THE NEW AMAZONS.
On every side the continued rivalry between the sexes in their struggle
for supremacy in national life was producing lamentable results.
To this general evil now was added the new move inaugurated by the
Vice-President of the Council in the matter of military training. The
unfortunate illness of President Jardine had facilitated the schemes
of that daring leader of the women, and it soon became apparent that
preparations for enrolling large bodies of Amazons, though hitherto
kept secret, in fact had been very far advanced before the memorable
meeting at Queen's Hall.
Recruits flocked in from every quarter. The idea of military service or
a military picnic for a few months in the Amazonian militia appealed
to all sorts and conditions of girls and young women. Those who had
reached the age when the resources or pleasures of home life had begun
to pall, those who saw no chance of getting married, those who had
met with disappointments in love and were stirred with the restless
spirit of the times, those who rebelled against parental rule, domestic
employments, or the monotony of days spent in warehouse or office, one
and all caught eagerly at the idea of a course of military training
in smart uniforms, with the possibility of encountering experiences
and adventures from which parents and guardians had sought to withhold
them.
Ready pens were at the service of the New Amazons. History and
tradition were ransacked by industrious scribes in search of precedents
and raw material for "copy." The _Epoch_, (the unofficial press organ
of the Vice-President) boldly vaunted the capacity of women to bear
arms. Who would dare to deny that women were as brave as men? In
modern times the Dahomey Amazons had been a force in being. An eminent
professor had made researches which went to show that the Amazons of
old were real warriors. Humboldt refused to regard American Amazons as
mythical, and other trustworthy authorities had confirmed his view.
Then there were the Shield Maidens of the Vikings, to whose existence
witness was borne by historical sagas. The ancient literature of
Ireland set forth as a fact that "men and women went alike to battle in
those days." Did not a certain abbot of Iona go to Ireland to organise
a movement against the custom of summoning women to join the standard
and fight the enemy? In Europe, not so very long ago, the Montenegrins
and Albanians called their women to arms in the hour of national
extremity.
The _Epoch_ presented the 1st Amazons of England with a silken banner,
embroidered with a representation of Thalestris the Amazonian queen,
and pointed out that, however fabulous might be the achievements of the
women warriors of ancient times, modern warfare need make no similar
demands on the physical strength of woman. War had become a feat of
science, rather than of endurance. It was no longer necessary for
contending champions to engage in a trial of muscular strength. Macbeth
and Macduff were not called upon to "lay on" until one of them cried:
"Hold! enough." Battles were fought and victories won at long range.
Thin red lines and Balaclava charges belonged to ancient history. And
if by any chance it should come to fighting at close quarters, had
woman shown herself lacking in courage, or even in ferocity in such
encounters? Why, in every memorable riot in which the civil population
had been in conflict with the soldiery, the women, again and again, had
proved themselves to be the foremost in attack and the most fertile of
hostile resource. Thus argued the _Epoch_ and other press advocates of
the New Amazons, at the same time citing many instances of the prowess
exhibited by individual women on fields of battle.
Vast numbers of young persons, supremely ignorant of life in its uglier
and more dangerous aspects, thus encited, discovered that they were
not, and could not be, happy at home all the year round. They wanted
variety; they pined for change and excitement; and all of them were
firmly pursuaded that they knew much better than their elders what
was good for them. In their eyes all things were not only lawful, but
all things were expedient. They stood up with stolid looks, deaf to
remonstrances and appeals, and expressed an obstinate wish to join the
Amazons. Numbers of them, being more self-willed than their parents,
got their own way, and were enrolled; while still larger numbers were
put back as physically ineligible, but with liberty, in some cases, to
renew their application at a future time.
That the movement had "caught on" nobody could deny. That it was full
of dangerous possibilities became more and more apparent every day.
Zenobia, who came to London to attend the Queen's Hall meeting, had
returned to Bath to nurse her father, whose illness showed increasingly
alarming symptoms. Linton Herrick, meanwhile, was not wholly without
occupation, for there were sundry private conferences between his
uncle and General Hartwell at which his presence was required. These
discussions and reports became of the more importance in view of
certain news from the East and of the complications likely to arise at
home in the event of the illness of the President proving fatal.
Nevertheless, there were times when Linton found himself mooning about
his uncle's house and garden in a state both of mental and physical
restlessness. He missed Zenobia, missed a glimpse of her on the river,
or a flash of her as she sped away in the _Bladud_ to London. They had
met often, and it seemed to him as if they had known each other all
their lives. He would have given anything to hear the yelping of her
dog Peter next door, because it would have betokened the presence of
Peter's mistress.
Before Mr. Jardine's departure for Bath, the young Canadian had sat
with him and talked on many topics and on several occasions. The
enormous strides which Canada had made, and was making, in the way
of prosperity greatly interested the President. Linton, however, was
astonished to find how little the man whom fortune had pitch-forked
into a foremost position in England really knew about Colonial affairs.
He frequently fell into amazing geographical errors, mistakes quite
comparable with that of a certain Duke of Newcastle who announced with
surprise to George II. his discovery that Cape Breton was an island.
Linton liked the President, not wholly for the President's sake, but
partly for the same reason that he had developed a friendly feeling
towards Peter the dog. The President, on his part, certainly had taken
a fancy to him, and in those bedside conversations talked with far
less reserve than he was in the habit of employing in conversations
with Englishmen, particularly young Englishmen. These conversations
gradually impressed Linton with the belief that this hardheaded and
successful mechanic, who found himself, thanks to the strength of a
numerous and well-drilled party, at the head of the State, actually
was discovering his own deficiencies--the educational deficiencies,
the intellectual deficiencies for which doggedness and powers of
oratory were no true substitute. In a word, it seemed as if, in that
time of inactivity and reflection which a bed of sickness enforces,
Nicholas Jardine had begun to realise his own shortcomings as a ruler
of men--his unfitness to direct the destinies of a nation great in
history, and still great in possibilities of recuperation if only well
and wisely led.
"If you should be down West, come and see me at Bath," were the
President's parting words. "Indeed I will," said the young man
heartily, and there was something in his eyes as he turned to say
good-bye to Zenobia that made her colour. Nothing seemed more probable
to both of them at that moment than that Linton would find himself down
West, and nothing more certain than that there would be only one reason
for his going there.
The young man had fought his way into Queen's Hall on the night of
the great meeting, solely and wholly because he had heard that Miss
Jardine was likely to be present. But he had no idea what line she
was likely to adopt in reference to the momentous question under
discussion. Yet the one drawback that hitherto he had found in her was
her attitude, or what he feared was her attitude, towards the question
of woman's ascendency. In the crush of the hot and noisy meeting, he
had failed to see Zenobia on the platform, and when she rose to speak
his feelings were strangely blended--of admiration at her bearing,
and of dread less she might say something than ran counter to his own
convictions. But her actual utterance astonished and delighted him;
and the hostile method of the "Cat" provoked in him such feelings of
fierce resentment as he had never felt towards womanhood before. Yet
there was one sentence that fell from the Vice-President which caused
him to be sensible of emotion of another sort. That sneering suggestion
that the younger speaker must be in love excited him strangely. He felt
an intimate personal concern in that scornful imputation. In love with
whom?
And now he had ample time in his uncle's riverside house, with the
empty dwelling and silent garden on the other side of the hedge, to
ponder the same question. The _Bladud_, however, proved a great boon.
It had been left at his disposal, and Wilton, the Jardine's engineer
and skipper, was always ready to accompany him in an air trip. Wilton
was a hard-featured little man with a soft heart and a shrewish wife,
who kept the domestic nest in so spick and span a condition that poor
Wilton could never take his ease at home, and therefore appreciated any
good and sufficient reason for getting out of it.
Wilton confessed to Linton Herrick a treacherous thought. It concerned
the wife of his bosom and the new Amazons.
"Seems to me," said the little man, "as this here scheme may be a good
thing in a manner of speaking. There's girls, and, maybe, there's wives
too, that wants a bit of a change. Well, that's right enough. Why not?"
"What do you mean?" asked Linton, wondering and amused.
"Wot I mean, under pervisions, mind, under pervisions...." Linton
laughed, but Wilton was quite serious, his thoughts engaged in a great
domestic problem, his hands busy with the machinery of the _Bladud_, in
which they were just about to go aloft.
"Well, it's like this, I wouldn't be for letting women jine a reg'lar
army, but militia's different. They'd get a 'oliday at Government
expense. When they come back they'd be more contented-like with their
'omes; and while they was away, well, there...." rubbing his head with
a pair of pincers.
"And while they were away the men would have a quiet time, eh?" laughed
Linton, who had heard of Wilton's family history.
"You've 'it it, sir, you've 'it it," said Wilton, without the vestige
of a smile. "Not but what women has a lot to put up with, mind you; and
there's times when they're as kind as kind. Still, wot I say is, a lot
of 'em's never content unless they can have the upper 'and, and that's
what's wrong with England."
* * * * *
Meanwhile, at Bath, the condition of Nicholas Jardine had given Zenobia
cause for increasing anxiety.
In the hushed and tranquil days that sometimes come with October, the
leaves fall of their own volition, and with scarcely perceptible sound.
Their hour has come, and, with a faint whisper or rustle of farewell,
one by one they flutter down to mother earth. Thus also, the leaves of
human life are ever falling--the sighing souls of men, obedient to the
immutable design, passing from out the bourn of time and space.
In those last days, when the certainty of the end came home to him,
Jardine, for the first time, began to ponder on problems to which he
had scarcely given a thought in the active years of his remarkable
career. Perhaps in the silence of the days, and in the deeper silence
of the nights, he asked himself unconsciously those same questions
which, thousands of years ago, the Son of Sirach had framed for all
time in language so expressive: "What is man, and whereto serveth he?
What is his good, and what is his evil? As a drop of water unto the
sea, and a gravel-stone in comparison of the sand, so are a thousand
years to the days of eternity!"
"All flesh waxeth old as a garment; for the covenant from the beginning
is: Thou shalt die the death. As the green leaves on a thick tree, some
fall and some grow: so is the generation of flesh and blood, one cometh
to an end, and another is born."
"Every work rotteth and consumeth away, and the worker thereof shall go
withal!"
One day the President startled Zenobia by asking for a Bible. She
brought it wonderingly. He signed to her to read. And as she read to
him, the sick man and his daughter looked up into each other's eyes
with something like bewilderment.
"Father," cried the girl passionately, as she closed the Book, "Why did
you keep it from me? Why did you do it?" The dying man looked into her
face with troubled gaze, and whispered something very faintly. Was it
the word "Forgive?"
A yet stranger and more terrible ordeal was in store for Zenobia. To
her lot it fell to hear from her father's lips a confession that seared
her to the very soul. This confession presently was embodied in his
will, which two days later he dictated to his daughter.
His mind was perfectly clear, though his hand could scarcely hold the
pen. As a matter of precaution, he insisted that the doctor and the
nurse should be the attesting witnesses. The will was sealed in an
envelope, and placed under lock and key. When that was done, Zenobia,
with set face, hurried to the nearest telegraph office and sent the
following message to Linton Herrick:
"I implore you to come immediately. A matter of life and death."
Meanwhile, Jardine had settled his affairs, and finished with the
business of life. Like the King of old, he turned his face to the wall.
Yet startling things were occurring close at hand--strange occurrences
within this very city of Bath. To others they were sufficiently
alarming. Indeed, there had been something in the nature of a panic.
The first manifestation had taken place at the Grand Pump Room Hotel.
The King of Bath, if he could have come to his realm again, would have
encountered not a few surprises, and would have found the famous Hotel
transformed beyond all recognition. The examples of London, Paris, and
New York had been diligently followed. There was a stately Palm Court,
with marble columns and gilded cornices. Oriental rugs and luxurious
fauteuils had been lavishly provided. On a raised marble terrace,
during the dinner hour, a stringed band furnished an undercurrent for
the banal remarks of the diners. There were rooms in the Adams style,
rooms in the Louis the Sixteenth style, a Charles II. Smaller dining
Room, and a Smoking Room in the Elizabethan style--with ingle-nook and
heavy ceiling beams in oak. But the people who dined and chattered
and smoked amid these surroundings were not Elizabethan, Stuart, or
Georgian in style. They were the product of the twentieth century, and
were of no style at all; they lacked repose and dignity; they were
self-conscious, self-assertive; believers, and encouraged to believe,
in the powers of the almighty dollar, hustlers and bustlers, who rushed
hither and thither, and did this or that without knowledge and without
appreciation, and solely for the purpose of being able to say that they
had done it. Everything inanimate in this twentieth-century Bath Hotel
was very beautiful. There were skilful imitations of Adams, Sheraton,
and Chippendale; there were coloured marbles, trophies, garlands,
ornamentation of all sorts in gilt and bronze; decorative panels,
with consoles and mirrors everywhere,--everything being in elaborate
imitation of something else and something older.
But in one corner of the Grand Dining Hall was one thing real and
old--a fountain of Sulis water, which had been brought into a
decorative niche and enshrined amid elaborate allegorical figures which
nobody understood.
It was typical of England. She had gained in some ways, she had lost
in many more. She had acquired electric appliances, telephones, and
air-ships, but lost in grace and picturesqueness. Frequenters of Bath
no longer wore wigs, laced coats, and buckled shoes. They no longer
settled their little difficulties with the rapier. The ladies had
discarded powder in any appreciable quantities, and patches altogether;
but people of quality had vanished from the once familiar scene.
Quantity had taken the place of quality everywhere. Money had proved
the great key and the great leveller. There was a dead level in style
and tone and appearance. Society had to be taken in the mass, instead
of in the class, and notabilities were far to seek.
Such were the people upon whom the panic seized, amid the clatter
of knives and forks, the rattle of plates, and the popping of
corks--inseparable accompaniments of the _table d'hôte_ dinner hour.
The visitors started to their feet with cries of dismay. An astonishing
thing had occurred. The fountain of Sulis water in the grotto at the
end of the great dining hall had suddenly burst its bounds! The pipes
were forced from their position. Great volumes of orange-tinted,
steaming water began to flood the room. The members of the string band,
whose seats and music stands were placed among the ferns and palms, in
immediate proximity to the fountain, grasped their instruments, and
beat a precipitate retreat. Ladies, uttering shrill cries, jumped upon
chairs. There was a scene of uncontrolled confusion. In a few moments,
water, almost boiling, covered the floor to the depth of several
inches, and male guests and waiters, carrying the ladies on chairs or
in their arms, made all haste to escape into the vestibule.
At the same time the springs in the Roman baths displayed extraordinary
activity. Everywhere the water rose in enormous and unprecedented
volume. All the baths were hastily cleared of occupants and closed
to the public, and the most astounding reports spread like wildfire
through the city. The corporation officials speedily came upon the
scene, and trenches were hastily cut for the purpose of carrying the
overflow of water direct into the river. To the intense relief of
everybody, in the course of a few hours the flood slackened.
Two days later, when people had begun to think there had been no
sufficient reason for their fears, came other sounds and signs
of abnormal activity in the earth itself. Faint tremors shook the
surrounding hills, more especially Lansdown, and these signs were
succeeded by sundry landslips, which sent many of the hillside
residents flying in terror from their houses. A huge crack presently
opened in the high plateau of the hill, and from this fissure arose at
intervals strong puffs of curious, reddish-tinted vapour.