quietly. “You’ll want to go into the meadows for a while when you get
back--but you won’t stay there. This stuff--the smell of it, as now in
the dawn-dew, and the muttering formations presently”--Routledge waved
his arm over the bivouac--“things like this won’t let you run long in
the pasture. When the war-headings begin to grow on the front pages
of the _Witness_, and the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand grows and
blackens into a mailed fist gripping a dagger--why, you’ll be at the
lane-fence nickering for harness.”
“Routledge, don’t go over all that rot again,” said the old man. “It
isn’t that I’m out of strength, but I’m too full of hate to go on.
I’ve always hated this smug English people, and I’m not mellowing with
years. I feel it hotter and hotter--sometimes I feel it like a running
incandescence inside. It leaves my brain charred and noxious--that’s
the way it seems to me.... Yet, I have been one of England’s first
aggrandizers. I have rejoiced in print at her victories. I have cheered
with the low-browed mob, ‘God save the Queen!’ I have borne the brunt
of her wars--_the son of my father_!”
Routledge was disturbed, but he chuckled softly. “One would think you
were still a fire-brand of the Fenians, Jerry.”
“I know to whom I am talking,” was whispered queerly. “The Fenians are
not dead yet--not all the Fenians.”
“When did you hear from Miss Noreen last?”
“Oh, it’s a fortnight. We ought to get mail at Madirabad.... I must
write. My God, I must write!... Don’t mind me if I ramble a bit,
Routledge. I drank rather plenty to welcome you back. Whiskey sizzles
along my spine rather faster than once upon a time.... And you haven’t
seen Noreen for----?”
“For over a year,” Routledge said.
“And you haven’t heard that they call her the most beautiful woman in
London?”
“Yes, Jerry. I heard it from General Falconer at Bombay; from the
Sewards in Simla; from Bleakley, who came back to Hong Kong after a
year’s leave with a made-over liver and a child-wife. But then I knew
it, Jerry--yes, I knew it.”
“But she burst into bloom astonishingly after you left us. She has
never forgotten you, Routledge.... She is like the Irish girl who gave
her to me.”
“Come on to bed, Jerry. We drive like carrion-birds across the world
wherever there is blood spilt upon the ground. We’re not fit for a
woman to remember.”
“The woman who gave Noreen to me--could remember and wait, son!... Ah,
God, the red hells I have passed through!”
Routledge reflected upon the furious emotions which had stormed his
old friend in a ten minutes’ walk. From the furnaces of British hate,
he had swept to the cold caverns of gloom wherein he had laid the
wife of his youth. Only four months ago he had left Cardinegh hard,
full-blooded, iron-gray. The dawn showed him now a bent, ashen,
darting-eyed old man, of volatile but uncentered speech. The tragedy of
it all was germinating in the faculties of the younger man. Moreover,
with a thrilling freshness, the night and the return to old London
friends had brought back his own memories.... “She has never forgotten
you, Routledge!”... Nor had _he_ forgotten the pale, exquisite face
of Noreen, large-eyed with listening under the lamp in Cheer Street.
Her every change of expression recurred to him; and for each phase of
the story he had related, there had been different ranges of sorrow and
sympathy.
In the queer, sensitive mood, Routledge tried to put away his memories.
Only a God was fit to mate with this moment’s conception of Noreen
Cardinegh, as he stood with her father in the new day, already defiled
by the sprawled army. He wished that he had not seen so much of war.
Fate had put a volume of battles into the binding of his brain. In the
very centres of his life, series upon series of the world’s late and
horrible tableaux had been imprinted. Routledge was impressed with the
queer thought that such pictures must dull the delicacy of a man and
sear the surface of his soul, like lava over-running a vineyard of
Italy.
“Will you go home after this little thing is over?” Jerry asked
suddenly.
“Yes, and it won’t be long.”
“You wizard!--what do you mean?” Cardinegh muttered, with a start.
“I mean the present bubble is just about to be pricked.”
“I--at least, the boys--supposed this campaign to be but nicely on!”
Cardinegh’s voice was a husky whisper, and his hand had gripped the
sleeve of the other. “Tell me what you know!”
“Softly, Jerry!” The voice of Routledge was inaudible two feet from his
lips. “It’s all rumor--indefinite, ungrippable, as if the clouds had
whispered it--and yet there is something big behind it all. Down in
Calcutta, the seats of the mighty are trembling. British India--take
it from me--is too agitated by some discovery within, or revelation
from without, to bother much further with a little native rebellion
like this. And yet even this may have its relation to the big trouble.
A native paper has dared to print this sentence--a good sentence, by
the way: ‘Mother India is quivering with hatred for her white child,
the British foundling!’ Would a Hindu journalist dare to print that
without real or fancied backing? ‘Unauthoritative, but important if
true,’ as the _Review_ says, is my own idea. It is this: Russian spies
have insinuated themselves somewhere into the arcanum of British India;
the Bear has lumbered off with information that is already pulling the
English forces into defense--from bigger game than the Bhurpalese.
If Russia is arming the Border States and has secured information of
the fire-brand sort against England--the latter is a good deal like a
shorn Samson just now--throwing so much power in little Bhurpal!...
Something’s askew. There’s a rival in the north.... It’s all vague,
vague, but big--big as Asia!... Listen to an amateur prophet, old
Ironsides: if we live three years, we’ll see a collision of fifty-mile
battle-fronts!”
They were back in the civilian camp. Cardinegh did not speak, but his
face was mad with excitement, his hands ungovernable.
SECOND CHAPTER
THE BAFFLING INDIAN MYSTERY IS DISCUSSED BY FOUR MEN WHO SHOULD HAVE
BEEN FIRST TO SOLVE IT
The Powers are held together with links not welded by hands. The
strain upon the weaker links sets to quivering the entire cable of
civilization. Certain sections of the system grind constantly against
each other, and inevitably there comes a period when snapping is
imminent. At such a time the two material forces draw apart for
defense. Frequently peace is preserved by silent affronts of power;
frequently by an easing of tension on either hand, a more comfortable
adjustment of boundaries, and thick applications of the lubricant,
diplomacy. The time is critical, however, and in either background the
engines of war are assembled against the crisis.
Something had happened in India. It was retching for outlet at
Calcutta, seething through Indian provinces. London and St. Petersburg
were jerking with its startling galvanism. The correspondents afield in
Bhurpal began to sense this mysterious friction, but could get no word
nor line on the truth. Rumors were thick as _confetti_ in Mardi Gras.
Rumors ran through all shades of dreaming and shapes of reason. One
story was that China had wiped out the foreign concessions from Hong
Kong to Vladivostok and had challenged the world to war; another that
Russian armies were swarming over the Himalayas, and that all India
stood ready to back the Russian Bear against the British Lion; that
England would call upon Japan and the United States, and Russia demand
the alliance of the French and Germans; in short, that there would be a
merry manifestation of hell around the world.
Routledge tarried but one day with the civilian outfit. He had been
gone but forty-eight hours, with Bulwer-Shinn’s cavalry, when the
rousing mystery which he had intimated to Jerry Cardinegh in their
brief night walk, began to be felt by the army and its followers. That
which was known in the secret councils of Calcutta and London never
reached the field, but the results did. The campaign came to an abrupt
close. The hand behind history beckoned; and arteries of horse, guns,
and infantry, running like lines of red ink over the map of Bhurpal,
were bottled up into garrisons to _wait_. The petty insurrection in
the hills, which had called the soldiers and scribes to action after a
bleak stretch of peace, was as remotely forgotten as the vagaries of a
fever past.
One after another the correspondents were recalled--uneasy, irritable,
their work half-done and wholly lustreless. All their cables of the
last days (messages that hinted some grave international lesion; the
strained, dwarfed results of minds that searched the stars and the soil
for truth) were either stopped in the sending or answered by a crisp
word that nothing more of the sort was wanted. This was heart-breaking.
Feeney, Finacune, Trollope, and Talliaferro had fore-gathered on the
veranda of the Bengal Hotel in Calcutta. They were awaiting ship for
Madras, Bombay, and Home. It was ten days after the big social night
in Bhurpal, and early in January, 1902. Trollope had promulgated a
theory. It was a full-rigged, painstakingly-ballasted theory, involving
hours of heavy work in a smutty, sweltering coach on the way down
from Madirabad, and Trollope was a heavy man who drew heat--“the Blue
Boar,” a few intimates dared to call him. The theory contained a
discriminating opinion, weighed to a dram, on the cause of the sudden
scatter of troops from field to garrison, and undertook to interpret
the pregnant undertone of disorder which whispered across the empire. A
cablegram from his paper, the _Examiner_, had just been delivered, and
was spread out upon the table before the others. Trollope was breathing
hard.
“Can’t use theory matter,” the dispatch read. “Campaign closed issue.”
Trollope looked up presently and found awaiting his eyes three wide,
indulgent smiles. Trollope was so seldom disconcerted that he now
furnished an enjoyable moment for the others.
“Cheer up, fat boy,” observed Finacune. “Your old man always was a
ruffian. The _Word_ handed me the same thing when I undertook to
explain to the boarding-schools of London what this reverse was all
about, only the _Word_ did it in a refined, delicate way. You know I
dreamed it all out that Russia had come to pay court to Mother India,
and that there was a hitch about Tommy Atkins acting the best man----”
“It was the only decent thing I sent in from the campaign,” Trollope
growled.
“They know more about it at Home than we do,” said Feeney, the
saturnine, a confirmed wanderer, next to Cardinegh in years of service.
He had searched the world for forty years to watch the crises of human
events.
Finacune inquired with a trace of animation, “We’ve all four been
recalled, haven’t we?”
The others disdained to answer, but Finacune went on airily. “We are
experts--picked men--the choice of Europe to cover the turmoils of
India and elsewhere. None stand beside us. Is this the truth or not?”
It was acclaimed that this was plucked from the original garland of
truth.
“Now,” the _Word_ man asserted, “we find our cables, our expert and
expensive cables, not cut, not filed for reference, not even trusted to
the janitor’s basket, but, so far as we know, _burned unborn!_... We
have received no explanation. We are not even told that we have done
well or ill.”
“I was told to shut up and come home,” drawled Trollope.
“The same pellet in different coatings is being absorbed in the systems
of three of us present,” Finacune added. “Listen. I’ve got a theory.
England is menaced by her logical enemy from the North. Some brilliant
_coup_ has been executed by the Russian spies, or else there has been
treachery. I make no pretension of knowing just what has happened.
Any way, it is big enough to make our native rebellion look like a
flicker in a holocaust. The trouble is so big that it must be kept
from the world, from the English people, from all but the Engine-room
of England! We are muzzled, and our papers are muzzled. In a word, the
crisis is so big that _the Press has rallied around the Throne_--to
keep the matter dark!”
There was considerable comment after this. The atmosphere was charged
with earnestness. The belief grew that the clear-headed little
humorist, Finacune, had pricked the pith of the question. The situation
furnished certain gorgeous playthings for discussion. The idea that the
Czar’s secret service, either through the purchase of a traitor or some
miraculous thievery, had secured information explosive enough to blow
out the British underpinnings from India, amounted to a huge and awful
conception in the English mind. Even the pale, listless Talliaferro,
the stately _Commonwealth’s_ “Excalibur,” stirred restlessly.
There was sharp scattering of gravel along the driveway, and the four
turned to see Jerry Cardinegh riding out on a gray gelding of splendid
style and power. He sped by at a fast rack, bending forward in the
saddle, his white, haggard face in vivid profile against the vine-hung
wall to his right. His gloved left hand held the bridle-rein with the
rigidity of an artificial member. His shoulders did not seem to fill
the coat he wore; his body looked little and shrunken on the huge
beast; his lips moved.... In the mind of each one of the four, queerly
enough, was lastingly imprinted this flying glimpse of the well-loved
dean as he swung out of the drive on to the Jasper Road.
“Speaking of wanting to know a thing,” observed Trollope, “I should
like to know what is pulling down the old man.”
“We’ve all got to break,” said Feeney gloomily. “Jerry’s breaking the
approved way like a good machine whose parts are of equal tensile
strength.”
“I wonder if it is possible,” came from Finacune slowly, “for the dean
to have a line on the mystery, and that it is so desperate--you know
there are some situations so desperate--that if one looks them straight
in the face he is never the same afterward.”
“Any international disturbance that could throw old Jerry Cardinegh off
his feet, or off his feed, would have to concern Ireland,” observed
Feeney.
Trollope took up the subject. “It was after that night that Routledge
dropped in upon us in Bhurpal--that Jerry began really to tear down.
They had a talk together after we turned in.”
“Who should know the real thing--if not that demon Routledge, who rides
alone?” Feeney questioned.
“Gentlemen,” said Trollope, clapping his hands for a servant, “we sail
to-night for Home. By the grace of the weird god of wars, we’ll be in
London, at the Army and Navy Reception, within a month. Possibly then
we shall be trusted with the secret which our papers dare not trust to
the cable--the secret that is gnawing at the vitals of who shall say
how many Powers? In the meantime, let us all drink to the man who wrote
of England’s wars--save the deathless Feeney here--when we were just
learning to read fairy-tales--drink to the man who just rode by!”
“May I add a line, Trollope?” Finacune asked, as the pegs were brought.
The “Blue Boar” nodded.
“When it comes time,” said Finacune, “for the man who just rode by to
finish his last battle--which we all lose--may he pass out from the
arms of the most beautiful woman in London--his daughter!”
They drank standing.
Old Feeney broke the silence which followed. They saw in an instant
that he had something big to impart--and that there was joy in the
telling.
“The Pan-Anglo Agency of stripped news which I have the honor to
represent, sent me a little story this morning,” he declared, with the
thin, cold smile which they all knew.
“Feeney, you dead planet, do you mean to say that you have got a ray of
light left?” Finacune asked. The two were very hearty friends.
“The Press has rallied about the Throne, as you say, my emotional young
friend,” Feeney went on blandly, “but the Throne in the interim has
turned one of the smoothest tricks known to diplomacy--all in the dark,
mind you--one of the deepest diplomatic inspirations ever sprung in the
law and gospel of empire-building. Let us say that some one, by a bit
of treachery, has thrown Afghanistan’s fighting power to the Russians,
lifting it out of the English control. Also let us grant that Russia,
confident of this bulk, is waving the fire-brand along the whole
northern border of British India--plunging those sullen native states
into rebellion--and telling them why! All lower India, people of the
plains, will respond to the disorder. It has been a case of waiting for
a full century--waiting for the exact moment for insurrection. India is
the prize waiting people. They build for eternity. In a word, my sweet
children of a battle or two, England faces a great war--with all India
energized by Russia--a ten-to-one shot!”
Feeney sat back and smiled at the vine which had been the background
for Jerry Cardinegh’s passing. The others squirmed impatiently.
“What does England do in a case like this?” old Feeney requested at
length.... “O glorious England--O my England of wisdom and inspiration!
Does England say, ‘Let us fight Russia if we must’?... No, my
fellow-sufferers; England looks at the map of the world. The heads of
her various top-departments in London draw together. I mean her Home,
Colonial, and Foreign offices. One of those mute inglorious Gladstones
finds an old petition that has been laughed at and thrust aside for
months. It is from Japan. It is read and re-read aloud. The unsung
Gladstone of the outfit makes a sizzling suggestion. Japan has asked
for an Anglo-Japanese alliance. With a turn of a pen it is done. What
does this mean, my brothers?”
The thoughtful Talliaferro deigned to speak: “Japan committed
_harakiri_--that is, many of the young, impulsive flowers of the army
and navy did--seven years ago, when Russia led the Triple Alliance and
looted the trophies, including Port Arthur, from Japan’s victory over
China. With England’s moral support in an alliance, Japan will start a
war with Russia to get her trophies back. I’ve got an idea that Japan
thinks she can whip Russia.”
Talliaferro talked so seldom that he was well listened to.
The ancient Feeney clapped his hands. “If you had the nerve to follow
troops in action, that you have in world-politics, Talliaferro, you’d
have us all whipped,” he said. “You’ve got it exactly. The insulation
has long been worn off between Russia and Japan, specifically between
Korea and Manchuria. Japan, looted of her spoils from the Chinese
war, is one vast serpent’s tooth for Russia. With England’s moral
support--I say _moral_ support--Japan will tackle Russia and sing
anthems for the chance.”
“You don’t mean that such an alliance is signed?” Finacune asked
excitedly, and Trollope was leaning forward.
“Exactly,” said Feeney quietly. “The Pan-Anglo wired me the story
to-day, and the _Pioneer_ here will print it to-morrow morning. Japan
will now make demands of Russia that will force a war. That will pull
Russia up from England’s India borders. Some diplomacy, that alliance,
my boys! England has jockeyed Russia out of her aggression; rendered
helpless the idea of rebellion in India because Russian support is
needed there; England has put half of Asia between her boundaries and
the possibility of war! The absolute splendor of the whole matter is
that England calls her unheard-of alliance with Japan--a movement for
the preservation of Chinese and Korean integrity! I ask you in all
truth and soberness--as Saint Paul said--isn’t this humor for the high
and lonely gods?”
THIRD CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE RELATES HOW A MASTER CAME DOWN FROM THE GOODLY MOUNTAINS TO
FIND HIS _CHELA_ IN THE BURNING PLAINS
Routledge parted from Bulwer-Shinn’s cavalry at Madirabad and reached
Calcutta two days before the others, except Bingley, who was but a
couple of hours behind him--just enough for the latter to miss the
boat Routledge had taken to Bombay. The “Horse-killer” took himself
mighty seriously in this just-miss matter, and was stirred core-deep.
He wanted to have the first word in London as well as the last word
in India. He had studied the matter of the mystery with his peculiar
zeal, cabling his point of view in full. So rapidly had he moved down,
however, that he missed a cable from the _Thames_, hushing further
theories. It was with rage that he determined to railroad across India
and regain the lost time, possibly catch a ship ahead of Routledge at
Bombay. This was the man he feared at home and afield, in work and play.
Bingley must not be misunderstood. He was a very important war-man, a
mental and physical athlete, afraid of few things--least of all, work.
Such men are interesting, sometimes dangerous. Bingley was honest in
material things; on occasion, hatefully so. He was the least loved of
the English war-correspondents, and one of the most famous. He envied
the genial love which the name of Routledge so generally inspired;
envied the triumphs of the “mystic,” as Finacune had called him;
copied the Routledge-method of riding frequently alone, but found
it hopeless to do so and preserve the regard of his contemporaries.
The careless manner with which Routledge achieved high results was
altogether beyond Bingley, as well as the capacity of seeming to forget
the big things he had done. It was necessary for Bingley to be visibly
triumphant over his _coups_; indeed, penetratingly so. This failure of
manner, and a certain genius for finding his level on the unpopular
side of a question, challenged the dislike of his kind.
Routledge settled himself for the long voyage with much to think
about and Carlyle’s “French Revolution”--already read on many seas.
Ordinarily, a mystery such as he had left in India would have furnished
material for deep contemplation, but he chose to put it away from him
and to live in full the delights of a returning exile. Bombay was
agog with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, but Routledge did not give
the subject more than one of his days out of the last Indian port.
He missed nothing of the significance of this great move by England,
which had so entranced Feeney, but when he undertook to delve for the
first cause his faculties became lame and tired, and he had learned too
well the therapeutics of sea-travel to continue an aimless grind. An
accomplished traveller, he put aside all wastes of hurry and anxiety
and allowed his days and nights to roll together without the slightest
wear. Consequently, big volumes of tissue were renovated and rebound.
With Routledge, it was not “To-morrow we will be at Port Said,” but
a possible reflection to-day that “we are somewhere in the Red Sea.”
Frequently, he read entire nights away; or dozed from midnight until
dawn, wrapped in a rug on deck. His brain fell into a dreamy state of
unproductiveness, until he could scarcely recall that it had ever been
a rather imperious ruler of crises; a producer of piled words which
developed, in war’s own pigments, the countless garish and ghastly
films which his eye had caught. The month at sea smoothed the hard
lines of service from his face, as it softened the calluses of his
bridle-hand.
It was not until the dusk, when his boat steamed into the shipping
before Marseilles, that the old click-click of his mental tension was
resumed and the thought-lights burned strong again. He found then that
much which had been vague and unreckonable at Calcutta was cleared and
finished, as often so pleasantly happens after a season of _pralaya_,
as the Hindus express the period of rest, whether it be sleep or death.
Standing well forward on deck, with the brilliance of the city pricking
the dark of the offing, it was borne to Routledge that his life at this
period had reached a parting of the ways. The divergences stretched out
before him clearly, as if his mind had arranged them subconsciously,
while his material faculties had drowsed in the lull of far journeying.
Thoughts began to rain upon him.