Julian and Furley left the place together. They looked for the Bishop
but found that he had slipped away.
“To Downing Street, I believe,” Furley remarked. “He has some vague idea
of suggesting a compromise.”
“Compromise!” Julian repeated a little drearily. “How can there be any
such thing! There might be delay. I think we ought to have given Stenson
a week--time to communicate with America and send a mission to France.”
“We are like all theorists,” Furley declared moodily, stopping to
relight his pipe. “We create and destroy on palter with amazing
facility. When it comes to practice, we are funks.”
“Are you funking this?” Julian asked bluntly.
“How can any one help it? Theoretically we are right--I am sure of it.
If we leave it to the politicians, this war will go dragging on for
God knows how long. It’s the people who are paying. It’s the people who
ought to make the peace. The only thing that bothers me is whether
we are doing it the right way. Is Freistner honest? Could he be
self-deceived? Is there any chance that he could be playing into the
hands of the Pan-Germans?”
“Fenn is the man who has had most to do with him,” Julian remarked. “I
wouldn’t trust Fenn a yard, but I believe in Freistner.”
“So do I,” Furley assented, “but is Fenn’s report of his promises and
the strength of his followers entirely honest?”
“That’s the part of the whole thing I don’t like,” Julian acknowledged.
“Fenn’s practically the corner stone of this affair. It was he who met
Freistner in Amsterdam and started these negotiations, and I’m damned if
I like Fenn, or trust him. Did you see the way he looked at Stenson out
of the corners of his eyes, like a little ferret? Stenson was at his
best, too. I never admired the man more.”
“He certainly kept his head,” Furley agreed. “His few straight words
were to the point, too.”
“It wasn’t the occasion for eloquence,” Julian declared. “That’ll come
next week. I suppose he’ll try and break the Trades Unions. What a
chance for an Edmund Burke! It’s all right, I suppose, but I wonder why
I’m feeling so damned miserable.”
“The fact is,” Furley confided, “you and I and the Bishop and Miss
Abbeway are all to a certain extent out of place on that Council. We
ought to have contented ourselves with having supplied the ideas. When
it comes to the practical side, our other instincts revolt. After all,
if we believed that by continuing the war we could beat Germany from
a military point of view, I suppose we should forget a lot of this
admirable reasoning of ours and let it go on.”
“It doesn’t seem a fair bargain, though,” Julian sighed. “It’s the lives
of our men to-day for the freedom of their descendants, if that isn’t
frittered away by another race of politicians. It isn’t good enough,
Miles.”
“Then let’s be thankful it’s going to stop,” Furley declared. “We’ve
pinned our colours to the mast, Julian. I don’t like Fenn any more than
you do, nor do I trust him, but I can’t see, in this instance, that he
has anything to gain by not running straight. Besides, he can’t have
faked the terms, and that’s the only document that counts. And so good
night and to bed,” he added, pausing at the street corner, where they
parted.
There was something curiously different about the demeanour of Julian’s
trusted servant, as he took his master’s coat and hat. Even Julian,
engrossed as he was in the happenings of the evening, could scarcely
fail to notice it.
“You seem out of sorts to-night, Robert!” he remarked.
The latter, whose manners were usually suave and excellent, answered
almost harshly.
“I have enough to make me so, sir--more than enough. I wish to give a
week’s notice.”
“Been drinking, Robert?” his master enquired.
The man smiled mirthlessly.
“I am quite sober, sir,” he answered, “but I should be glad to go at
once. It would be better for both of us.”
“What have you against me?” Julian asked, puzzled.
“The lives of my two boys,” was the fierce reply. “Fred’s gone now--died
in hospital last night. It was you who talked them into soldiering.”
Julian’s manner changed at once, and his tone became kinder.
“You are very foolish to blame anybody, Robert. Your sons did their
duty. If they hadn’t joined up when they did, they would have had to
join as conscripts later on.”
“Their duty!” Robert repeated, with smothered scorn. “Their duty to a
squirming nest of cowardly politicians--begging your pardon, sir. Why,
the whole Government isn’t worth the blood of one of them!”
“I am sorry about Fred,” Julian said sympathetically. “All the same,
Robert, you must try and pull yourself together.”
The man groaned.
“Pull myself together!” he said angrily. “Mr. Orden, sir, I’m trying to
keep respectful, but it’s a hard thing. I’ve been reading the evening
papers. There’s an article, signed ‘Paul Fiske’, in the Pall Mall. They
tell me that you’re Paul Fiske. You’re for peace, it seems--for peace
with the German Emperor and his bloody crew.”
“I am in favour of peace on certain terms, at the earliest possible
moment,” Julian admitted.
“That’s where you’ve sold us, then--sold us all!” Robert declared
fiercely. “My boys died believing they were fighting for men who would
keep their word. The war was to go on till victory was won.. They died
happily, believing that those who had spoken for England would keep
their word. You’re very soft-hearted in that article, sir, about
the living. Did you think, when you sat down to write it, about the
dead?--about that wilderness of white crosses out in France? You’re
proposing in cold blood to let those devils stay on their own dunghill.”
“It is a very large question, Robert,” Julian reminded him. “The war is
fast reaching a period of mutual exhaustion.”
The man threw all restraint to the winds.
“Claptrap!” was his angry reply. “You wealthy people want your fleshpots
again. We’ve a few more million men, haven’t we? America has a few more
millions?”
“Your own loss, Robert, has made you--and quite naturally, too--very
bitter,” his master said gently. “You must let those who have thought
this matter out come to a decision upon it. Beyond a certain point, the
manhood of the world must be conserved.”
“That sounds just like fine talk to me, sir, and no more; the sort of
stuff that’s printed in articles and that no one takes much stock of.
Words were plain enough when we started out to fight this war. We were
going to crush the German military spirit and not leave off fighting
until we’d done it. There was nothing said then about conserving
millions of men. It was to be fought out to the end, whatever it cost.”
“And you were once a pacifist!”
“Pacifist!” the man repeated passionately. “Every human being with
common sense was a pacifist when the war started.”
“But the war was forced upon us,” Julian reminded him. “You can’t deny
that.”
“No one wishes to, sir. It was forced upon us all right, but who made
it necessary? Why, our rotten government for the last twenty years!
Our politicians, Mr. Julian, that are prating now of peace before their
job’s done! Do you think that if we’d paid our insurance like men and
been prepared, this war would ever have come? Not it! We asked for
trouble, and we got it in the neck. If we make peace now, we’ll be a
German colony in twenty years, thanks to Mr. Stenson and you and the
rest of them. A man can be a pacifist all right until his head has been
punched. Afterwards, there’s another name for him. Is there anything
more I can get you to-night before I leave, sir?”
“Nothing, thanks. I’m sorry about Fred.”
Julian, conscious of an intense weariness, undressed and went to bed
very soon after the man’s departure. He was already in his first doze
when he awoke suddenly with a start. He sat up and listened. The sound
which had disturbed him was repeated,--a quiet but insistent ringing of
the front-door bell. He glanced at his watch. It was barely midnight,
but unusually late for a visitor. Once more the bell rang, and this time
he remembered that Robert slept out, and that he was alone in the flat.
He thrust his feet into slippers, wrapped his dressing gown around him,
and made his way to the front door.
Julian’s only idea had been that this might be some messenger from the
Council. To his amazement he found himself confronted by Catherine.
“Close the door,” she begged. “Come into your sitting room.”
She pushed past him and he obeyed, still dumb with surprise and the
shock of his sudden awakening. Catherine herself seemed unaware of his
unusual costume, reckless of the hour and the strangeness of her visit.
She wore a long chinchilla coat, covering her from head to foot, and a
mantilla veil about her head, which partially obscured her features.
As soon as she raised it, he knew that great things had happened. Her
cheeks were the colour of ivory, and her eyes unnaturally distended. Her
tone was steady but full of repressed passion.
“Julian,” she cried, “we have been deceived--tricked! I have come to you
for help. Are the telegrams sent out yet?”
“They go at eight o’clock in the morning,” he replied.
“Thank God we are in time to stop them!”
Julian looked at her for a moment, utterly incredulous.
“Stop them?” he repeated. “But how can we? Stenson has declared war.”
“Thank heaven for that!” she exclaimed, her voice trembling. “Julian,
the whole thing is an accursed plot. The German Socialists have never
increased their strength except in their own imaginations. They are
absolutely powerless. This is the most cunning scheme of the whole war.
Freistner has simply been the tool of the militarists. They encouraged
him to put forward these proposals and to communicate with Nicholas
Fenn. When the armistice has been declared and negotiations begun, the
three signatures will be repudiated. The peace they mean to impose is
one of their own dictation, and in the meantime we shall have created a
cataclysm here. The war will never start again. All the Allies will be
at a discord.”
“How have you found this out?” Julian gasped.
“From one of Germany’s chief friends in England. He is high up in the
diplomatic service of--of a neutral country, but he has been working for
Germany ever since the commencement of the war. He has been helping in
this. He has seen me often with Nicholas Fenn, and he believes that I am
behind the scenes, too. He believes that I know the truth, and that I am
working for Germany. He is absolutely to be relied upon. Every word that
I am telling you is the truth.”
“What about Fenn?” Julian demanded breathlessly.
“Nicholas Fenn has had a hundred thousand pounds of German money within
the last few months,” she replied. “He is one of the foulest traitors
who ever breathed. Freistner’s first few letters were genuine
enough, but for the last six weeks he has been imprisoned in a German
fortress--and Fenn knows it.”
“Have you any proof of all this?” Julian asked. “Remember we have the
Council to face, and they are all girt for battle.”
“Yes, I have proof,” she answered, “indirect but damning enough.
This man has sometimes forwarded and collected for me letters from
connections of mine in Germany. He handed me one to-night from a distant
cousin. You know him by name General Geroldberg. The first two pages are
personal. Read what he says towards the end,” she added, passing it on
to Julian.
Julian turned up the lamp and read the few lines to which she pointed:
By the bye, dear cousin, if you should receive a shock within the next
few days by hearing that our three great men have agreed to an absurd
peace, do not worry. Their signatures have been obtained for some
document which we do not regard seriously, and it is their intention to
repudiate them as soon as a certain much-looked for event takes place.
When the peace comes, believe me, it will be a glorious one for us. What
we have won by the sword we shall hold, and what has been wrested from
us by cunning and treachery, we shall regain.
“That man,” Catherine declared, “is one of the Kaiser’s intimates. He is
one of the twelve iron men of Germany. Now I will tell you the name
of the man with whom I, have spent the evening. It is Baron Hellman.
Believe me, he knows, and he has told me the truth. He has had this
letter by him for a fortnight, as he told me frankly that he thought it
too compromising to hand over. To-night he changed his mind.”
Julian stood speechless for a moment, his fists clenched, his eyes
ablaze.
Catherine threw herself into his easy-chair and loosened her coat.
“Oh, I am tired!” she moaned. “Give me some water, please, or some
wine.”
He found some hock in the sideboard, and after she had drunk it they sat
for some few minutes in agitated silence. The street sounds outside
had died away. Julian’s was the topmost flat in the block, and their
isolation was complete. He suddenly realised the position.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, with an almost ludicrous return to the
commonplace, “the first thing to be done is for me to dress.”
She looked at him as though she had noticed his dishabille for the first
time. For a moment their feet seemed to be on the earth again.
“I suppose I seem to you crazy to come to you at such an hour,” she
said. “One doesn’t think of those things, somehow.”
“You are quite right,” he agreed. “They are unimportant.”
Then suddenly the sense of the silence, of their solitude, of their
strange, uncertain relations to one another, swept in upon them both.
For a moment the sense of the great burden she was carrying fell from
Catherine’s shoulders. She was back in a simpler world. Julian was no
longer a leader of the people, the brilliant sociologist, the apostle of
her creed. He was the man who during the last few weeks had monopolised
her thoughts to an amazing extent, the man for whose aid and protection
she had hastened, the man to whom she was perfectly content to entrust
the setting right of this ghastly blunder. Watching him, she suddenly
felt that she was tired of it all, that she would like to creep away
from the storm and rest somewhere. The quiet and his presence seemed to
soothe her. Her tense expression relaxed, her eyes became softer. She
smiled at him gratefully.
“Oh, I cannot tell you,” she exclaimed, “how glad I am to be with you
just now! Everything in the outside world seems so terrible. Do you
mind--it is so silly, but after all a woman cannot be as strong as
a man, can she?--would you mind very much just holding my hand for a
moment and staying here quite quietly. I have had a horrible evening,
and when I came in, my head felt as though it would burst. You do not
mind?”
Julian smiled as he leaned towards her. A kind of resentment of which
he had been conscious, even though in some measure ashamed of it,
resentment at her unswerving loyalty to the task she had set herself,
melted away. He suddenly knew why he had kissed her, on that sunny
morning on the marshes, an ecstatic and incomprehensible moment which
had seemed sometimes, during these days of excitement, as though it had
belonged to another life and another world. He took both her hands in
his, and, stooping down, kissed her on the lips.
“Dear Catherine,” he said, “I am so glad that you came to me. I think
that during these last few days we have forgotten to be human, and it
might help us--for after all, you know, we are engaged!”
“But that,” she whispered, “was only for my sake.”
“At first, perhaps,” he admitted, “but now for mine.”
Her little sigh of content, as she stole nearer to him, was purely
feminine. The moments ticked on in restful and wonderful silence. Then,
unwillingly, she drew away from his protecting arm.
“My dear,” she said, “you look so nice as you are, and it is such
happiness to be here, but there is a great task before us.”
“You are right,” he declared, straightening himself. “Wait for a few
minutes, dear. We shall find them all at Westminster--the place will be
open all night. Close your eyes and rest while I am away.”
“I am rested,” she answered softly, “but do not be long. The car is
outside, and on the way I have more to tell you about Nicholas Fenn.”