CHAPTER I

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.