CHAPTER VI

GOODWILL TOWARD MEN

I

Faber arrived in Berlin three days after the yacht had put into Venice.

The cordiality of his reception in the German capital surprised him.

Known both as the inventor and the manufacturer of the famous "Faber"

magazine rifle, the greatest instrument of war the twentieth century had

yet seen, he found himself a celebrity most welcome to the Germans.

Rarely had there been so much "hoching" for a comparatively private

individual. Remarkable personages in remarkable uniforms overwhelmed him

by their hospitality; he was made familiar with superb "vons" in

accoutrement more superb. The gay city--by far the gayest in Europe at

the present time--delighted him by its capacity for enjoyment and its

freedom from social cant. The women flirted with him outrageously. He

had never been made so much of since fortune first smiled upon him.

Bertie Morris came from Paris on the fourth day, and brought him all the

news in exchange for his own. Bertie was not surprised that Faber's

first question should be about little Claudine d'Arny, and what had

happened to her since the tragedy of her father's death. He had come to

Berlin prepared to give a good account of his stewardship in that

affair, and he was very proud of what he had done. They were at dinner

when the narration took place, and the restaurant of the Metropole Hotel

glowed with light and colour, and the glitter of fine uniforms. There

were officers everywhere; women whose gowns neither Paris nor Vienna

might shame. They moved in an atmosphere of soft tints; the warmth of

crimson carpets and the spotless white of polished walls setting off

their "creations" to perfection. The air was heavy with the scent of

crimson roses, which were on every table, despite the season.

Faber had a table in the corner of the room, and he allowed

_hors-d'oeuvre_ and soup to be served before he interrupted the

journalist in his occupation of criticising the company with that

running and often ironical commentary in which writing people delight.

When the prettiest women had been "sized-up," famous people reduced to

pulp, and the European situation dismissed in twenty words, Bertie was

ready to speak of Claudine. He was too good an actor to bring her on the

scene before.

"She arrived at Cannes yesterday," he said at last. "I chose the Riviera

Palace because it's the kind of hotel where she'll meet the most people,

and forget the quickest. Of course, Issy-Ferrault is going. It was

difficult enough to do your business, but I did it bluntly in a business

way. 'Marry Claudine d'Arny,' I said, 'and she'll have a guaranteed

income of one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs a year.' His own

douceur was to be another hundred and twenty-five thousand paid on the

day the contract was signed. I put it to him as plainly as if I had a

picture to sell. In the end, he bought her with no more scruple than if

she had been a horse."

"Blustering first; I suppose, and talking of his ancestry."

"I don't think--there was about an hour and a half of it. Issy-Ferrault

came out of the history box like pepper out of a pot. You'd have thought

they made France and that Charlemagne was a bagman. When he was through

with his talking, I just put the cinch on him with the remark that he

wasn't writing history books but contracts. He pumped me like a

tax-gatherer to learn the why and wherefore of it all; but the most I

could tell him was that an old friend of Claudine's was determined to

see her through and that good hard dollars expressed the measure of his

determination. There I left it, and that's what he signed upon. He'll go

to Cannes and marry her directly public opinion will let him do it. They

are to live in London, I understand. He's a good sportsman and is out

after the English shooting and fishing, so I told him to get a house in

the shires, and he promised to do so. Claudine's money will tie him up

all right--and as for that, I should think a girl with those eyes could

hold most men. You may take it, Faber, that the matter is settled--as,

of course, it was bound to be--after your generosity."

Faber brushed the suggestion aside as one which hardly concerned him. He

was pleased by the news and his pride stirred at the suggestion of

power, the reality of which he began to understand. Who but a man of

vast fortune could have repaired such a tragedy as that? He looked

Destiny full in the face and laughed at its omens.

"I've bought most things," he said, "but this is my first deal in

husbands. Well, I'm glad the little girl is on the road again. Isn't

this Issy-Ferrault rather a hustler in his way? I heard him well spoken

of when I was in Paris; they say he's an aeroplane on the road or in the

air. Do you know of it?"

"Oh, there's some talk. He was with Blériot a month or two back. The

French army does not sleep much nowadays--a pretty wide-awake lot

without any whiskers on their ideas. Issy-Ferrault is one of the

aviation detachment. I suppose he'll be flying on his own account now if

he can keep out of the arms of that black-eyed little girl. But he

won't, if I'm any judge of women. She'll stick like the best glue; she's

just the sort."

"Then you haven't altered your opinion of her since we left Paris?"

"Guess not; nor of your flaxen-haired Venus either. You don't tell me,

by the way, what's become of her."

"She's gone to London to get married."

Bertie opened his eyes very wide.

"To get married! Who's the man?"

"He's a boy--knocks balls about and considers himself famous. Just one

of these British boys, nice voice and manners, and legs like the Moses

in the pictures. I don't think you would have named him for her choice

in twenty guesses, but there it is. They've been billing and cooing on

the Adriatic for a week, and now they've gone to do it in London.

They're a difficult proposition, Bertie."

Bertie, watching him shrewdly, guessed the same.

"Is she in love with him--real?"

"Ask me something else. She's a woman, and being a woman, many sided.

One side likes being kissed on the lips by twenty-two, who must be

big-limbed and masculine. The other sides are turned toward various

objects--ambition, money, and a woman's common vanities. She's at an age

when they turn like a wind vane, and as often. If he catches her in a

calm, he'll marry her."

"But if he doesn't--well, that's in the air. You were speaking of Rupert

Trevelle a while back. He's over there in the corner yonder. Shall I

introduce him?"

Faber looked up and saw a man of about his own age, faultlessly dressed,

and accompanied by two pretty women in the smartest gowns. Trevelle, by

his looks, should either have been a major of a smart cavalry regiment,

or in "the diplomatic." He had jet black hair and a fierce moustache,

large manners and a habit of authority. His party, like their own, had

just finished dinner, and presently they all found themselves in the

lounge where mutual introductions were made.

"My friend, Mr. John Faber, of Charleston, the Baroness von Hartmann,

Lady Florentine. This is Mr. Rupert Trevelle, of whom Sir Jules Achon

has spoken. So now we all know each other and may get down to business."

Bertie placed chairs for the party, and with one of his characteristic

"Shall we's," he ordered coffee and liqueurs. Faber found himself

between Trevelle and the baroness--a woman with a milk-white skin she

was at no pains to conceal, and a method of crushing her handkerchief in

a fat hand which was quite deadly with young men. She spoke little

English, but that was sufficient to convey to the somewhat reserved

American an intimation of possible weakness under pleasant conditions

and of her own indifference to the absurdities of some modern

conventions. Trevelle, on the other hand, had great news, and he

bestowed it as gracious manna upon a field of fertile flirtation.

"They are talking of you at the Embassy to-night," he said.

Faber merely retorted, "Why, is that so?" and edged a little farther

from the baroness.

"Indeed, it was very much so. You know that you are to have the White

Cross of Prussia?"

"That's fine news. Has Sir Jules got anything?"

"Nothing whatever. They don't give white crosses for ideas, more's the

pity. Jules Achon is a great man--the world will find it out some day."

"The sooner the better for its credit. What you have to do, Mr.

Trevelle, is to educate the people; but I'm telling you nothing new. You

know that as well as I do."

"Most certainly I do; I have told Sir Jules so some ten thousand times.

He has a great idea, but he must have public opinion behind it. The

people make war to-day, not the princes."

"But princes have a say in it, sure."

"They do when the people are willing that they should. At present the

popular mind is pretty well where it was fifty years ago. Look at the

reputation you bear in Berlin. Why? Because you have made an instrument

which allows the German to kill his enemies as he has never been killing

them before."

"You are saying, vat?" asked the baroness, impatient of neglect. "You

are telling Mister Faber to kill ze enemies?"

"Of his own sex, madame," retorted Trevelle immediately.

"Then he is not like ze Spanish king, who do not kill his enemy because

he have killed him already. I should be afraid of this friend of yours;

he have nothing but killing in his mind--he live to kill, is it not so?"

"Oh!" said Trevelle, "you must ask the ladies about that."

The baroness shook her head.

"We was all to go to the Alcazar to see the Russian dancers. Why do we

stay? I am all hot. I would get far from here--all hot, and yet they say

dat in England is joost one good big cold, so cold dat ze nose is freeze

off the face. Shall we go to dance, Mr. Trevelle?"

Trevelle said, "Certainly." He had heard of the terrible winter they

were having in England, and was glad not to be in London.

"The Thames will be frozen right over," he told them, "the first time

since the beginning of the nineteenth century. I suppose there is

something in this story of the weakening of the Gulf Stream after two

years of drought over yonder. Anyway, it's extraordinary. I wonder what

would happen if the Channel froze----?"

"Ah!" said Faber, "a good many people would wonder then, and some of

them would be in Berlin. I don't think Sir Jules's stock would stand

very high if that happened, Mr. Trevelle."

"But you think it quite impossible?"

"Which is to say that I dictate to Nature. Well, I don't think I should

do that at my time of life."

They all laughed, and went off to the Alcazar, where a Russian woman

danced divinely, and was followed by a red-nosed man, who broke plates

to the great delight of an immense audience. Faber was not displeased to

find himself with these two pretty women in a box, where all the world

could see him; and it occurred to him before he had been there very long

that the house had recognised him, and that he was being pointed out to

other pretty women in the seats below. Certainly, this visit to Berlin

was becoming a famous thing in its way. It compelled him to understand

the meaning of that fame he had won for himself and the homage paid both

to him and to his house. A glamour of life, unknown hitherto, but very

dazzling, could influence even so balanced a judgment and so cynical a

student of humanity. Hardly one of the women, rustling in silks and

velvets, bedizened in jewels--hardly one of them to whom he might not

have thrown the handkerchief, if he would. The knowledge flattered his

pride, and set him thinking of Gabrielle Silvester. Well dressed and

wonderful as these women were, Gabrielle would have held her own among

them all. He thought of her as destined to rule amid a glitter of jewels

and an incense of roses. There was no house in all Europe she could not

grace, he said.

A vain thought. She was engaged to a fool of a boy, who could play

cricket; and that very night upon his return to the hotel, he found a

letter from her in which she confessed to the folly without excuse.

Harry wished for an early day. He had altered his plans, and thought now

that he would not go to Australia.

II

Faber read the letter in a deep chair by the fireside--in his private

room at the Metropole. Bertie Morris, meanwhile, had the English

newspaper and a very large whisky and soda. Both men had caught the

Berlin habit, and lived rather by night than by day. The hotel itself

was then, at a quarter to one in the morning, beginning to amuse itself

seriously.

Gabrielle wrote a pretty hand, round as her own limbs, precise as her

own habits, with here and there a fine flourish to denote a certain want

of stability. It was to be expected that she would make early mention of

her charge; but she dwelt so insistently upon what Maryska de Paleologue

had done that she must have presupposed an interest beyond the common.

And then there was the postscript--a word of real alarm or of deep

design. Faber readily granted the former, and would have nothing to do

with the latter. Gabrielle was transparently honest in all that she said

and wrote.

"We arrived in London after a bitter journey," the letter ran,

"the frost has returned, and the cold is dreadful. I am afraid

Maryska feels it very much after Ragusa, and is not grateful to

us for bringing her to such an inhospitable country. The streets

of London shone like rivers of ice as we drove through, and even

my father now admits that there is something in a taxi. What

Maryska does not understand is your threatened journey to

America, and your unkindness in leaving us all with so brief a

farewell. She is very strange here, and she is entirely without

friends--though Harry has done his best to cheer her up, and has

really developed surprising powers as a private entertainer.

Perhaps the cold and the fog have affected her spirits unduly--I

would not make too much of it, but she is undoubtedly changed

since we left Venice, and the change is not for the better! This

much you ought to know.

"Of course, it is much too early yet to speak of the house. We

are all at Hampstead in the old home, and it seems difficult to

believe that so much has happened in so short a time. I refuse

to allow that Christmas Day falls next week, and that in twelve

days we shall be ringing the old year out. If anything could

convince me it is this bitter cold, this biting cruel weather,

which is like nothing England has seen before, and I hope will

be like nothing that is to come after. Here at Hampstead, they

say the ice is inches thick upon the ponds--I can hear the whir

of the skates from my windows, and everyone who passes is

dressed like a grizzly bear. Maryska has seen a severe winter in

America, and suffered terribly there because of the cold. So you

will understand how anxious we are about her, and how very

watchful it is necessary to be.

"My father says she is the strangest compound of oddities he has

ever encountered. It is a description which does less than

justice to an original character. Of religion she has none. Her

god is an oath--nothing more: and yet to say that she is without

a deep capacity of feeling would be untrue. Some of her ideas

are fantastic--I suppose the orthodox would call them barbarous.

She has a locket about her throat with a miniature of the

Crucifixion after Francesco. I know that she has painted out the

face of Christ, and made a crude likeness of her father in its

place. Her trunk is full of his drawings--there are hardly any

clothes, poor child, and we shall have to fit her out directly

she is well enough. By that time we should know where we are to

live, if I can persuade my father to see the house agents. He

has a morbid idea that he will commit some great mistake, and I

should not be surprised if he took a good many houses before the

New Year.

"The only other news is that Harry does not now think that he

will go to Australia. He appears to be capricious in his new

ideas, and is ready to insist upon a crisis in our affairs. This

is so wholly unexpected, that I do not know what to say about

it. The foundations of the Temple are not laid, and it would be

terrible if the building fell. I suppose it is all very serious,

and I should consider it in that light, but I remain an enigma

to myself, and am content to let the future speak for itself.

"Oh, how cold it is--how cruelly cold! I can write no more, even

by a warm fireside. Perhaps Maryska will write herself

soon--horrible thought, I have yet to learn if the child can

write at all. When she reads, she terrifies me with the

possibilities. Her acquaintance with the most dreadful words is

a daily fright to me! She speaks Italian and French quite

fluently, and another language which my father does not

recognise, but thinks may be Roumanian. He brought a professor

of Oriental languages from one of the Universities here

yesterday, but the poor man was utterly at sea. I am sure he did

not understand a single word of what she said--none knew that

better than clever Maryska!

"She is asking for you every day, and I must tell her that you

are going to America. It is a heavy burden upon my poor

shoulders. Yesterday she said, 'Even _his_ friend has gone

away.' So, you see, she knows that you were his friend, and I am

sure that will not be unwelcome to you.

"Believe me, with all our kindest regards,

"Dear Mr. Faber, yours sincerely,

"GABRIELLE SILVESTER."

"P.S.--The news is not so well to-night. We have had another day

of the damp cold, and I am seriously alarmed for her. Have we

done right to bring such a hot-house plant to England at all?

She is asking for you again even as I write, for she knows that

it is written. 'Tell him,' she says, 'that _he_ would have

wished it. Then he will come to me.' I am doing my duty even if

it be done without hope."

III

Bertie Morris drained his glass and then folded the paper he had been

reading with great nicety. The journalistic habit inspired a restless

curiosity which would probe even the intimate affairs of his friends. He

knew that the letter was of great importance, and was almost indignant

that his great friend did not speak of its contents.

"Well," he said, with a pretence of a yawn, "I suppose it's time for me

to be trotting. See you to-morrow, anyhow."

Faber thrust the letter into his breast coat pocket and lighted a new

cigar.

"If I am here, why, yes; maybe I'll not be here."

"You'll not be here! But haven't you an appointment with General

Heinstein, to say nothing of the Count?"

"An excellent pair; they can amuse my man of business. I guess I'm going

to England."

Bertie whistled.

"You don't toe the mark for any ceremony, Faber. What about this White

Cross?"

"Let them hang it round the neck of the little girl at the Alcazar. I've

seen the Emperor, the one big man in this country, perhaps the one big

man in Europe, unless you care to name Kitchener. The others are no good

to me."

"Then you'll be going sure?"

"Not sure at all. See me in the morning, and I'll write the bulletin.

Just at the moment I'm thinking about it."

"Well, I hope you won't go, anyway. If you do, so long."

He put on his hat slowly as though still hoping to hear the reason why.

That the "flaxen-haired Venus" had something to do with it Bertie Morris

was convinced; and being a mere man, conviction amused him. Had Faber

said a word to invite his confidence, he would have spoken freely

enough. What was this multi-millionaire, who might marry where he

pleased in any famous family in Europe, what was he doing in the

company of a mere parson's daughter? Here, in Berlin, Bertie could

have named half a dozen high and mighty personages, beautiful women

with wonderful swan-like necks and the blood of bountiful barons in

their delicate veins, who would have packed their traps like one

o'clock had John Faber but dropped a handkerchief in their path. And

here he was, restless and uneasy and stark indifferent to his social

opportunities in the German capital, just because a tall girl with

flaxen hair had preached sermons upon peace to him, and rubbed in the

moral with some meaning glances from far from inexpressive eyes.

Bertie could not make head or tail of such primitive passions, and he

gave up the business as incomprehensible.

He had left Faber upon a note of interrogation, and to the man chiefly

concerned it was a perplexing note enough. Should he go to England

because this little waif of the world had called him, or should he leave

her to forget, as forget she must before many weeks had run? If he went,

he would recreate for himself all those difficulties he experienced when

in the presence of Gabrielle and of her sometimes inexplicable charm.

That she was drifting, drifting into the marriage with Harry Lassett, he

would not deny. The tragedy of her life might be the consummation of

that marriage based upon the passion of an hour and doomed to perish as

swiftly. Dimly he perceived the truth about himself and about her. Both

had been tempted by a physical instinct--both were born to a destiny

more spiritual. He himself had stood for an instant toward Maryska de

Paleologue as Gabrielle towards this very human boy. And the child had

called him "an old, old man," awakening realities with her words and

opening his eyes as no other had dared to do.

Long he debated it, perplexed beyond experience. Should he go to

England, and if he did, what then? Day did not help him, nor the early

hours of a busy morning. It was not until he had lunched that they

handed him a cable from Gabrielle, and he knew that the argument was

ended.

"She is very much worse. I think you had better come."

So the cable ran. He caught the night mail, and was at Ostend upon the

following morning.

BOOK III

AFTERMATH

CHAPTER I

THE MEMORABLE WINTER

I

The leap into the dark is made willy-nilly by every passenger who steps

upon a mail boat at night and asks no preliminary question concerning

the weather.

What a spectacle it is of ease buffeted by necessity at the harbour

station; of luxury driven out howling to the rigour of a raw and

relentless atmosphere; of gregarious humanity sent as sheep to the

slaughter or the satiety of the elements. Here comes the train blazing

with lights. The passengers wake from their unsettled slumbers to

de-wrap and thrust anxious faces from the carriage windows. They call

for porters in many tongues, and porters often enough are not vouchsafed

to them. There is a dreadful confusion upon the platform--the strong

pressing upon the weak, the helpless giving place to the cunning, the

rich wondering that they cannot bribe the sea. So we go to the ship

lying as a phantom at the wharf. She must laugh at all this humanity so

suddenly uncoddled. It is little to her whether the night be fine or

windy. She has no rugs to cast aside, and the porters can do nothing for

her.

Faber was an expert traveller, and his man, Frank, a paragon. He found a

cabin reserved for him upon the steamer _City of Berlin_, and was

surprised when making his way below to rub shoulders with Rupert

Trevelle, the last person he believed to be on the train from the

capital. Trevelle, old hand that he was, admitted that he had been

caught napping this time, and was without a berth. It was the most

obvious thing to offer him one.

"Come right along with me--I always book a second bunk, and you're

welcome to it. You didn't say last night you were going across?"

"I hadn't heard from Sir Jules then. It's his business which is taking

me. He's thinking of going to St. Petersburg."

"A wonderful man, sir!--this appears to be our den. Come right in, and

when the ship starts we'll get some cigars and some claret if they've

any aboard. Ever try claret against sea-sickness? It's the finest thing

in the world! I'll give you a dose just now."

Trevelle laughed, and began to dispose his things about the cabin. It

was the best on the ship, and the beds looked inviting enough. He,

however, had the Berlin habit, and would gladly make a dawn of it. It

was a wonderful piece of good luck that he should have happened upon

this amazing man, who went through the world on the magic carpet of

luxury. Trevelle determined that John Faber was the man for him.

"I don't know about claret, but a little rye whisky would suit me very

well. You're going through to London, of course?"

"As the crow does not fly this odd weather. Sit down and take your boots

off. I'm Western enough to know the road to comfort, and boots don't

carry you far along it. We'll make ourselves snug while Frank is putting

the fear of God into the steward. Go right slick, my boy, and let us

hear the sound of corks. We shall want all the warmth we can get before

we make Dover harbour."

Trevelle assented to that. He had already lighted a cigar and was deep

down in an unprotesting bed. Soon glasses rattled in the cabin, and the

well-desired music of corks was to be heard. The steamer moved slowly

from her moorings: they had sailed.

"So Sir Jules is going to St. Petersburg? Does it strike you as not a

little extraordinary that this great man, who has the sanest ideas about

the peace question of anyone alive, should be wandering about Europe in

this way, knocking at every door like a weary evangelist? To me, it's a

sad sight, sir. I wish I could do something to make it better."

"I, not less," said Trevelle. "Do you think, though, that the world is

very much in love with sane ideas just now? I don't. You hit the

multitude either with fact or fiction. The _via media_ leads nowhere.

Sir Jules says to these people, 'I can give you peace, but my scheme may

take twenty years to mature.' So they think in a twenty years' measure!"

"Meanwhile the other man, who says 'Here is the millennium, take

it!'--he is on the first floor. None the less, I would go on if I were

Sir Jules. He's got a real good thing. When he's advertised it long

enough, the public will know it's real good, and he'll get a hearing. I

said and I repeat: 'Educate the people--the others wouldn't let you

educate 'em, if you could.'"

Trevelle laughed at that.

"I wish you'd come in yourself," he said, falling suddenly to great

earnestness. "By gad! that would be a coup for Sir Jules! Have you ever

thought about it, Mr. Faber? You are one of the few who could really

help him. Why not come and form an international committee? You could

work the American end yourself--no one better! I'm sure it must be some

interest to America to see a final settlement in Europe, even if she has

to make sacrifices to obtain it. Now, won't you think of it?"

Faber seemed very much amused. He had expected this request from one or

the other, but he recognised now that Sir Jules had been too shrewd to

make it. Why, the very essence of his scheme was an assault upon

American enterprise. It required this undaunted hustler to put the thing

in plain terms--he liked Trevelle none the less for his effrontery.

"I'll think of it all right," he said, still smiling; "perhaps I can see

myself upon an American platform telling my fellow countrymen that the

only way to keep Europeans from cutting each other's throats is to tax

our goods another twenty per cent. That's the pith of Sir Jules's

proposal. Free trade in Europe as a federated state--no more internecine

rivalry. All brothers, except when the United States are on hand. You

save your war bills because you fight for commercial reasons nowadays,

and there won't be any commercial rivalries there. Well, I don't think

it would do on my side, great as it is here. Make a federated state of

Europe, if you like, but my countrymen would sooner federate Christ and

His disciples. That's an honest truth, sir. I do believe my country is

averse to war, because Almighty God has taught her to be so. I am

thankful that it should be so, and yet I don't put human nature on too

high a pedestal, and I believe America would fight to-morrow if a slap

in her face rang loud enough. That's why I go on making guns for a

living. I don't want to see men shot any more than any other man; but I

do hold that the fighting instinct is deep down in the heart of every

man, and that you will require some centuries yet to root it out. My

gospel's there in so many words--I'm too old to alter it, and some of

you will say I make too much money out of it."

Trevelle expected nothing less, but he still persisted.

"What then of the others--of Carnegie and the arbitration movement, and

all that? Do you turn your back on them also?"

"I never turn my back on brains wherever I find them. These earnest men,

some of them men of genius, are educating the people of the whole world.

I wish them God-speed! They are as truly defending their country as the

man who holds a rifle. Their enemy is the brute beast, born in us from

the beginning. They have to cast out devils--there's one in every man's

story, but the best of us keep him under. It's just because there are

others that men like myself are necessary. We bring brains into the

argument--no country was yet saved without them, or ever will be."

"Which is as much as to say that you do your work in your own way.

America first in your mind all the time."

"All the time, sir, except when I go to England, as now, to do what I

can for those who may have need of me."

"Privately, of course, Mr. Faber----"

"Both privately and publicly, Mr. Trevelle, if the occasion should

arise."

"Ah," said Trevelle, "you are thinking what might happen if this frost

should bring a panic."

"I am thinking of nothing else, sir."

II

The _City of Berlin_ slowed down very much as they drew near to Dover,

and even those in the private cabins became aware that something unusual

was happening. Loud cries were heard from the bridge, and then heavy

blows upon the steel plates--repeated while the ship shivered and

trembled, and the dullest intellect awakened. As it was not yet light,

none of those who ventured from their beds to the decks could make much

of the circumstance; but when dawn broke, the state of affairs was

revealed, and surely it was significant.

Faber had not closed his eyes during the first four hours of the

passage, and he and Trevelle went out to the upper deck together

directly the light broke. They were off the Goodwins then, upon a sea so

still that the rising sun made of it one vast and silvered mirror. From

an almost cloudless sky above a powder of snow fell, as showers in

summer from the blue ether. Not a breath of wind appeared to be

stirring; the air was like ice upon the cheek; the whole atmosphere

ominously still.

The men had lighted cigars, and they walked aft to peer down into the

white water and learn what secrets it had to yield. An old salt,

round-barrelled and full of wise saws, a man who had spent a long life

upon that narrow sea which girds the silver isle, edged up to them, and

for once in a way uttered sentiments which had not possible half-crowns

behind them. He was genuinely astonished; "took all aback," and not

ashamed to say so.

"It's ice, gentlemen, that's wot it were. I seed it with these eyes, and

I've been looking down into that waterway nigh four and forty year. Ice

off the Goodwins: d----n me, who'd believe it?"

"I guess some of them will have to believe it," said Faber dryly,

"unless the weather keeps them out. You don't see any sign of a break,

eh, my friend?"

"I don't see no sign at all, sir, not as big as a man's hand. The wind's

from north by east, and little to speak of. Who's to change it? Would

you kindly tell me that?"

"Oh, don't look at me," exclaimed Trevelle with a laugh. "I'm not a

bagman in weather. So far as my memory goes, there was a good deal of

ice in the English Channel somewhere about 1820, and a very little in

the year 1887--I've read it somewhere. You don't remember that, my man?"

The old fellow spat into the sea with some contempt.

"As much ice as you could put down a woman's back. I remember 1887 well

enough. The Thames was nigh froze, and there was a fringe of summat they

called 'ice' right round by Herne Bay and all the way to Dover. But this

here's more than a bucketful, gentlemen--by gosh! it is."

He jumped involuntarily as a floe, some yards wide, struck the steamer

and set the metal reverberating. All on deck ran to the side and watched

the dirty ice bobbing like a human thing in the vessel's wash, and then

drifting upon the tide over toward Cape Grisnez. Hardly had it passed

when the captain rang an order from the bridge, and the ship went to

dead slow. Another floe had been sighted ahead, and it was large enough

to provoke greater wonder; a mass of black ice as though coming down

from a considerable field over yonder towards the land. The ship passed

by this and began to swing round to make Dover Harbour. The cold seemed

to be increasing with every knot they made. Such an experience upon the

English shore was within the knowledge of no living man.

"I've been up to the ice-blink twice, and I was in Alaska three years

ago," said Trevelle. "This beats anything I have seen, easily. What

would you say the temperature was, Mr. Faber?--phenomenal without

doubt."

"About as many degrees below zero as you can get into a common swear

word. Look yonder on the shore. Is that ice or am I dreaming it?"

"It's ice right enough! Hi, my man, that's ice by the harbour wall,

isn't it? Good God, what a sight! In the English Channel, too!"

The sailor enjoyed this spontaneous tribute to the eccentricities of

nature. He thought he would catch them upon an exclamation sooner or

later, and he did so triumphantly.

"The harbour's going to be froze," he said sardonically; "they'll be

cutting of it with sardine-openers--at least they were a-talking about

it. You could walk as far as the bathing machines gin'rilly git out. I

dare say you'll see some of 'em a-doing it now if your eyes are good

enough. They tell me it's the Gulf Stream what's responsible. Well,

d----n the Gulf Stream! say I, and that's all about it."

His peculiarities produced no other effect than the _sotto voce_ of a

chaplain's lady, who thought that he was a very wicked man. The others

were far too much interested in the unusual appearance of Dover Harbour

and the environs to take any notice of such emphasis. Early as it was,

groups of boys and lads sported with hard ice which ran right round the

seawall, and even floated in great lumps in the mouths of the basins.

Rills of waves ran, not upon a beach of shingle, but over the frozen

waters, spreading as molten silver and often freezing as they ran. There

were effects of the frost most bizarre--buoys covered with the hoar,

ropes of ice where ladders stood, vast stalactites as of pure crystal

from the roof of every walled bay into which the sea ran. The cold,

still air breathed upon all as with the breath of the Arctic wastes. The

town of Dover was frozen out from the heights of the Castle Hill to the

very depths of its meanest streets.

They went ashore over a gangway dusted with sand that they might obtain

a foothold upon it. They had thought that it would be warmer off the

sea, but when the train moved away and they crossed the frozen fields of

Kent, a new rigour penetrated the ill-warmed carriages and seemed to

search their very bones. At Dover newsboys had cried the morning papers

with the latest news of the phenomenal frost and of the rumours of a

great strike of transport workers following upon it. It seemed to be the

one topic of conversation in the train and out of it. Great experts in

meteorology had been interviewed in London, in Vienna, in New York. They

agreed that England was suffering this abnormal spell because of the

reduced flow of her old friend, the Gulf Stream. There could be no other

logical conclusion, and the best that could be said was that the

severity of the visitation was the soundest argument for its speedy

disappearance.

Trevelle read all this out to his companion in the reserved compartment

which carried them to Victoria. He seemed willing to be impressed by

such authorities and was amazed to find that his companion differed from

him absolutely. Faber confessed that he had looked for such a winter in

England and would have been surprised at any other. His manner had

become a little restless again, and he was very anxious for the journey

to terminate.

"We are going to have a lively time in London," he said. "I guess I'll

be caught in this pit after all, and pretty warm it will be for some of

them. Do you know how much wheat your country wants every week to feed

its people, Mr. Trevelle? I've figured it out, and it seems to me it's

somewhere about five million bushels; that's wheat alone, to say nothing

of an Englishman's roast beef and what goes with it. Well, I suppose

you've food enough in the country for three weeks at a press. Perhaps

you have and perhaps you haven't. Let this frost hold and the strike

continue in my country, which I hear is likely, and you're going to see

the biggest panic in London you ever saw in all your life. I had a

notion of it when I was last here and I mentioned it to some of them.

Professor Geikie, of St. Louis, first put it into my head as long ago as

last October, when he was taking observations of the Gulf Stream for the

Shippers' Institute of the southern ports; he noticed this check in the

flow. 'Let it go on,' he said, 'and they'll have a winter in Britain

which will be memorable.' I knew the professor and put my money behind

him. You've got the winter, and you're only at the beginning of it. God

knows when it will end or how, but I'd be glad to be out of this country

if I could, and that's sure. It's too late to think of that, now,

however."

"Do you seriously believe then that the wheat supply from your side will

fail?"

"It's failing already--the cables tell me so. Great extremities of

temperature are as sure a call to discontented labour as the spring to

the cuckoo. Let this go on a week and there'll be something like a

national panic. Then you'll see who believes in universal peace, and I

guess you'll see it quick. For my part, if I were a free agent, I'd pack

and be off to-night. But I'm not a free agent, and there's work for me

to do; mighty serious work, I know. Perhaps I'll ask you to help me.

You're just the man for the job. You step quick, and don't talk on the

road."

"It doesn't concern the weather, of course?"

"It concerns the people, Mr. Trevelle. I'll tell you when the time

comes. We are in London now, I think. My address is the Savoy Hotel.

Send me yours there. To-night I'm off to Hampstead to see a little girl.

She's just out of Ragusa, and it's to be imagined what this means to

her. The north is merciless to the south in that respect. I'm afraid of

the news I shall hear; more afraid than I can say."

He fell to silence suddenly as the train crossed Cannon Street bridge

and the face of the river was disclosed. A drizzle of snow had begun to

fall again, and many hummocks of block ice floated beneath the bridges.

Such a night had not been seen since Victoria was Queen and Melbourne

her Minister. They entered the station to the raucous shouts of the

newsboys, crying the latest tidings of the frost.

III

In the suburbs, there was little real understanding of the momentous

truth.

Kensington, Paddington, and Hampstead were frozen out, but their young

people enjoyed the predicament. Weary water-men plugged the mains and

wondered if Christmas half-crowns would compensate them for the trouble.

Plumbers left footprints on the silks of time and had become great

personages. The roads were like iron; the wood pavement impossible but

for the sand which covered it. Even the meanest wore some kind of shabby

furs, while the well-to-do were so many bundles of fine skins, from

which rubicund jowls peeped out.

Faber went to the Savoy Hotel and rested a few hours in his room before

going on to Hampstead. There were a few of his own countrymen there and

they, oddly enough, spoke of a mild winter in Eastern America and a

general absence of severity throughout the States. He learned with some

surprise that his meeting with the Emperor had been made known to New

York and was considered a triumph of a personal kind--though it had

given offence in some religious circles and was supposed to be

antagonistic to the peace idea. He determined to confute this without

loss of time, holding, as he did, the firm faith that the Kaiser was the

one great instrument of peace in the western world, and had the sanest

ideas upon the subject. For the first time in his life, there was a

trouble of the conscience concerning his own business and the mission

upon which it had sent him. Was he, in truth, an obstacle to a gospel

which had begun to obsess the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race? He knew

that the charge was false and his pride resented it warmly. He desired

peace absolutely--what forbade him to prepare the nations for war?

It was growing dark when he set out for Hampstead, and there were many

lights in the little house in Well Walk when he arrived there. A very

ancient parlourmaid, who would have served Rembrandt for "a head,"

opened the door and told him that Mr. Silvester was at home. She added

also that she had supposed he was the doctor, and plainly conveyed her

disappointment that he was not.

"Ah!" he said, "the young lady is no better, then? Well, I'm sorry for

that!"

"Indeed, and ye may be, sir. We think it's new-monica."

He shook the powdered snow from his boots and went into the hall.

Gabrielle, hearing footsteps, ran out on the landing above and looked

over the banister.

"Is that you, Mr. Faber--how good of you--how glad she will be!"--and

saying all this in a breath, she came down the stairs and held out her

hand.

"So, there's no great danger after all," he rejoined.

She looked surprised. "Why no danger?"

"Because you come to me smiling. Well, I'm anxious, anyway. Shall I be

able to see her?"

"Of course, you will. She is asking for you always. Please come right up

at once. Oh! there I am, speaking your language--how ridiculous it must

sound to you?"

"I guess it makes me feel at home. Is this the room--will she be ready,

do you think?"

"She heard you at once. She has been counting the hours."

Her soft fingers knocked twice and they went in. The room was small, but

it had been furnished with a great elegance. He was glad to see some

beautiful white flowers on a little table by the bedside, and a basket

of fine grapes with them. The note of it all was pure white, with rich

red curtains and pictures in gilt frames. The bed had dimity hangings

with great red roses for a pattern. A fire of logs roared up the chimney

and a thermometer was hung upon the wall by the mantelpiece.

"Hallo! Maryska, my dear!" he said, going to the bed and pressing her

thin fingers with his own. He thought her terribly changed: the black

eyes shone as those of a famished animal; the face was very white; the

breathing laboured; the hands hot to the touch. But she smiled at him

nevertheless and tried to sit up.

"I've got the marsh fever," she said, as though satisfied by her own

diagnosis, "it's your ship that did it. Why did you leave me in this

damnable country when I was ill? Don't you hate it as much as my father

did? Oh! I think you must, you really must."

He was a little taken aback, and sat at the bedside before he answered

her. Gabrielle nodded as who should say, "Now, you would like to talk to

each other." Then she slipped away, and closed the door softly. The

crackling of the logs and the ticking of the clock were loud sounds in

the cheery room.

"Why!" he exclaimed at last, "you surprise me, Maryska. I thought your

father liked England?"

She shook her head almost fiercely.

"I'd tell you what _he_ said if she would let me! She says it's wrong.

Why should it be, when my father said it? He called England--but there,

it hurts me, boss. Oh! it hurts me so much!"--and with that she flung

herself back on the pillow, warm tears of the memory in her eyes.

He perceived that she had no business to be talking, and for some time

he sat there, holding her hand and watching her. What a child she was,

and with what justice had she called him from the platform of her age,

an "old, old man." The tragic irony of his attempt to bring happiness

into the life of the man who had befriended him struck him anew and

would not be silenced. How little money could achieve when destiny

opposed! He reflected that brains were the greater instrument and fell

to wondering if brains had helped him in his dealings with Maryska.

"Feeling any better, my dear?" he asked her by and by. She turned upon

her side and looked at him with eyes pathetically round.

"I should be all right if I could get away from England, Mr. Faber. Do

you think that you can take me?"

"Of course, I'll take you, Maryska. Where would you like to go to, my

dear?"

She thought upon it, biting the sheet with fine white teeth. Her white

cheeks flushed with the effort.

"I would like to live in a city where there are many lights--in Paris, I

think. _He_ liked Paris. He said it was a bit of a hell, and he liked

it. I told the wolf man with the whiskers that, and he said, 'Oh, hush,

hush!' Why did he say that, Mr. Faber?"

"Because, my dear, he's a clergyman, and your father was what we call a

Bohemian. They don't say such words amongst our people. You mustn't be

offended with them, Maryska; you must try to do what Gabrielle tells

you."

She looked up, her suspicion on an edge.

"Are you going to marry Gabrielle?"

"Why, how can you ask me that?"

"Because I think that you are."

"What would she want with 'an old, old man' like me?"

Maryska reasoned it out.

"You are not so old when you are with her. Besides, I am getting used to

you. It is your looks which I don't like. You are not really so old, are

you?"

"I'm not forty yet, my dear."

"And how old is Harry Lassett?"

It was a surprising question, and he turned sharply when he heard it.

"Don't you know that Harry Lassett is going to marry Gabrielle?"

She bit her lips and half sat up in bed again.

"I don't believe that. They say so, but it's wrong. You can't make any

mistake in those things. _He_ used to beat me when I asked him; he

wouldn't let me talk about it, but I know. It's something which changes

your life. It is not that awful thing I saw in the streets of Ranovica.

God Almighty! none of those girls will ever have a lover now, will they,

Mr. Faber?"

The child's eyes were staring into vacancy as though she saw a vision

beyond all words terrifying. Here in this silent house remote from

London's heart, the unnameable hours of war were lived again both by the

man and the girl. John Faber's soul shivered at the hidden meaning of

these words of woe. Had not his act carried Louis de Paleologue's

daughter to the hills? Was he not responsible for what had been? And he

was a servant of such a nation's instruments--a servant of war in its

lesser aspect as in its greater. He did not dare to look the truth in

the face. The judgment of God seemed to be here.

"We won't speak of the things which are dead, Maryska," he said at

length. "The men you name are like the beasts; it is well to leave them

in their kennels. Your life begins again with me. I'll take you to Paris

directly you are able to bear the journey. Can I say more?"

"Will you, Mr. Faber? I could bear the journey any time--now, this

minute, if you would take me."

"My dear child, you are not fit to go. We must nurse you many days yet."

"That's what the doctor says. _He_ never liked doctors. They were

all--yes, knaves, he said, and the other word which Mr. Silvester hates.

Why should I be kept here for these men?"

"Because this time they are right, my dear. It's too cold for anyone to

go out of doors. What's more, the sailors are on strike, and so we

couldn't go if we wished. You'll be well when the thaw comes, and then

I'll take you."

"Will Harry Lassett come too?"

It troubled him to hear the reiteration of this idea. The anxiety with

which she regarded him, her eyes so big and round, her breathing so

laboured, her cheeks so flushed--this anxiety added not a little to his

own.

"Why do you bring that young gentleman into it?" he asked her. "How can

he go with us? Hasn't he got his duties to do here, my dear? What would

Gabrielle say if she heard it? Wouldn't she be put out, don't you

think?"

The round, dark face assumed an air almost of cunning. It was evident

that she knew just what Gabrielle would say, but was unmoved

nevertheless.

"What does 'engaged' mean in England? When _he_ and I were in Paris, a

lot of them came to the studio. They would be engaged for a little

while, and then there would be others. Jeannette Arrn had three lovers

while I was there--Henri Courtans was the last. Was she engaged to him?"

It was very earnestly put, and it embarrassed him. What a life the child

had lived; what an education had been hers! And now he feared that the

inevitable had come to be. Thrown into the society of the big-limbed

boy, she had immediately fallen in love with him. This should have been

looked for, and it would have been if he had realised a little earlier

the nature of her birthright and its consequences. She was born in a

land where passion is often uncurbed and the blood runs hot in the

veins. Religion had done nothing for her; those who would educate her

must begin at the very beginning. He himself felt totally unfit for the

task. And she had refused already to live with the Silvesters, at any

rate in England.

"Has Harry Lassett spoken to you about going to Paris?" he asked upon an

impulse. She shook her head.

"I wish he would. I wish he would ask me to go away from her."

"Don't you think it would be very unkind to Gabrielle to go with him

even if there were no other reason?"

"I don't think that. She wouldn't care."

"She is going to be his wife."

"Yes, and that is why I hate her."

No further question could be asked or answered, for Gabrielle entered

the room at the moment, and immediately the child hid herself in the

bedclothes and would not speak another word.

CHAPTER II

OF LOVE BUT NOT OF MARRIAGE

I

"You'll stay to dinner?" she asked, as they went down to the

drawing-room together a little later on. It was very warm and snug

there, and the deep red shades upon the lamps appeared to him

particularly English. They had few such suggestions of home in his

country.

"Why," he rejoined, "if it will not be putting you out."

"We have some pea soup and a sole. My father is Popish enough to eat

little meat, but that is for his stomach's sake--as Timothy was to drink

wine. Of course, the baby cannot eat anything at all. Did you think very

badly of her, I wonder? Is she really as ill as the doctors make out?"

"Tell me how ill the doctors make her out, and I'll say what I think.

Anyway, it isn't pneumonia yet. I've seen too much of it to be scared by

that particular spook. She's a bit of congestion of the lungs, and she's

worrying herself into a fever. The rest's doctor's talk--what they take

a fee to say."

She smiled, and went on busying herself about the room. The fire light

showed all her height and the fine contour of well-developed limbs.

Every movement was full of grace, he said. Gabrielle Silvester could

have taken her place in any society in Europe. For an instant, he

thought of her as the bejewelled hostess of a Fifth Avenue mansion, and

that thought returned later on.

"It is good to hear you," she said with a light laugh. "Everyone who

comes to a sick house seems to think it necessary to speak in a morbid

whisper. They expect to look sorrow in the face on the doorstep. Of

course, she has been very ill--dangerously ill, I think. Our bringing

her to England was a very great mistake; even father knows that now."

"Then she isn't very happy here?"

"Very far from it. Did she say anything of it to you?"

"Why, yes; she asked me to take her away by the next train."

"I thought she would; was it back to Italy?"

"No; to Paris--and what's more, she wants Harry Lassett to be of the

party."

He thought it necessary to tell her this: he had debated it while

sitting there and watching her graceful movements about the room. His

own act had committed Maryska to her charge; his own words must warn her

of a possible danger. Upon her part, however, the whole thing was

treated without concern, merely as the odd whim of a capricious child

who was sick. She surprised him very much by her attitude.

"Harry amuses her," she said without turning, "he can be so atrociously

vulgar. An accomplishment, is it not, when it brings a little sunshine?

They have been the best of friends, and he comes here every day with

some present or other for her. It is all quite pretty, and I am very

grateful to him."

"Then you would approve of his coming on my yacht?"

"If he could go, yes; but I know that it is quite impossible. He has

developed a surprising interest in his business; he is in town every

day. It's really most wonderful!"

"May I ask what his business is, by the way?"

She looked a little pained.

"He gets money from the people who sell stocks and shares--the jobbers,

don't you call them?"

"That's the name, to be sure. So he goes down to the city to watch them

making money for him. It's a joyous employment, sure; it won't make him

bald!"

Gabrielle did not like the tone of this at all, she bridled instantly.

"I dare say that Mr. Lassett is very well content with it. Don't you

think that we might be?"

"Why, certainly, I do. That's just what was in my thoughts just now. If

he's so well occupied in London, he won't mind your taking a little

holiday with me----!"

"With you! How odd it sounds!"

"Odd, or even; I mean every word of it. Will you come to Florida on the

_Savannah_?"

She hesitated and flushed. There are some tones of a man's voice a woman

never mistakes. Let him lie to her, and she may be wholly convinced;

deceive her by vain promises, and she will believe him--but let him

touch the tonic of a lover's chord, and her instinct is immediately

attuned. Gabrielle knew that John Faber was about to make love to her.

It came as a bolt from the blue.

"Why should I go to Florida in your yacht? Do you propose to take

Maryska there?"

"I do indeed--and you also!"

"As her nurse, I suppose?"

"No, as my wife!"

He bent forward and watched her closely. She had been standing by the

piano, the aureole of the lamp about her flaxen hair, making pure gold

of its silken threads. For an instant she trembled as though some

strange chord of her nature had been touched. Then, very slowly, she

crossed the room and sat in the chair upon the other side of the

fireplace. A warm light played upon her young face now; she was, indeed,

a beautiful woman.

"Why do you ask me to be your wife when you know I am engaged to Harry

Lassett?"

"Because I believe it is necessary to your happiness and mine."

"Just a guess at reasons then. If I believed it, I would say it is a

want of compliment to me. But I don't believe it. You are masterful and

would brush aside all obstacles. If I were not a woman with some faith

in things, you would do so. I happen to be that--perhaps to my sorrow.

No, indeed, I could never be your wife while I believe in the reality of

my own life, and the good of what I work for. You must know how very far

apart we are."

"In what are we apart? In causes which politicians quarrel upon. I guess

that's no reason. Does a man love a woman the less because she believes

the earth is flat? If he's a fool--yes. A wise man says, she is only a

woman, and loves her the more. Gabrielle, I don't care a cent for your

opinions, but I want you very badly."

She sighed heavily, and raised herself in her chair.

"My opinions are my life," she said quietly. "I have built a temple to

them in my dreams. How it would come crashing down if I married you!"

"I'll build it, anyway--it's a promise. You shall have your temple if it

costs half a million. They won't miss me there if I find the money. I

shall be proud enough of my wife the day it is opened!"

"Caring nothing that she could only speak of money. Oh, don't pursue it;

don't, don't! All my years have been a schooling against such things as

are dear to you. There are a hundred interests in my life I have never

dared even to mention to you. This home, my father's work--do they not

say 'no' for me? I should be a burden to you every day; you would have

nothing but contempt for me."

"If a man were fool enough to base his unhappiness on his wife's

goodness--why, yes. Don't you see that I may admire all this, and yet

differ altogether? Isn't it one of the reasons why I ask you to be my

wife, that I know how much reality and honest faith lies behind all you

do? You haven't considered that--you'll have to before it's done with.

I've a habit of getting my way; you'll discover it before I am through!"

The taunt turned her patience to defiance.

"No," she said, standing up as if impatient of it all, "I shall discover

nothing, Mr. Faber. I intend to marry Harry Lassett in February!"

"Ah! then I'll have to begin upon that temple at once. Have you thought

about the plans of it?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Do not spoil my dreams--there is the bell. I think it must be Harry,

for my father has a key."

She went toward the door, he watching every step she took. Was it the

face of a woman going to meet her lover, the face of an ecstasy, or of a

painter's dream? The prosaic man deemed it to be neither.

And yet he believed that she would marry the boy.

II

Gabrielle believed that also, but it was a vague thought, floating amid

a medley of reproaches and vain longings.

She had gone to her bedroom at eleven o'clock, when the night-nurse came

on duty, and the quiet house was hushed to sleep; and there she sat

before a great fire listening to the footsteps of the skaters who passed

by, or the chime of bells upon the still air.

What momentous thing was this which had happened to her to-day--what

flood of fortune which had swept by and left her to a woman's reckoning?

Was it not the thing which she had conceived in dreams most sweet--the

hope which her father had not been ashamed to utter, the golden shore to

which her eyes had been turned in hours of vain imagining? In a

twinkling the gates of great promise had been opened for her, and she

had refused to enter in. A word, and all the power and place of money

would have been at her command. She had been silent--the coach of

opportunity had rolled by and left her alone.

She would have been less than a woman if some blunt truths had not

emerged from this labyrinth of changing ideas. It is true that Faber had

offered to make her Maryska's guardian, an obligation she was to share

with her father to their mutual benefit. No money was to have been

spared. They were to take a great house in London, and furnish it

regardless of cost. The gates of that narrow social enclosure which

money can open were no longer to be barred to them. Luxury of every kind

was to be at their command--but all as recipients of a comparative

stranger's benevolence, and as the servant of his whims. It would be

different as his wife, for these things would have come to her then as a

right.

She was but a minister's daughter, but these are democratic days, when

money builds altars whereat even the ancient houses worship. Men are

made peers because they have so much money to put on the political

counter, or were famous as makers of jam and vendors of good provisions.

All sorts of vulgar personages crowd the royal precincts and wear a

William the Conqueror air, most ridiculous to see. The old titles of

birth and breeding are hardly recognised; unrecognised absolutely where

women are concerned. Gabrielle looked at herself in the glass, and knew

that she would have gone far in this latter-day hurly-burly they call

society. She had all the gifts, youth, beauty, wit; she was found

sympathetic by men and they were her slaves whenever she appeared among

them. She could have built a social temple, and there would have been

many worshippers.

And for what had all this been put aside? For the love of a man, or for

the trick of an imagined sentiment? Harry Lassett made a purely physical

appeal, but she was hardly aware of the fact. Faber had said that she

was drifting into the marriage, and this idea occurred to her when she

sat alone in the silence of the night. The years had conspired to bring

this impasse, from which there was no escape but by marriage. She

believed that the opportunities of the day would not recur, or if they

did recur, that she must give the same answer.

He would build her temple and lay the first stone, perhaps upon the day

she became Harry Lassett's wife.

III

John Faber himself had thought very little of this wonderful building

when she had first mentioned it to him; but the idea began to obsess his

mind as he returned to his hotel.

To say that he was greatly impressed by Gabrielle's refusal of his offer

is to express his feelings upon that matter somewhat crudely. There are

women's moods which hurt a man's pride, but heal it as quickly. His

early astonishment gave place anon to a warm admiration for her

principles. They must be something more than mere professions, after

all, and were so real that she had refused one of the biggest fortunes

in the world because of them. This of itself was a considerable fact

which dwelt in his mind. He had discovered few great characters in the

course of his busy life, and was tempted to believe that Gabrielle

Silvester was one of them.

Her passion for Harry Lassett, if it existed, was a more difficult

matter. The man of forty, who has never married, is prone to some

sentimentality where calf love is concerned. Well as he may disguise it

from the world, there is a bias towards a lover's Arcady; a tenderness

for the secret groves which he will never confess. The mere man goes out

to the witching hour of the young life. He has mad moments when he rages

against his lost youth, and would regain it, even at the cost of his

fortune. One such moment Faber himself had known when he went out with

Maryska to the hills. It would never recur; he had mastered it wholly

even before they returned to Ragusa; but he could credit Gabrielle with

a similar weakness, and wonder how far it would wreck her story. Let her

marry Harry Lassett, and the first chapters of a pitiful tragedy surely

were written. He was quite certain of that.

With this was some new estimate of his own position. He could be no hero

in the eyes of such a woman. From that standpoint his appeal to her must

be quite hopeless. There had been nothing of the dashing cavalier in his

record, nothing but the mere amassing of money; no glamour, no public

applause. Women like all that and forget much else when it is there. He

had not done the "great good thing" which Maryska, the untutored child,

had promised him he might do. Was it too late even yet? This temple he

would build at Gabrielle's bidding, must it stand as the perpetual

witness to the futility of his own attainments?

And so, finally, and merging into the one great thought was his own

awakening love for a beautiful woman. He no longer doubted this.

Admiration was becoming a passion of desire, which might lead him to

strange ends. He saw her as she sat by the fireside, the warm light upon

her eloquent face--he heard her sympathetic voice, watched the play of

gesture, the changing but ever-winning expression. He would have given

her every penny he had in the world that night to have called her his

wife. It came to him as an obsession that he could not live without her.

For thus do men of forty love, and in such a passion do the years often

mock them!

CHAPTER III

AFTER TEN DAYS

I

Bertie Morris was a man who rarely knocked upon any doors, and

certainly, had he stooped to such a weakness, it would not have been

upon the door of his very democratic patron, John Faber, who was never

surprised to see him whatever the hour or the place.

"So it's you, my boy! I thought no one else would butt in at this time

in the morning. Well, and what brings you now? I thought you were in

Portugal!"

Bertie Morris, who smoked a cigarette which had the obliging quality of

rarely being alight, sat down by his friend's bedside and thrust his

felt hat still farther upon the back of his head.

"Guess I came over last night--the hotel clerk said you were visiting.

Say, I must have a talk with you. Benjamin has cabled Paris for the

news, and he's got to have it. You know Benjamin, sure! Well, then, you

know what you've got to do."

Faber knew Benjamin Barnett of the _New York Mitre_ very well, but the

process of "doing it" seemed to amuse him. He sat up in bed and called

for his man, Frank, who had been brushing his clothes in the bathroom.

"What time is it, Frank?"

"A quarter past nine, sir."

"Then go and order half a dozen Bass's ale for Mr. Morris, and bring me

my coffee."

The journalist offered no objection whatever to this drastic

prescription, and when the beer was brought, and coffee, with hot-house

grapes and other fine fruit, had been set at the bedside, he drained a

glass to the dregs and then spoke up.

"Benjamin says the strike on their side is going to keep wheat out of

England for a month. You're the man most concerned in that, for a word

from you could end it. It's because your Charleston people went out that

the others followed. What I'm thinking is that you're hoist with your

own petard. You must tell me if it's true or false?"

Faber was out of bed by this time, dressed in a wonderful Japanese

kimono which gave him the appearance of a theatrical mandarin. He was

always amused by Bertie Morris, and generally ready to help him. Now,

however, he seemed at a loss, and he walked to the window and looked out

before he gave him any answer whatsoever.

What an unfamiliar spectacle he beheld from these high windows of the

Savoy Hotel! The River gave promise of soon being frozen from bank to

bank. Great lumps of shining ice protruded from its black face, and

thousands of idlers were ready to play in the arena this memorable

winter would create for them. Far away, to Westminster and beyond, the

scene suffered no change, the river of ice flashed in the wan sunlight

of the bitter day. He had heard yesterday of a pageant the city would

prepare, and here this morning were the outposts; jovial men who waited

to prepare the theatre, hew down the hummocks, and make many a broken

path straight. An ox would be roasted whole upon the Thames to-morrow,

and many a keg of good beer broached. The citizens themselves watched

the strange scene from the banks and the bridges, thousands of them in

black lines--well-to-do and ill-to-do; men and women about whose glowing

bodies fortune had put fair furs; wretched out-of-works who shivered in

the cold and had hardly a rag to cover them. Stress of weather could

break many a barrier; there would be little caste in England when a few

weeks had run.

Faber regarded the scene for a little while in silence; then he took up

the conversation at the exact point where Morris had left it.

"Does Benjamin name me in this?"

"Be sure he does; you're the marrow of it. What's Faber going to do with

the wheat he's cornered? That's what he asks. I don't suppose you'll

tell him, and so I ask also. What are you doing in corn?"

"I'm buying it, Bertie. I began about a month ago when the weather first

did stunts. Of course, you don't say that. For Benjamin the news is that

I happen to hold a number of steamers at Liverpool and in the Thames,

and that the men on strike there won't unload them. Say I'm a d----d

unlucky man, and leave it there."

"I'll do that, sure. The British public won't, though. Guess you're out

for a big scoop this time, John. I'm d----d if you're not the quickest

flier I ever saw at any game you like. Selling it, I suppose to the

philanthropic agencies? Is that the line? They pay a hundred per cent.

to feed the hungry, and you look on and bless 'em! What a story for

Benjamin! How he would put the ginger in!"

"Dare say he would. I know Benjamin. The philanthropic agency business

is in his line. He met Miss Silvester, I think, when she was over. Does

he know that she's at the head of this good Samaritan flare? Has he

heard of the national committee with her name among the four hundred?

I'd say something about that if I were you; it's the 'homes of the

people' lay, and goes down every time."

"I don't think--a committee for feeding the people and a minister's

daughter at the head of it. Shall I tell 'em they must buy the corn from

you in the end at a forty per cent. rise? By gosh! that laugh would be

on time, anyway."

"Why, it would, certainly. But you may leave my name out there. Say I

take a serious view of the situation, and if the frost holds, I look for

something like a panic."

"Then you don't think the government can feed them?"

"I have no doubt about it whatever. If you'll come with me by and by,

I'll show you such scenes in London as you may not see again if you

lived the lives of your great-great-grandchildren. It's war and no war.

When some fool gets up and cries that the Germans are sailing from Kiel

you'll have pandemonium. There's sure to be one before the week is out.

I open my papers every morning and expect to read the news. I tell you

we are going to see something and see it quick. Let Benjamin understand

that. I don't suppose you'll forget to point out to him the advantage of

having such a brilliant man upon the spot. You won't be backward in

coming forward, my boy."

Bertie assumed a meek look which served him very well upon these

critical occasions when he interviewed a great personage for the purpose

of taking away his character. A pleasant "I don't think" was his only

comment upon the impertinence of the observation; but for the rest even

his conventional imagination was impressed. John Faber was not the man

to be wasting his time upon mere speculations. When he indulged in the

luxury of a guess, a fortune usually lay at the back of it.

"Are you meaning to say that there is any real danger of this same

invasion?" he asked rather timidly. "Benjamin would like to hear you

about that; you're the first man he'd send to if he thought the game was

on. Do you think it yourself, now?"

"I think nothing of the kind. The Germans are not madmen. They've got

the sanest man in Europe at their head, and he is not likely to do

stunts with the Gulf Stream holding the stakes. What the Britisher has

got to fear is the consequence of war without its actuality. He's had

that to fear any time these ten years. Now that wheat is cornered, and

the shipping trade has fallen foul of the sailors, there is a flesh and

blood bogey behind it. By gosh! he's frightened. I know it, and so do

the newspapers. The Cabinet met last night and the King sent for

Kitchener afterwards. They know there where the shoe pinches, and they

see other bogeys. Let this frost hold, let hunger get a grip on the

people over yonder, and there isn't an institution in Great Britain

which will last a week. You can tell Benjamin as much, though there's no

need to say I said it."

He had become unusually serious, pacing the room while he talked, and

often looking out at the frozen river. Shrewd interviewer that Morris

was and blessed with an excellent memory, nevertheless these things were

big enough to be made a note of on the spot, and he took paper and pen

for the purpose. That was the moment, however, when a servant came in to

announce Mr. Rupert Trevelle, and immediately afterwards Faber fell to

earnest talk with this famous diplomatist who was Sir Jules's right

hand. There was nothing left for the journalist to do but to drink up

the beer--a task he performed with alacrity.

To be sure, his curiosity was provoked not a little by the vivacity of

the talk to which he listened, and when a little later on Faber

apologised for taking his guest into the adjoining room to discuss some

private business, the journalist prevailed against the man, and stooped

without hesitation to the methods of Mary Jane. Bertie's ear fitted the

keyhole very well, and he did not mind the draught overmuch. What he

heard seemed to interest him very much. And the greater merit of it was

that it had not been told him in confidence.

II

The three men left the hotel in a private car some hour and a half

later, and told the driver to go past Aldgate to Commercial Road East.

They all wore heavy fur coats and were put in good spirits by the vigour

of the day and the stillness of the frosty air. London looked her best

that morning. The whiteness of her roofs, the iron hardness of her

roads, blue sky above and a kindly sunshine to make a rare spectacle of

the gathered snow--never had she worn a fairer aspect. Even the

Americans felt at home and needed but a blizzard to deceive them

utterly.

The cheerful aspect of London chiefly impressed the imagination of the

people in the West End at this time and they had got little beyond it at

this stage. They talked in the clubs of the newspaper canards and

pooh-poohed them. It was true that the rivers were frozen, but it was

ridiculous to suppose that the severity of the frost would endure. As to

the food-supply, what did it matter to men who could order a sole à la

Victoria or a _tournedo_ without causing the club steward to lift an

eyelid? The frost was phenomenal, but it would in due course be followed

by a thaw. Meanwhile, those d----d bakers were charging a shilling a

loaf, and making a fortune by other people's necessities. It was a

scandal with which any but an incompetent Radical government would have

known how to deal.

Such a pleasant way of regarding things was universal through the West

End, where business went on much as usual, and only the newspapers

displayed the vulgarity of agitation. It is true that the cold caused a

seeming bustle upon the pavements; but this was merely the cold, and the

old gentlemen, who trotted vigorously where yesterday they walked, were

not driven to such antics by the bakers, but by the bitterness of the

weather. Not until the car had carried the three men past Aldgate

Station to the junction of the Commercial Road, was there any evidence

whatever of that menacing spectre the wise men had dreaded. Then it came

upon them without warning--a procession of the social derelicts with a

red flag for their banner.

"Hallo, now!--and what do you call this?" Faber asked, as the car came

to a standstill and the mob pressed about it. "Is this a dime show, and

do we get you?"

Trevelle, a little shaken by the attentions of his neighbours, who had

climbed upon the footboard to look at him, declared that they were the

"out-of-works."

"Just one of the usual January processions--I expect we shall see a good

many before we are through."

"I guess they look ugly, anyway--see that fellow with the lantern jaw

and the club? It will want a pretty big baker to stop him if he's

hungry!"

"We are stopping him by food--the government must help us."

"And buy Faber's corn?" chimed in Morris, "he's about two or three

hundred cargoes to sell--at a price," and he laughed as though it were

the finest of jokes. Trevelle, however, was too busy with his neighbour

on the footboard to say anything at all. A swarthy ruffian with a ragged

crimson tie had grabbed at his watch and chain, and discovered a fifteen

shilling enamelled timepiece, which annoyed him.

"A ---- fine gentleman, you are--I don't fink!" and he went off,

rattling the money-box, which he had dropped for the purpose of this

assault.

It was an aggressive procession--long, disorganized, revolting in

aspect. Men of all ages had set out upon the long march to Trafalgar

Square, where they would demand of the government work or bread. You may

see the same any winter; but this winter of surpassing cold had given

the wolf's jowl to many who were pleasant-faced without it, and the fire

of hunger shone from many eyes. A few girls of brazen mien walked by the

ragged coats and occasionally danced a few steps to keep themselves

warm. With them went grandfathers and grandsons; old men, whose backs

were bent by the labours of distant years; mere lads looking for a row

with the "coppers."

"What do those fellows think they will do?" Faber asked of Trevelle. He

had seen the same kind of thing in his own country--but there, as he put

it, the club of the policeman was more powerful than the brotherhood of

man. Trevelle admitted that it was so. He had been three days in New

York. Therefore, he knew it must be so.

"If the frost holds, they will loot the shops. They've done it before

with an embryo Cabinet Minister to lead them. I tell my journalistic

friends that they are going to do a finer thing than they have ever done

before--they are going to help the mob to loot Bond Street. We are on

the top of a volcano; we have been really, for twenty years. The wonder

is that we have never discovered it before."

"Meaning to say that the volcano is now about to take a hand in it!

Well, Bertie here will be on the spot if there's any looting to be done.

I guess the side-track won't see much of him."

Morris was rather flattered.

"I was up among the lakes one winter," he said, "and I saw the wolves

pull down a buck. He came out of the woods like a race-horse on the

straight. There were twenty snarling devils at his heels, and they had

eyes like live coals. Presently one jumped at the buck's throat, and you

could not have struck a match before the others had fixed their teeth in

him. He bleated for about two minutes; then he was so many gnawed bones

on the ice. Well, that's what I think of the social system sometimes.

Let the cold get a cinch on those particular wolves, and you'll count

some bones! It has got to be--hunger is going to make it so!"

No one contradicted him, for the scenes on the side-walk were too

engrossing. All Whitechapel appeared to be abroad that day as though

curiosity drove it out of the mean houses. Wan women stood at their

doors seeking vainly for some tidings which should be carried to the

famished children within. Hulking labourers took their leisure with

their broad backs supported by friendly posts. Paradoxical as the thing

seemed, the public-houses were beset by fierce mobs of ruffians, both

sexes being fairly represented in the mêlée. By here and there some

anxious philanthropist in a black coat moved amid the throngs, and spoke

words of good cheer to all. There were ministers of religion whose faith

knew nothing of new theology but much of bread.

Through this press, by many a filthy street, the car conveyed the

strangers to their destination. This lay some way down the Commercial

Road and was officially in Stepney. Long before they reached it, the

increasing throngs spoke of its whereabouts. A vast mob of the hungry,

the homeless, and the desperate strove to reach a square-fronted

building over whose doors were written in golden letters the words "The

Temple." A shabby structure of dull red brick, this day it had become a

house of salvation to the multitude. And high above them, upon the

topmost step of a stairway which led to its unadorned halls, stood

Gabrielle Silvester speaking to the people.

She was dressed from head to foot in grey furs, and her flaxen hair

showed golden beneath the round cap of silver-fox which crowned it. The

excitement of her task had brought a rich flood of colour to her round

girlish cheeks, and her eyes were wonderfully bright. The nation's

tragedy had dowered her with a rare part, and finely she played it. All

this publicity, this movement, this notoriety of charity was life to

her. She worked with a method and an energy which surprised even her

most intimate friends. In Stepney they had come to call her "Princess

Charming"--a title taken from their halfpenny stories and apt for them.

Whenever she drove, men doffed their caps, while the eyes of the women

filled with tears. This very day she was feeding the people even as

Christ, her Master, had fed them. And, looking on with new wonder and

pleasure, was the man who knew that she was necessary to him--she and

none other.

The car came within a hundred yards of the Temple and then was held up

by the press. Faber called a sergeant of police, and slipped a sovereign

into his hand.

"Get us up to the door and there's another," he said, and immediately

five sturdy policemen drove a way through the hungry throngs with

shoulders hardened by such tasks. The car followed them slowly, and as

it went Faber threw silver among the people. It was a mad act, for they

fell upon it like wolves, and when the police had quelled the riot, two

of those who had come to the Temple for bread lay stark dead upon the

pavement.

III

There were two long counters running down the centre of the Temple, and

between them lay piles of new crisp loaves. Many servers handed them out

to whoever asked for them, and continued so to do until the day's supply

was exhausted. It was a study to watch the faces of those who came for

relief--cunning faces, pitiful faces, the faces of mean desire. Some of

these people would go out with their bread and return immediately for

more, trusting to the press to remain undiscovered. Others were given to

wild words of thanks; but these were few, and in the main it would seem

that natural greed dominated other thoughts.

Gabrielle shook hands with Faber a little coldly; her manner toward

Trevelle was cordial; she hardly noticed Bertie Morris. A habit of

authority is easily assumed by some women, and it sat upon her

gracefully. With unfailing dignity, she moved amid her assistants,

directing, criticising, applauding them. When the mere man ventured a

word of suggestion, he perceived very plainly that he was no hero in her

eyes.

"Why," Faber remarked, "have you nothing in the ticket line? Do they all

come in here on the nod?"

"Absolutely. Why should we have tickets?"

"Well, I've seen one old woman stow away five loaves since I came in. Is

that your idea of it?"

"Oh, we can't stoop to trifles. And we have so much to give away. Mr.

Trevelle is so wonderful. He has done a beautiful thing."

"A good collector, eh? So he's doing it all?"

"Indeed, and he is. It would not last a day without him. We are coming

to a time when the others will have no bread to give away. He says that

we can go on for weeks and weeks."

"I shouldn't wonder. Trevelle is a bit of a hustler, anyway. I suppose

you've no time to tell me the news?"

She shrugged her shoulders, almost impatient of the mere cynic who could

watch all this and say nothing in its favour.

"She is much better--of course, you are thinking of Maryska? I don't

think she wishes to go to Italy now."

"Then you will take that house we spoke of?"

"I will talk to you about it when all this is over. If you could only

live a few weeks among these people! And they say it is but the

beginning. There will be downright starvation soon. Thousands dying in

the very streets."

"Just because God Almighty has sent an extra turn of winter. Well, you

are doing fine things, anyway. This is better than the Temple we spoke

of."

"Why is it better?"

"Because there are brains behind it. They are the only things which

count in the story of great causes--brains and money. I put them in

their proper order."

"Ah!" she exclaimed; "of course you think of the money."

"How can I help it? What is feeding these people? Bread! But you don't

buy bread with a stone."

She smiled.

"There will be always money for those who really suffer. I count upon

Mr. Trevelle for all that. He is a miracle."

And then she said:

"I suppose he has begged of you?"

He brushed the question aside.

"Trevelle knows me better. You don't come to rich men unless you have a

proposition. What are all these people to me? I didn't starve them,

anyway. Why should I give them money?"

She thought him quite brutal, and went away presently to speak to some

of "her guests," who had nearly fallen to blows on the far side of the

hall. The heaps of bread were vanishing at an alarming rate, and the sea

of faces beyond the doors of the building declared its tragedies of want

and hope. In many a street in Stepney and Whitechapel that day the

bakers had no bread to sell. Men told you that the government were at

grips with the affair, but could any government compel men to work when

they had the mind to be idle? A panic of threatened starvation drove the

women to frenzy--the men to oaths. There is always hope in the meanest

house; but there could be no hope if this frost endured and England were

paralysed by strikes. So they fought for the gifts of the Temple, the

strong triumphant, the weak to the wall.

"Guess you will have to lay on those tickets," Faber said to her when

next she came round to his side of the room. She listened, now impressed

by the reason of it.

"We could feed ten times the number," she said--"it is awful to turn

them away!"

"Why not take your Temple across the road? I saw an empty factory as I

came along; rent that, and see that each man and woman comes but once a

day. Trevelle will do it for you."

She said that it must be done, and went away to speak to the unwearying

aide-de-camp about it. Later on, with hardly another word to him, Faber

saw her enter a plain hired carriage and drive off through the streets,

followed by a howling mob whose moods were twain: gratitude on the part

of some, rage and disappointment of others. She was going down to Leman

Street to the children's institute there, Trevelle said; but he did not

suggest that they should follow her.

"By the lord Harry! you've let me in for something!" he protested,

mopping a perspiring face when Gabrielle had gone. Faber replied that he

would let him in for a good deal more yet. "Anyway, you're a hero in her

eyes," he said--and as he said it, he reflected once more upon the

meaning of that quality to women, and how far he seemed, from its

possession where they were concerned.

CHAPTER IV

CINDERELLA

I

Gordon Silvester's mission to the East, as he would call his work beyond

Aldgate, was really a charity of ten years' standing, and one that often

proved a thorn in the flesh to Gabrielle, who, at heart, had no great

love for poor people.

When the memorable winter came, it was a natural thing to use the

resources of this mission for the purposes of that undiscriminating

charity the season required; and so we had the Temple (suggested by

Rupert Trevelle and other organizations not less useful). Silvester

himself went into this work with the ardour of a man of twenty. His

sermons at Hampstead were masterpieces of eloquence; his labours at

Stepney would have wearied a giant. The national necessity demanded

heroism--there will always be many in England to answer such a call when

it comes.

Gabrielle herself had been handicapped somewhat by Maryska's illness;

but the child responded quickly to the devoted care bestowed upon her,

and youth emerged triumphant. Her every whim gratified, as Faber

dictated, she was nevertheless often alone in the little house now, and

many were the solitary hours she spent there. Harry Lassett alone saved

her from despair; and so much did she come to rely upon him, that she

would send a note round by hook or by crook whenever Gabrielle went out,

and sometimes when she was at home.

One of these letters went up the fifth morning after Faber's visit to

the Temple. Silvester was to address a big meeting at the Mansion House

upon that day, and Gabrielle to open the factory as a second centre for

the distribution of bread. Maryska, who heard with impatience all this

talk of things she failed utterly to understand, sulked for an hour in

the lonely house, and then dispatched a letter by a friendly butcher to

Harry's rooms, near the Holly Bush Inn. To her great joy, he came at

once, wrapped in a monstrous fur coat and evidently amiable. This little

waif from the unknown was already growing into his life, though he would

have been angry had his oldest friend told him as much.

"Hallo, little Gipsy!--and what's up this morning?" he asked, as he came

like a great bear into Silvester's puny dining-room. "Gipsy" was his

favourite name for her, and she liked it well enough.

"Oh!" she said, "they've all gone praying again, Harry--they're not fed

up with it, even yet! I'm sick of this house! Oh! I'm d----d sick of it,

Harry. Won't you take me out?"

He always laughed at this trick of strong expression, caught by the

child from a Bohemian father; an anathema to Gabrielle and the Reverend

Gordon. Harry rather liked it, for it seemed to him somehow that he was

talking to a man when he and Maryska were alone together.

"Why, Gipsy!" he cried, taking both her hands, "you do look blue, upon

my word! Where do you want to go to now? Where shall I take you if we

have a spree?"

She thought upon it with a quick and serious glance aside.

"To a café!" she said at length. "Let us go and eat bouillabaisse at a

café! _He_ always did when the drawing had tired him. Let us melt the

old pot, and drink it--that's what he used to say!"

"But, Maryska! If I haven't got any money?"

She laughed at that.

"Oh!" she cried, "I've got lots! Here's a whole bank-note. Cannot we buy

bouillabaisse with that, Harry?"

Harry took the bank-note and perceived with astonishment that it was for

no less a sum than one hundred pounds.

"Guess Papa Faber gave you this, now, didn't he? Generous old daddy,

too. Have you seen him lately, Gipsy?"

She was a little troubled by his question.

"He came--it would be many days ago. He is going to take me back to

Italy. Why do you say he is generous? Was he not _his_ friend?"

"Do you mean your father's? Well, but we don't always give a lot of

money to the daughters of our friends--not in this country, anyway! You

ought to think yourself very lucky, Maryska!"

She did not understand that.

"He is very old," she said. "Once I thought that he looked at me as

other men do--as you do sometimes, Harry! It was when I first saw him at

Ragusa. Then it became different! He took us to Ranovica, and I saw

dreadful things. Jesus Christ, what things I saw! Oh! if you had

known--but I try to forget them now. _He_ would wish that--he never let

me speak of yesterday."

Her eyes were very wide open and shining; the expressive face spoke of

woe most piteous. And this memory of suffering affected the boy also,

destitute of sentiment as he was in a general way. He stooped suddenly

and kissed her warm lips.

"Never mind, Gipsy dear! You've got some jolly good friends, and old

Papa Faber will see you through. I know he means to, for Gabrielle told

me so. Just think of it!; one of the richest men in the world your

godfather! Aren't you in luck?"

She smiled. Money, by hook or by crook, had been Louis de Paleologue's

gospel; how could she forget it?

"He's in love with Gabrielle," she said, making no shadow of a

resistance to his kisses, but rather lifting her lips to his, "I know

it, and so does she! Why aren't you angry with them, Harry--don't you

care? Doesn't it make any difference to you?"

"Oh," he said with just a touch of hardness in his voice, "I'm not going

to be jealous of an old bounder like that. He's old enough to be her

father. Let's go and spend some of your money, Maryska. Does the doctor

say you may go?"

She made a wry grimace.

"_He_ used to say doctors were----But no, I mustn't tell you. I hate

them! How can they know what's inside us and why we feel it? Of course I

shall go! Why are you such a fool?"

He gave way with a shrug, and she went up to get her furs. It was a

clear day with little wind and a fine red sun. The frost had not broken,

and these two went down toward a city over which loomed the menace of a

peril terrible beyond imagination. But of this the suburbs said nothing.

Here and there a baker would have a flaring bill in his window; there

were advertisements and appeals upon some of the hoardings, but few

stopped to read them. Such idlers as gathered at the street corners had

long exhausted the only topic of conversation and smoked in silence when

they did not beg in companies. "Bread, for the love of God!" was the

chant of gangs of impostors whose corduroys were no ornament to streets

of red brick. 'Buses, trams and taxis seemed quite unaware of a crisis.

The newspapers alone were hysterical. They were covered with flaring

black headlines.

Harry had engaged a taxi, and he took her for a drive round Hyde Park

before going on to the Savoy Café for luncheon. There were a few

horsemen in the Row, but they looked cold enough, and Maryska, who had

seen the Italian cavalry ride, thought but little of their performance.

For the most part, the big houses in the West End were left to Jeames

and his humours. It would have been unfair to the owners of these to say

that panic had driven them away. They were just wintering at Cannes or

Monte or Aix as they always did. Out there, the news from England seemed

very dubious; it was almost impossible to believe that such consequences

had attended the severity of the winter. Here in Western London, the

intensity of the cold, the relentless winds, the bitter weather taught

men to incline an ear to every rumour. Perhaps even the sanest critic

experienced a new sensation when he stood apart and asked himself if it

were true that the sea might freeze from Calais to Dover. A menace of an

unknown peril troubled all; the East End alone gave tongue to it.

They went down St. James' Street and turned into Pall Mall. Here their

taxi was held up by a howling mob, indulging in the ancient and amusing

pastime of breaking the windows of the clubs. Did a politician as much

as show a nose at a window-pane and a shower of stones rewarded long

years of salaried labour or unfeed eloquence. Was he not one of those

who pocketed the profits the bakers were making?--and if he did not, was

he not, at any rate, "capital in a black coat"; and where would you have

a better target? The hulking youths, who rattled their money-boxes

offensively in every face, cared much about beer and little about bread,

but that little had become rather a grim reality these later days. They

saw men, and, women, too, dying, down East of absolute starvation--the

ghosts of the "might be" stood at their elbow and whispered "Better the

jewellers' shops than the mortuaries." And to Bond Street they went,

adding to their numbers quickly and uttering bolder threats. "Bread or

death!" An odour of beer was the incense to this prayer.

Maryska regarded these gangs of loafers with inquiring eyes. She had

seen nothing of the kind in any country, and they excited her contempt.

When she asked Harry why none of them carried guns, his laughter seemed

to her quite silly.

"The police would never let them do that in Austria," she said

emphatically. "Each side would have guns and they would kill each other.

The English are afraid, I think. They should not let such people be in

London."

"But, Gipsy, don't you know this winter is killing them by thousands?

Haven't you read it in the newspapers?"

"Oh!" she said. "He would never believe what was in the newspapers. He

said it was--but you would be angry. Are we going to have bouillabaisse

soon? I am dreadfully hungry; I could eat a man, truly I could."

"Then I mustn't take you where any man is. This is the Strand, the place

a lot of your people come to. Do you see that sign over yonder? We are

going to eat there."

"But, Harry, it's a tailor shop! Oh, you little beast! You would not

take me to a tailor's shop? You can't mean to take me there!"

"Cheer up!" he said, squeezing her arm, "they cut very well," and so

they drove into the courtyard, and seeing the actresses in weird furs at

the door of the café, Maryska leaped down from the taxi and laughed with

pleasure.

"I could kiss you if it were English," she said.

Evidently she was of the opinion that it was not English, and so no more

on that point was said.

II

Her idea was still a café chantant, and the Savoy met it badly.

She had seen a number of well-dressed women in Berlin, in Madrid, and in

Paris; but these, apparently, had belonged to the undesirable classes,

and she could hardly believe that any showy creature in the

neighbourhood of the ancient hospice of the Fratres de Monte Jovis--a

fraternity unknown, may be, to the courtly Gustave--could be of any

other kidney. Twenty times during the elegant repast must Harry say, "Do

shut up, Gipsy!" and as often must her eyes express wonder. What had she

done?

There were odd moments when the mere girl in her came out with a bang,

and the boy blushed up to his ears. She laughed uproariously at two

waiters who cannoned each other off the soup, and when a clumsy fellow

dropped her box of chocolates on the floor, she was after it in a

twinkling and down on her paws like a cat. This was a depressing

interlude which alarmed her conventional cavalier. Harry hated "scenes"

with the distaste habitual to the Englishman of strait laced manners.

He forbade her to smoke, moreover, and that was a grievance. She had

smoked cigarettes since she could remember anything at all, and were not

other women, especially the daughter-in-law of a personage famous in

great circles, were not they smoking? Maryska knew nothing about

palaces, but much about tobacco, and this was a question which nearly

led to the resignation of the Cabinet.

"I shall tell the waiter to bring me a cigar," she exclaimed at last,

resting her pretty face upon her clasped hands and dealing him out a

look which was feline in its intensity. Harry gave up the contest at

that and ordered her a little box of Russian cigarettes upon the spot.

"What would Mr. Silvester say?" he asked her. He might as well have

talked of the weather.

"I don't care a ----, and if you provoke me, I will say it. Am I a

little, little child that the priests shall beat me? Give me a liqueur,

and I will call you a good boy. If you do not, I will go away."

He did not wish her to go away, and he gave her the liqueur. When, at

length, he escaped, she besought him to take her to "the café chantant,"

and for very importunity they went over to the Coliseum. Here both the

_Connaisseuse_ and the child were in evidence. She called the echo of a

tenor "a beast," was dreadfully bored by a comic sketch, but enraptured

by the "plate-breakers." When a Russian _danseuse_ appeared, her eyes

sparkled, and all her body swayed to the rhythm of the graceful

movements. She would like to be a dancer--she said so.

"When I leave the Silvesters, I will come to the man who owns this

theatre, and ask him to let me dance. How much will he give me for that,

Harry?"

He was watching the Russian when she spoke, and hardly noticed it--but

she persisted, and would be heard.

"I used to dance for _him_, sometimes--after we had been to the cafés

together. He played the fiddle--oh, so badly!--and he said I was born to

it. Why should I not dance when those Silvester people are tired of me?"

The man said, "Oh, rot!"--but chancing to look at her presently, he was

startled to see the expression upon her face, and the evidences of an

ecstasy she could not conceal. The music had entered into her very soul.

She bent to it; seemed to suffer a trance because of it, while her eyes

watched the scene as though this were a house of visions. Harry Lassett

wondered; she was, indeed, an extraordinary child. When the ballet was

over, and they were in the cab again, he told her so.

"What about this dancing nonsense? Did you say your father put it into

your head?"

"I used to dance for him--very well, _he_ said. I would like to be that

woman, Harry! The Russian one, with the diamonds in her hair."

"Don't be a fool, Maryska! She's been dancing ever since she was four, I

suppose. I expect she's got a husband who drinks champagne and thrashes

her with a horse-whip. If you tried that game, they'd laugh at you."

She leaned back upon the cushions of the cab, and looked straight before

her.

"No one laughs when I try to do things. I know what I am saying. I could

dance as well as the Russian woman, and they would give me a lot of

money. Why should I not do it? I have no one who cares for me! Mr. Faber

is going to America--the Silvesters do not like me because I am tired of

praying. There, I shall come to the theatre, and they will keep me."

Harry was not a sentimentalist, very far from it; but the restrained

dolour of this confession made a curious appeal to him, while, at the

same time, the childishness of it exasperated him. Was she not in

reality one of the most fortunate women in London that day? Her failure

to realise what John Faber's friendship meant was incomprehensible, and

yet it could not be disputed that she did fail to realise it.

"Look here, Maryska!" he said emphatically, "you don't want me to be

angry with you, do you, now?"

"No," she said very quickly, "not you, Harry." And she laid her hand in

his. He did not repulse her, but went on with the argument.

"If you don't want me to be angry, talk sense! Faber has adopted you,

and he is one of the richest men in the world. Very well, you'll never

want for anything on this planet. You're going into life on a good

pitch, and the bowling is bilge. I expect they'll speak of you as a

famous heiress presently, and half the men in London be after you!

What's the good of romancing, then, or pretending you don't understand?

I'm sure you understand just as well as I do--and if it were me, I'd

knock up a century, certain! Don't you think you're rather foolish,

little Gipsy?"

She shook her head, and put her arms about him in a gesture she could

not control.

"No," she said, "I am very lonely, Harry!"--and she spoke no other word

until the cab drove up to the house in Well Walk.

III

These excursions were no secrets between a boy and a girl, and Maryska

would recite every detail of them upon her return to Hampstead. She was

spared the necessity upon this occasion by the appearance in the road of

another taxi, bringing Silvester and Gabrielle from Stepney. The four

met upon the pavement, and immediately fell to a narrative of events. So

much had been done, Gabrielle said; it had been a day of triumphs, and

they had been achieved by Rupert Trevelle in the face of great odds.

Harry looked at his fiancée while she was talking of her success, and he

could not but realise that the recent days had changed her greatly. She

had won dignity, he thought, and a new outlook upon life, which could

not be a transient influence. There was in her manner towards him a

sense of superiority, which the inferior intellect resented; while her

good-natured badinage upon his "holiday" suggested anew his inability to

play any serious part in the grave affairs which now occupied her. But,

beyond this, was her utter indifference to his attempts to make her

jealous, and he knew that she hardly listened to him when he spoke of

Maryska and the theatre.

"She wants to be a dancer! Oh! every child wants to be that some time or

other. Were you not going to be an engine-driver yourself when you were

seven? You told me so."

"Yes, but she's a jolly lot more than seven, and if you don't look out,

she'll catch and bowl the three of you."

"My dear Harry, that is nonsense. Are you going skating to-night?"

"Yes, if you are coming."

"I can't. Mr. Trevelle is going to dine with us."

"What! hasn't he done talking yet? Someone ought to take away the key.

That man is wound up!"

"At any rate, he is the life and soul of things. He's got nearly twenty

thousand pounds for us in five days."

"I'll have to borrow a monkey of him. Is your tame millionaire coming

also? They say in the papers that he's been sent for by the Cabinet! Is

he going to sell some of his wheat cheap, or what?"

Gabrielle froze perceptibly.

"I have seen very little of Mr. Faber. It is not to be supposed that he

is interested in what we do. They say he is going to America from

Queenstown. All the steamers are to sail from there next week."

"If the strike lets them! Is Maryska going with him?"

"I don't think so; we are to have charge of her. Won't you come in, or

must you go? I am perishing here!"

"Oh!" he said with chagrin, "I must go, as usual"--and he lurched off

down the street without even offering his hand to her.

The truth was that he was angry both with himself and with her. Brief as

their odd engagement had been, he knew that it had been a great mistake.

He felt vaguely that his brains were no match for hers, and that she was

coming to understand the fact. And then there was his new attitude

towards Maryska. How strangely the child could influence him! He

remembered almost every word she had said since they set out for the

Savoy together. The memory of the many _faux pas_ she had made was so

humorous that he stood upon the pavement to laugh at them again. There

followed a recollection of the moment when she had put her arms about

him, and he had kissed her. His whole soul had gone out into that kiss!

The warm lips upon his own, the hands which thrilled him, the hair

brushing his face lightly--all had moved him in a transport of desire he

could not resist. And he was engaged to Gabrielle! His step quickened

when he remembered it, and he tried to sweep the inevitable accusation

aside. He was engaged to Gabrielle, who trusted him. A silent voice

asked, was it cricket?--and he could make no answer.

In his own rooms, by the Holly Bush Inn, the hag who robbed him had

stirred up a splendid fire in the grate and set the teacups for two, a

suggestion which caused him some irritation. Here was his holy of

holies, chiefly devoted to cricket bats and tennis rackets. The walls

were decorated by a number of "groups" of the teams for which he had

played, including two English elevens against Australia, and at least

six which had opposed the Players. Elsewhere, and chiefly upon the

writing table at which he rarely wrote, were smaller pictures, including

one of Gabrielle which had been taken in New York, and another which he

called "the Flapper" portrait. The latter showed a chubby-faced child of

fourteen with her hair down her back, and legs of such ample proportions

that she might have been in training as an athlete. The picture had been

his ideal for many years, but he regarded it a little wistfully now.

When he sat down to tea, he took with him a little book between whose

leaves was a miniature of Maryska, done by her father some three years

ago. Such an exquisite painting had never been in his possession before.

It had been one of her few treasures, and yet she had given it to him.

Louis de Paleologue had painted this in Paris, intending to sell it; but

Maryska stole it when he was at the café one day, and neither threats

nor persuasion had robbed her of it subsequently. It showed her head and

shoulders, a veil of gauze about her, and a Turkish cap upon her head.

The note of it was the passionate intensity of the girl's eyes, glowing

like jewels in the picture, but with a depth of human feeling art is

rarely able to convey. For the rest it might have been a miniature of

the Bologna School and it had all the virtues of colour of which those

masters were capable. Harry understood its value, and he thought that he

knew why Maryska had given it to him. He did not ask himself why the

gift had been kept secret, or why he had no courage to speak of it to

Gabrielle.

He was at the stage when he knew that something must be done, and yet

would consent to drift upon the tide of circumstances. The inevitable

had happened, and this boy and girl, thrown by the chance of confidence

into each other's society, were lovers already. What the future had in

store neither dared to ask. Vanity and John Faber were driving him into

a speedy marriage with Gabrielle, and they had spoken already of the

week previous to Lent. This was to say that in five weeks' time he would

be her husband. It seemed impossible to contemplate. Harry drank his tea

with his eyes still upon the picture of Maryska.

CHAPTER V

THE MAN OF THE MOMENT

I

It was quite true that Faber had been summoned to Downing Street;

equally true to declare that not even the wit of that engaging Paul Pry,

Master Bertie Morris, would have divined the nature of the interview.

Perhaps good common sense might have helped him had he trusted to such a

cicerone rather than to his ears.

Here was the head of one of the most famous engineering firms in the

world held prisoner in London during these days of national tribulation.

The house of John Faber and Son had achieved colossal undertakings in

all quarters of the globe. Its transport mechanism was beyond question

the finest in existence. The genius of it was known to be the man who

had recently sold some millions of rifles to Germany--a man accredited

by rumour with such sagacity that he had cornered the wheat-market

during the earliest days of this memorable winter. The latter proceeding

did not help his popularity in England, though it was ignored by the

politicians who invited him to Downing Street. In a word, they desired

to know how he was going to bring his wheat into England.

Faber was some hours at the conference, and directly it was over he left

London with Rupert Trevelle, and set off for Liverpool. Unusually quiet

and obviously troubled by a "brain fit," he delved into a mass of

newspapers while the train rolled on over the frozen fields, and it was

not until they had passed Crewe that he laid the paper aside and

addressed a remark to his ready friend.

"I guess London is pretty well like a rat pit just now; at least these

newspaper men make it so. Hunger's a useful sort of dog when his dander

is risen. I suppose Miss Silvester has found that out already?"

Trevelle, who smoked an immense cigar, and wore a fur coat with a

wonderful collar of astrachan, rose to the occasion immediately.

"We are living on a volcano," he said. "The government knows it, and

others must guess it. I am waiting every day to see the shell burst and

the lava come out. We want imagination to understand just what is going

on in England at the present time. That is where we are short. All the

way down here, I have been looking at these cottages and asking myself

in how many of them the children have no bread this night. My God! think

of the women who are bearing the burden--but, of course, you are the man

who has thought of it. I wonder sometimes how much you would have made

but for certain things. You didn't buy corn to give it away in Stepney,

Mr. Faber; that wasn't in your mind a month ago. I'll swear you had very

different intentions."

"No need to swear at all. I'm not a philanthropist; I never was. I

bought that wheat because the cleverest weather man in New York promised

a winter which, anyway, would make the market sure. I went in as any

other speculator. How I am coming out is a different proposition. They

don't seem to think much of me in England--not by what these writers

say. I guess if I were a prize fighter, I'd be doing better business in

the popularity line."

Trevelle was a little upset about it.

"It can all be put right in a day if you wish it."

"But I don't wish it."

"I know you don't; you are wanting the girl to have the credit of it."

"Why not? It's a bagatelle to me. And the game will soon be up. I can

feed a few thousands in London, but I can't feed a nation. Either I send

a cable to Charleston surrendering to my men or I do not. If I do, it

will cost me half my fortune; if I don't and this frost holds, you'll

see red hell in England before twenty days have run."

"Then the rumours about the strike breaking at Liverpool are true? There

is something in them?"

"There is everything in them. The government can deal with this side if

I deal with the other. It's up to me in the end and I must say 'Yes,' or

'No.' If I say 'Yes,' all America will laugh at me--if I don't, well

who's to charge me? That's the situation, that and your own people, who

are going to give the politicians their day. I tell you, it's a

considerable proposition and is going to make me older before I have

done with it."

He was unusually earnest, and his manner forbade any inquiry as to what

had happened in Downing Street, a matter Trevelle's curiosity would have

probed if it could. To be candid, this polished gentleman, who

indirectly had brought the fact of Faber's presence in England to the

notice of the government, was immensely pleased by the part he had

played in the stirring events of recent days. Not a lover of money, but

a persistent seeker after social credit, when it could be gained by

worthy ends, Trevelle had won distinction in twenty ways: as a founder

of boys' camps, an officer of Territorials, and a promoter of some

schemes which had become national. And here he was in these critical

days by the side of the man whose genius might well be the salvation of

his fellow-countrymen.

Then entered Liverpool a little late in the afternoon, and went at once

to the scene of the strike. It was bitterly cold weather, but nothing to

justify the fearsome stories which had delighted London for some days

past. The strike itself appeared to be the result as much of lack of

work as of any fundamental discontent; starvation had been busy here,

and the fruits of starvation were now to be reaped. As in London,

haggard gangs paraded the streets and clamoured for bread; there were

turbulent scenes in the darker quarters of the city, and not a little of

that unmeasured mischief which ever treads upon the heels of want. An

interview with the men's leaders convinced Faber that America alone

could unlock the doors of this compulsory idleness, and it set his own

responsibility once more in a lurid light. Let him cable that message of

surrender and the end would be at hand; but in that case his own people

would call him a genius no more and Wall Street would deride him. He saw

himself as the enemy of the British people, dominant in victory and yet

upon the eve of a defeat which never could be retrieved. And if this

befell him a woman must answer for it--an ancient story truly.

From Liverpool he journeyed to Fishguard, thence to the south coast. A

greater rigour of the frost was here, and it was possible for the

dreamer to understand some of those fears which had haunted the timorous

during the eventful days. Perhaps a man of large imagination might have

been justified in looking across the still seas and asking himself what

would befall the island kingdom if the prophets were justified.