THE WORLD WELL LOST
People were in London in September and October who seldom arrived
before November. War was coming. Hundreds of families whose men were in
the army came to be within touch of the War Office and Aldershot, and
the capital of the Empire was overrun by intriguers, harmless and
otherwise. There were ladies who hoped to influence officers in high
command in favour of their husbands, brothers, or sons; subalterns of
title who wished to be upon the staff of some famous general; colonels
of character and courage and scant ability, craving commands;
high-placed folk connected with great industrial, shipping, or
commercial firms, who were used by these firms to get "their share" of
contracts and other things which might be going; and patriotic amateurs
who sought to make themselves notorious through some civilian auxiliary
to war organization, like a voluntary field hospital or a home of
convalescence. But men, too, of the real right sort, longing for chance
of work in their profession of arms; ready for anything, good for
anything, brave to a miracle: and these made themselves fit by hard
riding or walking or rowing, or in some school of physical culture,
that they might take a war job on, if, and when, it was going.
Among all these Ian Stafford moved with an undercurrent of agitation
and anxiety unseen in his face, step, motion, or gesture. For days he
was never near the Foreign Office, and then for days he was there
almost continuously; yet there was scarcely a day when he did not see
Jasmine. Also there were few days in the week when Jasmine did not see
M. Mennaval, the ambassador for Moravia--not always at her own house,
but where the ambassador chanced to be of an evening, at a fashionable
restaurant, or at some notable function. This situation had not been
difficult to establish; and, once established, meetings between the
lady and monsieur were arranged with that skill which belongs to woman
and to diplomacy.
Once or twice at the beginning Jasmine's chance question concerning the
ambassador's engagements made M. Mennaval keen to give information as
to his goings and comings. Thus if they met naturally, it was also so
constantly that people gossiped; but at first, certainly, not to
Jasmine's grave disadvantage, for M. Mennaval was thought to be less
dangerous than impressionable.
In that, however, he was somewhat maligned, for his penchant for
beautiful and "select" ladies had capacities of development almost
unguessed. Previously Jasmine had never shown him any marked
preference; and when, at first, he met her in town on her return from
Wales he was no more than watchfully courteous and admiring. When,
however, he found her in a receptive mood, and evidently taking
pleasure in his society, his vanity expanded greatly. He at once became
possessed by an absorbing interest in the woman who, of all others in
London, had gifts which were not merely physical, but of a kind that
stimulate the mind and rouse those sensibilities so easily dulled by
dull and material people. Jasmine had her material side; but there was
in her the very triumph of the imaginative also; and through it the
material became alive, buoyant and magnetic.
Without that magnetic power which belonged to the sensuous part of her
she would not have gained control of M. Mennaval's mind, for it was
keen, suspicious, almost abnormally acute; and, while lacking real
power, it protected itself against the power of others by assembled and
well-disciplined adroitness and evasions.
Very soon, however, Jasmine's sensitive beauty, which in her desire to
intoxicate him became voluptuousness, enveloped his brain in a mist of
rainbow reflections. Under her deft questions and suggestions he
allowed her to see the springs of his own diplomacy and the machinery
inside the Moravian administration. She caught glimpses of its
ambitions, its unscrupulous use of its position in international
relations, to gain advantage for itself, even by a dexterity which
might easily bear another name, and by sudden disregard of
international attachments not unlike treachery.
Rudyard was too busy to notice the more than cavalier attitude of M.
Mennaval; and if he had noticed it, there would have been no
intervention. Of late a lesion of his higher moral sense made him
strangely insensitive to obvious things. He had an inborn chivalry, but
the finest, truest chivalry was not his--that which carefully protects
a woman from temptation, by keeping her unostentatiously away from it;
which remembers that vanity and the need for admiration drive women
into pitfalls out of which they climb again maimed for life, if they
climb at all.
He trusted Jasmine absolutely, while there was, at the same time, a
great unrest in his heart and life--an unrest which the accident at the
Glencader Mine, his own share in a great rescue, and her gratitude for
his safety did little to remove. It produced no more than a passing
effect upon Jasmine or upon himself. The very convention of making
light of bravery and danger, which has its value, was in their case an
evil, preventing them from facing the inner meaning of it all. If they
had been less rich, if their house had been small, if their
acquaintances had been fewer, if ...
It was not by such incidents that they were to be awakened, and with
the wild desire to make Stafford grateful to her, and owe her his
success, the tragedy yonder must, in the case of Jasmine, have been
obscured and robbed of its force. At Glencader Jasmine had not got
beyond desire to satisfy a vanity, which was as deep in her as life
itself. It was to regain her hold upon a man who had once acknowledged
her power and, in a sense, had bowed to her will. But that had changed,
and, down beneath all her vanity and wilfulness, there was now a
dangerous regard and passion for him which, under happy circumstances,
might have transformed her life--and his. Now it all served to twist
her soul and darken her footsteps. On every hand she was engaged in a
game of dissimulation, made the more dangerous by the thread of
sincerity and desire running through it all. Sometimes she started
aghast at the deepening intrigue gathering in her path; at the
deterioration in her husband; and at the hollow nature of her home
life; but the excitement of the game she was playing, the ardour of the
chase, was in her veins, and her inherited spirit of great daring kept
her gay with vitality and intellectual adventure.
Day after day she had strengthened the cords by which she was drawing
Ian to her; and in the confidence begotten of her services to him, of
her influence upon M. Mennaval and the progress of her efforts, a new
intimacy, different from any they had ever known, grew and thrived. Ian
scarcely knew how powerful had become the feeling between them. He only
realized that delight which comes from working with another for a
cherished cause, the goal of one's life, which has such deeper
significance when the partner in the struggle is a woman. They both
experienced that most seductive of all influences, a secret knowledge
and a pact of mutual silence and purpose.
"You trust me now?" Jasmine asked at last one day, when she had been
able to assure Ian that the end was very near, that M. Mennaval had
turned his face from Slavonia, and had carried his government with
him--almost. In the heir-apparent to the throne of Moravia, whose
influence with the Moravian Prime Minister was considerable, there
still remained one obdurate element; but Ian's triumph only lacked the
removal of this one obstructive factor, and thereafter England would be
secure from foreign attack, if war came in South Africa. In that case
Ian's career might culminate at the head of the Foreign Office itself,
or as representative of the throne in India, if he chose that splendid
sphere.
"You do trust me, Ian?" Jasmine repeated, with a wistfulness as near
reality as her own deceived soul could permit.
With a sincerity as deep as one can have who embarks on enterprises in
which one regrets the means in contemplation of the end, Ian replied:
"Yes, yes, I trust you, Jasmine, as I used to do when I was twenty and
you were five. You have brought back the boy in me. All the dreams of
youth are in my heart again, all the glow of the distant sky of hope. I
feel as though I lived upon a hill-top, under some greenwood tree,
and--"
"And 'sported with Amaryllis in the shade,'" she broke in with a little
laugh of triumph, her eyes brighter than he had ever seen them. They
were glowing with a fire of excitement which was like a fever devouring
the spirit, with little dark, flying banners of fate or tragedy behind.
Strange that he caught the inner meaning of it as he looked into her
eyes now. In the depths of those eyes, where long ago he had drowned
his spirit, it was as though he saw an army of reckless battalions
marching to a great battle; but behind all were the black wings of
vultures--pinions of sorrow following the gay brigades. Even as he
gazed at her, something ominous and threatening caught his heart, and,
with the end of his great enterprise in sight, a black premonition
smothered him.
But with a smile he said: "Well, it does look as though we are near the
end of the journey."
"And 'journeys end in lovers' meeting,'" she whispered softly, lowered
her eyes, and then raised them again to his.
The light in them blinded him. Had he not always loved her--before any
one came, before Rudyard came, before the world knew her? All that he
had ever felt in the vanished days rushed upon him with intolerable
force. Through his life-work, through his ambition, through helping him
as no one else could have done at the time of crisis, she had reached
the farthest confines of his nature. She had woven, thread by thread,
the magic carpet of that secret companionship by which the best as the
worst of souls are sometimes carried into a land enchanted--for a brief
moment, before Fate stoops down and hangs a veil of plague over the
scene of beauty, passion, and madness.
Her eyes, full of liquid fire, met his. They half closed as her body
swayed slightly towards him.
With a cry, almost rough in its intensity, he caught her in his arms
and buried his face in the soft harvest of her hair. "Jasmine--Jasmine,
my love!" he murmured.
Suddenly she broke from him. "Oh no--oh no, Ian! The work is not done.
I can't take my pay before I have earned it--such pay--such pay."
He caught her hands and held them fast. "Nothing can alter what is. It
stands. Whatever the end, whatever happens to the thing I want to do,
I--"
He drew her closer.
"You say this before we know what Moravia will do; you--oh, Ian, tell
me it is not simply gratitude, and because I tried to help you; not
only because--"
He interrupted her with a passionate gesture. "It belonged at first to
what you were doing for me. Now it is by itself, that which, for good
or ill, was to be between you and me--the foreordained thing."
She drew back her head with a laugh of vanity and pride and bursting
joy. "Ah, it doesn't matter now!" she said. "It doesn't matter."
He looked at her questioningly.
"Nothing matters now," she repeated, less enigmatically. She stretched
her arms up joyously, radiantly.
"The world well lost!" she cried.
Her reckless mood possessed him also. They breathed that air which
intoxicates, before it turns heavy with calamity and stifles the whole
being; by which none ever thrived, though many have sought nourishment
in daring draughts of it.
"The world well lost!" he repeated; and his lips sought hers.
Her determined patience had triumphed. Hour by hour, by being that to
his plans, to his work of life, which no one else could be, she had won
back what she had lost when the Rand had emptied into her lap its
millions, at the bidding of her material soul. With infinite tact and
skill she had accomplished her will. The man she had lost was hers
again. What it must mean, what it must do, what price must be paid for
this which her spirit willed had never yet been estimated. But her will
had been supreme, and she took all out of the moment which was possible
to mortal pleasure.
Like the Columbus, however, who plants his flag upon the cliffs of a
new land, and then, leaving his vast prize unharvested, retreats upon
the sea by which he came, so Ian suddenly realized that here was no
abiding-place for his love. It was no home for his faith, for those
joys which the sane take gladly, when it is right to take them, and the
mad long for and die for when their madness becomes unbearable.
A cloud suddenly passed over him, darkened his eyes, made his bones
like water. For, whatever might come, he knew in his heart of hearts
that the "old paths" were the only paths which he could tread in
peace--or tread at all without the ruin of all he had slowly builded.
Jasmine, however, did not see his look or realize the sudden physical
change which passed over him, leaving him cold and numbed; for a
servant now entered with a note.
Seeing the handwriting on the envelope, with an exclamation of
excitement and surprise, Jasmine tore the letter open. One glance was
sufficient.
"Moravia is ours--ours, Ian!" she cried, and thrust the letter into his
hands.
"Dearest lady," it ran, "the Crown has intervened successfully. The
Heir Apparent has been set aside. The understanding may now be
ratified. May I dine with you to-night?
"Yours, M.
"P.S.--You are the first to know, but I have also sent a note to our
young friend, Ian Stafford. Mais, he cannot say, 'Alone I did it.'
"M."
"Thank God--thank God, for England!" said Ian solemnly, the greater
thing in him deeply stirred. "Now let war come, if it must; for we can
do our work without interference."
"Thank God," he repeated, fervently, and the light in his eyes was
clearer and burned brighter than the fire which had filled them during
the past few moments.
Then he clasped her in his arms again.
As Ian drove swiftly in a hansom to the Foreign Office, his brain
putting in array and reviewing the acts which must flow from this
international agreement now made possible, the note Mennaval had
written Jasmine flashed before his eyes: "Dearest lady.... May I dine
with you to-night? ... M."
His face flushed. There was something exceedingly familiar--more in the
tone of the words than the words themselves--which irritated and
humiliated him. What she had done for him apparently warranted this
intimate, self-assured tone on the part of Mennaval, the philanderer.
His pride smarted. His rose of triumph had its thorns.
A letter from Mennaval was at the Foreign Office awaiting him. He
carried it to the Prime Minister, who read it with grave satisfaction.
"It is just in time, Stafford," he remarked. "You ran it close. We will
clinch it instantly. Let us have the code."
As the Prime Minister turned over the pages of the code, he said,
dryly: "I hear from Pretoria, through Mr. Byng, that President Kruger
may send the ultimatum tomorrow. I fear he will have the laugh on us,
for ours is not ready. We have to make sure of this thing first.... I
wonder how Landrassy will take it."
He chuckled deeply. "Landrassy made a good fight, but you made a better
one, Stafford. I shouldn't wonder if you got on in diplomacy," he
added, with quizzical humour.... "Ah, here is the code! Now to clinch
it all before Oom Paul's challenge arrives."