BOOK I

THE NEW PLAGUE

I--THE GOSLING FAMILY

1

"Where's the gels gone to?" asked Mr Gosling.

"Up the 'Igh Road to look at the shops. I'm expectin' 'em in every

minute."

"Ho!" said Gosling. He leaned against the dresser; the kitchen was

hot with steam, and he fumbled for a handkerchief in the pocket of

his black tail coat. He produced first a large red bandanna with which

he blew his nose vigorously. "Snuff 'andkerchief; brought it 'ome to

be washed," he remarked, and then brought out a white handkerchief

which he used to wipe his forehead.

"It's a dirty 'abit snuff-taking," commented Mrs Gosling.

"Well, you can't smoke in the orfice," replied Gosling.

"Must be doin' somethin', I suppose?" said his wife.

When the recital of this formula had been accomplished--it was hallowed

by a precise repetition every week, and had been established now for

a quarter of a century--Gosling returned to the subject in hand.

"They does a lot of lookin' at shops," he said, "and then nothin' 'll

satisfy 'em but buyin' somethin'. Why don't they keep away from 'em?"

"Oh, well; sales begin nex' week," replied Mrs Gosling. "An' that's a

thing we 'ave to consider in our circumstances." She left the vicinity

of the gas-stove, and bustled over to the dresser. "'Ere, get out of

my way, do," she went on, "an' go up and change your coat. Dinner'll

be ready in two ticks. I shan't wait for the gells if they ain't in."

"Them sales is a fraud," remarked Gosling, but he did not stop to

argue the point.

He went upstairs and changed his respectable "morning" coat for a

short alpaca jacket, slipped his cuffs over his hands, put one inside

the other and placed them in their customary position on the chest of

drawers, changed his boots for carpet slippers, wetted his hair brush

and carefully plastered down a long wisp of grey hair over the top

of his bald head, and then went into the bathroom to wash his hands.

There had been a time in George Gosling's history when he had not been

so regardful of the decencies of life. But he was a man of position

now, and his two daughters insisted on these ceremonial observances.

Gosling was one of the world's successes. He had started life as

a National School boy, and had worked his way up through all the

grades--messenger, office-boy, junior clerk, clerk, senior clerk,

head clerk, accountant--to his present responsible position as head of

the counting-house, with a salary of £26 a month. He rented a house

in Wisteria Grove, Brondesbury, at £45 a year; he was a sidesman

of the church of St John the Evangelist, Kilburn; a member of Local

Committees; and in moments of expansion he talked of seeking election

to the District Council. A solid, sober, thoroughly respectable man,

Gosling, about whom there had never been a hint of scandal; grown

stout now, and bald--save for a little hair over the ears, and that

one persistent grey tress which he used as a sort of insufficient

wrapping for his naked skull.

Such was the George Gosling seen by his wife, daughters, neighbours,

and heads of the firm of wholesale provision merchants for whom he had

worked for forty-one years in Barbican, E.C. Yet there was another man,

hardly realized by George Gosling himself, and apparently so little

representative that even his particular cronies in the office would

never have entered any description of him, if they had been obliged

to give a detailed account of their colleague's character.

Nevertheless, if you heard Gosling laughing uproariously at some story

produced by one of those cronies, you might be quite certain that it

was a story he would not repeat before his daughters, though he might

tell his wife--if it were not too broad. If you watched Gosling in the

street, you would see that he took a strange, unaccountable interest in

the feet and ankles of young women. And if many of Gosling's thoughts

and desires had been translated into action, the Vicar of St John the

Evangelist would have dismissed his sidesman with disgust, the Local

Committees would have had no more of him, and his wife and daughters

would have regarded him as the most depraved of criminals.

Fortunately, Gosling had never been tempted beyond the powers of

his resistance. At fifty-five, he may be regarded as safe from

temptation. He seldom put any restraint upon his thoughts, outside

business hours; but he had an ideal which ruled his life--the ideal

of respectability. George Gosling counted himself--and others counted

him also--as respectable a man as could be found in the Metropolitan

Police area. There were, perhaps, a quarter of a million other men

in the same area, equally respectable.

2

As he was drying his hands, Gosling heard the front door slam and

his daughters' voices in the passage below, followed by a shrill

exhortation from the kitchen: "Now, gels, 'urry up, dinner's all

ready and your father's waitin'!"

Gosling trotted downstairs and received the usual salute from his two

girls. He noted that they were a shade more effusive than usual. "Want

more money for fal-lals," was his inward comment. They were always

wanting money for "fal-lals."

He adopted his usual line of defence through dinner and constantly

brought the subject of conversation back to the need for a reduction

of expenses. He did not see Blanche wink at Millie across the table,

during these strategic exercises; nor catch the glance of understanding

which passed between the girls and their mother. So, as his dinner

comforted and cheered him, Gosling began to relax into his usual

facetiousness; incredibly believing, despite the invariable precedents

of his family history, that his daughters had been convinced of the

hopelessness of approaching him for money that evening.

The credulous creature even allowed them to make their opening,

and then assisted them to a statement of their petition.

They were talking of a friend's engagement to be married, and Gosling

with an obtuseness he never displayed in business remarked, "Wish my

gels 'ud get married."

"Talking about us, father?" asked Blanche.

"Well, you're the only gels I've got--as I know of," said Gosling.

"Well, how can you expect us to get married when we haven't got a

decent thing to put on?" returned Blanche.

Gosling realized his danger too late. "Pooh! That don't make any

difference," he said hastily, adopting a thoroughly unsound line of

defence; "I never noticed what your mother was wearing when I courted

'er."

"Dessay you didn't," replied Millie, "I dessay most fellows couldn't

tell you what a girl was wearing, but it makes just all the difference

for all that."

"Of course it does," said Blanche. "A girl's got no chance these days

unless she can look smart. No fellow's going to marry a dowdy."

"It does make a big difference, there's no denyin'," put in Mrs

Gosling, as though she was being convinced against her will.

"And now the sales are just beginning----"

Poor Gosling knew the game was up. They had made no direct attack

upon his pocket, yet; but they would not relax their grip of this

fascinating subject till they had achieved their object. Blanche was

saying that she was ashamed to be seen anywhere; and procrastination

would be met at once by the argument--how well he knew it--based on

the premise that if you didn't buy at sale-time, you had to pay twice

as much later.

It was quite useless for Gosling to fidget, throw himself back in

his chair, frown, shake his head, and look horribly determined;

the course of progress was unalterable from the direct attack: "Do

you like to see us going about in rags, father?" through the stage

of "Well, well, 'ow much do you want? I simply can't afford----"

and the ensuing haggles down to the despairing sigh as the original

minimum demanded--in this case no less than five pounds--was forlornly

conceded, and clinched by Blanche's, "We must have it before the end

of the week, dad, the sales begin on Monday."

At the end of it all, he received what compensation they had to offer

him; hugs and kisses, offers to do all sorts of impossible things,

assistance in getting his armchair into precisely the right position,

and him into the chair, and the table cleared and the lamp in just

the right place for him to read his half-penny evening paper which

was fetched for him from the pocket of his overcoat. And, finally,

the crux of Gosling's whole position, a general air of complacency,

good-temper and comfort.

Gosling was an easy-going man, he hated rows.

"Mind you, you two," he remarked with a return to facetiousness as he

settled himself with his carpet slippers spread out to the fire--"mind

you, I look on this money as an investment. You two gels got to get

married; and quick or I shall be in the bankrup'cy Court. Don't you

forget as these 'fal-lals' is bought for a purpose."

"Oh, don't be so horrid, father," said Blanche, with a change of front;

"it sounds as if we were setting traps for men."

"Well, ain't you?" asked Gosling. "You said just now----"

"Not like that," interrupted Blanche. "It's very different just wanting

to look nice. Personally, I'm in no 'urry to get married, thank you."

"You wait till Mr Right comes along," put in Mrs Gosling, and then

turned the conversation by saying: "Well, father, what's the news

this evening?"

"Nothin' excitin'," replied Gosling. "Seems this new plague's spreadin'

in China."

"They're always inventin' new diseases, nowadays, or callin' old ones

by new names," said Mrs Gosling. The two girls were busy with a sheet

of note-paper and a stump of pencil that seemed to require frequent

lubrication; they were making calculations.

"This one's quite new, seemingly," returned Gosling. "It's only the

men as get it."

"No need for us to worry, then," put in Millie, more as a duty,

some slight return for benefits promised, than because she took any

interest in the subject. Blanche was absorbed; her unseeing gaze was

fixed on the mantelpiece and ever and again she removed the point of

the pencil from her mouth and wrote feverishly.

"Oh, ain't there?" replied Gosling. He turned his head in order to

argue from so strong a position. "And where'd you be, and all the

rest of the women, if you 'adn't got no men to look after you?"

"I expect we could get along pretty well, if we had to," said Millie.

Gosling winked at his wife, and indicated by an upward movement of

his chin that he was astounded at such innocence. "Who'd buy your

'fal-lals' for you, I should like to know?" he asked.

"We'd have to earn money for ourselves," said Millie.

"Ah! I'd like to see you or Blanche takin' over my job," replied her

father. "Why, I'll lay there's 'alf a dozen mistakes in the figurin'

she's doing at the present moment. Let me see!"

Blanche descended suddenly from visions of Paradise, and put her hand

over the sheet of note-paper. "You can't, father," she said.

Gosling looked sly. "Indeed?" he said, with simulated surprise. "And

why not? Ain't I to be allowed to judge of the nature of the investment

I'm goin' in for? I might give you an 'int or two from the gentleman's

point of view."

Blanche shook her head. "I haven't added it up yet," she said.

Gosling did not press the point; he returned to his original

position. "I dunno where you ladies 'ud be if you 'adn't no gentlemen

to look after you."

Mrs Gosling smirked. "We'll 'ope it won't come to that," she

said. "China's a long way off."

"Appears as there's been one case in Russia, though," remarked

Gosling. He saw that he had rather a good thing in this threat of male

extermination, a pleasant, harmless threat to hold over his feminine

dependents; a means to emphasize the facts of masculine superiority

and of the absolute necessity for masculine intelligence; facts that

were not sufficiently well realized in Wisteria Grove, at times.

Mrs Gosling yawned surreptitiously. She was doing her best to be

pleasant, but the subject bored her. She was a practical woman

who worked hard all day to keep her house clean, and received very

feeble assistance from the daughters for whom her one ambition was

an establishment conducted on lines precisely similar to her own.

Millie and Blanche had returned to their calculations and were

completely absorbed.

"In Russia? Just fancy," commented Mrs Gosling.

"In Moscow," said Gosling, studying his Evening News. "'E was an

official on the trans-Siberian Railway. 'As soon as the disease

was identified as a case of the new plague,'" read Gosling, "'the

patient was at once removed to the infectious hospital and strictly

isolated. He died within two hours of his admission. Stringent measures

are being taken to prevent the infection from spreading.'"

"Was 'e a married man?" asked Mrs Gosling.

"Doesn't say," replied her husband. "But the point is that if it once

gets to Europe, who knows where it'll stop?"

"They'll see to that, you may be sure," said Mrs Gosling, with a

beautiful faith in the scientific resources of civilization. "It said

somethin' about that in the bit you've just read."

Gosling was not to be done out of his argument. "Very like," he

said. "But now, just supposin' as this 'ere plague did spread to

London, and 'alf the men couldn't go to work; where d'you fancy

you'd be?"

Mrs Gosling was unable to grasp the intricacies of this

abstraction. "Well, of course, every one knows as we couldn't get on

without the men," she said.

"Ah! well there you are, got it in once," said Gosling. "And don't

you gels forget it," he added turning to his daughters.

Millie only giggled, but Blanche said, "All right, dad, we won't."

The girls returned to their calculations; they had arrived at the

stage of cutting out all those items which were not "absolutely

necessary." Five pounds had proved a miserably inadequate sum on paper.

Gosling returned to his Evening News, which presently slipped gently

from his hand to the floor. Mrs Gosling looked up from her sewing

and put a finger on her lips. The voices of Blanche and Millie were

subdued to sibilant whisperings.

Gosling had forgotten his economic problems, and his daring

abstractions concerning a world despoiled of male activity, especially

of that essential activity, as he figured it, the making of money--the

wage-earner was enjoying his after-dinner nap, hedged about, protected

and cared for by his womankind.

There may have been a quarter of a million wage-earners in Greater

London at that moment, who, however much they differed from Gosling

on such minor questions as Tariff Reform or the capabilities of the

then Chancellor of the Exchequer, would have agreed with him as a

matter of course, on the essentials he had discussed that evening.

3

At half-past nine the click of the letter-box, followed by a resounding

double-knock, announced the arrival of the last post. Millie jumped

up at once and went out eagerly.

Mr Gosling opened his eyes and stared with drunken fixity at the

mantelpiece; then, without moving the rest of his body, he began to

grope automatically with his left hand for the fallen newspaper. He

found it at last, picked it up and pretended to read with sleep-sodden

eyes.

"It's the post, dear," remarked Mrs Gosling.

Gosling yawned enormously. "Who's it for?" he asked.

"Millie! Millie!" called Mrs Gosling. "Why don't you bring the

letters in?"

Millie did not reply, but she came slowly into the room, in her hands

a letter which she was examining minutely.

"Who's it for, Mill?" asked Blanche, impatiently.

"Father," replied Millie, still intent on her study. "It's a foreign

letter. I seem to remember the writing, too, only I can't fix it

exactly."

"'Ere, 'and it over, my gel," said Gosling, and Millie reluctantly

parted with her fascinating enigma.

"I know that 'and, too," remarked Gosling, and he, also, would have

spent some time in the attempt to guess the puzzle without looking

up the answer within the envelope, but the three spectators, who were

not sharing his interest, manifested impatience.

"Well, ain't you going to open it, father?" asked Millie, and Mrs

Gosling looked at her husband over her spectacles and remarked,

"It must be a business letter, if it comes from foreign parts."

"Don't get business letters to this address," returned the head

of the house, "besides which it's from Warsaw; we don't do nothin'

with Warsaw."

At last he opened the letter.

The three women fixed their gaze on Gosling's face.

"Well?" ejaculated Millie, after a silence of several seconds. "Aren't

you going to tell us?"

"You'd never guess," said Gosling triumphantly.

"Anyone we know?" asked Blanche.

"Yes, a gentleman."

"Oh! tell us, father," urged the impatient Millie.

"It's from the Mr Thrale, as lodged with us once," announced Gosling.

"Oh! dear, our Mr Fastidious," commented Blanche, "I thought he was

dead long ago."

"It must be over four years since 'e left," put in Mrs Gosling.

"Getting on for five," corrected Blanche. "I remember I put my hair

up while he was here."

"What's he say?" asked Millie.

"'E says, 'Dear Mr Gosling, I expect you will be surprised to 'ear

from me after my five years' silence----'"

"I said it was five years," put in Blanche. "Go on, dad!"

Dad resumed "... 'but I 'ave been in various parts of the world and it

'as been quite impossible to keep up a correspondence. I am writing

now to tell you that I shall be back in London in a few days, and to

ask you whether you can find a room for me in Wisteria Grove?'"

"Well! I should 'ave thought he'd 'ave written to me to ask that!" said

Mrs Gosling.

"So 'e should 'ave, by rights," agreed Gosling. "But 'e's a queer

card is Mr Thrale."

"Bit dotty, if you ask me," said Blanche.

"'S that all?" asked Mrs Gosling.

"No, 'e says: 'I can't give you an address as I go on to Berlin

immediately, but I will look you up the evening after I arrive. Eastern

Europe is not safe at the present time. There 'ave been several

cases of the new plague in Moscow, but the authorities are doing

everything they can--which is much in Russia--to keep the news out

of the press, yours sincerely, Jasper Thrale,' and that's the lot,"

concluded Gosling.

"I do think he's a cool hand," commented Blanche. "Of course you

won't have him as a paying guest now?"

Gosling and his wife looked at each other, thoughtfully.

"Well----" hesitated Gosling.

"'E might bring the infection," suggested Mrs Gosling.

"Oh! no fear of that," returned her husband, "but I dunno as we want

a boarder now. Five years ago I 'adn't got my big rise----"

"Oh, no, father; what would the neighbours think of us if we started

to take boarders again?" protested Blanche.

"It wouldn't look well," agreed Mrs Gosling.

"Jus' what I was thinking," said the head of the house. "'Owever,

there's no 'arm in payin' us a friendly visit."

"O' course not," said Mrs Gosling, "though I do think it odd 'e

shouldn't 'ave written to me in the first place.

"He's dotty!" said Blanche.

Gosling shook his head. "Not by a very long chalk 'e ain't," was his

firm pronouncement....

"Well, girls, what about bed?" asked Mrs Gosling, putting away the

"bit of mending" she had been engaged upon.

Gosling yawned again, stretched himself, and rose grunting to his

feet. "I'm about ready for my bed," he remarked, and after another

yawn he started his nightly round of inspection.

When he returned to the sitting-room the others were all ready to

retire. Gosling kissed his daughters, and the two girls and their

mother went upstairs. Gosling carefully took off the larger pieces

of coal from the fire and put them under the grate, rolled up the

hearthrug, saw that the window was securely fastened, extinguished

the lamp and followed his "womenfolk."

As he was undressing his thoughts turned once more to the threat of

the new disease which was devastating China.

"Rum thing about that new plague," he remarked to his wife. "Seems

as it's only men as get it."

"They'd never let it spread to England," replied Mrs Gosling.

"Oh! there's no fear of that, none whatever," said Gosling, "but it's

rum that about women never catching it."

The attitude of the Goslings faithfully reflected that of the immense

majority of English people. The faith in the hygienic and scientific

resources which were at the disposal of the authorities, and the

implicit trust in the vigilance and energy of those authorities, were

sufficient to allay any fears that were not too imminent. It was some

one's duty to look after these things, and if they were not looked

after there would be letters in the papers about it. At last, without

question, the authorities would be roused to a sense of duty and the

trouble, whatever it was, would be stopped. Precisely what authority

managed these affairs none of the huge Gosling family knew. Vaguely

they pictured Medical Boards, or Health Committees; dimly they

connected these things with local government; at the top, doubtless,

was some managing authority--in Whitehall probably--something to

do with the supreme head of affairs, the much abused but eminently

paternal Government.

II--THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE

1

"Lord, how I do envy you," said Morgan Gurney.

Jasper Thrale sat forward in his chair. "There's no reason why you

shouldn't do what I've done--and more," he said.

"Theoretically, I suppose not," replied Gurney. "It's just making

the big effort to start with. You see I've got a very decent berth

and good prospects, and it's comfortable and all that. Only when

some fellow like you comes along and tells one yarns of the world

outside, I get sort of hankerings after the sea and adventure, and

seeing the big things. It's only now and then--ordinary times I'm

contented enough." He stuck his pipe in the corner of his mouth and

stared into the fire.

"The only things that really count are feeling clean and strong and

able," said Thrale. "You never really have that feeling if you live

in the big cities."

"I've felt like that sometimes after a long bicycle ride," interpolated

Gurney.

"But then the feeling is wasted, you see," said Thrale. "When you

feel like that and there is something tremendous to spend it upon,

you get the great emotion as well."

"Like the glimmer of St Agnes' light, after you'd been eight weeks

out of sight of land?" reflected Gurney, going back to one of Thrale's

reminiscences.

"To feel that you are a part of life, not this dead, stale life of

the city, but the life of the whole universe," said Thrale.

"I know," replied Gurney. "To-night I've half a mind to chuck my job

and go out looking for mystery."

"But you won't do it," said Thrale.

Gurney sighed and began to analyse the instinct within himself,

to find precisely why he wanted to do it.

"Well, I must go," said Thrale, getting to his feet, "I've got to

find some sort of lodging."

"I thought you were going to stay with those Gosling people of yours,"

said Gurney.

"No! That's off. I went to see them last night and they won't have

me. The old man's making his £300 a year now, and the family's too

respectable to take boarders." Thrale picked up his hat and held out

his hand.

"But, look here, old chap, why the devil can't you stay here?" asked

Gurney.

"I didn't know that you'd anywhere to put me," said Thrale.

"Oh, yes. There's always a room to be had downstairs," said Gurney.

After a brief discussion the arrangement was made.

"It's understood I'm to pay my whack," said Thrale.

"Of course, if you insist----"

When Thrale had gone to fetch his luggage from the hotel, Gurney

sat pondering over the fire. He was debating whether he had been

altogether wise in pressing his invitation. He was wondering whether

the curiously rousing personality of Thrale, and the stories of those

still existent corners of the world outside the rules of civilization

were good for a civil servant with an income of £600 a year. Gurney,

faced with the plain alternatives, could only decide that he would be a

fool to throw up a congenial and lucrative occupation such as his own,

in order to face present physical discomfort and future penury. He

knew that the discomforts would be very real to him at first. His

friends would think him mad. And all for the sake of experiencing

some high emotion now and again, in order to feel clean and fresh

and be able to discover something of the unknown mystery of life.

"I suppose there is something of the poet in me," reflected

Gurney. "And I expect I should hate the discomforts. One's imagination

gets led away...."

2

During the next few evenings the conversations between these two

friends were many and protracted.

Thrale was the teacher, and Gurney was content to sit at his feet

and learn. He had a receptive mind, he was interested in all life,

but Uppingham, Trinity Hall, and the Home Civil had constricted his

mental processes. At twenty-nine he was losing flexibility. Thrale

gave him back his power to think, set him outside the formulas of

his school, taught him that however sound his deductions, there was

not one of his premises which could not be disputed.

Thrale was Gurney's senior by three years, and when Thrale left

Uppingham at eighteen, he had gone out into the world. He had a

patrimony of some £200 a year; but he had taken only a lump sum of

£100 and had started out to appease his furious curiosity concerning

life. He had laboured as a miner in the Klondike; had sailed, working

his passage as an ordinary seaman, from San Francisco to Southampton;

he had been a stockman in Australia, assistant to a planter in Ceylon,

a furnace minder in Kimberley and a tally clerk in Hong Kong. For

nearly nine years, indeed, he had earned a living in every country

of the world except Europe, and then he had come back to London and

invested the accumulation of income that his trustee had amassed for

him. The mere spending of money had no fascination for him. During

the six months he had remained in London he had lived very simply,

lodging with the Goslings in Kilburn, and, because he could not live

idly, exploring every corner of the great city and writing articles

for the journals. He might have earned a large income by this latter

means, for he had an originality of outlook and a freshness of style

that made his contributions eagerly sought after once he had obtained

a hearing--no difficult matter in London for anyone who has something

new to say. But experience, not income, was his desire, and at the

end of six months he had accepted an offer from the Daily Post as a

European correspondent--on space. He was offered £600 a year, but

he preferred to be free, and he had no wish to be confined to one

capital or country.

In those five years he had traversed Europe, sending in his articles

irregularly, as he required money. And during that time his chief

trustee--a lawyer of the soundest reputation--had absconded, and

Thrale found his private income reduced to about £40 a year, the

interest on one of the investments he had made, in his own name only,

with his former accumulation--two other investments made at the same

time had proved unsound.

This loss had not troubled him in any way. When he had read in a

London journal of his trustee's abscondence--he was later sentenced

to fourteen years' penal servitude--Thrale had smiled and dismissed

the matter from his mind. He could always earn all the money he

required, and had never, not even subconsciously, relied upon his

private fortune.

He had now come back to London with a definite purpose, he had come

to warn England of a great danger....

One other distinguishing mark of Jasper Thrale's life must be

understood, a mark which differentiated him from the overwhelming

majority of his fellow men--women had no fascination for him. Once in

his life, and once only, had he approached and tasted experience--with

a pretty little Melbourne cocotte. That experience he had undertaken

deliberately, because he felt that until it had been undergone one

great factor of life would be unknown to him. He had come away from

it filled with a disgust of himself that had endured for months....

3

Fragments of the long conversations between Thrale and Gurney,

the exchange of a few germane ideas among the irrelevant mass,

had a bearing upon their immediate future. There was, for instance,

a criticism of the Goslings, introduced on one occasion, which had

a certain significance in relation to subsequent developments.

Some question of Gurney's prompted Thrale to the opinion that the

Goslings were in the main precisely like half a million other families

of the same class.

"But that's just what makes them so interesting," said Gurney,

not because he believed it, but because at the moment he wanted to

lead the conversation into safe ground, away from the too appealing

attractions of the big world outside the little village of London.

Thrale laughed. "That's truer than you guess," he said. "Every

large generalization, however trite, is a valuable contribution to

knowledge--if it's more or less accurate."

"Generalize, then, mon vieux," suggested Gurney, "from the characters

and doings of your little geese."

"I've seen glimmerings of the immortal god in the old man," said

Thrale, "like the hint of sunlight seen through a filthy pane

of obscured glass. He's a prurient-minded old beast leading what's

called a respectable life, but if he could indulge his ruling desire

with absolute secrecy, no woman would be safe with him. In his world

he can't do that, or thinks he can't, which comes to precisely the

same thing. He is too much afraid of being caught, he sees danger

where none exists, he looks to all sorts of possibilities, and won't

take a million-to-one chance because he is risking his all--which is

included in the one word, respectability."

"Jolly good thing. What?" remarked Gurney.

"Good for society as a whole, apparently," replied Thrale, "but surely

not good for the man. I've told you that I have seen glimmerings of

the god in him, but outside the routine of his work the man's mind

is clogged. He's not much over fifty, and he has no outlet, now,

for his desires. He's like a man with choked pores, and his body is

poisoned. And in this particular Gosling is certainly no exception

either to his class or to the great mass of civilized man. Well, what

I wonder is whether in a society which is built up of interdependent

units the whole can be sound when the greater number of the constituent

units are rotten."

"But look here, old chap," protested Gurney, "if things are as you say,

and men rule the country, why shouldn't they alter public opinion,

and so open the way to do as they jolly well please?"

"Because the majority are too much ashamed of their desires to dare

the attempt in the first place, and in the second because they don't

wish to open the way for other men. They aren't united in this; they

are as jealous as women. If they once opened the way to free love,

their own belongings wouldn't be safe."

"What's your remedy, then?"

"Oh! a few thousand more years of moral development," said Thrale,

carelessly, "an evolution towards self-consciousness, a fuller

understanding of the meaning of life, and a finer altruism."

"You don't look far ahead," remarked Gurney.

"Do you think anyone can look even a year ahead?" asked Thrale.

"There have been some pretty good attempts in some ways--Swedenborg,

for instance, and Samuel Butler...."

"Yes, yes, that's all right, in some ways--the development of

certain sorts of knowledge, for example. But there is always the

chance of the unpredictable element coming in and upsetting the whole

calculation. Some invention may do it, an unforeseen clash of opinions

or an epidemic...."

For a time they drifted further away from their original topic till

some remark reminded Gurney that he had meant to ask a question and

had forgotten it.

"By the way," he said, "I wanted to ask you what you meant when you

said you had seen a god in old Gosling?"

"Just a touch of imagination and wonder, now and again," replied

Thrale. "Something he was quite unconscious of himself. I remember

standing with him on Blackfriars Bridge, and he looked down at the

river and said: 'I s'pose it was clean once, banks and sand and so

on, before all this muck came.' Then he looked at me quickly to see

if I was laughing at him. That was the god in him trying to create

purity out of filth, even though it was only a casual thought. It was

smothered again at once. His training reasserted itself. 'Lot better

for trade the way it is, though,' was his next remark."

"But how can you alter it?" asked Gurney.

"My dear chap, you can't alter these things by any cut-and-dried plan,

any more than you can dam the Gulf Stream. We can only lay a brick

or two in the right place. We aren't the architects; the best of us

are only bricklayers, and the best of the best can only lay two or

three bricks in a lifetime. Our job is to do that if we can. We can

only guess very feebly at the design of the building; and often it is

our duty partly to pull down the work that our forefathers built...."

Presently Gurney asked if his companion had ever seen a god in Mrs

Gosling.

Thrale shook his head. "It didn't come within my experience," he

said. "Don't condemn her on that account, but she, like all the women

I have ever met, has been too intent upon the facts of life ever to see

its mystery. Mrs Gosling hadn't the power to conceive an abstract idea;

she had to make some application of it to her own particular experience

before she could understand the simplest concept. Morality to her

signified people who behaved as she and her family did; wickedness

meant vaguely, criminals, Sarah Jones who was an unmarried mother, and

anyone who didn't believe in the God of the Established Church. Always

people, you see, in this connexion; in others it might be things;

but ideas apart from people or things she couldn't grasp. Her two

daughters thought in precisely the same way...."

4

One Saturday afternoon Thrale came into Gurney's chambers and burst

out: "Just Heaven! why you fools stand it I can't imagine!"

"What's up now?" asked Gurney.

Thrale sat down and drew his chair up to the table. The pupils of

his dark eyes were contracted and seemed to glow as if they were

illuminated from within.

"I was in Oxford Street this morning, watching the women at the

sales," he said. "All the biggest shops in London are devoted to

women's clothes. Do you realize that? And it's not only that they're

the biggest--there are more of them than any other six trades put

together can show, bar the drink trade, of course. The north side

of Oxford Street from Tottenham Court Road to the Marble Arch is one

long succession of huge drapers and milliners. And what in God's name

is the sense or reason of it? What do these huge shops sell?"

"Dresses, I suppose," ventured Gurney, "and stockings, underlinen,

corsets, hats, and so on."

"And frippery," said Thrale, fixing his brilliant dark eyes on Gurney,

"And frippery. Machine lace, ribbons, yokes, cheap blouses, feathers,

insertions, belts, fifty thousand different kinds of bits and rags

to be tacked on here and there, worn for a few weeks and then thrown

away. Millions of little frivolous, stupid odds and ends that are

bought by women and girls of all classes below the motor-class, to

make a pretence--gauds and tawdry rubbish not one whit better from the

artistic point of view than the shells and feathers of any half-naked

Melanesian savage. In fact, meaningless as the Melanesians' decorations

are, they do achieve more effect. And what's it all for, I ask you?"

Thrale paused, and Gurney offered his solution.

"The sex instinct, fundamentally, isn't it?" he said. "The

desire--often subconscious, no doubt--to attract."

"Well, if that is so," said Thrale, "what terribly unintelligent

fools women must be! If women really set out to attract men, they must

realize that they are pandering to a sex instinct. Do you think any man

is attracted by a litter of odds and ends? Doesn't every woman sneer

when they see some Frenchwoman, perhaps, who dresses to display her

figure instead of hiding it? Don't they bitterly resent the fact that

their own men-folk are resistlessly drawn to stare at, and inwardly

desire, such a woman? Don't they know perfectly well that such a woman

is attractive to men in a way their own disguised bodies can never be?"

"Yes, old chap; but your average middle-class English girl hasn't

got the physical attractions to start with," put in Gurney.

"Look at it in another way, then," replied Thrale. "Doesn't every

woman know perfectly well--haven't you heard them say--that a

nurse's dress is very becoming--a plain, more or less tightly-fitting

print dress, with linen collars and cuffs? Don't you know yourself

that that attire is more attractive to you than any befrilled and

bedecorated arrangement of lace, ribbons and gauds? Why are so many

men irresistibly attracted by parlourmaids and housemaids?"

"Yes," meditated Gurney, "that's all true enough. Well, are women

all fools, or what is it?"

"The majority of women are sheep," said Thrale. "They follow as

they are led, and don't or won't see that they are being led. And

the leaders are chiefly men--men who have trumpery to sell. Why do

the fashions change every year--sometimes more often than that in

matters of detail? Because the trade would smash if they didn't. New

fashions must be forced on the buyers, or the returns would drop;

women would be able to make their last year's clothes do for another

summer. That must be stopped at any cost. Those vast establishments

must maintain an enormous turnover if they are to pay their fabulous

rents and armies of assistants. There are two means of keeping up

the sales, and both are utilized to the full. The first is to supply

cheap, miraculously cheap, rubbish which cannot be made to last for

more than a season. The second is to alter the fashions which affect

the more durable stuffs, so that last year's dresses cannot be used

again. This fashion-working scheme reacts upon the poorer buyers,

because it compels them to do something to imitate the prevailing

mode, if they can't afford to have entirely new frocks. That is where

all these bits of frilling and what-not come in; make-believe stuff

to imitate the real buyers--the large majority of whom don't buy in

Oxford Street, by the way.

"Mind you, there is a limit to the sheep-like docility of women in this

connexion. They refused, for instance, to return to the crinoline, and

they refused the harem skirt--one of the very few sensible devices

of the fashion-imposers. And this in the face of the prolonged,

strenuous and expensive methods of the fashion ring. With regard to

the crinoline, I think that failure was due to over-conceit on the

part of the fashion-imposers. They had come to believe that they

could make the poor fools of women accept anything, and on the two

marked occasions on which they attempted to introduce the crinoline,

the contrast to the existing mode was too glaring. If the fraud had

been worked more gradually by way of full skirts and flounces, some

modification of the crinoline to the necessities of 'buses and tubes

might have been foisted upon the buyers."

"Oh, my Lord!" ejaculated Gurney; "do you mean to say that women just

accept these fashions without any sense or reason at all?"

"You're rather a blithering ass, at times, Gurney," remarked Thrale.

Gurney smiled. "You don't give me time to think," he said, "I feel

like an accumulator being charged. I haven't had time yet to begin

working on my own account. You're so mighty--so mighty dynamic--and

positive, old chap."

"Well, it's so absurdly obvious that there must be a reason for women

accepting the fashions, you idiot!" returned Thrale. "And the first

and biggest reason is class distinction. The women with money want

to brag of it by differentiating themselves from the ruck of their

sisters, and the poor women try to imitate them to the best of their

ability. Women dress for other women. There is sex rivalry as well as

class rivalry at the bottom of it, but they dare not put sex rivalry

first and dress to please men alone, because they are afraid of the

opinions of other women."

"Sounds all right," said Gurney, and sighed.

"And we, damned fools of men, stand all this foolishness and pay for

it. Pay, by Jove! I should think so! I should like to see the trade

returns of all the stuff of this kind that is sold in England alone

in one year. They would make the naval estimates look small, I'll

warrant. We even imitate the women's foolishness in some degree. There

are men's fashions too, but the madness is not so marked; fortunately

the body of middle-class men can't afford to make fools of themselves

as well as of their women--though they are asses enough to wear linen

shirts and collars which are uncomfortable unsightly and expensive

to wash."

Gurney regarded his lecturer's canvas shirt and collar, and then

stood up and observed his own immaculate linen in the glass over the

fireplace. "I must say I like stiff collars and shirts," he remarked;

"gives one a kind of spruceness."

Thrale laughed. "It's only another sex instinct," he said. "Women

like men to look 'smart.' When you are playing games with other men,

or camping out, you don't care a hang for your 'spruceness.' Oh! and

I'll admit the class distinction rot comes in too. You're afraid

of public opinion, afraid of being thought common. If the jeunesse

dorée started the soft shirt in real earnest, you would soon be able

to persuade your women that that looked smart or spruce, or whatever

you liked to call it."

"Look here, you know," said Gurney, "you're an anarchist, that's what

you are."

"You're half a woman, Gurney," said Thrale. "You think in names. All

people are 'anarchists' who think in ideas instead of following

conventions."

5

Not until he had been staying with Gurney for more than a week did

Thrale speak explicitly of his purpose in London. But one cold evening

at the end of January, as the two men were sitting by a roaring fire

that Gurney had built up, the younger man unknowingly opened the

subject by saying,

"Things are pretty slack at the present moment. The Evening Chronicle

has even fallen back on the 'New Plague' for the sake of news."

"What do they say?" asked Thrale. He was lying back in his chair,

nursing one knee, and staring up at the ceiling.

"Oh, the usual rot!" said Gurney "That the thing isn't understood,

has never been 'described' by any medical or scientific authority; that

it is apparently confined to one little corner of Asia at the present

time, but that if it got hold in Europe it might be serious. And then

a lot of yap about the unknown forces of Nature; special article by

a chap who's been reading too much Wells, I should imagine."

"It seems so incredible to us in twentieth-century England that

anything really serious could happen," remarked Thrale. "We are

so well looked after and cared for. We sit down and wait for some

authority to move, with a perfect confidence that when it does move,

everything is bound to be all right."

"With such an organism as society has become," said Gurney, "things

must be worked like that. A certain group to perform one function,

other groups for other functions, and so on."

"Cell-specialization?" commented Thrale. "Some day to be perfected

in socialism."

"I believe socialism must come in some form," said Gurney.

"Yes, it's an interesting speculation, in some ways," said Thrale,

"but the higher forces are about to put a new spoke in the human wheel,

and the machinery has to be stopped for a time."

"What have you got hold of now?" asked Gurney.

"The thoughtful man," went on Thrale, still staring up at the ceiling,

"would have asked me to define my expression 'the higher forces.'"

"Well, old man, I knew that was beyond even your capacity," returned

Gurney, "so I thought we might 'cut the cackle and come to the

'osses.'"

Thrale suddenly released his knee and sat upright; then he moved his

chair so that he directly confronted his companion.

"Look here, Gurney," he said, and the pupils of his eyes contracted

till they looked like black crystal glowing with dark red light. "Do

you realize how some outside control has always diverted man's

progress; how when nations have tended to crystallize into specialized

government, some irruption from outside has always broken it up? You

can trace the principle through all known history, but the most

marked cases are those of the Egyptians and the Incas--two nations

which had developed specialized government to a science. There is

some power--whether we can credit it with an intelligence in any way

comprehensible to us from the feeble basis of our own knowledge,

I doubt--but there is some outside power which will not permit

mankind to crystallize into an organism. From our, human, point of

view, from the point of view of individual comfort and happiness,

it would be of enormous benefit to us if we could develop a system

of specialization and swamp the individual in the community. And in

times of peace and prosperity that is always the direction in which

civilization tends to evolve. But beyond a certain point--as the

individualists have not failed to point out--that state of perfect

government will lead to stagnation, degeneration, death. Now, in the

little span of time that we know as the history of mankind, there

has been no world-civilization. As soon as a nation tended to become

over-civilized and degenerate, some other, younger, more barbarous

people flowed over them and wiped them out. In the case of Peru the

process had gone very far, owing to the advantages of the Incas'

peculiar segregation. But then, you see, the development in the East,

the new world (I ought to explain that I find the oldest civilization

of the present epoch in America) reached a point in Spain and England

which sent them out across a hemisphere to wreck and destroy the Incas.

"Well, we have now reached a condition when the nations are in touch

with one another and progress becomes more general. We are in sight

of a system of European, Colonial and Trans-Atlantic Socialism,

more or less reciprocal and carrying the promise of universal

peace. Whence, you ask, is any irruption to come that will break up

this strong crystallizing system which is admittedly to work for the

happiness and comfort of the individual? There has been much talk

of an Asiatic invasion, a rebellious India or an invading China,

but those civilizations are older than ours; if we can trust the

precedents of history in this connexion, the conquerors have always

been the younger race." He broke off abruptly.

Gurney had been sitting fascinated and hypnotized by the compulsion

of Thrale's personality; he had been held by the keen, intent stare

of those wonderful dark eyes. When Thrale stopped, however, the

tension snapped.

"Well," remarked Gurney, "I think that's a jolly good argument to

prove that we have, at last, reached a stage of universal progress

towards the ideal."

"You can't conceive," asked Thrale, "of any cataclysm that would

involve a return to the old segregation of nations, and bring about

a new epoch beginning with separated peoples evolving on more or less

racial lines?"

Gurney pondered for a moment or two and then shook his head.

"Little wonder," said Thrale, "I had often considered this problem,

and I could think of no upheaval which would bring about the familiar

effect of submersion. Years ago there was always the possibility of a

European war, but even that would have only a temporary effect despite

the forecast of Mr Wells in The War in the Air. No, I considered and

wondered if my theory was faulty. I was willing to reject it if I

could find a flaw...."

"And then?" questioned Gurney.

Thrale leaned forward again and once more compelled the other's

fascinated attention.

"And then, when I was in Northern China, seven weeks ago, I saw a

solution, so appalling, so inconceivably ghastly, that I rejected

it with horror. For days I went about fighting my own conviction. I

couldn't believe it! By God, I would not believe it!

"There, within a hundred and fifty miles of the border of Tibet, the

outside forces have planted a seed which has been maturing in secret

for more than a year. There that seed has taken root, and from that

centre is spreading more and more rapidly, and it may spread over

the whole world. It is like some filthily poisonous and incredibly

prolific weed, and its seeds, now that it has once established itself,

are borne by every wind, dropping here and there in an ever-widening

circle, every seed becoming a fresh centre of distribution outwards."

"But what, in Heaven's name, is the weed?" whispered Gurney.

"A new disease--a new plague--unknown by man, against which, so

far as we know, he has no weapon. In those scattered villages among

the mountains there are no men left to work. Everything is done by

women. They are prohibited more fiercely than any leper settlement. No

one dares to approach within five miles of them. But every week or

two another village is smitten, and the inhabitants fly in terror

and carry the infection with them.

"Gurney, it's come to Europe! There are new centres of distribution

in Russia at the present time. If it isn't stopped it will come to

England. And it doesn't decimate the population. It wipes the men

clean out of existence; not one man in ten thousand, the Chinese

say, escapes.

"Is it possible that this can be the means of the 'higher forces'

I spoke of, the means to segregate the nations once more?"

III--LONDON'S INCREDULITY

1

Jasper Thrale's mission was no easy one. England, it appeared,

was slightly preoccupied at the moment, and had no ear for

warnings. Generally, he was either treated as a fanatic and laughed

at, or he was told that he greatly exaggerated the danger and that

these matters could safely be entrusted to the Local Government Board,

which had brilliantly handled the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth

disease. But there were some exceptions to this rule.

His first definite statement had been made to his own editor, Watson

Maxwell of the Daily Post.

"Yes," said Maxwell, when he had given Thrale a patient hearing,

"it is certainly a matter that needs attention. Would you care to go

out as our special commissioner and report at length?..."

"There isn't time," replied Thrale. "The thing is urgent."

Maxwell brought his eyebrows together and looked keenly at his

correspondent. "Do you really think it's so serious, Thrale?" he

asked. "After all, what evidence have you, beyond the Chinese reports?"

"I know there are several cases in Russia," said Thrale.

"Yes, yes; I don't doubt that," returned Maxwell, with a touch of

impatience. "But unless you can bring evidence to show that this new

disease is as deadly as you say, it is not a matter that I could give

space to at the present time. For one thing, the Evening Chronicle has

been making rather a feature of it for the last three or four days,

and I don't see that I could do much unless we had some special inside

information. Then, the House will be sitting again next week, and

it seems to me not altogether improbable that we shall have a stormy

session, which will mean that a good deal of ordinary matter will have

to give way...." He broke off, and then added, with a friendly smile:

"But if you would go out as our commissioner, we should be glad to

make you a proposal."

"There will be no need for a commissioner in a week's time," replied

Thrale. "You don't seem to understand that I'm not looking out for a

job. I don't want to write articles; I don't want to be paid for the

information I can supply. I foresee a grave danger, which is growing

more grave hourly by reason of the Russian Government's censorship of

all reports referring to the plague. It is a danger which should be

understood at once. If you send any commissioner, send the cleverest

physician you can find, and a bacteriologist."

There could be no doubt of Thrale's earnestness, and Maxwell, who was

not only a very capable editor, but also an able and intellectual man,

was impressed. Unfortunately, the interests of his proprietors at

that moment necessitated a great effort to prop up the very unstable

Liberal Government, which had been in power for four years and was

now on its last legs. It was so essential from the proprietors' point

of view--three of them were on the Government front bench--that the

dissolution should be postponed until such time as the Ministry could

go to the country with a reasonable prospect of success. A tentative

English Church Disestablishment Bill was to be introduced in the coming

session, and it was hoped that if the Government had to go to the

country they could make a platform on that one clear issue. It was a

good Bill, designed to win the Nonconformist vote, without completely

alienating the High Church party. In other words, the Government was

eager at that moment to please the majority of the electors, which is,

presumably, the highest object of a representative government.

"If it had been at any other time," said Maxwell, and pushed his

chair back.

Thrale understood that the interview was at an end. He rose from his

chair and picked up his hat.

"We shall be glad to print any articles you care to send us," said

Maxwell, with his kind smile, "but I can't undertake a campaign,

you understand, at the present moment."

It was nearly four o'clock, but Thrale just managed to catch Groves

of the Evening Chronicle.

2

Groves had his hat on, and was just off to tea at his club when

Thrale's name was sent in to him. He told the messenger that he would

see Mr Thrale in the waiting-room downstairs.

Thrale had had some experience of newspaper methods, and he inferred

that the reception was equivalent to a refusal to see him. He knew

what those interviews in downstairs waiting-rooms implied. It was

not the first time that he had been treated like an insurance agent

or a tradesman and told, in effect, "Not to-day, thank you."

In this case he was mistaken in his inference. Groves had had an

eye on Thrale's articles for some time past, and though he thought

it a diplomatic essential to keep his man waiting for ten minutes,

he had no intention of offending him.

Groves came into the waiting-room with a slightly abstracted

air. "Sorry to keep you waiting Mr Thrale," he said. "The fact is,

that I wanted to finish before I left. Did you want to see me about

anything particular?"

"Yes," returned Thrale; "I have some facts about the new plague which

ought to be given publicity at once."

Groves pursed his thick lips and shook his head. "Well, well," he said,

"will you come and have tea with me at the club?"

He took Thrale's assent for granted, and went out abruptly, leaving

his guest to follow.

In the taxicab Groves talked of nothing but the lack of originality

in invention in reference to aeroplanes. He seemed to take it as a

personal affront that no workable adaptation of the aeroplane had

been made to short-distance passenger traffic.

Indeed, it was not till after "tea"--in Groves' case an euphemism for

whisky and soda--that he would approach the subject of Thrale's visit.

"The fact is, my dear fellow," he said, "that our campaign hasn't

caught on. I'm going to let it down gently and drop it after to-day's

edition. You see, we've got to get the Government out this session,

and I'm going to start a new campaign. Can't give you any particulars

yet, but you'll see the beginning of it next Monday." Like Maxwell,

Groves differentiated between the uses of the singular and plural

pronouns in speaking of his work. There was a distinction to be

inferred between the initiation and responsibilities of the editor

and those of his proprietors.

Groves was not at all impressed by any earnestness or forebodings. He

seemed to think that a touch of the plague in London might be rather

a good thing in some ways. People wanted waking up--especially to

the importance of getting rid of the present Government.

It appeared that Thrale's articles on other subjects would be

acceptable to the readers of the Evening Chronicle, but there was no

suggestion that he should go out to Russia as a special commissioner.

3

Grant Lacey, of The Times, listened seriously to Thrale's exposition,

and then, in a finely delivered speech which lasted twenty minutes,

proved to his own complete satisfaction that Thrale's premises,

deductions, and whole argument were thoroughly unsound. Lacey,

however, was greatly interested in the condition of Russia, and

promised Thrale magnificent terms if he would tour St Petersburg,

Moscow, Kiev, Warsaw--and then return and contribute a special series

of articles. References to the new plague would not be prohibited in

the series if Thrale still found any cause for alarm.

In all, Thrale had interviews with the editors of nine important

journals; the other six developed on the general lines already

indicated--either he was not taken seriously or was told that the

danger was greatly exaggerated. The real causes of his failure were

two:--first, the critical position of the Government; second, the

precocious campaign of the Evening Chronicle--the latter had taken

the wind out of the sails of less enterprising journals.

Thrale's next step was to obtain introductions to Ministers and

prominent members of the Opposition; but from them he received even

less attention--he did not obtain interviews on many occasions--and, if

possible, less encouragement. The President of the Local Government

Board informed him that the matter was already engaging that

department's energies; the others were all manifestly preoccupied

with more immediate interests.

But little less than a fortnight after the initiation of his campaign

Thrale received a special message from the editor of the Daily Post. It

was nearly midnight, and the messenger was waiting with a taxicab.

The message ran: "Received through news agency report of three cases

of plague in Berlin. Can you come down at once?--Maxwell."

IV--MR BARKER'S FLAIR

1

Jasper Thrale, in the partial exposition of his philosophy (if

that description is not too large for such vague imaginings), had

included very definite reference to certain "higher forces" to which

he had attributed peculiar powers of interference in humanity's

management of its own concerns. Doubtless these powers had control

of various instruments, and were able to exercise their influence

in any direction and by any means. In the present case it would

seem that they were working in devious and subtle ways--and in this

at least they differed not at all from the methods attributable to

that we have called Providence, or the Laws of Nature; any assumed

guide or irrefragible, incomprehensible ordination. It is a common

characteristic of these forces that they seem able to control the

inconceivably great and the inconceivably small with equal certitude.

Not that George Gosling touched any limits. He was moderately large

in body and small in intellect, but neither the physical excess nor

the mental deficiency marked him out from his fellow men. In the

office, indeed, he was regarded by the firm and his colleagues as a

capable man of business whose embonpoint was quite consistent with

his employment by a firm of wholesale provision merchants.

On the Thursday morning that saw the announcement in the morning papers

that a case of the new plague was reported in Berlin, Gosling was

called into the partners' private office on some matter of accountancy.

The senior partner of Barker and Prince was eager, grasping and

imaginative; his name had originally been German, and ended, in

"stein," but he had changed it for the convenience of his English

connexion. Prince was a large rubicund man, friendly and noisy in

his manners, but accounted a shrewd buyer.

It was not until Gosling was about to depart that the higher forces

turned their attention to Barbican and then they suddenly urged

Gosling to say, without premeditation on his part,

"I see there's a case of this 'ere new plague in Berlin."

Mr Prince laughed and winked at his subordinate. "Some of us'll have

to start a hareem, soon; who knows?" he said, and laughed again,

more loudly than ever.

"I suppose you haf not heard any other reports, eh?" asked Mr Barker.

"Well, curiously enough, I 'ave," said Gosling. "A young feller who

used to lodge with us five years back, come 'ome from Russia about

a fortnight since, and 'e tells me as the plague's spreadin' like

wildfire in Russia."

Mr Prince laughed again, and Mr Barker seemed about to turn his

attention to other matters, when the higher forces sent Gosling the

one great inspiration of his life. It came to him with startling

suddenness, but he gave utterance to it as simply and with as little

verve as he spoke his "good morning" to the office-boy.

"I been thinkin', sir," he said (he had never once thought of it until

this moment), "as it might be well to keep a neye on this plague,

so to speak."

"Ah! Zo?" said Mr Barker; a phrase which Gosling correctly interpreted

as the expression of a desire for the elucidation of his last remark.

"Well, I been thinkin', if you'll excuse me, sir," he went on, "as

though the plague's only in the bud, so to speak, at the present time,

it seems very likely to spread so far as we can judge; and that what

with quarantine, p'raps, and p'raps shortage of labour and so on,

it might mean 'igher prices for our stuff."

"Zo!" said Mr Barker, but this time the monosyllable was

reflective. The great inspiration had found fruitful soil.

"Brince," continued Barker after a minute's thought, "I haf a

flair. We will buy heavily at once. But not through our London

house, no; or others will follow us too quickly. You must not go,

we will zend Ztewart from Dundee, it will zeem that we prepare for

the zhipping strike in the north. We buy heavily; yes? I haf a flair."

"But, I say," said Mr Prince, who had the greatest confidence in his

partner's insight, "I say, Barker, d'you think this plague's serious?"

"I am putting money on it, ain't I?" asked Barker.

Prince and Gosling exchanged a scared glance. Until that moment it

had not come home to either of them that it was possible for English

affairs to be affected by this strange and deadly disease.

The remainder of the conversation was complicated and exceedingly

technical.

2

When he came back into the counting-house, Gosling looked unnaturally

thoughtful.

"Anything gorne wrong?" asked his crony, Flack.

"There's nothing wrong with the 'ouse, if that's what you mean,"

replied Gosling mysteriously.

"What then?" asked Flack.

"It's this 'ere new plague," returned Gosling.

"Tchah! That's all my eye," said Flack. He was a narrow-chested,

high-shouldered man of sixty, with a thin grey beard, and he had a

consistently incredulous mind.

Out here in the counting-house, Gosling's thrill of fear was rapidly

subsiding, and he had no intention of passing over his own important

part in the house's decision to buy for a rise; so he bulged out his

cheeks, shook his head and said:

"Not by a long chalk it ain't, Flack; not by a long chalk. There

was that young feller, Thrale, as I was tellin' you about; 'e gave

me a hidea or two, and now s'mornin' we 'ave this very serious news

from Berlin."

"Papers 'ave to make the worst of everything," said Flack. "It's

their livin'."

"Anyways," continued Gosling, "I put it quite straight to the 'ouse

this mornin', as we might do worse under the circumstances than buy

'eavily...."

"You did?" asked Flack, and he cocked up his spectacles and looked

at Gosling underneath them.

"I did," replied Gosling.

"What did Mr Barker say to that?" asked Flack.

"He took my advice."

"Lord's sakes, you don't tell me so?" said Flack, his spectacles on

his forehead.

"I'm now about to dictate various letters to our 'ouse in Dundee,"

replied Gosling, dropping his voice to a whisper, and assuming an

air of mysterious importance, "advising them to send our Mr Stewart

to Vienna immediate, from where 'e is to proceed to Berlin. 'E is,

also, to 'ave private instructions from the 'ouse as to the extent

of 'is buyin'--which I may tell you in confidence, Flack, will be

enormous--e-normous." Gosling raised his head slowly on the first

syllable, brought it down with a jerk on the second, and left the

third largely to the imagination.

"But d'yer mean to tell me," expostulated Flack, "as all this is on

account of this plague? They been usin' that as a blind, my boy."

Gosling laid a bunch of swollen fingers on his colleague's arm. "I

tell you, Flack, old boy," he said, "that this is serious. When Mr

Barker took up my advice, as 'e did very quick, Mr Prince said, 'You

don't tell me as you really take this plague serious, Barker?' 'e

said. And Mr Barker looked up and says, 'I'm goin' to put all my

money on it.'" Gosling paused and then repeated, "Mr Barker says as

'e's goin' to put all our money on it, Flack."

"Lord's sakes!" said Flack. Here, indeed, was an argument strong enough

to break down even his consistent incredulity. "But d'yer mean to tell

me," he persisted, "that Mr Barker thinks as it'll come to England?"

"We-el, you know," returned Gosling, "we need not, p'raps go quite

so far as that. But it may go far enough to interfere with European

markets, there may be trouble with quarantine, and such-like...."

"Ah, well, that," said Flack with an air of relief. "Jus' so, jus'

so. Mr Barker can see as far through a brick wall as most people,

and so I've always said." He dropped his spectacles on to his nose

again, and returned to his interrupted accountancy.

Gosling went fussily into his own room and rang for his typist--a

competent and presentable young woman, among whose duties that of

turning her superior's letters into equivalent English was not the

lightest.

3

Gosling was very full of importance that day, and during lunch he

wore the air of a man who had secret and valuable information. He

was too well versed in City methods and too loyal to his own house

to give any hint of Barker and Prince's speculations in Austria and

Germany; but when the subject of the new plague inevitably came into

the conversation, he spoke with an authority that was heightened by

the hint of reserve implicit in his every dictum.

When the latest joke on the subject, fresh from the Stock Exchange,

had been retailed by one of the usual group of lunchers, and had

been received with the guffaws it merited, Gosling suddenly screwed

his face to an unaccustomed seriousness and said, "But it's serious,

you know, extremely serious."

And by degrees, from this and many other better informed sources,

the rumour ran through the City that the new plague was serious,

extremely serious. That afternoon there was a slight drop of prices in

certain industrial shares, and a slight rise in wheat and some other

imported food stuffs; fluctuations which could not be attributed to

ordinary causes. Mr Barker's foresight was justified once again in

the eyes of Gosling and Flack. Before five o'clock another letter

was posted to Dundee, enforcing haste.

In the bosom of his family that evening, Gosling was a little pompous,

and talked of economy. But his wife and daughters, although they

assumed an air of interest, were quite convinced that the head of

the house in Wisteria Grove was making the most of a rumour for his

own purposes.

As Blanche said to Millie, later, father was always finding some

excuse for keeping them short of dress money. That five pounds had

proved inadequate to supply even their immediate necessities, and

they were already meditating another attack.

"We simply must get another three pounds somehow," said Millie. And

Blanche quite agreed with her.

V--THE CLOSED DOOR

1

There was a lull for forty-eight hours after that announcement of

the case of the new plague in Berlin, and Maxwell was beginning to

regret his headlines when the news began to come in, this time in

volume. The Russian censorship had broken down, and the news agencies

were suddenly flooded with reports. There were several thousand cases

of the plague in Eastern Russia; the north and south were affected,

many men were dying in such towns as Kharkov and Rostov; there were

a dozen cases in St Petersburg; there was a such a rush of reports

that it was quite impossible to distinguish between those that were

probably true and those that were certainly false.

The morning papers gave as much space as they could spare, and had

even broken up some of the matter dealing with the arrangements for

the opening of Parliament on that day. But the evening papers had

news that put all previous reports in the shade. Eleven more cases

were reported in Berlin, three in Hamburg, five in Prague and one in

Vienna. But more important, more thrilling still, was the news that

H.I.H. the Grand Duke Kirylo, the Tsar's younger brother, had died of

the plague in Moscow, and Professor Schlesinger in Berlin. Until that

startling announcement came, the English public had incomprehensibly

imagined that only peasants, Chinamen and people of the lower social

grades were attacked by this strange new infection.

In the later editions it was reported on good authority that Professor

Schlesinger had been observing a sample of the blood of the first

case of plague that had been recognized in Berlin.

Nevertheless the majority of readers, after glancing through the

obituary notices of H.I.H. the Grand Duke Kirylo and of the world-famed

bacteriologist, turned to the account--only slightly abbreviated--of

the opening of Parliament. And in many households the subject of

the new plague gave place to the fiercely controversial topic of the

English Church Disestablishment Bill, which had been indicated in the

King's Speech as a measure that was to be introduced in the forthcoming

session. Many opponents of the Bill coupled the two chief items of

news and said that the plague was a warning against infidelity. It

may be assumed that they found sufficient warrant for the killing

of a few thousand Russians, including a prince of the blood and a

great German scientist, in the acknowledged importance of England

among the nations. The death of half a million or so Chinamen in the

first instance had been a delicate hint; now came the more urgent

warning. Who knew but that if this sacrilegious Bill were passed,

England herself might not be smitten. When warnings are disregarded,

judgments follow. The Evangelicals found a weapon ready to their

hands....

But what precisely was the nature of the new plague, none of the

journals was as yet able to say. The symptoms had not as yet been

"described" by any medical authority, for it appeared that, contrary

to modern precedent, the doctor himself, despite all precautions,

was peculiarly subject to infection. Out of the eleven new cases in

Berlin, no less than four were medical men.

From the layman's point of view the symptoms were briefly as follows:

Firstly, violent pains at the base of the skull, followed by a period

of comparative relief which lasted from two to five hours. Then,

a numbness in the extremities, followed by rapid paralysis. Death

ensued in from twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the pains were

first experienced. No case, as yet, was known to have recovered. A

well-known physician in London gave it as his opinion that the disease

was a hitherto unknown form of cerebro-spinal meningitis of unexampled

virulence. He protested that the word "plague" was a false description,

but that word had already been impressed on the public mind, and the

disease was spoken of as the "new plague" until the end.

2

The next morning all London was reading a heavily-leaded article

by Jasper Thrale. It appeared first in the Daily Post, with the

announcement that it was not copyright, and all the evening papers

took it up, and some of them reprinted it in its entirety.

The article began by pointing out that in the recent history

of civilization Europe had been subject to a long succession of

pestilences. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries,

wrote Thrale, the Black Death, now commonly supposed to be a form

of the bubonic plague, was practically endemic in England. In more

recent times small-pox had been responsible for enormous mortality

among all classes, and, in our own day, tuberculosis. In the two

former examples, Thrale pointed out, and in many other diseases,

infectious or contagious, or both, these pestilences had gradually

lost virulence. By the elimination of those most susceptible to

infection and incapable to resist the onslaught of the disease, and

by the survival of those whose vitality was strong enough either to

resist attack or to achieve recovery, mankind at last were gradually

becoming immune against certain infections which had prevailed in the

past. And in a greater or less degree this immunity was without doubt

being obtained against a whole host of lesser ills. This comparative

immunity, in fact, was one of the means of man's evolution towards

a more perfect physical body.

"But let us consider for a moment," wrote Thrale, "the appalling

danger which threatens us when we are attacked by a pestilence which

is entirely new to humanity; new, so far as we know, to the world. In

the middle of the fourteenth century the Black Death is recorded in

some places to have killed two-thirds of the whole population, and,

notwithstanding the modern improvement in sanitation and general

hygiene, there is no inherent reason why another pestilence may not

appear, which may be even more deadly. And we are faced at the present

moment with the awful threat that such a pestilence has appeared, the

pestilence commonly known as the 'new plague.' There is no reason why

we should consider the appearance as without precedent in history;

there is no reason why we should regard its coming as outside the

laws of common probability; finally, and most decisively, there is

no reason why England should not be smitten.

"According to report among the Chinese, this 'new plague' has been

spasmodically epidemic in Tibet for more than a century. We have, as

yet, no certain facts upon which to base any hypothesis, but is it not

credible that during that time some bacterium or bacillus--hitherto

harmlessly parasitic, perhaps, in the blood of lower animals--has

changed its life habit? In the isolated and sparsely inhabited

regions of Tibet, it is possible that for many thousand years the

assumed bacterium was never bred in the blood of man; it is possible

that when it first found a new host it was comparatively harmless

to him, but within a hundred years it may have become so altered by

new conditions that it has developed into what is practically a new

species. If these theories are relatively true, it is not unlikely

that this new bacterium is working out its own destruction by the

destruction of its hosts. It may be that it is one of those blind

alleys of evolution which reach a certain stage of development and

then disappear. But meanwhile what of mankind? We know so little of

the history of microscopic life. There is a whole world of evolution

in process of which we have no conception, and at this stage, whether

my hypothesis be a possible one or not, we are at least sure that an

unknown organism--animal or vegetable--has become visible to us in

its effects and may alter the whole history of mankind.

"I lay stress on these aspects, because we are so hide-bound, so

restricted, so conventional in our ideas that we assume, without

thought, that the process of life as we know of it from a few thousand

years of history can never be interrupted. In our few years of

individual existence we become accustomed to certain apparent laws of

cause and effect, and will not believe that there can be any exception

to those assumed laws. But, now, in the face of recent evidence, it is

absolutely essential that we should realize instantly and practically

that we are threatened with a new factor in life, which imperils the

whole human race. It is no longer safe to comfort ourselves with the

belief--begotten of our vanity--that the world was necessarily made for

man. It behoves us to take measures for our protection without delay,

to undertake our own cause and trust no longer in any beneficent

Providence that works always for our ultimate benefit.

"These measures of protection are clearly indicated. We must close our

doors against the invasion of the plague. Quarantine will not protect

us; we must have no traffic with Europe until the danger is past. By

the happy accident of our position we can become isolated from the

rest of the world. We must close our doors before it is too late."

3

If the people had not been seriously scared by the sudden irruption of

news on the day preceding that on which this article was published,

they would have ignored Thrale's hyperboles--or laughed. But, caught

in a moment of agitation and fear, a certain section of the crowd took

up Thrale's suggestion, talked about the "closed door," held meetings,

and started propaganda. The Press, with its genius for appreciating

and following public opinion, also took up the suggestion, and was

automatically divided into two sections, recognizable as Liberal

and Conservative.

The Times took command of the situation with a leader, in which

Thrale's argument was pounded, rather than picked, to pieces;

but the Daily Mail produced more effect with two special articles

contributed, one by a bacteriologist, the other by a professor of

economics. The first had little weight--all argument under that head

was as yet founded on the most uncertain hypotheses. The second was

so convincing that the less ardent supporters of the "closed door"

policy were shaken in their convictions.

The writer of the economic article pointed out that an England with

closed doors could not feed herself for a month. He was scrupulously

fair in his argument, and was at great pains to show that even if

preparation was instantly made to lay in large stores of grain from

Canada, tinned meats from America, and food-stuffs generally from

the many places which were as yet free from any taint of plague, it

would still be impossible to provide for more than a three months'

isolation. Then, leaving this aspect of the question, he went on to

show in detail that even if the food could be supplied, the practical

cessation of our enormous foreign trade would mean the destruction of

England's commerce, and he wound up with an earnest exhortation to

the country at large, warning the people to beware of scaremongers,

pessimists, and opportunists who had their own ends to serve, and

cared nothing for the general welfare. It was an excellent article

in every way; quite one of the best that the Daily Mail had ever

published. And as this, too, was declared free of any copyright

restrictions, it was largely circulated.

The Daily Post replied next morning by pointing out that the

celebrated professor of economics was nullifying all his own previous

utterances on the case for Tariff Reform, but that retort carried

little weight. No one cared if the professor contradicted himself;

anyone, except the faddists, could see that the argument of the

article was sound, in fact incontrovertible. What had to be done was

to put pressure on the Local Government Board. It was true that the

Daily Post, the semi-official organ of the Government, affirmed that

the Board in question was alert and active, but that announcement

was regarded as a cliché; what was wanted were particulars of the

preventive measures that were being taken.

The members of the great Gosling family, in offices, warehouses

and shops followed the line of least resistance, while making some

assertion of their rights as citizens.

George Gosling's arguments with his crony Flack were excellently

representative.

"What yer think of this 'closed door' business?" asked Flack.

"Goin' a bit too far, in my opinion," returned Gosling judicially.

Flack's natural incredulity had inclined him in the same direction,

but his colleague's certainty swung him round at once.

"I ain't so sure o' that," he said. "Looks to me as things is going

pretty bad."

"Bad enough, I grant you," returned Gosling. "But there isn't no

need for us to lose our 'eads over it. Take it all round, you know,

it's pretty certain as things isn't as bad as is made out, whereas,

on the other 'and, the 'closed door' policy'd mean ruin and starvation

for 'undreds of thousands--there's no gettin' round that."

"Better a few 'undred thousands than the 'ole male population,"

said Flack.

"If it come to that, but it won't; no fear, not by a long chalk,

it won't," replied Gosling. "What's got to be done is to get the

Local Government Board to work. We've got to 'ave a regular system o'

quarantine established, that's what we've got to 'ave."

It did, indeed, appear the most practical form of prevention at

the moment; it is hard to see what other measures could have been

adopted. The supporters of the "closed door" policy soon began to

lose adherents. The scheme was obviously alarmist, far-fetched and

utterly impracticable....

4

Through February and the early part of March the plague spread through

Central Europe, but not with an alarming rapidity.

In the second week of March, Berlin was reporting a weekly roll of

over five hundred deaths attributable to this cause, and Vienna was

second with between four and five hundred. In St Petersburg and Moscow

the figures were no higher, and there were as yet comparatively few

cases in France, and none in Spain or Portugal.

Many authorities were of opinion that the mortality had reached the

maximum, and that the plague would work itself out in the course

of a few more weeks. Moreover it appeared that the early reports

of the highly infectious character of the plague must have been

grossly exaggerated, for as yet there had been not a single case

in the British Isles despite the enormous traffic between England

and the Continent. It is true that the strictest quarantine had been

established--it had been ascertained that the period of gestation of

the germ was about fifty hours--but not one single case had so far

been detained in quarantine ships or hospitals. It was argued from

this that the plague was not infectious at all in the ordinary sense,

and only mildly contagious; that it flourished in certain centres

and was not easily transferable from one centre to another.

The only aspect of the thing that was seriously alarming was

the horrible mortality among doctors and the specialists who were

endeavouring to recognize and isolate the characteristic germ of the

disease. Nine English experts who had dared martyrdom in the cause

of science had gone to Berlin to make investigations, and not one of

them had returned. As a consequence of this strange susceptibility

of the investigator, whether medical man or bacteriologist, there was

still an extraordinary ignorance of the general nature and action of

the disease.

Nevertheless, despite this one intimidating aspect of the plague,

the general attitude in the middle of March was that the quarantine

arrangements were enormously impeding trade and should be relaxed. The

foreign governments were alive to the seriousness of the scourge,

and were doing all in their power to prevent infection. There had

been a scare, but people were calm again, now, and able to realize

the extent of the earlier exaggerations.

The Government passed the second reading of the English Church

Disestablishment Bill by a majority of nineteen, before the Easter

recess, and the Goslings, who had grown used to the plague, whose

chief attitude towards it was that it was an infernal nuisance which

interfered with trade, turned their attention gladly to the new topic;

they all thought that a general election at that moment would result

in an overwhelming Conservative majority. And as the Liberals had

been in power for more than ten years, that eventuality was regarded

with complacency.

But at this critical moment--to the joy of the Evangelicals--the new

plague set to work in earnest.

VI--DISASTER

1

Russia was smitten. Once more communication was cut off from Moscow,

this time by a different agent. The work of the city was paralysed. Men

were falling dead in the street, and there were only women to bury

them. A wholesale emigration had begun. The roads were choked with

people on foot and in carriages, for the trains had ceased to run.

The news filtered in by degrees: it was confirmed, contradicted and

definitely confirmed again every few hours.

Then came final confirmation, with the news that something approaching

war had broken out--a war of defence. Germany had sent troops to the

frontier to stem the tide of emigrants from smitten Russia and Poland;

and Austria-Hungary was following her example.

Parliament re-assembled before the Easter recess had expired. The

time for more drastic measures had come, and the Premier explained

to the House that it was proposed to bring in a Bill immediately to

cut off communication with Europe.

There can be no doubt that England was now badly scared, but centuries

of protection had established a belief in security which was not

easily shaken.

The enthusiasts for the "closed door" policy found plenty of

recruits, but on the other side there was a solid body of opinion

which maintained that the danger was grossly exaggerated. And when the

Evening Chronicle came out with a long leader and a backing of expert

opinion, to prove that the "Closed Door" Bill--as it was commonly

called--was a dodge of the Government's in order to retain office,

a well-marked reaction followed against the last and terrible step

of cutting off all communication with Europe; and the Conservative

party was joined by some avowed Liberals who had personal interests

to consider in this connexion.

In committee-rooms, members of the Opposition were inclined to be

jubilant: "If we can throw out the Government on this Bill we shall

simply sweep the country ... all the manufacturers in the North will

be with us ... even Scotland, most likely ... we should come back

with a record majority...."