by them; men,
who had dined well, lurched past with their hands in their pockets and
cigarettes in their mouths. The Hungarians played one of Lehar's
waltzes--a scene of colour and of life reflecting the holy of social
holies and of the almighty dollar. Presently Sir Jules Achon came out,
followed by the three girls. Now, Faber recognised the third. She was
Claudine d'Arny, General d'Arny's daughter.
The party was almost gone by before Gabrielle discovered him. She turned
at once and held out her gloved hand.
"The wager," she said, looking at him very earnestly; "I appear to have
lost."
"Well, there's nothing to pay anyway. Are you going through to the
yacht?"
"Yes, to Naples. Sir Jules wishes me to see Italy and then the
Adriatic."
"Full of pirates and wild men," said Eva Achon, who was by Gabrielle's
side. "We shall all be carried away to a cave."
"I didn't know they had so much taste. How do you do, Sir Jules?"
Sir Jules was a little man with a wonderful head. He was sixty-four
years old, but had the intellectual energy of a man of twenty. The East
and the West were strangely blended in a countenance full of power and
quiet dignity. A softer voice Faber had never heard.
"Very well, Mr. Faber. And you?"
"Always well--on paper. You are going through to Italy, I hear--you'll
catch the Emperor, I think."
"I hope so. The promises encourage me."
"But the performances will be better. Any old fool of a minister can
promise; it is a king who performs."
"You have read my pamphlet, Mr. Faber?"
"Every line--the greatest peace scheme--I was going to say, on earth.
I'll change that: Out of heaven's nearer it!"
"Of course, it must come slowly, if it comes."
"All the best things come slowly. Man was about a million years about
before he thought of microbes--this is a great affair; none greater. It
would be the coup of the century if you brought it off. There could be
nothing greater."
"I hope to do so. Are you staying here long?"
"As many hours as it will take me to teach a man my name. I may be at
Corfu myself afterwards. I'm imitating you, and buying a yacht."
"The one luxury in the world--get a good one."
"There won't be any better when I begin."
The group passed on; Faber shook hands with Eva, but not with Claudine
d'Arny. When Gabrielle's turn came, he held her hand in his for a brief
instant and said:
"Well, how's the I.A.L.?"
"Waiting for your name," she replied. But she did not withdraw her hand.
"Will you give me the top of the bill?"
"In gold and purple."
"And printed on fine linen? Well, I'm not tempted."
"The day will come----"
He laughed and dropped her hand.
"That's Booth, the actor. Well, most of you are play-acting, anyway.
Good-night, Miss Silvester, don't forget what I say."
She laughed and spoke in a lower tone.
"I will remind you of it at Corfu," she said.
The men watched them down the corridor before Bertie Morris became
eloquent. He was not a little piqued that the girls had ignored him,
while even Sir Jules had regarded him as one regards an ugly piece of
china in a glass-case. A poor tribute, he thought, to the might of the
pen.
"Well?" said Faber.
"A d----d fine girl, but cold as marble!"
"What makes you think so?"
"Voice, gesture, everything. Give her a chance, and she'd be up on a
platform spouting."
"I don't think so. She's going to have many chances. What about the
others?"
"The old man's daughter is just a bread-and-butter miss. I liked little
Claudine d'Arny--as ugly as sin, but passion enough for a nautch girl."
"You remind me of her father. See here: I had a letter from him to-day.
What would happen to-morrow if I published it--by accident? Here's a
note of it."
Bertie read it carelessly; then with a journalistic interest:
"If you published that----"
"Or you did----"
"Same thing--I guess he'd be out of Paris in four-and-twenty hours."
"Ah, then I mustn't publish it--don't you be playing any journalistic
tricks on me!"
"I don't think," said Bertie Morris.
And their eyes met.
CHAPTER V
GENERAL D'ARNY AND HIS DAUGHTER
I
General d'Arny lived in an old house in the Boulevard St. Germain, one
of the few monuments still existing to the golden age of Récamier and
the salons. He did not care a scudo for the literary and artistic
associations of this gloomy mansion, but much for the fact that he paid
little rent. Beaumarchais had lived there on the eve of his flight to
Holland; the great rooms had known Fleury and his fellows, Balzac and
Saint-Beuve--a very panel of genius written across the centuries.
It all meant very little to Hubert d'Arny, the bulk of whose fortune
went into the trough at Panama; the residue into the hands of the
jobbers on the Bourse. The general was notoriously a financial derelict;
as notoriously a suspect to his many enemies in the Chamber.
He had married late in life--some years after the war--and his wife died
in childbirth. One daughter, Claudine, was alternately the object of a
maudlin affection and of sentimental regret. She cost a great deal of
money, and had the indecency to arrive at a marriageable age. When
Captain Issy-Ferrault, a son of one of the oldest aristocracies in
France, came forward, the general assented in spite of his democratic
principles. The business of providing for the girl aged him
pathetically. The newspapers said it was Morocco; but the trouble lay
much nearer home.
As it chanced, John Faber arrived in Paris in the midst of the
preparations for Claudine's wedding. He knew nothing of it; no one had
guessed that he had any interest in the daughter of the French Minister
of Artillery, or she in him. Claudine went to America at the invitation
of the French Ambassador, whose children were her friends. When Faber
was introduced to her upon the ship, she said frankly that she did not
like him. His manners were _gauche_, and his eyes inquisitive. She
avoided him with a sure instinct, being ignorant that he knew anything
of her or her family. This was a great misfortune, for she had many
qualities which appeal to men, and Faber was not the kind of man to
remain insensible to them.
In Paris, upon her return, she entered the promised land of preparation.
The general swore loudly while he signed the cheques, but signed them
none the less. Dressmakers flocked to the Boulevard St. Germain, and
their mouths were full of pins. Claudine was of a romantic temperament,
but it could stoop to laces and fine linen. She argle-bargled with her
father like a wench at a fair, and when he discounted the list, she
declared that she would not be married at all. A scandal was the potent
weapon in her armament. He could not have a scandal.
This extravagance of idea filled her bedroom to overflowing; to say
nothing of other bedrooms. She would sit curled up amid a tangle of the
most delicate draperies--transparencies which should have come from a
fairy godmother; masterpieces in velvets and satins--she would wonder if
life were long enough to wear them all. These things were hidden in her
virgin holy of holies, but she ticked off the days which shut the door
against the One Unknown, and often fell to a young girl's awe in the
presence of the mysteries. Then came the last night of all--the maids
had left her; the house was at rest. A dirty fluff of snow fell upon the
streets of Paris. She was to be married at St. Eustache to-morrow!
Claudine undressed herself, and putting on the most wonderful of lace
robes, she sat before a fire of wood and warmed her pink and white feet
at the blaze. There should have been regrets at the life she was
leaving: she might have dwelt with some affection upon her passing
girlhood, and the home which had sheltered her. But she did nothing of
the kind. Her thoughts were entirely devoted to St. Eustache and
afterwards. What an exciting day it must be! Every friend she had would
be in the church. One of the canons was to marry them, and afterwards
there would be a great feast and many speeches in the old ballroom
downstairs. At four in the afternoon, Justin's motor-car was to take
them to the old château, near Rambouillet, where the first week was to
be spent. She pictured the lonely drive over the whitened roads, through
the forests--then the château, grim, old and moated. They would dine
together--and then--then she would know what love was!
Her ideas were truly French, and English sentiment could have offered
them little sympathy. Perhaps Captain Issy-Ferrault stood to her less
for _the_ man than for _a_ man. She had been educated in convents where
saintly women shuddered at the mere footsteps of their common enemy and
provoked a thousand curiosities by their very holiness. Then had come a
few short years of the world--it had taught Claudine that all life began
from the hour when a man first took a woman into his arms and the Church
blessed the proceeding. Afterwards there were other things. The first
step was sufficient for her vigil that night.
Her wedding dress had been laid upon a little bed in the adjoining room.
She went there on tip-toe as though afraid that someone might spy upon
her while she touched the satin and laces with delighted fingers. Strong
scents perfumed the room and the odour of blossoms. Claudine went and
stood before a long mirror of the wardrobe and studied herself in many
attitudes. She did not know whether she was really pretty. Justin, her
fiancé, had paid her many compliments, and she tried to believe them. A
greater source of encouragement was her figure--the fine rounded limbs,
the pink and white of a young girl's skin. For an instant she remembered
the ordeal of discovery which awaited her to-morrow; then with a light
laugh, she returned to her bedroom. Other brides had suffered and
survived--she took courage.
The priest had told her to say many things in her prayers--good man, he
said them in his--but they were clean gone from her head at this time.
The girlish romance of an English wedding was not for her. No gifts of
sweet and silent hours were hers. She knew very little of Justin--he,
less of her. He had kissed her but twice, and then apologetically. Yet
to-morrow she would be his wife.
Stay, but was it to-morrow? She listened at the window and counted the
church bells chiming the hour.
Twelve o'clock.
Her wedding was to-day.
II
The afternoon of the same day had found General d'Arny closeted with
John Faber in a little room in the Avenue de l'Opéra. Here was the Paris
agency of the great Charleston Company, and hither came d'Arny at his
own suggestion.
A bent old man, not lacking dignity in a common way--dignity had gone to
the journalistic dogs that afternoon. He entered the office trembling
with excitement; he could not speak for some minutes, and when he did
so, his tones rolled like thunder.
"It is finished," he said. "Read!" And he held out a paper with
quivering fingers.
Faber watched him with half-closed eyes. He was thinking of another day,
when this man, a mere captain of the Chasseurs-à-Cheval then, had ridden
down the Rue de Fleurus and commanded his men to hunt out the
Communards. Some forty years ago, and no doubt the soldier had forgotten
every hour of it. None the less, the sword of destiny was poised and
would fall.
"What shall I read?" Faber rejoined, after a little spell of waiting. He
knew every word his friend Bertie Morris had cabled to America, but his
face was void of knowledge.
"Some talk of the deal," he ran on. "Well, I guess we expect it. Why
should they keep quiet?"
The soldier pulled himself together, and taking the paper from the
outstretched hand, he began to turn the leaves quickly.
"It is on page 3," he said. "Yes, that is it, if you would be good
enough to read."
The clock ticked in a silent room for some minutes. Faber read the
article to the end without moving a muscle of his usually expressive
face. A great business man is often a great actor. He was one.
"There seems to have been a leakage," he said presently, and then,
looking up, "Whom do you suspect?"
"I suspect! God in Heaven, what has suspicion to do with me?"
"I should have thought you were in the way of it--that is, if you take
it seriously this side."
The old man wormed with impatience.
"The _Soir_ has it; there will not be a paper in Paris without it
to-morrow. Do you not see that it is, in effect, the letter I wrote to
you on Tuesday last?"
"Who's to blame for that? I told you at the beginning not to write."
"Is it to be imagined that you cannot receive letters?"
Faber leaned over the table, and began to speak with some warmth.
"See here," he said, "you're a Minister of Artillery in Paris. You
receive, I suppose, some three or four hundred letters a day? Can you be
responsible for them all?"
"But this was sent to you privately at your hotel."
"A foolish kind of letter at the best--I remember every word of it. You
admit in so many words that our deal is for forty thousand francs, and
stipulate that Captain Clearnay must have ten. Why couldn't you come
round to me and say so?"
"I was three times at the hotel that day; you were absent on each
occasion. It was urgent that Clearnay should be dealt with if the
contract was to go through."
"Exactly what this newspaper man says. He calls it a second Ollivier
case, I see. Well, I shouldn't wonder if it made as much noise."
D'Arny tortured himself into new attitudes.
"Good God!" he cried. "Don't you see my position?"
"Perfectly. I saw it from the beginning. You'll have to leave Paris
awhile."
"Then the contract is lost?"
"I never thought it would go through, General. I wasn't such a d----d
fool."
"But at least a word from you will save my name. You can deny the
letter."
"I could deny it."
"Are you wishing to tell me that there is any doubt?"
"No doubt at all. Unfortunately, it was read, by mistake, in the Hotel
Ritz the night it reached me. You should see Morris, of the _New York
Mitre_. He might do something for you."
The man rose, white as a sheet and broken. He may or may not have
understood the nature of the trap into which he had fallen, but it was
clear to him that John Faber could or would do little for him. He went
out into the street to be offered a copy of _La Guêpe_, and to hear the
newsboy cry the latest news of this surpassing jobbery.
A less consummate artist than Faber would have spoken of the Rue de
Fleurus, and of what happened there forty years ago. Hubert d'Arny had
not the remotest notion that the man who had ruined him was the son of
that American citizen who had been shot by his orders at the crisis of
the great debacle.
III
Paris licked its lips over the scandal, and then stood aghast.
The tragedy surpassed all expectation, and yet all admitted that there
was no other course.
Hubert d'Arny was found dead in a little hotel at Passy that very night.
He had blown out his brains upon the eve of his daughter's wedding.
People thought rather of Claudine than of him. Much that would have been
written and said was obliterated or hushed when she was mentioned. Who
would break it to her? Such a blow had not been struck at the Republic
since the Humbert scandal.
Faber knew nothing of the coming wedding, and he heard the news of
Hubert d'Arny's death without emotion. There were primitive traits in
his character which this affair made dominant. If pity urged claims, he
thrust them aside when he remembered his dead father. "An eye for an
eye--and for death, the dead." A sense of power and authority nerved his
will and flattered a well-balanced vanity. After all, his brains and
money had won this victory against all the shining armour of France. He
perceived that the financier was, after all, the most considerable power
in the world to-day. Kings can make war when the bankers will pay for
it. He had been his own general and his money was his army. A stroke of
the pen had laid one of the most powerful men in Paris dead at his
feet--as vulgar tragedy would put it. A mind that had little subtlety
and much common sense rose to no analytical attitudes. He had killed the
man just as a Southerner shoots down a nigger--and of the two the nigger
was perhaps the more deserving.
In this frame of mind, he was greatly astonished to receive a visit from
Gabrielle Silvester very early on the following morning. He had even
forgotten that she knew anything of his dealings with General d'Arny,
nor did he immediately connect her with the tragedy of which all Paris
was talking. She had come to tell him that the yacht was sailing, he
thought; then he noticed that she did not offer him her hand, while her
manner toward him was utterly changed--a chill womanly manner he could
not mistake.
"Why!" he said. "Still in Paris?"
She avoided the question, and went straight to the heart of the matter.
"I have come to ask you, Mr. Faber, if you knew that Claudine d'Arny was
to have been married to-day?"
He stepped back a pace and looked her full in the face. Rarely in his
life had he flinched before man or woman, but the accusation stunned
him.
"Was I aware? But how should I be aware?"
She drew nearer, her face aflame and her heart beating wildly.
"I must know this--please bear with me. I must have your answer!"
"It has been given you. I knew nothing."
She seemed dazed and not a little helpless now. Seating herself upon the
edge of a chair near the fireplace, she began to speak her thoughts
aloud.
"The secret is yours and mine. I would have told nobody. For you, it
must be a hard thought to the end of your life. She was to have been
married to-day. Will you tell me that if you had known it, it would have
made a difference?"
He debated that, standing with his hands in his pockets, but his face
grave enough.
"Nothing would have made any difference between that man and me. He shot
my father. Very well--he had to pay, sooner or later. But I don't think
it would have been to-day, if I had known."
She was silent a little while. Then she said:
"I can think of nothing but such simple things. If I had stopped to tell
you in the hall of the hotel--just that--there would not have been
to-day! It was one of those chances that do not recur. I thought
everyone knew that Claudine was to be married."
"The last thing a man knows about any woman who is a mere acquaintance.
Have you seen her to-day?"
She shivered.
"I dare not go--I dare not!"
"She has relatives in Paris?"
"I suppose so--friends would put her to shame. Does it matter when he is
dead?"
"He was a rogue, or I would have spared him. He tried to cheat me from
the start. I found nothing I could fix upon--and I looked for it!"
She would not consider it from that point of view.
"This will always be in your life and Claudine's. Time cannot alter
judgments of this kind. It will grow with the years. I am very sorry for
you, Mr. Faber."
He resented it; the patronage of women rarely failed to anger him.
"Leave me to my own affairs. I take the responsibility. I've taken a
good many in my time. The girl's to be thought of. Who was she going to
marry?"
"Captain Issy-Ferrault. I hardly know him: an officer of cavalry, they
say."
"Poor, I suppose, as most of the kind?"
"I cannot tell you."
"When will she marry him now?"
"Oh, surely, you understand?"
"I understand one thing: he's going to marry her."
"A child would know that it's impossible!"
"Then I am wiser than a child. Will you let me have his
address--to-morrow, say?"
"I am leaving Paris to-morrow."
"Then one of my clerks will get it. Shall we meet at Corfu?"
"I don't know," she said. "I came to tell you that I never wished to see
you again."
"You haven't told me so. It shall be at Corfu."
She did not answer or hold out her hand. He knew that a barrier had
risen up between them and his pride was quickened.
He would marry this woman because she had judged him.
BOOK II
THE PLAYERS
CHAPTER I
A RACE FOR AN EMPEROR
I
There were two yachts on the Adriatic Sea waiting for an emperor.
One lay in the harbour of Fiume; the other at Trieste. The emperor
himself was still at Potsdam, and none of the newspapers seemed to know
when he would sail.
Sir Jules Achon was a man of infinite patience and superb tenacity. Few
but his intimate friends knew much about him. He had amassed a great
fortune as a shipbroker, and now with advancing years, he devoted the
bulk of that fortune to this tremendous project of European Federation.
Yet it was all done without any claptrap whatever. The newspapers had
hardly heard of it. There was no writer of eminence to take it up. Sir
Jules worked in great places, but he worked silently. Already his scheme
had the approval of kings and emperors. He had gone to St. Petersburg
with a recommendation to the English Ambassador which opened all doors.
But for a dramatic accident of destiny, the Tsar would have been his
first patron. Three ministers knew his scheme, and two of them were warm
supporters of such a transcendent project. The third saw in it a danger
to the diplomatists, which self interest could not tolerate. "This will
make an end of us," he had said. Sir Jules agreed that it was so. That
very night Ivolsky obtained an audience of the Emperor, and besought him
to withdraw his patronage. The others were too late by a few hours, and
who shall say how far that accident of time and space has affected the
immediate destinies of Europe?
For the common peace projects, beating of pacific drums and waving of
fraternal flags, Sir Jules cared not at all. He believed that
international peace could come only upon a basis of common European
interests. His scheme would have established free trade between the
kingdoms. Wars arise chiefly from commercial disputes; commercial
disputes are the first fruits of tariffs. Let the commercial incentive
be wanting and disarmament may begin. A gradual process needed many
years for full attainment--but it could begin to-morrow if the
conditions were fulfilled.
He talked very little of all this to those with him on the yacht. It
was, in effect, a young people's party and a merry one at that. Dr. Joe
Burrall had come from Putney, a braw man of thirty, who had rowed for
Cambridge. Douglas Renshaw, a gunner whose occupation had gone, came
because he was asked, and was asked because he was sure to come. He had
taken to the Stock Exchange recently as a wire-haired terrier to the
gorse, and Sir Jules had put a small fortune into his pocket. He knew a
little geology, and declared his intention of studying Slav. So far the
only word he had picked up was "hijar," and he was not very sure to what
tongue it belonged, though he used it frequently as an expression of
joy.
These two with Gabrielle Silvester were the guests of Sir Jules and his
daughter upon the _Wanderer_, the fine steam yacht which had so often
invaded the superb mysteries of the Western Mediterranean. They
understood their host's ambitions, but rarely spoke of them. When it was
learned that there was a doubt about the Emperor going to Corfu after
all, they looked upon it as a personal rebuff, but did not discuss it
except apart. All kinds of excursions kept them busy. They visited the
unsurpassable islands of the Adriatic, became learned about Zara and
Sebenico and matchless Ragusa, the incomparable Republic, defying East
and West alike during the centuries. Local interests attracted them;
they saw much of these savage peoples; were ashore for many a frolic;
lived in a blaze of sunshine and an atmosphere wholly medieval.
Gabrielle's voyage to America had been her first world experience beyond
the walls of meticulous suburbia. This new adventure fascinated her
beyond measure. She felt that she had really begun to live. It were as
though the passion of the East stirred in her normally cold blood and
left her panting. Destiny had snatched her up from the ruck to put her
in high places. Far from surrendering to the enervating suggestions of
this sunny sea, they forced her mind to considerable ambitions--and with
them all the name of John Faber would associate itself despite the
memories. This was contrary to all she had determined in Paris, and put
her to some shame. She felt that she had no right to see such a man
again, that he was a social pariah, without pity or any title to the
meanest respect. And yet he would creep into the scheme of her
ambitions, and she understood in some way that without him they were
meaningless.
II
It was a great surprise to Gabrielle when the launch returned to the
yacht one afternoon in the second week in December with her father and
Harry Lassett on board. This was one of Sir Jules' great surprises--one
in which Eva had a part. Silvester was very tired after his long journey
across Europe, but Harry was very full of it. They were greeted by
Douglas Renshaw with a "hijar"; by Sir Jules with that quiet smile which
betokened pleasure in the company of his friends.
"I had no idea you could get away," he said, "or I would have asked you
in London."
Silvester said that he had no idea of it either; an American had come
over from Yonkers and was taking his services for a fortnight. Harry
admitted that for his part he could always get away, which, as Joe
Burrall remarked, was an advantage as useful in debt as in matrimony.
This was a sunny day, an ideal day of southern winter, and they all took
tea beneath the awning of the promenade deck. With Harry, Gabrielle was
a little constrained and uneasy. She was glad to have him there, and yet
felt that in some way his presence was a douche upon her schemes. He
spoke of the little world of outer London, not of the wider horizon to
which she looked. She had built a tower of her imagination which Harry
Lassett would never climb. Indeed, he would have derided it as he had
done her American friendship. With her father it was different. She had
a long talk with him in his cabin before dinner and she learned again
how much importance he had attached to her diplomatic success with John
Faber.
"It would send me to Yonkers with better credentials than any Englishman
ever carried across the seas," he said. "Think of it--John Faber with
us! The man who has done more than anyone alive to make war possible in
our time."
"You will never get him, father. It would be a great wrong against the
truth if he came in."
"Why should it be wrong, Gabrielle?"
"For many reasons. He believes that all our dreams are sentimental
moonshine; he never could be in earnest--how should he be when he does
not believe?"
"Is it not possible to put our view so convincingly that he must
believe?"
"Are we convinced ourselves? Is it very real to us?"
"It is very real to me. I think it must be to every man of culture."
"How many that would exclude. Nelson could not have been a man of
culture."
He looked up, pained.
"Faber has been talking to you."
"No, I have been talking to myself. I think with you that war is a very
great crime against humanity, but, after all, God allows it."
He sighed and began to sort out his papers.
"There is a great deal which seems to be permitted. It is another way of
saying that mankind has been left a great work to do. We are fortunate
if we are called to bear the smallest burden. I think disappointments
should be numbered among them."
"Oh! I agree with you. And, of course, I shall still hope for Mr.
Faber's name."
"If you think it a wrong, that would be an inconsistency."
"Not altogether; it might be a great victory. He is a man with whom you
can argue."
"Then I hope you will see him again at Corfu."
Gabrielle did not answer that. Her own words accused her in some way.
A great victory! A woman's victory! What would that mean in this case?
For the moment she let ambition run away with her and imagination reared
fine castles. They went down with a crash when she heard Harry Lassett
calling her. She made some excuse and went out--just as she had gone
when Harry called below her window at Hampstead.
III
A superb night with a fine round moon found them aft upon the deck,
gazing over the lights of Fiume to the vine-clad hills beyond. A
wonderful stillness upon land and water gave place from time to time to
sounds most musical--the lingering notes of sonorous bells, the lilt of
Italian song, the splash of unseen oars, and the music of ships.
Lanterns shone about them, the lanterns of steamers at anchor and of the
Austrian fleet. Against a glorious horizon the sails of feluccas would
take fantastic shapes; the stars grouped themselves in joyous
brilliancy. There were many houses upon the distant hillside and they
stood there as beacons, speaking to the ships and the sea in a tongue
which all understood.
Sir Jules and Silvester were in the smoking-room at this time having
what Harry called "a pow-wow." Eva played sentimental themes upon the
great organ in the drawing-room; the doctor and Douglas Renshaw were
ashore for the good of the populace. Gabrielle, herself, set deep in a
deck chair with Harry Lassett at her feet. He smoked a great pipe and
talked St. Moritz. There had been trouble with his trustees, and he was
not sure he could get out there this year.
"So, you see," he said, "I came along when the old chap asked me."
"A most candid way of putting it; there could have been no other reason
in the world."
"Oh, I say, puss! That's nasty now."
"Not at all. To qualify candour is a crime. Well, you can't go to St.
Moritz. What then?"
"I didn't say I couldn't go. I said that old Ben Stuart, my trustee, was
playing the fox with me. He says I overdrew a hundred and ninety last
year, and it can't go on. As if it was his own money!"
"Do you disagree with his accounts?"
He laughed.
"Arithmetic's no good to me. I was a bit of a flier at Ananias and Dido
at school, but I could add up a column every time and make it different.
I ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer--eh, what? Surely, you don't
mind?"
He nestled his head against her knees as though this kind of comfort
were some solatium. Gabrielle was thinking of John Faber and of what his
opinion would have been of such an admission.
"I suppose life isn't worth living unless you go to St. Moritz?"
He detected no irony.
"How's a man to keep fit in our beastly country?--then, there's habit. I
believe in doing to-morrow what you did yesterday--don't you? If I stop
in England, it's covered court tennis, nothing more! How's a man to go
through the winter on covered court tennis?"
"The survival of the fittest. Whatever will become of you on the yacht?"
He puffed stolidly.
"That's vegetation. I can lie on my back with any man--I'm a plus two at
it. A man's year should include a month of it. Then I'm orderly; I know
just what I'm going to do during the next two seasons, as sure as the
moon and stars: cricket, four months; two months' shooting; a bit of
hunting if I can get it in, and if I can't, then some pat ball on the
links. What more do you want?"
"Are you putting the question to me?"
"I wasn't--but I will!"
"Oh, I should want a lot more: to begin with, a definite object."
"Ah, you're a girl. My opinion of men with definite objects is that they
are generally bores."
"But the country would not get on without them, would it?"
"Don't believe such nonsense, puss. Who's the greater man: Asquith or
Foster? Would you sooner be Lloyd George or Bobs? Who's doing more for
England--the man who helps to beat the Australians, or the lawyers who
put threepence on the income tax? You ask the average man, and see what
he says."
"The average man has not much brains; he is the servant in the house of
intellect. I should never consult him about anything."
"Puss, I know what you're thinking about--it's that popgun man."
"Rather inconsequent, isn't it? You wouldn't average Mr. Faber?"
"No, I suppose he's clever enough. He makes money. Old Baker, our head
at school, always used to say that the faculty of making money was one
of the most contemptible. But it's useful, I admit."
"Oh, yes, we all admit that, and show our contempt of the faculty by
worshipping the possessor."
"Do you worship John Faber?"
"Collectively, yes; individually, not at all."
He thought upon it.
"I suppose you had a jolly time with him in Paris?"
"Oh, my dear Harry, what next? I saw him twice: once in the corridor of
the hotel, then in his own rooms."
"In his rooms!"
"Yes; to tell him I never wished to see him again."
"Oh, you brick; that's the best thing I've heard. Of course, I knew you
would. There's never been anything said, but you owed that to me--now,
didn't you, puss?"
She would not answer him. They passed to the vague intimacies of an
incomplete amour, in which their whispers were inaudible and the sound
of voices in the cabin a warning discord. Eva still played an
intolerable waltz. The harbour waves sported about the dinghy, tethered
astern. Gabrielle wondered why it was that she was incapable of
resisting all this; that she suffered this quite brainless boy to kiss
her at his pleasure--a great bear with fearsome limbs cuddling her. Was
it because of her twenty-three years of Suburbia? Because of an
inherited instinct for the commonplace of the natural life--such a life
as all about her lived, and would live in that little world of
Hampstead? Or was it purely the call of sex--more potent than a thousand
theories, imperious beyond all the laws of emperors and kings?
The latter thought did not occur to her. She suffered the spell of the
scene, the soft airs of night, the shining stars, the harbour lights,
the waxing and waning chords of distant music. Harry's passionate
whispers were like a message from afar. She submitted to him as though
thus was her destiny written.
CHAPTER II
LOUIS DE PALEOLOGUE
I
Do you know Ragusa--Ragusa, the Pearl of the Adriatic?
It was here that the Imperial yacht carried the Emperor when at last he
sailed from Trieste--here that John Faber saw him within three hours of
his going ashore.
Here also Faber found the man he had sought so many years. Louis de
Paleologue, who had taken his mother to America after his father's death
in Paris.
Ragusa--what city is like to this of all that border the incomparable
shore? Sebenico, Zara, Spalato--who cares if they perish while Ragusa
remains?
Consider how through the centuries this little republic shut the gates
of her sanctuary in the face alike of Moslem and of Christian; how she
defied now the Turk, now the Servian, even the mighty power of Venice at
its zenith. Neither friend nor foe coming to her for shelter was
refused. She protected Stephen Nemanja, who fought her allies of the
Byzantine Empire; she opened her gates to Queen Margarita, and defended
them against the King of Dalmatia. The "winged lion" writes no shame
upon her citadel. She fell at last, not to man, but to the very earth
which opened and swallowed her up. There was never a history of Ragusa
after that fateful year 1667. The great earthquake ended a
story--Napoleon wrote but a sorry epitaph.
What a cosmopolitan company is that which gathers every day within the
tremendous walls of this fallen citadel. All the colours of the Balkan
peoples are to be seen here--the flag and turban of the Turk; the white
breeches of the Albanian--Joseph's coat upon the back of the son of the
Black Mountain. Servians are here: Bosnians and men of Herzegovina;
Italians who have drifted down from northern towns; Austrians in
possession. Crimson clashes with the sky-blue tunics of the Austrian
officers--there are deep reds and glowing tints of orange--all moving in
kaleidoscopic splendour through streets which the extended arms may
measure; by churches and palaces, which are matchless in their art. A
city girded by the libidinous foliage of the south; a city of
half-lights and shaded cloisters; of a fortress running out into the
blue Adriatic, lifting mighty walls to the caress of the kindly seas.
II
Louis de Paleologue had taken up his abode in a veritable hole in the
wall near the Dominican monastery. The place was dark and cavernous, and
might have been (but for its monstrous stones) a booth in an Eastern
bazaar. When he worked it was in the cool of the monastery gardens, the
monks stealing looks over his shoulder at wonderful forms in bewitching
_négligé_--or even at terpsichoreal advertisements of pills and powder.
For despite his sixty-two years, and the fact that he was a prince in
his own country, Louis still earned his living by the advertisers, and
was held to be the cleverest draughtsman at the business.
One grievance he had, and one joy--his daughter Maryska, nineteen upon
her last birthday, and still a child. Maryska like her father (and
another celebrity who has had a statue raised to him) never grew up. She
was the youngest woman of nineteen in the whole wide world, and when
father and daughter went for "a rag" together, it was wonderful that
anything at all was left in the Cantina--as he had named the house.
Such days they passed! Louis, prone in the sun with a cigarette in his
mouth; Maryska, flitting about the scene like a schoolgirl at play! They
went hand in hand everywhere like sworn friends in an academy for young
ladies. What money they earned would be sometimes in his pocket,
sometimes in hers. They quarrelled babyishly--the man shedding tears
more often than the girl. Yet he would have put his knife into the heart
of any who did her injury, with as little thought as he would have
killed a stray dog at his door. There had been one such tragedy at
Zara--the body was found in the harbour some days afterwards.
Maryska was a cosmopolitan. She had starved in New York, in London, in
Paris, in Berlin. Now she starved in Ragusa--except upon those splendid
occasions when a cheque came from England. Then the Austrian banker
would be fetched out of bed or café to cash it. They were rare days, for
Louis would knock down the bottles like ninepins, and never turn a hair
whatever their number. Maryska drank just as much as she could, and then
fell asleep. He used to shout and swear because she would not wake up to
draw another cork for him.
Latterly, it had been the devil to pay at the Cantina. Louis had lived
in prospective upon six disorderly nymphs--all décolleté--who were to
have proclaimed the merits, _urbi et orbi_, of a new suspender for
ladies of fashion. These drawings were quite wonderful. The prior of the
monastery who no doubt, may have imagined that they were part of a
scheme for a stained glass window, thought very highly of them. The
Austrian officers begged for copies of the paper. The governor laughed
and had a fit of coughing. He wanted to know where the models came from.
Louis would not tell him that, except to say that they were memories of
Paris and New York. He rarely drew the beautiful dark face of
Maryska--but there is a portrait of her in the church of St. John the
Divine in London, and many would swear it is a madonna of an old master.
Louis painted it for the priest, who used to tell him he was a
scoundrel. It was so very true.
Well, the pictures were drawn and dispatched to London; and then a
dreadful thing happened. The firm, which understood the female mysteries
so well, treated the financial verities with a contempt which quickly
ended in Carey Street. No cheque came to that hole in the wall at
Ragusa. Squat-legged and patient, Louis smoked his cigarette and
listened to Maryska's wholly unmelodious music. There was bread in the
house, but no wine. Well, wine would come presently.
Wine did not come, but in its place came John Faber. For a moment, Louis
thought that a customer had crossed the seas to buy his pictures. Then
he said that the firm, which was suspended because of its suspenders,
had sent an embassy with the cash. However it might be, he determined to
borrow five crowns of the stranger, and saluted him with princely
politeness.
Maryska, meanwhile, stood up ready to go to the wine-shop.
III
Faber took off his hat at the entrance to the cavern, and blinked in the
darkness. He saw a handsome man squatting on the floor, and behind him a
pair of eyes which glowed as a cat's. They belonged to Maryska; but he
did not know, indeed, he wondered if there were wild beasts in the
place.
"Say, does anyone named Louis de Paleologue live here?"
The accent transplanted father and daughter to New York in an instant.
What years they had lived there! How they regretted them!
"He does, sir, and what then?"
"You are Mr. Paleologue?"
"That is so. My daughter--she doesn't bite--at least, only me!"
Maryska's teeth were to be counted on the instant. She laughed as the
Italians laugh, without reservations.
"_Accidenti!_" she cried, and then coming out into the light, "_caro
mio_--he is too tough, poppa, I should spoil my teeth!"
Faber saluted her in a way he intended to be Continental.
"You have been in New York, signorina?"
"Five years, mister. I am all Americano!"
"Then I'll walk right in, if I may."
He did not wait for permission, but entered the cavern. It was evident
that he would have liked a chair, but seeing none, he accepted a mat
which she offered.
"Poppa burned all the chairs long ago. Can you sit down on nothing,
mister?"
He said that he could, looking at Maryska all the while. Louis took a
box of Bosnian cigarettes from the floor and passed it over.
"Say, are you thirsty, boss?"
Faber smiled at that.
"Well, this is thirsty ground. As the governor said--but I guess ye
don't know what the governor----"
"Bet you!" He said. "'Don't let it be long between the drinks.' There's
a wine-shop two blocks away."
Maryska stepped forward, as keen as a hound. She held out her hand for
the money without any shame at all--she and her father had been holding
it out for years--yet some of Louis' gifts in return had been more
precious than gold.
"How much shall I give you?" Faber asked. She replied that a kronen
would be ample. He gave it her, and she was away in a flash.
They smoked a space in silence when she was gone. Presently Faber said:
"Business good down this way?"
Louis did not like the tone of it, and the quills of his pride
stiffened. "What's that to you?"
"Might be a good deal--I'm in dead earnest."
"What's your line--pills or powder?"
"I'm neither. I make guns."
"Want me to fire 'em off--well, I'm ready. What's the size?"
Faber smiled.
"Not quite it," he said; and then wandering right away from the subject,
"I wish I'd known you were in New York. You didn't work under your own
name there."
"That's so. I used to sign just 'Louis.'"
"Will you draw me a picture of Maryska--for my house? A thousand dollars
now and another thousand when it's delivered?"
Louis drew back a little.
"Why the girl?"
"You must know why. There couldn't be a better subject."
"Yes; but if I do not choose to do it, what then?"
"Why, then I'm beaten."
He threw away the stump of his cigarette and took another. Presently
Maryska returned with the flask of white wine and the glasses were
chinked. The child drank a draught which would have put a vintner to
shame. Then she showed her pretty teeth.
"Oh, how good!" she said, and then with a heavenly sigh, "_Ecco c'e
vuoto_."
"Think you could do another?" Faber asked Louis. The reply was quite
stately.
"Sir, I am at your disposition."
Maryska went off with five crowns this time. When she was gone, her
father thawed a little.
"Have you seen much of this place?"
"Just as much as the harbour showed me."
"Staying here long?"
"Why, as to that--why stay?"
Paleologue knocked the ashes off his cigarette with magnificent dignity.
"You make guns; why not see some of them go off?"
"Do you suggest fighting?"
"That's so. I'm going up to Podgorica in three days' time, afterwards on
to the frontier. There'll be riot, rape and pillage. Like to come
along?"
Faber was a little nonplussed.
"Do you go alone?" he asked.
"The girl and I, certainly. We can talk business on the road. Why not?"
"Oh, I'll come! Here's the wine, I see. She's a wonder that girl of
yours."
Louis assented.
"Her bringing up; she has forgotten how to read and write. It is
education which is the matter nowadays. I believe the Greeks knew women.
Come here, wild cat, and tell the stranger you can't read or write."
Maryska reddened at this and cried "Beast!" with real anger. She sulked
for quite a long time, hiding in the dark corner where only her glowing
eyes could be seen. Louis took no notice of her tantrums; he had begun
to be rather interested in the stranger.
"Say, you know the fighting may be a bit lively. I'm bound for
Ranovica--want to see it burned. There was a man here yesterday from the
London illustrated papers. He's out for fancy pictures and put me on.
He's mighty anxious after the rape and pillage. I guess we'll see
something of that at Ranovica."
Faber looked at the girl; she did not seem to be listening.
"Aren't you imprudent? Isn't it better to leave your daughter here?" he
asked in a low voice.
Louis did not understand him. "Where I go, she goes. Besides, they know
me very well, these people. You are not afraid, mister?"
"Afraid! How do we go?"
"Steamer to Antivari."
"I'll take you on my yacht."
Louis expressed no surprise. If his guest had promised a warship with
golden plates his sphinx-like attitude would have been unchanged.
"Just as you like," he said. "We take the horses at Scutari anyway."
To which Faber responded with a further offer. "I've a car on my ship;
we'll put her ashore and try that road."
Louis shook his head. "No good at all; there isn't any damned road.
To-day's Saturday; shall we say to-morrow morning at ten?"
"But it was to be three days' time."
Louis yawned. "Oh, d----n time!" he said. "I never think of it."
"Then we'll start to-morrow at ten."
He drank off his wine and turned to look at Maryska. She had crept
nearer while they talked, and her head was bent to the floor that she
might not miss a word. When Faber held out his hand to her she leaned
upon her elbows and looked at him with strange eyes.
"Good-bye, mister!"
"You are coming on my ship, Maryska."
"Not with that man," and she pointed to her father.
"Pouf!" said Louis. "I will flay you with the whip."
"And I will kill you with my knife," she said quickly, in Italian.
It was the customary exchange of their daily compliments. Louis rather
liked it.
"Say," he exclaimed on the threshold, "and who may you be, anyway?"
"I? Why, my name's John Faber."
"Faber--Faber? I used to know a Faber in Paris in the 'seventies."
"His son, sir."
Louis turned his cigarette over in his mouth.
"How did you hear of me?" he asked.
"Oh, I got your name in Paris. The _New York Mitre_ people gave it to
me."
"That's odd; I used to know your mother forty years ago. Well, so long,"
and he turned on his heel.
CHAPTER III
THE DAMNABLE MOUNTAINS
This was a bitter winter on the Albanian frontier, and God alone knows
how the party got to Ranovica at all.
None but a madman would have attempted the journey at such a moment in
the story of the Balkans; but as John Faber remarked, it needed a
double-barrelled charge of insanity to venture it in the winter. Yet he
had told Maryska that he would go, and go he did.
What a country, and what a people! The Almighty seemed to have blasted
the mountains and the mountaineers alike. Such a wilderness of grey
rocks, of weirdly scarped precipices, of awful caverns and fearsome
valleys is to be imagined by none who have not visited it.
Depict a range of mountains built up of the barren limestone into a
myriad fearsome shapes of dome and turret, castle and battlement. In the
valleys far below, put the gardens of the world, fertile beyond all
dreams; where the grapes grow as long as the fingers on your hand, and
every tropical plant luxuriates. Drive humanity from this scene and
deliver it up to the world and the bear. Such is the frontier of Albania
where it debouches upon Montenegro--such are the "damnable mountains,"
as every Christian in their vicinity has learned to call them.
A desert upon an altitude, and yet it is not wholly a desert. Here and
there ensconced in nook and cranny you will come upon an oasis where a
village harbours wild people and a scanty patch of fertile soil keeps
body and soul together. Such a place was Ranovica, to which Louis de
Paleologue led his guest on the sixth day afterwards. They came up to it
at three o'clock upon that December afternoon when the sun was
magnificent over the Western Adriatic, and even these desolate hills had
been fired to warmth and colour.
An odd party--three upon cheeky little Hungarian horses; three upon
mules. Frank, the American valet, had much to say about the habits and
character of the mule, but he reserved it until they should be safely
upon the yacht again. The other two servants were Austrians who had been
heavily bribed for the venture--even they would have refused had they
understood that it was for an expedition to Ranovica. This hole in the
hill was full of savage Christians who hated the Montenegrins much, but
the Moslem a good deal more. It was bound to be burned sooner or later.
Ranovica has a fine old gate built by Stephen of Bosnia, heaven knows
how many years ago. The party rode through this just after three
o'clock, and was challenged immediately by half-a-dozen warriors with
the most wonderful white breeches the Western world has seen. Already,
and when far down the valley, the outposts of the little force defending
this wild place had put the travellers through a searching inquisition;
but they had to face another ordeal at the gate, and lucky for them that
Louis spoke Servian so fluently. The soldiers listened to him as though
a brother was speaking. They looked at Maryska with wide black eyes. Why
not?--she was good to look upon, surely, with her high boots and crimson
breeches and little Greek cap. Faber himself had looked at her a great
many times on the way up, but he was by no means pleased that she should
become the cynosure of so many evil eyes.
"Well?" he said to her, while Louis played the millionaire among the
wild men, "and what do you think of this, young lady?"
She was still upon her pretty little horse and her eyes were here, there
and everywhere; but not with the curiosity an untravelled woman would
have displayed. Maryska had seen too much of the world to be troubled by
Ranovica. Besides, she was hungry.
"I think my father is a fool to come here, and you also, boss, that is
what I think."
"Guess you've hit it first time. Are you hungry, Maryska?"
"Why, yes. Are you, boss?"
She imitated her father perfectly, and Faber laughed. They were in a
street so narrow that his horse had a head in the window upon one side
of the road and a tail in a window upon the other. A tremendous
battlement of rock lifted a sheer precipice far up above this peopled
gorge. In the shadows there moved a fierce people, savage, wild, hunted.
They gathered round the strangers menacingly, and but for the old
white-haired priest, even Louis' gift of tongues might not have saved
them. The priest, however, liked the jingle of good Austrian crowns. Let
the strangers come to his house, he said, the inn was not fit to harbour
a dog.
So the party rode on a furlong--the men, the girl, the American valet
and the Austrians. At every step the crowd pressed about them, black and
scowling. It was good at last to enter an open courtyard and to see that
none followed. Dark was coming down then and lights shining from the
windows of the miserable houses. Faber remembered that he had
communicated with the Turkish authorities before setting out and
congratulated himself upon his prudence.
"They'll want my guns, and so they'll want me," he said.
But he was still mightily anxious about Maryska.
II
The priest's house was about as big as a cow-house and as filthy as a
Spanish podesta. Of food there was little save coarse bread and
villainous-looking brandy. Here the guests came to the rescue, for Louis
had carried up victuals at Faber's expense, and now the good things were
spread upon old "Pop's" table, to that worthy's exceeding satisfaction.
None ate with better appetite than he; none smacked fine lips so loudly
over the good white wine, unless it were Maryska.
Louis had christened him "Old Pop" immediately, and he talked to him in
voluble Servian during the repast. Occasionally he interpreted at
Maryska's request, and fragments of talk were tossed down to her as
bones to a dog. They made the girl laugh, but Faber found them grim
enough. He was asking "What does he say?" almost at every sentence.
Louis picked out the tit-bits and passed them on.
"There were Turks nine miles from here the day before yesterday. They
burned Nitzke, and killed the women; some of the Nitzke people are here
now; one has lost his nose--yes, they always cut off the noses, and so
do our fellows when they catch a Turk. This place would be easy to hold
if there were troops, but, of course, Nicholas can't send any until war
is declared. Pop hopes that Alussein Pasha won't find us. If he does,
there'll be a massacre; yes, it will be in the next two or three days.
You're not behind the times, sir; you'll see the fun if there is any."
Faber looked at Maryska, and discovered that she was looking at him.
Evidently she shared her father's whim of exaggeration and her curiosity
as to "the stranger's" behaviour was now awake. These odd terms: "boss,"
"stranger," "master," picked up from the backwoods of America twenty
years ago, pleased the Southern ear, and were guarded tenaciously.
Maryska wished to frighten this American, and would have been delighted
had she succeeded.
"What shall you do if they come?" she asked him.
He said, as quickly: "I should go to bed," and at that she laughed
again.
"And what will you do?" he asked her. She leered as she put a whole
sardine into her capacious mouth.
"I shall see them fight. Men are for fighting--women to see them. In
your country, you have no soldiers. All the Americans talk a heap about
it, but none of them have seen anything at all. You will be a great good
man after this, boss!"
He opened his eyes.
"Why a great good man?"
"Because you will have seen something that is great and good."
He was very much astonished.
"Do you mean that killing other men is great and good, Maryska?"
Her face wore a pensive attitude, but she still had one eye upon the
comestibles.
"I think they are a brave people. I think it is great and good to fight
for your country."
"Well, wouldn't the Americans fight for theirs?"
"Perhaps; I don't know. You are all too clever to think about anything
but money. He says so."
"Isn't money a very good thing to think about?"
She looked at him with great contempt.
"I was not born a shopkeeper," she said, and then, "Ask poppa and hear
what he will say."
He nodded his head.
"Why has poppa come to Ranovica?"
"To draw pictures for the papers, yes."
"Is it for money?"
"If he will receive it, yes; if he does not like the people he will not
receive it."
"Then how will you live, Maryska?"
She tossed her head.
"We shall live very well, sir; my father is a noble in his own country.
He will not be insulted by such people; he is very proud."
And then she said with a ridiculous want of gravity, "And so am I.
Please to give me some of the chocolates, sir. The old Pop will eat them
all."
He passed her the chocolates and helped himself to a cigar from one of
his own boxes. The room was long and narrow, the walls wainscoted in oak
and painted a dirty pink above. An ikon hung in a corner, for "Pop" was
of the Greek Orthodox Church, and very devout--when he was not drunk.
The latter appeared now to be his condition, and when they rose from the
table, he insisted upon taking them out into the village that they might
hear him harangue the people. Night had come down at this time, but no
one thought of sleep in that oasis of the bleak mountains. Far up on the
desolate hills were the sentries who would tell Ranovica of the Turks'
approach. In the street itself moved a heterogeneous company of old and
young men, and women and laughing girls, everyone carrying a revolver in
the girdle and some armed to the very teeth. A babble of excited talk
fell upon the night air as a hum of insects. What was in store for the
people of this new citadel? Would the Turk come or pass them by? God and
the morrow must answer.
III
It was a far cry to the great arsenals at Charleston, but Faber's mind
crossed the seas when he walked alone that night in the street before
the priest's house. What particular freak of a latent insanity had sent
him to this place?
Was it curiosity or the girl? Just the passing fancy for the wildest
little woman he had ever met or the desire to see his fellow men
butchered? One or the other it must be, and he was too honest to deny
it. Either Maryska or the Turkish butcher, scimitar in hand.
If it were the girl, his vain folly had met with a swift rebuke. Looking
up to her bedroom window, he remembered her "good-night," and the manner
of it. She had told him that he was an "old, old man," and the words
struck him as a thunderclap. An "old, old man!" Good God! had so much of
his life already run? No one had ever spoken such words before and his
vanity bristled. Had the girl been serious, or did she speak in jest?
An "old, old man"--and he was not forty. In America, it is true, they
have little use for forty unless forty can command allegiance. He, John
Faber, had ruled a city in Charleston. His works employed more than five
thousand men; he was the high priest of the temples of labour his own
brain had built up. No one remembered his age there. They spoke of him
as "the new Krupp," the young genius in steel who could make or mar the
fortunes of empires. The women pursued him relentlessly, remembering his
eleven millions. He could have led the life of an Oriental debauchee and
no one criticise him. To read the papers--many of which he owned--you
might have set him down for twenty-five. This chit of a wild girl had
burst the bubble with a little pin prick of her candour. An old, old
man! The words raked his self-assurance, he could have boxed her ears
for them.
If not Maryska, what, then, had brought him to Ranovica?
Was it to see if he could witness something of that wild life of the
Balkans which had stirred his imagination in the past? When quite a lad
he had read of these villages and of what befell them when the Turk came
in. One incident he had never forgotten; it was on the Macedonian
frontier where a little town had been sacked, the men butchered or
burned by naphtha, the women violated, the old priest flayed alive. He
had the account of it in the _Illustrated London News_ among his papers
to that very day. Such a village as this might have been the scene of
it!
He passed on, musing deeply, and presently met an Albanian posted at the
head of the street. The soldier had an American rifle, and he discovered
that it had come from his own factory at Charleston. He gave the man a
couple of crowns, and the fellow grinned savagely, pointing at the same
time up to the silent hills. There were Turks somewhere up there, and he
would shoot them. The rifle was about to do that for which it was made.
Faber would see the fruit of his own work.
He walked on a little way and met his valet, Frank. The young man spoke
German fluently, and had learned a good deal from the Austrian porters.
He was much alarmed by his situation, and did not hesitate to say so.
"They tell me an attack is expected, sir. We shall fare badly in this
hole if it comes off. I don't think the authorities can do much for us;
what's more, there ain't any."
Faber thrust his hands into his pockets--a habit of his--and walked a
little way by his servant's side.
"Why," he said half reflectively, "it isn't exactly the Ritz Hotel to be
sure. Who's been talking, Frank?"
"All of them, sir, all together. Turks are known to be five miles away
and the young lieutenant expects them to ride in before morning. He says
passports are a sure road to paradise--you can get to heaven quicker on
an ambassador's signature than on any other. I'd do this block next time
if I was you, Mr. Faber, to be sure I would. We may all have our throats
cut before morning."
Faber chewed his cigar heavily.
"Mr. Paleologue doesn't think it; he's been among them before. He says
the Turks like newspaper men; he's one of them. I advised our people in
Constantinople I was coming, and I don't suppose they've gone to sleep.
Anyway, can you fire a gun, Frank?"
Frank turned a little pale.
"I'd sooner see others fire it, sir."
"True enough, and guns won't be much good if the knives get going. I
think we'll move on to-morrow, Frank; we'll learn what happens from the
newspapers."
"I wish you'd go to-night, sir."
Faber shook his head.
"There's the young lady to be thought of. I guess she's asleep. It's got
to be the morning, anyway."
"At any particular hour, sir?"
"As early as you like, Frank, if mademoiselle is ready."
The young man went off more afraid than he would say, but glad of the
crumb of comfort. His master, however, continued to walk up and down the
narrow street before the house and to regard the cold mountains
wistfully. What an odd scene! What a place for him to be in! The hole
was full of the queerest people he had met in all his travels. Every
hour added to the multitude of souls, while as for the inn or
guest-house, it might have been a barracks. Albanians whose belts were
full of knives and revolvers wrangled with refugees from the mountains
who had fled before the Turks; there were travellers, police, wild
women, soldiers, all boxed up together like sardines in a tin; and to
add to the uproar a mechanical organ played the "Merry Widow" waltz
without an interval. From time to time shrieks were to be heard and the
sound of blows. A man would come reeling out into the street with bloody
face or gashed limbs. One of them fell dead almost at the door of the
priest's house, but no one took any notice of him. As for Louis de
Paleologue and "old Pop" they were far too busy getting drunk together
to observe such a trifle.
Faber assured himself that the man was quite dead, and chancing upon two
immense Albanians who were coming down the narrow street, he told them
as much of the story as gestures would permit. They shrugged their
shoulders and entered the guest-house, whence two or three tipsy fellows
emerged presently to drag the dead man away as though the body were a
sack. Following them to the lower end of the village, Faber perceived
them disappear upon a narrow path by the side of the gorge he had
climbed that afternoon, and he had no doubt that they would throw the
dead man into the ravine, and leave the wolves to perform the last
obsequies. He followed them no further, but stood a little while
breathing the cool air and looking over toward Scutari. There lay
Antivari and his own yacht. His voyage had been successful enough, and
he had found the Emperor complaisant, but this estimate of his success
was attended by another thought, and it concerned a woman. Sir Jules
Achon would be at Ragusa by this time. Had Sir Jules seen the Emperor,
and if so, to what end?
Here was a memory of Gabrielle Silvester speaking to him, and in some
way moving him to an exaltation of success, not wholly chivalrous.
Had he not wagered that he would obtain an audience of the Kaiser, while
the ridiculous ambassadors of a silly sentimentalism were still dreaming
of their projects? And what he had promised, he had performed. The new
Faber rifle would go to Germany--manufactured in part by Krupps, in part
at Charleston. Meanwhile, universal peace remained a pretty topic for
public platforms, and for certain distinguished old gentlemen whose
philanthropy all the world admired. He, John Faber, owed something to it
for it had introduced him to one of the cleverest women he had met in
all his life, and this could be said despite their dramatic farewell.
The latter troubled him, to be sure, but he did not despair of her when
he remembered that the ugly business in Paris could yet be set straight.
Claudine d'Arny must have a husband bought for her as other women have
jewels or toy dogs. It should not be beyond his resources to contrive as
much.
He lighted a new cigar upon this pleasant realisation of power--a
gratification which his busy life made rare--and turning about, he
retraced his steps toward Ranovica. The contrast between the lonely
mountains which guarded the valley and the hive of armed men within was
sharp enough, but it interested him at the moment less than other omens
which a quick ear detected. The stillness seemed to him almost
unnatural. He could have sworn at one place that a face peered down at
him from a cranny of the precipice above, and, upon that, there came
from afar the echo of a rifle shot. He was sure of it, faint as was the
report and difficult to locate. A rifle shot over there beyond the great
mountain which protected Ranovica from the northern winds! Long he
listened for any repetition of the firing, but hearing none, returned at
last to the priest's house. His nerves were playing tricks with him, he
said. It was time to have done with it. There was a light in Maryska's
room and a shadow upon the blind said that she was not yet in bed. Faber
smiled as he looked up and remembered her words.
"An old, old man."
What had put it into the little cat's head to call him that?
CHAPTER IV
THE BURNING OF RANOVICA
There were two beds in the room, and one was occupied already by Louis
de Paleologue, who lay in a heavy stupor, but was not properly asleep.
Faber had slept in such rooms before--in the old wild days when he had
travelled in Western America to sell revolvers to a Christian people,
who were set upon shooting other Christians. This room impressed chiefly
by its omnipresent suggestions of profound filthiness. He feared to
touch anything in it--the chairs, the walls, the very coverlet on the
bed. His own rugs were his armament. He wrapped himself in them from
head to foot, and fell asleep at last, still wondering in his dreams
why, in God's name, he had come to Ranovica.
When he awoke, it was at a touch of the hand of his valet Frank. He felt
heavy and drowsy, and knew that he had missed a good night's
rest--indispensable to men whose brains are dominant. It was already
light, and the curtains were drawn back from the window. He sat up to
listen and became aware of a strange hubbub in the street without.
"Why, what are you saying, Frank; what's that you're telling me?"
The valet was ghastly pale; he walked upon tip-toe as though afraid of
being heard; his voice was hardly more than the whisper of polite
servitude.
"The soldiers are in, sir--it's all up with Ranovica."
"You don't say so! When did they come in?"
"Five minutes ago, sir. Don't you hear that--my God, don't you hear it,
sir?"
There is no mistaking the cry of a man who is being butchered by knives,
and Faber could not mistake it then. He sprang out of bed at a bound and
ran to the window. The street below was full of Turks--the red fez, the
baggy blue breeches were everywhere. Leaning out to get a better view,
he saw a huge Albanian held down by four assassins who had the faces of
the devils in the pictures. Another, like to them, had a broad butcher's
knife in his hand, and was deliberately hacking the prone man's head
from his shoulders. It was clumsily done and the wretch shrieked
horribly at every cut upon the bare flesh. His blood already ran in the
gutters, where it mingled with the blood of fifty others.
A sense of utter helplessness--of a sickness and horror he had not yet
experienced, held Faber to the window for some minutes. He could look at
nothing else but the outstretched figure and the clumsy knife. When head
and body at length were torn apart, and the former held up on the end of
a scimitar, a loud shout of fury escaped him, and he ran across the room
for his revolver. The uproar had awakened Paleologue, who sat bolt
upright watching his friend. When he perceived the revolver in his hand,
he sprang out of bed and caught him in powerful arms.
"What are you doing, boss--what d----d nonsense is this?"
"I tell you they're hacking men to pieces in the street out yonder. Let
me go--by God, I can't stand it."
"Say, don't be a fool. Do you think you can shoot a regiment? Keep that
pistol out of sight, and hold your tongue. We'll have them up here if
you butt in like that! Don't you understand it isn't our business? Why,
you're more d----d nuisance than any woman--and you talk as much. Now,
be quiet, and hear me out. You've got to sit this through and say
nothing. I'll do the talking for myself and the girl. You look on and
remember why you're here. Haven't you sense enough at your age?"
The irony of it stung Faber, and he put the pistol down. The frightened
valet still looked out of the window and howled at intervals, as though
he himself were already in the hands of the Turks. They could hear rifle
shots, sometimes a volley, then a few straggling reports, which spoke of
fugitives, who were making a dash for the mountains. In the street
itself, it seemed that men scurried hither and thither as rats from
their holes. Shouts of triumph were followed by sharp cries of pain,
often by groans and the shrill screams of women. The air came pungent
with the odour of gunpowder. In the room itself there was now silence
save for the servant's bellowing. Paleologue dressed himself without any
fuss whatever, and he did not utter a single word. When he was quite
ready, he went out into the street immediately--Faber at his heels. No
one had asked for Maryska.
Paleologue was wearing a ridiculous suit of yellow tweed at this time,
and a green Homburg hat with a feather in it. He carried no other
weapons than a cigarette case and a box of matches. The Turks round
about eyed him with amazement not untempered by curiosity; but before
any of them could make a movement he shouted out in their own tongue
that he was an English newspaper correspondent, and their rifles were
lowered. Doffing his cap to a man upon a little grey horse, who appeared
to be their officer, the artist crossed the street and offered him a
cigarette, speaking rapidly in the careless way he could command,
whatever the language. Faber listened open mouthed. He thought that he
was as near to death as ever he had been in his nine and thirty years,
and he made no poor guess.
"What does he say, Frank?" the question was hurled up at the window
where the valet's white face could be seen. He might as well have asked
the fellow a question in Chinese.
"I don't know, sir. I think he is mad."
"I guess we were all mad to come here. My God! what a slaughter-house!"
No truer description of the scene could have been uttered by any man.
The streets of Ravonica had become a shambles. Turks ran in and out of
the distant houses like dogs at a warren. There were twenty headless
bodies within ten yards of the captain in command. From the door of the
inn or guest-house a broad eddy of blood was oozing away to the gutter;
they could hear the troops within looting and ravaging at their
pleasure, while the wretched organ still played some trumpery waltz in
irony most wonderful. So dreadful it was that Faber, who believed that
he knew the whole story of war, staggered back in a revolt of nausea and
would have re-entered the priest's house but for Paleologue's imperative
summons. The artist had never been more at home. He wore his hat
jauntily and smoked with gusto while he talked to the captain.
"Say, boss, come and report yourself. This is Alussein Pasha. He has had
word of you from headquarters; just shake and look as pleased as you
can."
Faber shook hands with the man, while Louis offered him a cigarette and
struck matches for them all. The concomitants of the ghastly scene were
wholly out of place and singularly at variance with the truth. These
three men might have met by accident in this outlandish village and have
been discussing the best road back to civilization. The bloody struggle,
still proceeding in the miserable hovels round about, moved Alussein
Pasha no more than did the howling of dogs in an Eastern street. And
Paleologue was just as indifferent until some of the ruffians fetched
out "old Pop" by the hair of his head and held a scimitar at his throat.
Then, to be fair to him, he woke up to the truth and began to argue
excitedly with the Pasha--at which moment also Maryska appeared at a
window above and spoke to her father in Italian. He answered with a wave
of his hand, bidding her disappear; but not before a Turkish subaltern
had seen her and thrown her a kiss in the Western fashion. This was too
much for Louis, who knocked him down out of hand.
Undoubtedly it was a mad act, and went near to costing the lives of the
party. Alussein Pasha uttered a roar like a stricken bull when his
officer was floored; the Turks about him drew their knives and pressed
upon Faber with fierce shouts. He had as good as given it up, and
thought that this was the end of the business, when a young man at the
Pasha's side said something to his chief in an earnest note and appeared
to bring that savage worthy to his senses. He roared an order to the
hawking pack, and they fell back from the prey they had marked down. An
excited exchange of doubtful compliments between Louis and the grand
Turk was followed by a compromise, Alussein stipulating for an immediate
return to the shelter of the priest's house until the affair was over.
So, in they went, the soldiers half pushing them with the butts of their
rifles and barring the door behind them. "Old Pop" was the only prisoner
now. They had forgotten him in the excitement of that very critical
moment through which they had passed.
"Have a drink?" said Louis, throwing himself into a chair by the window
and his hat into another; he seemed quite unconcerned, even unaware that
there had been an instant of peril. John Faber, on the other hand, was
talking to himself in decided terms. "John, my boy, you're a d----d fool
to be here," he was saying--and that was very true. When he had drunk a
tumbler of white wine and mineral water he found the sweat running off
him like rain.
"Hot weather for the time of year. Where's your girl, Louis?"
"Oh! I guess she's all right--better where she is. Will you pass over
that drawing pad? I can see a picture here."
Faber passed him the pad, and he settled deep in the arm-chair and began
to make a rapid sketch of the crowded street. At the same moment Maryska
entered the room and closed the door firmly behind her.
II
"Where is the priest?" she asked them in a strange tone. The men looked
at her together, then at each other.
"Why, isn't he in the house?"
"They are killing him," she said. And then, "What are you doing here?"
Louis put down his pencil, and leaning out of the window, which was on a
level with the street, he watched the scene a little while in silence.
"By God!" he cried at last; "they're singeing the old man's beard.
Listen to that."
They listened and heard a harrowing sound, neither cry nor scream, but
the wail as of a cat mewing. Twenty Turks had "Old Pop" in their midst;
they had torn his clothes from his back and cut off his nose. Now some
of them brought naphtha and poured it on his head, and instantly he
became a vomit of flame.[1] Every feature of the wretched man could be
seen with horrid distinctness, clarified by the fire. The flesh withered
up before their eyes. He stood for a long minute plucking at his own
flesh with hands of which but the bones were left. Then, all his cries
ceased, and he fell forward in a ghastly heap, while the Turks howled
derisively and thrust scimitars into the fire. They had burned many a
priest these latter days, but this fellow was famous, and had fought
many a good fight for Ranovica. His death stimulated a frenzy of lust
and madness, and they rushed away to enter the houses and drive out the
women. All the make-believe of a military occupation had been put aside
by this time. Alussein had led them across the mountains to teach these
Christians a lesson, and they were good masters.
[1] The incident here described is taken almost unchanged from
the recent story of Macedonia.
Maryska heard the priest's cries, but she did not see the manner of his
death. Had it not happened so swiftly and with such dramatic finality,
the men would have made some stir to save him; but, as though guessing
their intention, a group of soldiers with rifles across their arms
pressed about the window, and made it very clear that they would shoot
upon next to no provocation at all. Alussein Pasha had ridden on at this
time to the lower road overlooking Scutari, and would return when the
good work was done. He would declare that the villagers had brought it
all on themselves, and his report would be a model of tearful orthodoxy.
Meanwhile, there were very few of the male inhabitants to bring anything
upon anybody; the women alone remained, and they were dragged from their
houses, some by the hair of their heads, some forced by thrust of
swords, a few going without protest, as though they dreamed. Of the
latter were the younger girls, mere children of fourteen or fifteen
years, who stood in a little group before the priest's house, and looked
at the soldiers, uncertain--nay, ignorant--of their meaning. Maryska saw
these anon; and Louis also. He had been chewing his cigarette very
busily since the priest died, and there were few lines upon the paper.
As for Faber, he merely stood motionless by the window. The scene held
him spellbound with an influence he knew to be evil.
"What have they done with the priest? Why do you not answer me, Mr.
Faber?"
She touched him upon the arm, and he looked down upon a child's face
from which a woman's eyes stared up at him wonderingly. What answer
could he make to her?
"You must just run away and think nothing about it, Maryska," he said
quietly. "We can none of us do anything. I wish to God we could."
"Are you not going to speak for the children, then?"
"The children! Oh, they're all right; they won't hurt the children."
"That is not true," she said, for the instinct of the woman guided her
surely. "Someone must speak for the children. Will not you, father?"
The appeal touched Paleologue, and he threw away the stump of his
cigarette and leaned out of the window. They heard him talking rapidly
with the Turks upon the side-walk, and presently shouting something to
an officer before the guest-house opposite. Whatever he said moved the
soldiers to derision and the children themselves to hope. They knew that
he was their friend, and their round eyes watched his every gesture.
"What's the man saying?" Faber asked. Louis hardly seemed to know.
"I guess it's a bad business, boss, a d----d bad business."
"You don't mean to say----"
"I do every word of it."
"We must see this thing through, Paleologue. I'm going out."
"You can't go out. What's the good of doing stunts? They'll shoot,
sure."
He tried to hold back the impetuous man, appealing and swearing in a
breath. From below, the children watched the scene with a look of
bewilderment and despair. The unknown strangers were quarrelling, then!
What hope of mercy had they if this went on? This must have been in
their minds when Maryska, climbing nimbly as a cat, slipped by her
father and leaped down among the Turks. She was kissing and hugging some
of the children and telling them in a tongue they understood that all
would be well with them; doing this, and defying the snarling troopers
before a man could have counted ten. Then the men at the window lost
sight of her, the throng closing about her as water filling the vortex
of a falling stone.
"Good God, man, aren't you going now?"
Paleologue licked his lips, a little astonished, perhaps, not to find a
cigarette between them. He caught up a great planter's hat and clapped
it on the side of his head; then, without a word, he clambered over the
casement and pushed his way among the soldiers. Of course, Faber was
upon his heels, treading so close on his tracks that they stumbled into
the press together and were instantly swallowed up by it. Instructed to
deal patiently with the strangers, none of the sentries fired upon them,
but all swarmed about them and tried to pull them back. The village
itself had by this time become a Golgotha, from whose wretched houses
came the groans of butchered men and the screams of women in an agony of
fear and shame. Their terrible cries were echoed up and down the streets
from many a group which stooped about an infamy; while at the far end
near the church, flames spurted from an isolated house, and the wood
burned with a detonation heard closely upon the still air. The outposts
of the legions of hell had begun their work; they would do it thoroughly
enough before their chief returned to call them off.
"Where's my daughter? What have you done with her?" Paleologue's voice
rose to a shrill pitch as he pushed and fought his way into the crowd
and was thrust forward and still forward by the wiry American at his
heels. Faber had never imagined such a scene as this, nor could he have
believed it possible. The heat and clamour of the street, the sweat of
the fighting men; here and there a girl caught in a man's arms and held
firmly as a wild beast holds its prey; smoke of the burning house coming
down upon the wind--the crazy organ still rolling out its dirge-like
waltzes. All this and the fierce oaths of the maladroitly butchered--the
horrid, gashed corpses in the gutters--the rearing, terrified horses of
Alussein's lieutenants; and, above it all, the serene sky and the
desolate mountains lifting their scarred summits in savage menace. What
an inferno, what a hell of human creation! And into this the girl
Maryska had plunged, headlong as a bold swimmer into a raging sea which
has engulfed a child.
He found himself imitating Paleologue by and by, and calling her name
aloud. The attempts of the sentries to get the pair of them back to the
house were met by thrust upon thrust; a good square push from the
shoulder here and a dive into an opening there. Gradually they won their
way up the street, but could not find her; and upon that a sense of
desperation drove them to some imprudence, and they began to deal in
blows. Such madness might have brought a swift penalty but for the fire
which the priest's death had kindled. The God of Ranovica, designing
that these people should perish to bear witness to their faith, willed
also that Ranovica should fall with them, and that the priest should be
the instrument. From his body the flames had run to the crazy house;
from the house to the church, and thence to the narrow street, which
instantly became aglow. Faber found himself pressing forward amid
showers of sparks, and still crying "Maryska--Maryska!" as though the
child's voice could be heard amid the din. Turks pressed about him
shielding their faces with sun-browned arms and cursing the "spawn of
dogs" by which the visitation had come upon them. He was driven in and
out of courtyards, tossed hither and thither by the human wave, whose
crest was the whirling scimitars of the destroyers. In the end he found
himself out upon the hillside, flaming Ravonica below him, and the still
air alive with the cries of its people. Paleologue had disappeared;
there was no trace of Maryska, and he himself had hardly a rag upon his
back.
He sat down upon a great boulder, and presently heard a familiar voice.
It was that of his valet, Frank.
"Mr. Faber, is that you, sir?"
"I guess it is, Frank."
"Thank God for that, sir! Our baggage is done for, sure and certain. The
house is afire from top to bottom, sir."
"Never mind the baggage, Frank. Have you seen Mr. Paleologue?"
"He was down among the soldiers five minutes ago, sir."
"And the young lady?"
Frank could not answer.
"She went away with some of the young women--I think toward the church,
sir."
"Was that long ago?"
"About five minutes before they fired it; I'm sure it wasn't more."
"Well, look at the church now, anyway. This is an awful business,
Frank."
"I suppose in their way it's what they call war, sir. But it's a
terrible business."
"Ah!" said Faber. "I suppose it would be. You don't happen to have a
cigar on you, Frank?"
"I've got a few cigarettes, sir."
"Then pass one up. We'll go and look for Mr. Paleologue presently; I
guess he's taken the lower road. We should find both of them there."
"I hope we shall do so, sir."
He passed the cigarettes and the matches, and his master lighted one and
sat and smoked in silence. It may be that he asked himself what he, John
Faber, was doing out there upon this bleak hillside when he might have
been on board his yacht in the harbour of Antivari. Such reflections had
occurred to him on several occasions when some absurd venture had
brought him very near to that haven where millions are the poorest
credentials; but they were unduly ironical to-day, and not a little
persistent. Why had he come to Ranovica? Because that little wide-eyed
woman, who made such a curious appeal to him, had insisted upon his
coming. It was very true, and he would not fence with it. He might lose
his life for Maryska even yet; and that would be a grotesque finale
enough. Meanwhile, a certain doubt about her remained and troubled him
with a graver thought. Why had he not discovered her in the village? No
man could venture into that inferno now, for the whole place was just a
flame upon the hillside; but he had been up and down the street with
Paleologue, and they had seen nothing of her. He thought it curious if
nothing more. They should have discovered her immediately when the fire
broke out.
Alussein Pasha rode up presently and his little staff with him. He had
treated Faber with some deference from the beginning, and now that the
fury of the sack was over he became almost grotesquely polite, gabbling
in appalling German and expressing as well as he could his regret for
the state in which he discovered the stranger. In return, Faber asked
him of his friend--gesture serving where names failed--and the matter
being understood, the Pasha told off a lieutenant and two men who
invited the "infidel" to follow them. Ranovica had burned itself to a
cinder by this time, and if it was not possible to pass down the narrow
street, at least the precincts of the houses might be searched. Faber
trudged after the men and came to the ruined church, now but a shell and
a few blackened beams. A young Turkish soldier walked to and fro here;
but the gulley of the road before the church was blocked by corpses, and
near by them lay the figure of Louis de Paleologue. He had been shot
through the head just as he reached the porch, and he lay face
downwards, an unlighted cigarette between his lips and his kindly eyes
wide open.
Faber knelt and turned the dead man over. He felt his pulse, and even
laid his head upon his chest to listen for the beating of his heart.
There had been horrors enough in Ranovica this day; but they had to do
with a strange and savage people, of whom he knew nothing. He remembered
that this man had taken his mother to America when she had no other
friend in the world. Had he not come to Europe to reward him for what he
had done as few have been rewarded, whatever the service? And this was
the end of it--this prone figure, still and fearful--this, and the Turks
who looked down upon the scene with Oriental indifference--this, and the
sentry who leered behind their backs and made no attempt to hide his
satisfaction. Faber caught the fellow grinning, and recognized him for
one of the men who had turned on him earlier in the day when Paleologue
floored the officer. The rifle in his hand had come from the arsenal at
Charleston. Surely destiny spoke loudly enough here.
He borrowed a burned and tattered cloak from one of the dead in the
gutter, and covered his friend's face reverently. Where to go, what to
do next, he knew not; nor in what manner he should seek Maryska. The
truth had gripped him with fingers of iron.
This was war--and of war was he not the disciple?
III
The Turks left the village about three in the after-noon. It was
understood that they had other work of the kind, but more to the
northward, and removed from the observant eye of their neighbours, the
Montenegrins, who would surely avenge this day. Before they left, they
were able to restore to Faber the mules which had brought his party to
Ranovica. The beasts had been taken up the hillside during the
conflagration, and would have been led much further afield but for the
Pasha's desire to curry favour with the American. He knew that this was
the man who made the rifles with which the infidel dogs must be
destroyed; urgent messages from Constantinople had warned him to show
deference to so useful an ally, and he obeyed his instructions with a
display of manners quite pleasing. It was otherwise when the dead artist
and his daughter were mentioned. Constantinople had said nothing about
them, and it really seemed to Faber that the flat-faced, good-humoured
Alussein could be a genius of understanding or the dullest blockhead at
his pleasure.
So away the Turk went, just when the sun was beginning to dip down over
the Adriatic and all the wilderness to glow beneath the shimmer of its
deepening rays. A hillside, normally grey and cold, shone rose-pink and
purple in the waxing splendour of the hour. The burned village became
but the blacker for the gift, a charred log lying in a cup of the
burnished rocks. Out of it, when every ruin had been twice searched,
every heap of ashes turned for possible plunder, out of it went the
baggy breeches and the little white horses and the fierce and bristling
men, as cool and laconic as though this were but an episode and
to-morrow would furnish another. Romancers' tales of troops drunk with
lust and slaughter could not be told of them. All that passed, women's
fearful struggles to escape their embraces, the shrieks of men whose
hearts were being torn out, the gasps of the dying and the livid faces
of the dead--all this was already forgotten, and would hardly be
remembered when a week had gone. Had not the Prophet commanded them so
to do, and was not he a discerning person withal?
Faber had taken a meal with Alussein upon the hillside about midday, and
after that he had patrolled the village with Frank at his side, waiting
and hoping for the coming of Maryska. To return to Ragusa without her
would have been an infamy he could not contemplate; and yet he feared to
meet her or to tell her the truth which must be told. When at last he
did discover her, some hours had passed, and it was quite dark. The
hillside with its savage boulders had given up the most part of the
refugees then, and they had come down to the village to wander amid the
ruins of their poor homes and to fill the street with their wailing. It
was at this time also that another band of Albanians came up the valley
to their comrades' rescue; alas, so many hours too late, but yet in time
to help the desperate refugees and to bring them food and succour. Fires
were now lighted by the valley road, and the women and children grouped
about them. The most timid crept down from the rocks above; girls
dishevelled and weeping, men who had fled with gashed limbs to the
harbourage of caves, children whose parents lay dead beneath the
ashes--all came at the summons of the shrill goat's horn. Meanwhile,
none thought of burying the dead--none except Faber, who would not leave
the body of Louis de Paleologue where it was, and returned with two
lusty Albanians at his heels to do what could be done in the matter.
It was then that he found Maryska.
One of the Albanians carried a lantern, and the rays of it discovered
her, kneeling against the broken railings of the church porch, but with
face averted from the dead. She did not appear to have been weeping. Her
eyes were big and round; her head bare, her hair dishevelled. What she
had suffered at the soldiers' hands might not be imagined; but its
memories had been obliterated by this sudden realization of the greater
loss. All that humanity had been to her lay still and ghastly in that
fearsome gutter. Father, brother, friend--he who had gone hand in hand
with her through the wild wilderness of the world, he would lead her no
more. The night had dropped a black curtain between her and the eternal
hope of youth. Womanhood had revealed itself, its secrets thrust upon
her by the bloody hands of monsters; but the drugged soul of the child
could find no place in her mind for that. He was dead. Why, then, did
she live?
She shrank from the light, but did not cover her eyes. Discerning Faber,
she leaped toward him as an animal unchained, and bared her breast with
frenzied fingers. "Shoot me, stranger--shoot me through the heart!" she
cried. He caught her outstretched hand, and she fell almost lifeless
into his arms. Oblivion, the greater mercy, saved her reason in the
critical hour. She was in a delirium when they made a rude palanquin and
carried her down to Antivari. She awoke therefrom upon the afternoon of
the second day after in a cabin upon Faber's yacht; and then, for the
first time, they believed that she would live.
CHAPTER V
A STRANGE VOYAGE
I
The _Wanderer_, carrying Sir Jules Achon and his party, lay in Ragusa
harbour when the fugitives came down from the hills. The two boats were
moored almost side by side in the offing, and hardly had Faber set foot
aboard when he sent a message to Gabrielle, begging her help in an
emergency. Half an hour later she met him at the head of the gangway
ladder, and he led her at once into the gorgeous saloon of the
_Savannah_, as his own boat was named.
"Is this the emergency?" she asked laughingly, as she pointed to the
wonderful decoration of the cabin. He told her as bluntly that it was
not.
"I've got a patient on board," he said. "Will you help me?"
"You know that I will--very gladly. Is he here now?"
"It's not he--it's she. That's why I sent for one of her own sex. God
help a foreign woman in this part of the world! This is a mere baby. She
calls me an 'old, old man.' So I guess she's interesting."
He betrayed no emotion of any kind. His anxiety concerning the child,
his perception of the irony of fate directing his footsteps into such
strange paths, the baser curiosity which had sent him into the hills,
were masked successfully by that clear-cut face. Gabrielle imagined that
his act was an impulse of charity, and she was pleased that he had made
her the instrument of it.
"Where is this precious derelict, and what has happened to her?"
"She's in the pink saloon. Don't speak of it lightly. She's lost her
father, and has not a friend in the world. I knew she would find her way
to your heart. Shall we go and see her? The doctor's there now, I guess.
We'll have to get our orders."
He led the way to the cabin, and they went in. It was a beautiful room,
and his servants already had smothered it in flowers. A young Austrian
doctor from Ragusa was trying to give the head stewardess his
instructions, and failing as dismally. He turned with relief to
Gabrielle, whose German was pretty if not eloquent. The cabin was to be
kept as quiet as possible; the patient must be watched zealously in case
of sudden collapse. He understood that this was a case of shock, and
could know nothing until consciousness returned. His suggestion that a
nurse should be fetched from one of the military hospitals was refused
almost ungraciously by the English girl he so plainly admired. Gabrielle
would play the part herself. She had already removed her furs, and was
busy about the cabin where artistic fingers could do so much. It was
quite needless for the doctor to repeat his instructions as he was
prepared to; she dismissed both him and her host with a wave of the hand
which said "begone" as no tongue could have uttered the word.
It was nine o'clock at night before Faber saw her again. His dinghy had
gone across to the _Wanderer_ with a message explaining the
circumstances, but he himself remained on deck, waiting for news that
might be a new echo of this pitiful tragedy. But a few days ago he had
entered that beautiful place and discovered the little nomad whose life
now hung upon a thread. He had wished to bring happiness to her father
and herself, but had failed beyond repair. Money did not help him in the
wilds of Albania, nor could money buy one jot or tittle of content for
the child of the man he had discovered in the cavern. Had not he himself
paid for the journey to Ranovica--a whim which cost the life of a man to
whom he owed his very existence? And now the child was his legacy. He
stood at the taffrail wondering what unnameable secret she had carried
down from the hills.
Perhaps he remembered the multitude of women who had so suffered since
God Almighty created a battlefield; but understanding had never come in
that way hitherto. Little Maryska--he would have given a good deal of
his lavish fortune to have saved her life that night. His heart bounded
when Gabrielle came out of the cabin at last to bring him better news of
the invalid.
"She is conscious and would see you. I think you had better go down."
"Do you approve my going?"
She looked at him in a curious way.
"She has asked for you, Mr. Faber."
"Why, then, I'll go right now. Have you eaten that dinner yet?"
"As much as I want. I must go now and get my things from the yacht."
"But you'll come back, sure?"
"I think I must--there's no one else."
"That's right down fine of you. I knew you'd do it when you understood."
She looked him full in the face and smiled.
"There are some things no woman can misunderstand. I shall not be very
long. Please let her talk as little as possible."
"Ah!" he said, fallen to a grave manner. "I fear this is a bad business
altogether."
She did not ask him why, nor had she any clue to his meaning. The whole
affair was a mystery which could have but a human solution. She made
light of the romantic story concerning Louis de Paleologue, and
believed, with a feminine instinct for the obvious, that vulgar
flirtation had been the impulse of Faber's journey. All this hurt her
pride, but could not be the just subject of complaint. Tenaciously she
clung to the idea that she might yet use this master intellect for the
schemes which had lifted her father and herself from the slough of
monotony to a little place in the story of the world. This very
accident, this revelation of a man's weakness, might be a precious
opportunity, however deeply her vanity suffered. If she succeeded, her
triumph must be the greater; if she failed----But failure was a word
which Gabrielle Silvester refused to add to her vocabulary.
So she went over to the _Wanderer_ to tell her father of the sick girl,
and to add, almost in a whisper, "I believe there's a good deal in it."
To which Silvester replied that he was sorry to hear it, "for," said he,
"there is no man alive who could do so great a work if he would come
over to us."
II
Faber went straight down to Maryska's cabin and found her crouching upon
a pillow. The long, jet black hair had been taken down, and lay in a
tangled skein about her; she was very pale, and her eyes glowed as with
a fever. Evidently she had been listening for his footsteps, for she
turned instantly when he came in and fixed her eyes upon him.
"It's Mr. Faber," she said, but without satisfaction.
He took a chair and drew it to her bedside.
"Well, Maryska, are you feeling better, my dear?"
She paid not the slightest heed to the question. Sitting up in bed, she
closed her gown about her chest and breathed a little heavily. Then she
said, without warning:
"Where is my father?"
He bent his head, fearing to meet her gaze.
"My dear little girl, you'll remember all about that presently."
There was a long pause upon this.
"Yes," she said at last, and still apparently unmoved; "I do remember.
Why did you let him die, Mr. Faber?"
"I, Maryska? I had nothing to do with it. If he had taken my advice he
would not have left the Pasha's side. I was quite a long way off when it
happened."
She insisted, looking at him with pathetic eyes.
"If you had not come to Ragusa, he would not have left me. I am sorry
you came. Shall I be kept here long?"
"Do you mean in this ship?"
"Yes, of course. Is it your ship, then?"
"It's my ship--at least, I've hired it. Don't you like it, my dear?"
She looked round about her critically.
"You are not very rich," she said at last. "We came from America in a
much larger ship than this. He was with me then."
Her eyes filled suddenly with tears, and she saw no longer either the
cabin or the man. Faber covered the outstretched hand, and stroked it
softly.
"My poor little girl! You must make your home with me now."
She shook her head.
"You are not rich; it would be different with you," she said; and then,
in just the childish tone she had used at the Cantina, she exclaimed, "I
don't believe you have much money."
He laughed, and reassured her.
"I've a great deal more than you or I will ever want, Maryska."
It was evident that the wolf-child was suspicious. The gipsy instincts
were awake.
"Will you give me some money if I want any?"
"I'll give you as much as you ask me for."
"Five crowns, say--would you give me five crowns?"
"Of course I would."
"Here and now?" and she held out her hand.
He was nonplussed for the moment, but he took a bank-note from his
pocket, and thrust it into her tiny fist.
"There, I guess there are fifty crowns and more there, Maryska. You
shall have another when you want it."
The hand closed upon the bank-note like a vise. None the less, her
thoughts were not wholly of the money.
"If my father had been here he would have been very glad of this. He
will never know now."
"I don't believe that. He'll know that you've become my little daughter,
Maryska. He'll understand that all right. My home's yours now. I want
you to understand that right here."
She shook her head, the long hair smoothed back from her forehead.
"He will never know. I cannot speak to him. I have tried so hard and he
does not hear me."
"Believe no such thing, my dear. He hears every word you say. He knows
that you will be happy with me."
She looked up inquiringly.
"With you, Mr. Faber? Why should I stay with you?"
"Because I mean to make a home for you."
"Will you make it upon this ship?"
"Why, you couldn't live always upon a ship."
She became practical.
"I would sooner live in Ragusa; but not in the Cantina, because he would
not be there with us. It is very cheap, and if you had the money we
could live very well upon a crown a day and the wine. I have had no wine
since I came away; the lady would not give me any. If you have any money
left and would send for some wine----" She looked up beseechingly, with
a look which reminded him of the little wild wolf who had run to the
wine-shop the night he discovered her father. He hardly knew how to
satisfy her.
"I'll send down anything the doctor orders for you. If he says wine----"
"Oh!" she cried, flown into a passion in an instant. "I could kill
you--I could kill you for that!" And without another word she turned her
face to the wall and still clutching her money tenaciously, she made it
plain that she had done with him.
"All right, Maryska," he said, rising, "you shall have the wine all
right. I don't care that for the doctors; I'll see to it myself."
She did not answer him, and lay so still that she might have been dead.
III
Gabrielle returned immediately after the interview was terminated, and
with her Harry Lassett, who by no means liked the circumstances of her
visit, and had come to verify them. She went at once to Maryska's cabin,
but Lassett remained on deck to sample the green cigars, and
incidentally to cross-question their owner. He talked upon a number of
subjects with the assurance of twenty-three years and the experience of
ten.
"I've heard a lot of things about you from Gabrielle. Of course, you
know I'm engaged to her."
Faber finished the operation of striking a match and then lighted his
cigar.
"Why, is that so? My congratulations. When is it to be?"
"Oh, I dunno; marriage is a considerable proposition. Besides, I'm going
out to Australia next winter--cricket, you know."
"Ah! you play ball, then? Is there much to it?"
Harry grinned.
"Nothing. I'm an amateur, you know--that is, if you know anything about
the game at all. We can't take any money for our services, so we have to
charge expenses. And jolly well we're worth it--some of us," he added
with conviction.
Faber nodded, as though he understood perfectly.
"I guess you deliver the goods. There's something of that sort in my
country, only we don't call 'em amateurs. Anyway, the name doesn't hurt.
You'll be married when you come back, I suppose?"
"Ah! there you _cherchez la femme_. Gabrielle isn't struck with
marriage--not very much. She's full of this tomfool business about peace
on earth and goodwill toward Wilhelm. It makes me sick to listen to it.
The yacht loaded up with cranks, and every one of them trying to get
something out of Sir Jules. It's almost as good a game as Throgmorton
Street, if you can find the mugs, chiefly those with handles. I tell
you, I'm just fed up with it."
"You don't get thin on it, sure. How long does Sir Jules propose to stop
here? Has he said that?"
"He'll stop on the off chance of another interview with the Emperor on
his return from Corfu."
"The first one wasn't satisfactory, then?"
"Oh, lots of pats on the back and that sort of thing--plenty of butter,
but not much bread. By the way, do you think there's anything in the
business, or is it just fancy?"
"I think there's a great deal. Sir Jules Achon is about the deepest
thinker in this line I've yet struck. But he wants a man with him--he
wants a hustler. Europe listens when you beat the drum, but it's got to
be a mighty big drum nowadays. He's merely playing with fiddle-sticks."
"That's because his drummer is on the sick list. I hear he's a regular
roarer--Rupert Trevelle, who hustled Balfour into the Blue Ensign Club.
He was to have been here, but he's down with neuritis or something. They
say that's why we're all drifting about the Adriatic doing nothing but
patting each other's back. It will be different when Trevelle gets
going."
"Then set him going right quick. Does Miss Silvester take to it kindly?
Is she dead earnest?"
"That's just what I want to know. I'll tell you what, though--she won't
be when she's married to me. No peace at any price in my house, I'm
d----d if there is."
"Don't believe in it, eh?"
"Does any good Britisher really believe in it? Wars made us what we are.
Would Nelson have gone to a law court? And what price would Drake
receive in a county court action for singeing the Spanish King's beard?
I tell you it's all d----d nonsense, and some of 'em must know it to be
so. When I am married to Gabrielle----But here she comes, my boy, so
mum's the word. There's time enough for arguments--eh, what?"
Faber smiled and stood up to get another chair. Gabrielle was very
serious, and looked gracious in her perplexity. She had a strange tale
to tell of her patient, and recited it in a kind of astonished despair
which amused her host very much.
"Do you know," she exclaimed, "the child drinks wine like an alderman.
Whatever am I to do?"
"What?" cried Harry. "You're rotting, Gabrielle, you're not serious."
"It's true, every word of it. She says that she is doing it by your
orders, Mr. Faber. Is it really so?"
"How much has she taken? I sent a bottle down. It's only the light stuff
they drink hereabouts. You can hardly call it wine."
"She has drunk the whole bottle. I was never more astonished in my
life."
"We shall have to humour her a bit. Of course, it must be stopped. And
that reminds me--I want a home for her in England. Will you and your
father give her one?"
"She'll do for the 'horrid' example at your temperance meetings,
Gabrielle. Better take her."
"I think," said Gabrielle, "you had better see my father. You know that
he is undecided about this call to Yonkers."
"He won't be undecided about it when I've had my say. Is the patient all
right now? Do you think well of her?"
"I think she is terribly distressed, and is hiding it from all of us."
"A brave little girl! I guessed as much. We must get her away from this
place as soon as possible. When does Sir Jules propose to sail?"
"Not until the Emperor leaves Corfu. He said so at lunch."
"He'll weigh before then; the Emperor doesn't mean to see him a second
time. Anyway, you won't leave her, Miss Silvester, I go pat on that."
She averted her eyes from both of them, and looked away to the other
yacht.
"I don't think I ought to leave her. The better way will be for you to
see my father. She's sleeping now. We might go over to the _Wanderer_ at
once, if you liked----"
"And make it an excuse for a jolly little supper on deck," said Harry
voraciously. He had done little but eat and sleep since they left
London.
IV
Gordon Silvester was as astonished as Gabrielle by the proposition which
Faber made to him, but he listened sympathetically none the less.
"This would mean a definite refusal to Yonkers," he said, and Faber
agreed that it was so.
"I'll tell you what, Mr. Silvester. This affair has cut pretty deep down
into some of my old-fashioned notions, and is costing me more than I
care to tell any man. I came across to Europe to pay a debt I owed to
one who was my mother's friend. I meant to reward him pretty liberally.
And what have I succeeded in doing after all? You know the story.
Paleologue lies dead up at Ranovica--the child's on my yacht to judge me
for what I've done. Henceforth, she is going to stand to me as my own
daughter. I shall spare no expense to educate and train her. She'll have
the best that money can buy; all that gives a woman a chance in the
world. If you will, you and your daughter shall be my agents in this.
Live where you please, take the best house the agents can find for you,
spend all the money you can spend on making her what I would wish her to
be. You say the pastorate has tired you out, and that you would like to
devote yourself to literature. Here's the chance of your life time!
Don't tell me that you will let it go begging."
Silvester knocked out the ashes of his pipe with some deliberation. He
was very much excited by the offer, but at some pains to conceal his
surprise at it. Many schemes ran through his head--alas! none of them
had to do with Maryska de Paleologue.
"Of course," he said, "I could devote myself entirely then to the I.A.L.
It would be a great opportunity. I can imagine no finer."
"There is one finer, Mr. Silvester."
"Of what are you thinking?"
"Of a woman's soul--just the heart and the soul of a little waif from
the hills. She's a finer opportunity, for she's flesh and blood. Your
geese are all swans, Mr. Silvester. You'll know as much when they fly."
"I fear you are as hostile to us as ever. Yet it seems to me--I say it
with all reserve--that these days should have done something for us."
Faber thrust his hand deep into his pocket, and bit into his cigar.
"They've taught me nothing, except to say 'kismet.' Who knows truly how
a man's destiny works? I shall make Maryska de Paleologue one of the
richest women in Europe--well, there I come in. Money's stronger than
most things, and it's going to be stronger than a man's death on this
occasion. Wait until the story is written, then we'll draw the moral."
"Do you wish me to go to England at once?"
"To-morrow, in my yacht, if you can. I go to Berlin to sign up a
contract for rifles, but I expect to be in London in a fortnight's time.
You should have your house then. There'll be no difficulty when you show
them the money. I leave all that to you and to Miss Gabrielle. She's got
to be the good angel in this affair. I'm counting on her right through."
"You may well do that. She is a wonderful organizer; no talk, no fuss. I
am sure they would have liked her in America if we had gone to Yonkers.
As it is, I really don't know what to say to those people."
"Oh, tell them to go to hell!" said Faber, while he struck a match
sharply and relighted his cigar.
V
The _Savannah_ weighed at dawn, and all that day they steamed by the
glorious isles of the matchless Adriatic. Their destination was Venice,
whence Faber would go via Munich to Berlin. The others were to travel
direct by the Simplon to London--all but Harry Lassett, who meant to put
in a few days at Montana before he returned.
They carried a young doctor from Ragusa, but he soon discovered that he
had little to do save to take a fee, a performance which he accomplished
with truly professional grace. Maryska had a heart of iron, it appeared,
and a constitution to match it. Whatever the unnameable night had taught
her of life or of men, she held the damnable secret with the tenacity of
a race born to such acts and schooled in the creeds of ferocity. Very
silent, suspicious of all, agitated and given to fits of trembling when
alone, those with her could not read that riddle of a child's dreams
aright. To Gabrielle she remained an enigma, seemingly wanting in
gratitude and anxious to escape every occasion for it. Gordon Silvester
she treated as though he did not exist; Harry Lassett was a problem in
manhood to awake distrust and find her eyes furtive. John Faber she
trusted wholly.
They had allowed her to come on deck during the heat of the day, and she
lay there in a hammock swung between hatches. An untamed restlessness
found her starting at every sound. She would sit up and watch the
passers-by as though afraid of them; or stare at the crew with deeply
black eyes, as though seeking a friend among them. Her requests that
Faber should be sent to her were unceasing. In his turn, he liked to
hear her talk. He would watch those eloquent eyes, and forget that she
had called him "an old, old man" in the early days of their
acquaintance.
"Will you come and sit beside me, Mr. Faber, just a little while? I do
not want the others to come. I will not have them near me."
"But, Maryska, my dear, they just want to be kind to you, that's all.
Don't you like Miss Gabrielle, now?"
She thought about it. Then she said: "Is she your wife, Mr. Faber?"
"My!--what an idea! I haven't got a wife. She's engaged to the young man
over there."
"Not the one with the wolf's whiskers and the teeth."
"Of course not; he's her father. The other one who's playing with the
quoits."
She watched Harry Lassett a little while; her face became grave.
"_He_ used to play that when last he came from America. He played with
me, and then I won money for him from the others. We can't do that here;
is that right, Mr. Faber?"
He laughed and took her hand.
"Let me tell you about this money, Maryska. Do you know I'm very rich,
my dear? They call me one of the richest men in the world. You mustn't
think about money any more. I've got more than you and I will ever spend
if we live to be as old as Methuselah. So just change the subject,
little lady, and find another."
She made nothing of it, the years of the human chase pursued her. Was
she not alone now? _He_ could never help her again, and he had been so
great a part of her life.
"What is the good of telling me this? It is not my money, Mr. Faber. I
must go and get some for myself when the ship stops. You had no right to
take me away from Ragusa--my home was there. Why have you done it?"
He tried to tell her, but it was very difficult. In some moods she was
little better than a waif of the streets, who had learned to beg like a
mendicant at a church door; in others her birthright gave her a
wonderful dignity before which the plebeian in John Faber was dumb.
"I want you to have a new home, Maryska, one that you'll be glad to call
your own. That's why I'm taking you to England. Miss Gabrielle there is
going to live with you and so's her father. But it will be your own
house and everything that's in it yours. You'll like it, sure, when you
see it, my dear. I don't think you'll want to go back to Ragusa again."
She listened pensively.
"Will that boy be there?"
"The one who's playing games?"
"Yes, the boy who laughs."
"Oh, I dare say he'll come sometimes. Do you like him, then?"
"I don't know; he is very young, is he not?"
"I haven't asked his age, but I dare say he'll tell you."
"I should not ask him. Men do not like to tell their age. He never
would. Why are you paying for this house you speak of? You have no right
to pay for anything for me. You know that very well."
The question gave him his opportunity, and he told her as much of the
story as she could comprehend. Her father had been the best friend he
had ever known. He had taken his mother to America at the crisis of her
fortunes. It was an obligation he could never forget. He had meant to do
so much in return, but fate was against them both. They must act
together henceforth and make the best of their lives they could. She
must help him to honour his mother's name. In her turn Maryska replied
but vaguely. He had thought that she was not listening, but when he had
finished, and following a little interval of silence, she threw herself
back upon her cushions and cried wildly, "Jesus Christ! I never had a
mother to honour." And that surely was as lamentable a confession as any
he had heard from her lips.
VI
They were off Venice upon the following night, and so favoured by
fortune that the waxing moon gave them a vista of the hundred isles,
beautiful beyond compare.
A still sea hardly stirred a ripple upon the sandy shores of the Lido.
Venice herself stood up in a haze of soft light, her spires and domes
rising above the vast lagoon of untroubled waters, dim, mysterious,
entrancing. Seen from afar, she might have been a great house of dreams;
her windows so many stars above a silent lake; her palaces but the dark
clouds of a vision. As phantoms about them, ships drifted upon a
reluctant tide; sails took shape and glided away, spectres of an
instant, into the deeper shadows. There were musical voices crying out
of the darkness; notes of song most pleasing; the dwelling
reverberations of ancient bells to tell of hours which should have been
unnumbered. As they drew nearer still and the Dogana took shape with the
vast dome of the Maria della Salute beyond it, then it was as though the
centuries spoke with one voice, and all the lustre and the achievement
of a thousand years were revealed in a splendid instant. So is it ever
for those who approach Venice from the sea and obliterate the black
modernity which wrestles with her story. Such is the vision of her which
Turner beheld.
Faber watched the spectacle from the boat deck, and was far from
displeased to find Gabrielle at his side. There had been few
opportunities for confidential talk since they sailed from Ragusa, and
she herself had said no word to lead him to believe that the course of
her life was about to be changed. Very stately in mien this night, her
height accentuated by the place where she stood, her hair a little wild
beneath her wrap, eyes very bright and searching, her manner restful, he
wondered whence came the "aristocrat" in her lineage, and how a mere
manse had sent forth such a missioner. Let the assembly be what it
might, Gabrielle Silvester would take a proud place. Intellectually she
was far above him in education and artistic perception, but he suffered
a sense of inferiority with patience, and admired her the more because
she could awaken it. Bertie Morris had said that she was "cold and
Saxon." Faber doubted the truth of that.
They discussed many things in an ordinary way. She spoke of the story of
Venice and found him skilfully parrying his own ignorance. He knew
little of the history of the place--had heard of St. Mark's and of the
"Three." The lion's mouth struck him as a fine idea. There ought to be
one in every city for cranks and faddists, he said, and a special box
for politicians and newspaper men. When she asked him if the vision of
the city suggested nothing more, he thrust his hands into his pockets
and said that it reminded him of New York Bay.
"Which is to say that all this talk of fine buildings is so much flute
blowing. I guess our people wouldn't give New York second best if they
spoke the whole truth. You'll never admit as much yourself just because
you're full of Eastern prejudices. That's to be expected. A thing which
has stood a thousand years has got the moss of the world's approval
pretty thick upon it. I take off my hat to Venice, but I'm thinking of
New York all the time."
"Of the temples of a mighty industry? Isn't that in the advertisement
line? I don't think you can be quite serious, though. It must mean more
to you than that."
"Why should it mean more to me. I guess it's brick and marble anyway,
and not so very much better because it's old. What we are seeing
to-night comes out of heaven--light and atmosphere and the sea for a
setting. I could show you a night in New York Bay which is up to
anything hereabouts. Why should I spread myself when conviction isn't
there? Yonder's a beautiful city--is it worse because there are others?"
Convention bade her smile, but she would yet try to teach him.
"You have no true inspiration," she said; "there will never be another
great building in the world until we find the key to the old. If a man's
faith could move mountains, he might build such a city as that. But the
faith must be there, I am sure of that."
"Meanwhile the world gets along very well on stucco fronts. No one
believes very much in anything but money. You yourself are but half
convinced, and you want to make a convert of me. Now, isn't that the
truth, Miss Gabrielle?"
She was very angry with him.
"You rich men have no ideals. You discredit the ideals of others. If I
had your money, I would build such a temple to peace as would compel the
world to come in. Oh! think what one might do, the name one might leave,
the homes one might save. It is money that hides all this from you,
money that hides even the purpose of life itself. You grub in the
valleys when imagination should lead you to the hill-top. Your eyes look
downwards--how shall anyone teach you to see?"
He smoked on patiently. Presently, he said:
"There's something in the Bible about the blind leading the blind. I'll
tell you what. You are trying to convince yourself about this peace
nonsense, and in the end you may succeed. When you do, I'll build your
temple for you; it's a promise between us, and shall be kept. The
heretic building the church for the faithful; I like the idea of that,
don't you?"
"You will never build it," she said. "I have come to know that now. You
have not the imagination to build; nothing teaches you in spirit."
And then she exclaimed with very real conviction:
"You are a man without pity for humanity--all your story is told in
that."
He accepted the savage assault with a smile that was unchanging. Candour
in women pleased him; as his wife, this woman would carry him far upon
an unfamiliar road his ambition had often sought. In the vulgar phrase,
she would bring culture.
"I may be without pity for humanity," he said, "but humanity's had a
good many dollars out of my pocket. Do you know how much humanity I
employ at Charleston, I wonder? Well, all told,
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