The morning of arrival found every one in the natural state of
excitement induced by eight days' anticipation and three thousand miles
of progress toward a given goal. Napier's glimpse of Nan, hurrying out
of the breakfast-salon by an opposite door as he went in, showed
excitement in her, too. Notwithstanding all that had happened, he was
determined not to part from her on that note of last night. Anything,
the merest commonplace, rather than that, he told himself, unable to
strangle a larger hope.
Not in vain he, in his turn, despatched breakfast in short order and
went above. There she was on the promenade-deck, her back to him, her
face to the faint, still far-off outline of her native land.
In the raw chill of that February morning the prospect appeared anything
but welcoming to Napier. It was different for her. In the forefront of
her mind she was no doubt waving the Stars and Stripes. But, Napier
could have sworn, deep in her heart was the thought of him and a secret
planning of one of those "meetings in New York" she had spoken of in the
first days. She stood there lightly poised, a little wistful, more than
a little alluring. Another man, noting the empty deck, remembering that
other sea they had stood by, locked together, would have gone up to her
and put an arm about the waiting figure. The scene of pretty confusion
and tender yielding, the withdrawal, "Some one is sure to come!" and the
hurried arrangement to meet--he saw it all. He wondered afterward what
would have happened had he played his part.
When she found him at her side with "Good morning," she turned sharply
as though to fly. It was all in the convention.
"You must be very happy to-day," he said.
"_Happy!_ Why should I be happy?"
"Well, to be so near home."
"Oh, home!" She lifted her shoulder slightly. "New York is less my home
than--" she stopped short.
"Than England?" he said.
"There's one thing, anyway," she said in her elusive way. "If I can't go
back for a good while, neither can you."
He stared at her, a great hope contending with mystification.
"Do I understand," he forced himself to answer lightly, "that you refuse
to let me return home without you?"
Her cheeks showed sudden color.
"The Germans refuse to let either of us go if what Greta has heard is
so."
"And what has she heard?"
"That soon after we sailed the Kaiser declared a blockade of England, an
Atlantic war zone."
She saw that Napier had already had the wireless news before he asked:
"How does that affect you and me?"
"Even neutral ships aren't safe after to-morrow," she said, accepting
with the hypnotized docility shown by so many in those early days any
edict bearing the German stamp. "What I've been thinking is, you'll be
over here till the end of the war, so there'll be time to--to
understand--to get _some_ things straight, anyhow." She turned to answer
the good morning of one of the ship's officers.
Napier always believed that the first real shock to Nan's faith in Greta
came as the passengers of the _Britannia_ were about to disembark an
hour later. Mr. Vivian Boxborough, very smart in new ultra-English
clothes, had been observed threading his way among the crowd on deck,
plainly in quest of Miss Ellis. No sooner had he caught sight of her
than he pressed forward, and no sooner was he near her than he stopped
short, his eyes intent on the lady at Miss Ellis's side.
Greta had forborne to challenge curiosity by absolutely concealing her
features. But probably no one better than she understood the
serviceability for disguise of a heavily figured white-lace veil.
Mr. Roxborough must have known her well to be able to say with such
assurance: "Why, Greta--" and then in the rebound from that betrayal of
too close acquaintanceship away to the other end of the scale: "I didn't
know you were on board, Mrs. Guedalla."
Greta stared at him through the meshes of the elaborate pattern and said
with her grand air: "Some mistake, I think."
Roxborough pinched his lips. "Oh, you don't remember me! Well, perhaps
you'll remember your husband. I'm rather expecting my manager to meet me
on the dock. Or perhaps it's _you_ Mr. Guedalla is waiting for,"
Roxborough added with a peculiar smile.
Greta put a hand through Nan's arm and drew her near the gangway.
Something must have been said for the girl turned her back with decision
upon her late admirer. But her face was more than disturbed; it was
shamed, frightened. A cut in public is a terrible thing to the innocent
mind.
Napier stood close behind the pair, waiting for the excuse he felt that
Mrs. Guedalla would make for not going down with the crowd to confront
her husband. But the lady was too entirely mistress of herself for that.
Perhaps she counted on Mr. Guedalla's knowledge of the wisdom of not
interfering with his wife. Straight down the gangplank she walked, Nan
behind her, recovering herself enough to make little signals toward a
group--two ladies, a young man, and three children with flags--waving
and smiling at Nan Ellis, first from the end of the crowded pier, then
running along at the side, and now waiting finally at the bottom of the
gangway to fall upon the girl with their welcome.
Napier had no difficulty in deciding which of them was her mother in
face of the fact that Mrs. Ellis looked more like an elder sister. Yes,
that must be a nice woman; but stupid, he decided, noting the
cordiality, after the first motion of surprise, with which Mrs. Ellis
received the lady in the baffling veil. She kissed Greta through the
lace. Bah! With Nan's address in his pocket, he could afford to leave
her and her party in the hands of a customs officer, opening trunks on
the pier.
Indeed, he had little choice, he found himself appropriated by an
English friend and an American steel magnate--carried away into a world
about which all that he had heard had very little prepared him.
His private as well as patriotic interest in the possibilities unfolded
did not prevent him from putting himself in touch with the British
Intelligence Department before he dined that first night on American
soil.
The chief agent in New York was, or had been, as Napier knew, the
British partner in an American shipping house. That he had married an
American heiress, Napier also knew. He was the more surprised to find
Mr. Roderick Taylor installed _en garcon_ at an hotel.
"My w-wife," said the long, fair young man with the strictly pomaded
hair, "is in P-Paris with her sister, who is or-organizing American
Hospital Relief. In any case,"--his smile seemed to accept Napier as one
to be treated frankly--"all sorts of coming and going is less marked in
a c-caravansary like this." The luxurious sitting room bore at that
moment, though it was not yet six o'clock, signs of the indicated
traffic. A bridge table not long abandoned, to judge by the glasses and
cigar ends, stood there.
He had run across Stein, coming out from luncheon, said Mr. Taylor. Old
Viennese friend of his, Stein. Had him up along with O'Leary, the Sinn
Feiner, and a German-American dark horse, Bieber. "We are all dining at
Bieber's to-morrow," Mr. Taylor smiled as one who preserves a native
modesty in full view of triumph. It wasn't the smile he showed to his
experimental bridge parties. "Greta von S-S--" the slight, very slight
stammer gave a touch of unreadiness which perhaps prevented the extreme
competency of Mr. Roderick Taylor from being too marked. Napier noticed
later than the stammer was hardly discernible when the engaging young
man was off duty.
"Yes, von Schwarzenberg." He helped Taylor over the barbed-wire of
Teutonic syllables.
"_Know_ her?" Taylor could go on glibly enough. "Rather!" And what, he
asked, made Mr. Napier think the woman who had crossed with him as
Mademoiselle La Farge _was_--
Clearly Mr. Taylor, whether in obedience to his own judgment or to the
issue of some _mot d'ordre_, was disposed to take Napier at face-value;
but he was far from accepting Napier's facts on the sole ground of
Napier's belief in them. After the Schwarzenberg incident had been
probed and sifted, Mr. Taylor sat back in his chair, gently perplexed
and obviously perturbed.
"It's not that we haven't been expecting her. The chief value of one of
our men is that he has hitherto been able to keep in touch with her. But
if she really has left the other side, he ought to have warned us." He
took up the receiver of his desk telephone, and then laid it down. "We
go warily with Miss von Schwarzenberg." He rose and opened a door at the
very moment that a frail, grizzled man entered the adjoining room from
the hall. "Oh, Macray, just a moment!"
The man did not stop to take off either hat or coat. Middle-aged,
dyspeptic-looking, he came in, settling his black-rimmed pince-nez on an
insufficient nose. He took a reporter's note-book out of his pocket and
stood there, sour, hopeless, a mere sketch of a man in black and white.
"Greta Schwarz is back," said Mr. Taylor. Without a pause and in the
same low voice he ran rapidly over the main facts in the story Napier
had told him. "Just set them to work," he wound up. "Quickest way to get
on her track--" he turned to Napier--"what's the American girl's
address?" Napier did not disguise his reluctance to produce that
particular information.
"You understand," he repeated for the benefit of the pessimist with the
note-book, "this Miss Ellis is under the most complete misapprehension
about the woman."
"Of course, of course," agreed Mr. Taylor.
Macray impassively poised his pen. Napier gave the address. Macray set
down a grudging stroke or two, and then: "All New York knows where to
find Schwarzenberg," he said, dragging out the information as though to
talk increased his affliction, whatever it was. "Just heard. Been seeing
reporters all afternoon."
"Who's been seeing reporters?" Taylor demanded.
"Schwarz."
"The deuce she has!"
Macray felt in his pocket. He drew out an evening paper, damp from the
press, and folded to display:
COLONIALISM IN AMERICA
ENGLISH DICTATION
IMPRESSIONS OF GERMAN-AMERICAN BACK FROM
BELLIGERENT COUNTRIES
Napier stood at Mr. Taylor's side, and together they read how Miss von
Schwarzenberg had not been an hour on this dear American soil, before
she perceived with pain that, while Germany was fighting for freedom of
the seas, for human rights, America was forgetting she'd ever won hers.
After a genial reference in passing to the burning of Washington by the
British, the lady protested that history wasn't her strong point. Would
some one, therefore, kindly tell her who had given the seas to the
British? Upon the eloquent pause that seemed to have followed that
request, the lady illustrated the service Germany was rendering the
United States in protesting against English domination. It must be very
humiliating, the lady thought, for Americans to have their mail-bags
opened, their letters confiscated. "Of course some of the letters are
for Germany. Why not? Is England to tell you to whom you may write?
Isn't America a neutral? Or is that a pretense?" She gave cases of
bitter hardships, German parents, old, ill, dying, whom faithful sons
had long been accustomed to supply with remittances from America. In
suffering British interference, America, so Miss Greta told the
interviewer, had failed in dignity. Weakly, supinely, slavishly, America
was submitting to British insolence.
Nothing in the interview occasioned Napier so much concern as the fact
that it was stated to have taken place at a named hotel, "where Miss von
Schwarzenberg is staying with old friends."
Mr. Taylor laughed a trifle ruefully as he threw down the sticky paper
and applied a pocket-handkerchief to his long, white fingers. "I like
America, he assured the newcomer, but there's no denying it's a queer
country and a queer people. Isn't it so, Macray?"
Macray's only answer was a faint groan. He picked up his newspaper and
walked gloomily out.
"The very strangest mixture," Taylor went on, "of shrewdness and
innocence. Take their attitude toward this woman. She impresses them
enormously." He disregarded Napier's "She impresses most people." "Over
here they take this Mrs. Guedalla, or Schwarz, or whatever her real name
is--they take her not only for a woman of education, but a woman
_wohlgeboren_. They accept her account of misuse of her name. An obscure
Western actress who, you are told, bears a certain dubious likeness to
the real Greta von Schwarzenberg had feloniously adopted that honorable
name. 'You know the stage way,' says Schwarzenberg. 'Tottie Tompkins
turns into Arabella Beauchamp.' The real Miss von Schwarzenberg has
naturally _never_ been on the stage. She is musical. All _gebildete_
Germans are musical. And that fact had been her salvation, so she tells
these fatuous friends of hers over here. Being musical in the thorough
German way enabled her to hold out against her proud, despotic father.
When he tried to compel her to marry the dissolute Freiherr of vast
possessions, Miss Greta ran away with her governess. Oh, always the
scene is carefully set! And then, in order not to live on the governess,
Miss Greta took to teaching music. They swallow it all! They look upon
her as a patriot. A German patriot, of course; but still laboring
devotedly and legitimately for her native land."
What made Taylor's dealings with her a delicate matter was the fact that
she had these powerful friends, Americans whose good faith and general
decency of conduct no reasonable being could doubt. She had kept herself
in close relations with these people even while she was abroad. His
wife discovered that in Paris. How did Schwarzenberg keep up these
useful relations? Through the one channel of organized participation in
the war then open to American sympathizers, _Relief_.
"Lord! the jobs put through in the name of Relief!" Taylor exclaimed.
On his second evening in New York Napier went with the Van Pelts, his
hosts, to hear "Lohengrin" at the Metropolitan. In a stage-box sat Miss
Greta, very handsome, in green, with a silver wreath on her fair hair.
The elderly lady beside her, according to the Van Pelts, was a
well-known "society leader" with a taste for philanthropy. She had
largely financed a certain branch of American relief work. That was her
husband just coming into the box. But the girl--the Van Pelts couldn't
make out the girl. Napier could.
The next day, three tables away from him, at a men's luncheon given to
Napier at a hotel, Greta again, with a different party except for Nan.
Napier saw the girl's face brighten in that instant of catching sight of
him. He saw her half rise, and then, as Greta fixed her eyes on Nan's,
Napier saw the girl subside. From time to time she looked over
wistfully. In a general movement after luncheon, emptying and refilling
the great room, he was able to time his going out so that he might
snatch a word with her.
"You haven't forgotten where I am?" she said hurriedly after they had
allowed new-comers to separate them a little from their respective
parties.
No, he hadn't forgotten; but he had read that _she_--he nodded in
Greta's direction--was also at the same hotel.
"And that keeps you away! _That's_ all you care!"
"Do you want, then," he said, with that daring which the sense of being
safely lost in a crowd will lend--"do you _want_ me to care?"
"No! At least I oughtn't to." Greta and her guests were waiting. "If I'd
known how to find you," Nan went on speaking deliberately, as though
making a declaration of rights, "I should have written you. I could let
you see part of a letter I've had from Julian. He tells news the papers
don't."
Napier thanked her gravely and gave a private address. As he saw her
disappear with "that woman," he said to himself for the thousandth time,
If only he'd been allowed to tell Nan about that Gull Island villainy at
the time, she _couldn't_ have gone on making her loyalty a cloak for
their common enemy!
The temptation to use his knowledge now, strove in him with an
instinctive as well as a reasoned shrinking. The Gull Island affair
couldn't, he argued, still be a secret of any state importance. But in
proportion as he cleared away that obstacle, the clearer yet another
stood forth. It was one of the evils of a most evil time that he, Gavan
Napier, of all men, had been forced to play a leading part in the
violent end of a man with whom he and this gentle, sensitive girl had
broken bread! Napier caught again that animal-like gleam of bared teeth
as Carl Pforzheim writhed across the table for his pistol, saw again the
gush of scarlet after the figure turned, met the knife, and fell back
against the wall. Let all that horror be hidden in the island earth and
in oblivion. If Nan knew, never, never could it be forgotten.
The "news" in the letter she sent from Julian, was all of the gathering
strength of the peace movement and the glorious part in it which America
was destined to play. President Wilson, "the man with more power and a
greater range of action than any ruler on the earth to-day"--President
Wilson was the hope of the world. The rest of the page had been torn
off. Nan was learning discretion, poor child!
In the intervals of business conclaves in the city, trips to Pittsburgh
and elsewhere, Napier continued to cultivate Mr. Roderick Taylor despite
that gentleman's refusal to lunch out, or to dine out. Not with Mr.
Napier! Taylor was never seen in the company he most liked, as he said
in his pleasant way. But there were private smokes and talks during
which many things that had been mysteries to Napier became clear. Those
were the days when Taylor and his agents were almost daily unearthing
evidences of the underground activity of the pro-German propagandist.
Among these moles of international mischief Taylor's weasels came upon
Schwarzenberg's traces only to lose them. "Suspects of more public
weight and interest, particularly men, were far more easily dealt with.
These border-line women were the devil."
Never in all that time was Napier wholly free from a dread of hearing
the name of Ellis in connection with Schwarzenberg; for always in his
mind the figure of the winged messenger followed the devious ways of the
German, followed like her shadow. The girl he loved was lavishing faith
and service, as well as financing this enemy of England. The thought was
an anguish to him.
Nothing of all this to Taylor. The sole reference to the chief ground of
Napier's own interest in the situation was a carelessly expressed
opinion, "Schwarzenberg must be making a considerable hole in the Ellis
pockets."
But, no. According to the omniscient Taylor, Schwarzenberg's spendings
were on a scale quite outside the Ellis range. Taylor half closed his
whitish eyelashes and regarded the end of his cigar. "I am, I believe,
on the track of Schwarzenberg's new resources."
That telephone again! It was always ringing in here when Macray was out.
Taylor listened, laughed, and made an appointment.
An Italian, he explained, a Mr. Luigi Montani, over here with his
family. He had taken from some friends of Taylor's a furnished house in
Washington. All arranged in twenty-four hours. Not a syllable in the
press.
"He's just been telling me that when his servants, Italians, went
downstairs the first morning, they couldn't open the front door for the
mass of pro-German literature shoved through the letter-box overnight."
The incident set Taylor talking about "the slender thread" on which may
hang "the everlasting things" in international relationships. He talked
of America with, as Napier thought, an understanding given to few
foreigners. You couldn't shake Taylor's faith in America. "But her
ignorance of one entire hemisphere!"
Was it greater, Napier asked, than Old-World ignorance of the new?
No, no. Lack of mutual understanding was the common danger. To increase
it was the German trump-card.
"People talk of America's largely unconscious power to wreck the world's
best interests. She _won't_!" he cried with a passion that seemed alien
to his nature; "but if there's even a danger of it, it is because of
innocent susceptibilities which the underground people, Schwarzenberg
and her crew, are rubbing raw." And there was another thing. "If they
should 'get at' Wilson, we'd be in a bad way."
"The whole world would be in a bad way," said Napier, with a dizzying
sense of the issues at stake.
"Yes, the whole world," Taylor agreed. And on his face, too, was a
deeper gravity.
"I heard something last night"--Napier sat up suddenly--"that made me
furious. I denied it. I want to hear you deny it. Fellow from Washington
told us the President has given up receiving the British Ambassador."
"It's true."
"My God! then Bernstorff _has_ got him!"
"Not at all. It's true Wilson's given up seeing the British ambassador,
and it's true he's given up seeing the German ambassador. Oh, a long
head, Wilson's! He corresponds with the accredited official
representatives, and he sees the unofficial, the people he can learn
from and the people he can indoctrinate. You'll be dealing with him less
advantageously because of your mission, even though it's private.
But"--Taylor got up to find a match. He paused to lay a hand on Napier's
shoulder--"see Wilson soon."
It was already arranged, Taylor was told.
"Well, don't talk only munitions." Nobody better than the President,
according to Taylor, knew that the old diplomacy was doomed. "This is
the hour of the unofficial envoy."
In Washington, four days later, Napier had cause to remember that
dictum.