Chapter VI: Part 6

Manifestly this would never do. Noreen felt uncomfortable in her probing. She must make him see how important anything he might say would be not only to her, but to the Man.... As for what the boy knew, an analyst, or, better, an alienist, would be necessary to piece into a garment of reason his poor little patches of understanding, in regard to what he had heard that night--names of men and places and deeds outside of Bookstalls. The fact that Johnny Brodie did not understand, was no reason why he should uncover his patches to this woman who understood so much. He was a little afraid of her, and not a little sorry that he had come. He felt, in spite of himself, that his face was telling her that he knew a great deal about that night. He squirmed.

Noreen sensed many of his mental operations, arose and knelt before him, her elbows upon his knees, and looked up into his face.

“Boy,” she whispered, “you are very good and dear to me for trying to keep his secrets. He is a great and good man, who means very much to you and to me. He is doing for some one else (who cannot love him as you and I do) a great thing and a hard thing, which keeps him away from us. So long as the secret is kept, Boy, he will have to stay away, but if we knew the secret we could bring him back to us and be very happy.... I want you to tell me all that you know, all that you heard that night while the visitor was there--but before you do you must understand that you are doing only good for him. His good, his welfare, is life and death to me. I love this man, Johnny Brodie, I think even better than you do. Won’t you help me to bring him back?”

His eyes were wide with temptation. He longed to consult her about the laughing stranger who had pumped him. Many things had happened to him in twelve flying, graceless years, but nothing like this. Never would come another moment like this--with the woman, whom Bookstalls had gasped at the sight of, kneeling before him. The fate of a city might well have wavered in the balance before the pleading of such a woman. He had a premonitive sense that this moment would become more significant the older he grew. She overturned half his resistance with the single fact of sharing with him the possession of the Man and acknowledging his almost co-equal rights in all that pertained. It was not her interest, but _their_ interest.... And then--the seething curiosity for months--this woman could tell him why the Man wanted the Hate of London! There could be no mistake about this last. The Man had begged for it in many ways and in such language as was never heard in Bookstalls, except in the Socialist’s Hall. How could one old man, all scarred and shot up, give him the Hate of London?

At this instant Jerry Cardinegh opened the door from the dining-room. Noreen felt the little body turn rigid under her hands and saw the thin jaw tighten. As she turned hastily to her father, she heard Johnny Brodie’s voice--the voice of one who has triumphed over temptation:

“Ask ’im! Wot yer askin’ me fer--wen ’e knows?”

She hurried to lead her father back into the dining-room, but he could not stir. His eyes had fixed themselves upon the boy, and seemed to be draining from him some deadly poison. His liquor betrayed him, as it ever betrays the old and the fallen. The tissue it had sustained collapsed in his veins and the low light left his brain. Only there remained horror as of a basilisk upon his face. His bright, staring eyes had a look of isolation in the midst of altered ashen features.

It was too much for Johnny Brodie--this quick formation of havoc on the face that had been florid and smiling. Moreover, he saw the conspiracy against him in the woman and the old man. He clapped his hand to his pocket--the cap was where it belonged--bolted into the hall and down the stairs.

Noreen’s lips formed to call his name, but the look of her father forbade. She heard the slam of the front door.

THIRTEENTH CHAPTER

JERRY CARDINEGH OFFERS A TOAST TO THE OUTCAST--A TOAST HE IS COMPELLED TO DRINK ALONE

There was but one face in the world--the face of the boy who had so startled Jerry Cardinegh in Routledge’s rooms their last night together--that could have brought to the old man as now the falsity of his position, the shame of his silence, and the horrid closing of his life. Routledge himself could not have done this, for he would have returned with a smile and a grip of the hand. Cardinegh had received in full voltage the galvanism Routledge had craved as a boon. He tried to speak, but the sound in his throat was like dice shaking in a leather box. He tried again unavailingly, and sank into a chair. Noreen brought the whiskey.

“Why, father, it was just a little boy whom Routledge-san knew,” she soothed. “I found him on the street to-day, and asked him to come to see us to-night--because he had known Routledge-san.”

For an hour he sat quietly, and neither spoke.

The bell rang. Noreen steeled herself to meet a party of correspondents who had promised to drop in upon Jerry that night. The old king was not forgotten by the princes of the craft, and his daughter was unforgettable.

“Are you well enough to see the boys, father?”

In the past hour the old man had felt the fear of his daughter’s presence, a deadly fear of questions. A sort of hopeless idea came to him--that men in the room would be a defense--until he was himself again.

“Of course. Bring them in.... The little chap---- ... I was gripped of a sudden.... It’s an old dog at best, I am, deere!”

Finacune, as handsome as a young rose-vine in his evening wear; the heavy, panting Trollope, who put on weight prodigiously between wars; Feeney, with his look of gloom, as if a doom-song were forever chanting in his brain; and young Benton Day, of slight but very promising service, the man who was to take Routledge’s place on the _Review_ in the event of war--these filled the Cheer Street sitting-room with brisk affairs. Noreen’s heart was in the dark with the little boy fleeing back to Bookstalls through the noisy October night. Old Jerry was shaken up and embraced. There was to be a full gathering of war-scribes at Tetley’s later, to discuss the Russian reply to certain Japanese proposals received by cable in the afternoon. The dean was invited to preside. Noreen saw the pained look in the eyes of Finacune as he relaxed her father’s hand.

“I’ll not go,” said Jerry. “I drink enough at home, sure. Did you say Russia has been talking back--though it’s little interest I have in rumors of war? It’s a boy’s work.”

“The Czar says Japan may run Korea, but as for Manchuria it is, ‘Hands off, Brownie.’” said Finacune.

“Which means----” Trollope began.

“The same old tie-up,” added Finacune. “Only closer to the cutting. Cable to the _Pan-Anglo_ this afternoon declares that Japan has already granted the inevitability of war.”

“Russia suggests,” Benton Day observed carefully, “that Japan offer no military demonstration in Korea from the Yalu down to 40°. Japan says in reply that she must have a similar zone of gunless activity, then, north of the Yalu.”

“And the fact is,” said Feeney, “they’ll be shooting at each other from bank to bank before the ice is out in the spring.”

“It’s a theory of mine,” Trollope offered, “that Japan will sink a Russian battleship or blow up a Russian troop-train, and then observe playfully that further negotiations are uncalled-for.”

Jerry was staring at the carpet, apparently in deep thought. Noreen was close to Finacune.

“Don’t ask him again to go to Tetley’s with you to-night,” she whispered. “He is far from well.”

“I thought it would cheer him up--to preside over an old-fashioned session of prayer for action.”

She shook her head. Her father now stared about from face to face and finally fixed upon her the nervous smile.

“There’s a deere,” he said, “run and see if the dinner things are cleared away. We must get about the board--for a toast to the work ahead.... Come, boys, to the dining-room.”

They obeyed with enthusiasm. Glasses and things were brought by Noreen. Jerry sat rigid at the head, perspiration upon his brow, the struggle for light to think by in his brain. The men felt the strain, and pitied the woman.

“And what does England do in all this?” Cardinegh asked huskily, after a painful pause.

Old Feeney was nearest the dean. He dropped his hand upon the other’s arm in a quiet way. “England boosts for Japan, Jerry,” he replied. All were eager to relieve the strain by a detailed discussion on any subject, but the dean renewed:

“And is all quiet in India?”

“Quiet as the ‘orchard lands of long ago,’” said Finacune.

There was something in the old man’s voice which suggested to Noreen the long forgotten passion--so out of place here. She trembled lest he should prove unable to handle himself.

“_England_----” Cardinegh rumbled the name. It was as if he were fighting for a grasp upon all that the gigantic word had meant to him. “England ought to be down there fighting the Czar on the British-Indian border--not on the Yalu.”

It was clear to all why England was not embroiled with Russia--the Anglo-Japanese alliance--save to the old man who should have known best. The truth thundered now in the clouds of his brain, but he could not interpret. Nobody spoke, for the dean’s hand was raised to hold the attention. The gesture was a pitiful attempt to assist him to concentrate. He faltered helplessly, and finally uttered the words nearest his lips:

“Finacune, the florid,--you’re for the _Word_ as usual?”

They all breathed again. The old man had found a lead.

“Always for the _Word_, Jerry--I write war for the skirt-departments of London.”

“And you, Blue Boar--for the _Examiner_?” he demanded of Trollope.

“The same.”

“And Benton Day--you----” Cardinegh’s expression suddenly became single-pointed. Here were breakers again.

“It’s not rightly settled, sir. I’ve got lines out severally. I really do want to go.”

“Then Dartmore didn’t call you to the _Review_ yet?”

“I did speak with Dartmore,” said Day. “Things are not altogether settled, though.”

Jerry regarded him for a second, as if to say, “I’ll get back to you, young man, when I am through with this peroration.”

“And, Bingley, the ‘Horse-killer’?” he resumed.

“Goes out for the _Thames_, as usual. There’s a lad that means to make us all sweat,” Finacune said thoughtfully.

“Feeney--you old were-wolf--you’ve been scratching old Mother Earth in the raw places--almost as long as I have. What are you out for this time?”

Feeney hesitated, and Trollope dragged out the answer: “All kinds of berths for Feeney. The _Thames_ will put out a dispatch-boat which he can command if he likes. The _Pan-Anglo_ wants him for the Russian end. Also he’s got an offer to follow the Japanese. Feeney told me more about the Yalu country, and that new cartridge-belt of creation, while we were walking over here to-night--red-beard bandits, Russian grand dukes, Japanese spies, _with queues_, who have been mapping Manchuria for ten years--than any white man has a right to know.”

The fact was that old Feeney had about closed to go out for the _Witness_, which Jerry had left open.

“There’s no need of asking about Talliaferro,” Cardinegh said impatiently.

“No, Talliaferro is Peter Pellen’s ‘Excalibur,’ as usual; and will set out on schedule for the Yalu or the Gugger--wherever the fronts meet.”

“And the _Witness_?” Jerry said, clearing his throat. His thoughts were like birds starting up in the dusk, clots of night without name and form.

Finacune arose and filled the breech. “The _Witness_ awaits the word of the greatest of us all--our dean, Jerry Cardinegh. I propose now a drink to him standing--to the greatest of our kind!”

Personal vanity had never fallen into the senility of the Irishman, but he arose with the others, and his face caught up an old wild look familiar to everyone in the room, as he raised his hand to speak:

“Let us drink to the greatest of us all, as you say,--not to the decayed correspondent which the _Witness_ does _not_ wait for.” His eyes flashed with a sudden memory of the windy night in Bhurpal. “Let us drink to the greatest of us all--‘the man whom the gods formed for a war-correspondent--or a spy, as you like--whom they tempered in hell’s fire and holy water’--drink to Cosmo Routledge, already afield!”

The old man did not note the suppressed disorder, nor the dawn of joy on the face of his daughter.

“I remember he called me the ‘damaged archangel’ that night,” he added softly, and turned to Benton Day: “God be with him this night--and with you, too, lad--for you’ll need Him--to take his place.”

Jerry drank ceremoniously and alone, but there was a fuller tribute than any emptied glass ever tokened--in the brimming eyes of Noreen.... The boys were in the hall.

“I’m going--not to war, lads--but to bed,” Cardinegh said, and presently called after them at the door: “May the patchwork for peace fail to cover the knees of the nations!”

Noreen was alone. Her brain, sensitive from weariness and wounds, moved swiftly, restlessly. She knew at this moment the correspondents would be discussing the phases of her father’s madness--whispering at Tetley’s of the fall of the chieftain. Later, at the banquet-table, when the wines swept away all lesser regards, they would no longer whisper.... These men were her friends all. Not one would have hesitated to serve her well in any need. She did not want to do them an injustice; and yet there was something in their minds that was stinging and foreign now. The cause was in her own mind, and she realized it. They were big among men, big among their kind, honorable and genuine, but it was not in human reason for them to share her immutable trust, any more than they could share the feminine outpouring of her heart for the man afield. Also she knew that there were few things in this world that Routledge could have done wicked enough to shake these men so utterly from allegiance to him. He had been to them a mystical attraction of virtue, as he was now in their eyes the imperator among criminals.

She understood something of what her father had passed through in the recent hours. The sight of the Bookstalls boy had withered him like some disordered ghost; and yet, to her, there was a greater tragedy in watching her father try to hold his old place as chief at the table of war-men. He had not lost that king-torture of consciousness which showed him that he was not as he had been. His struggle to cast out the abiding fatuities, and to regain his old high place of mental activity, was terrible to witness--like the suspension of his faculties upon a cross.

Little could be added now to Noreen’s suffering. It is not given to one in the depths to realize what perfect soul-substance the recent months had brought her. The thought had come in her happier reactions, that if she were like other human beings, the patience, the self-control, and the purity of her yearning--this bearing all cleanly and without a cry--was great with tempering and expansion. But the hunger within her was deep and masterful for the end of it all. As never before, she felt the need of a human force to lean upon. There was neither priest nor pastor nor woman in her life. Her heart cried out for a greatness such as Routledge had suggested in Rawder. To her, their bravest man was a splendid, glowing picture of sorrows; before such a one she could have knelt and found healing, indeed.... And with what infinite content could she have knelt in this hour before the disciple of Rawder!

It is a dear but delicate thing to chronicle that matters of sex were practically untouched by the mind of the woman in so far as Routledge was concerned. Not at all did she despise these matters; nor is it to be inferred that she was one of those miraculous innocents who reach maturity with a mind virgin to the mysteries of creation. She had felt with a thrilling, exquisite sense the imperious young summer of her life, and all that throbbing veins and swift-running dreams mean under the steady stars.... But the call to her out of all creation--which was the voice of Routledge--was vital with a rounder and more wonderful vibrance.

One art of his that had found the heart of her was his conception of the inner loveliness of life. He caught the finer relation of things. He could love the lowliest, hunger with them, and realize in their midst the brotherhood of man. He perceived the great truths everywhere which purely physical men, of necessity, must miss. His discovery of Rawder was great with meaning to Noreen, and his adoration for those silent sacrifices which summed into a life of glory unobserved by the world. He could love India without hating England. He could be the greatest of war-scribes and despise war. He laughed at material possessions and bowed before breech-clout chivalry. He had witnessed processes of life and death in their most cruel, intricate, and abominable manifestations, but had preserved his optimism. This, which so many words are required even to suggest--and which is covered in the single expression, _soul growth_--was the rousing, irresistible appeal of Routledge to the woman whose spiritual age was sufficient to respond to it.

The man’s intellect--in contrast to the enchanting mystic element of his mind--compelled, stimulated, and enfolded her own. When Routledge talked, such a sympathy was aroused within her that she could watch the play of scenes before his eyes, the tithe of which only he told. In all that he had said and written she found the same smooth-running, high-powered intelligence. She had never touched his limitations, therefore infinity could hold no greater delights. She loved the harmony of his talents and the sterling, one-pointed direction of a man whose life is apart from the complicated lives of modern men. All dimensions of knowledge were in his mind; and yet its surfaces were free from taints and scar-tissue, preserved with virginities. His thoughts had that firm delicacy of the strong, and some of his thoughts had ripened in mystic suns and rains.

Once she had been but one of many champions of the man and his work. From time to time under his name, the _Review_ had ignited London. The men of his world and hers had granted his supremacy as a picture-maker of war--and yet to her this was one of his lesser attractions. She loved to look into his conception of things _back of the words_. How pitiably often were the words shaped to meet the so-called needs of a daily paper, as the bones of a Chinese foot are crushed into a thimble. It was the master behind the narrator; the man who lived and moved in a wonderland that was a hopeless arcanum to the many; the man who glimpsed the temple of truth, if not from within, at least from the gardens--it was he who fascinated the woman. And since she loved him, she was proud that his intelligence enfolded her own.

The physical man, Routledge, all men had found excellent in those good days before the mystery. His endurance and bravery had formed many classics for his craft. He had always bewitched her father. Incidentally, her life among the many friends of her father--soldiers, seamen, and civilian campaigners--had taught her that man’s judgment for man is best.... But it was not Routledge, the fearless and tireless; not Routledge, the male, who called her so ardently this night. At least, it was less the male than the mind; and less the mind than the mystic.... It would be the idlest affectation to assert that actual marriage with Routledge was beyond the pale of her thoughts; and yet this was not her ultimate passion. To be with him in great wanderings of gentle purport; to meet the suns and storms with calmness and cheer; constantly to toil together, helping, meditating, always together on the world’s highways, always looking toward God’s Good Hope, with thoughts in the stars, but not so lost in the stars that they missed the sorrowing by the roadside;--wandering grateful for life together, having a tear for the helpless, a smile for the beautiful, and a love for each other so vast and pure that it must needs love the world and reflect the love of God.... Such was Noreen Cardinegh’s dream of the fullness of days--so great a gratitude to the Most High for the presence of her lover, that it would manifest itself in eternal services to those who could not be so happy--services that faltered before no pain, quailed before no horrent spectacle, and retained their sweet savor in the lowliest haunts of men.

Marriage.... It might come. In some garden of the world, there might be a halting, when the full tides of life swelled together. No fixed date, exterior formality; no words uttered by a Third could release these two for triumphant nuptial flight!... She had seen too much mangling of this intimate and portentous moment between man and woman, by a stranger, the member of a paid profession--how often the mere licensed liberator of lusts. A signal from him, as to runners set for a Marathon--the _spirit_ of chastity already a ghost....

If she should some time turn in the day’s journey and meet in the eyes of Cosmo Routledge that challenge which startled her into full-length a woman--with old Nature’s anthem flooding her vein and brain--then of all times, in their incarnation, would there be but the hand of the conqueror to lead her to the place the earth-gods had made ready!... After that, the formalities, the blessings--and the law which, being good for the many, is necessary for all....

She leaned against the mantel and closed her eyes, trying to find her lover’s lodge this night in the wilderness of the world.

“Nor--Noreen!”

The voice, rough, charged with fright in itself, shook the woman to the very roots of her life. Her whole psychic force had winged away to find the mate; only her body was in the silent room in Cheer Street. There is a thrilling hurt in the sudden intrusion of physical force upon such contemplation. She ran to her father’s room.

“Eh, Gawd! I--I was dreaming, child,” he mumbled, as she entered the dark where he lay.

FOURTEENTH CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE IS ASSURED OF A WOMAN’S LOVE--THOUGH HE SHOULD LEAD THE ARMIES OF THE WORLD TO BURN LONDON

Hai, Johnny Brodie of Bookstalls, there’s a sweet lady looking for you! Possibly you know it, scamp, and are tricking from doorway to doorway behind her carriage, and grinning because those of whom she inquires don’t know a little maverick like you.... You think she is out to do harm to the Man; and you won’t be caught with her elbows on your knees again, and her great gold-brown eyes boring into your hard head where the Man’s sacred secrets are!... Perhaps you will, after all, Johnny Brodie, but it will be after this narrative (when there are lights again in that room of mystery and enchantment across the hall), and the Man is back in Bookstalls, there being no further need of secrets.... The Hate of London will never change direction by reason of gossip of yours, Johnny Brodie, because “the best fellows in this world are those strong enough to hold their tongues at the right time.” You learned that lesson, Manikin. Did you learn the other so well--about it not being good to do a thing alone, which you wouldn’t do if the one you liked best in the world were watching? That’s a harder lesson.... No, it won’t be your revelation of that impregnable night which brings the outcast into love and laurels, but so badly have you frightened a poor old man that he is about to rush half around the world to avoid meeting you again--instead of dying in Cheer Street.... Your short-trousered part in these events ended with the slam of the Cheer Street door, Johnny Brodie--but God love you, little boy, and Johnny Brodies everywhere!...

* * * * *

The next morning, and thrice in the week following, Noreen Cardinegh drove to Bookstalls and threaded the unkempt way up and down in vain for the boy. She had failed to learn the name of the pastry-cook who employed him, and it would have been her last thought to seek him in the house of Routledge’s lodgings. Though a familiar in Bookstalls, he was an unfiled human document of the ancient highway; and always she returned to Cheer Street profitless.... It would be merciless to question her father; and yet he seemed to divine her anxiety to find the boy, and to fear her success as a visitation of death. It was hard for her to see him, the man whose courage had been a point of British comment for forty years, white, shaken, and exhausted from suspense when she returned from Bookstalls. Still, he dared not ask if she had seen the boy; and she did not confess that she had been searching.

Her only line on the mystery was to this effect: Routledge, though innocent, was blamed by England for some appalling, unmentionable crime, openly unpunishable. Her father and a few others knew the specific charge. Routledge had not known this at the Armory, but knew it the morning afterward. Meanwhile, her father and Johnny Brodie had been with him. All the boy’s actions denoted that he knew something, possibly a great deal in a fragmentary way, which she might be able to piece together into an illumination. He must have known something, since he apparently had been pledged to silence. At all events, he was lost.

It must be understood that Noreen’s conviction of her father’s integrity had never been shaken. It was more than a family faith. His life had been as a record accessible to all men. It did not even occur to her to build a system of reasoning upon the hypothesis of any guilt of his, even though much was strange and foreboding. She had heard her father mutter that a war would bring Routledge out of his lair. She could not forget that her father had come back from India on the day of the Reception, all consumed and brain-numbed from strain. For a moment in her arms he had broken completely--acting like one who was to be dragged from her to the gallows. The next morning, after his return to Cheer Street from Routledge, the tension was gone.

Comparative peace had endured, with only an occasional restless interval, until the sight of the Bookstalls boy had filled him with inexplicable dread. His condition when she returned from her fourth journey to Bookstalls was such that she determined not to go again. One of two results was inevitable if this devouring tension was not speedily relaxed--utter insanity or swift death. One more circumstance in this connection intensified the mystery, even though it gave her gladness--her father’s toast to the outcast, the toast that was drunk alone. He was without that poisonous personal hatred which the others manifested toward Routledge. All these thoughts had worn grooves in her mind from much passing, but they did not evolve her father’s shame.

Throughout the week, the correspondents had dropped in by twos and threes to bid them good-by. Negotiations were at a dead-lock, and the London dailies wanted their men on the spot for eventualities. Most of the men were going west to the Far East--the twenty-five day route, via America. Some one, however, mentioned Suez, and the name was on Jerry Cardinegh’s lips for an entire afternoon. At dinner his idea broke into words:

“Come, deere, we must pack to-night. We’re off to-morrow for Japan on the P. & O. liner, _Carthusian_. We can smell the ruction in Japan--and it’s a good place to live. London--aye, God, the old town is murdering me!”

She had thought of it many times, but until last week her father had been happy in Cheer Street, entirely immune to the war ferment. Noreen understood what had turned London into an iron pressure--one little boy, lost in din and fog and multitudes. She was glad to go away.

The first few days at sea helped her father, but the improvement did not last. They travelled very leisurely, sometimes stopping over a ship in different ports. It was with a quickened heart that the woman saw the Indian coast again after several years. Routledge was intricately identified with the India of her mind now, and she knew that somewhere in India he was living out his exile. Always in those days and nights of watching and labor with the sleepless old man who was leaving her hourly, with the accelerated speed of a river that nears its falls, she was thrilled with the hope that Bombay or Madras or Calcutta would give her some living word of the outcast. She hardly hoped to see Routledge; but with a triple hunger she yearned to hear that he lived, even to hear his name uttered by some one in whom the mystery had inspired hatred.... But the Indian ports furnished nothing concerning Routledge. They revived, however (and in her maturity), the half-formed impressions of her girlhood on the Anglo-Indians and their life. To observe and despise certain aspects of the ruling people was as certain a heritage from her father as was that fairer evolution of the spirit with which she had been blest by some elder lineage.

The English at Home, Noreen had ever regarded with a mental reservation, or two; and with those telling, divining eyes which are not rarely filled with Irish light. She had repressed and even tried to root out an instinctive animus for certain monuments and institutions large in British life; she tried constantly to shut her eyes to that quarry of self-infatuation, perdition deep, from which these monuments and institutions were carved. She came to triumph over her critical impulses at home, partly because her incisive barbs were dulled by constant contact and repetition--but India again after the few vital years of growth!... Londoners might forget themselves for an hour or two a day on the Thames. They allowed it to be taken for granted an hour or two a day at Home that they were English. In India, they were more English than the English.

It must not be forgotten that Noreen Cardinegh’s mind was the arena of interminable rebellion against the banishment of Routledge. All Englishmen of rank arrayed themselves in contrast to him. She knew that this was wrong, useless; that the energy which spent itself in contrasting to the disfavor of the English, reacted with a hurt to her own finest nature, but she could not help it now. As a daughter of Jerry Cardinegh, she could not be free from something of his passion; moreover, body and brain, she was spent in his service. There were vast areas of unhealed tissue within her--the agony of a daughter of strong devotion, and the agony of a woman whose romance is mined and countermined. So it was a weary and supersensitive nature that caught its new series of impressions of Anglo-Indian life--the life of pegs and chits; men moving in a circle like those lost in the woods; men speaking of their livers as of members of the family; hot, heavy dinners; the religious, life-and-death ceremony of eating and drinking; the arrogant assumption of superiority over the native, and each separate foreigner a cyst of the great British drain! Such were the men of the Indian ports to whom the name of Cosmo Routledge was as black magic. It all came back to her like an ugly dream, and it is not strange that she returned speedily to her ships to cleanse herself from her thoughts in the prophylactic sea-winds.

A day north out of Hong Kong on one of the Empress steamers, Noreen drew her chair to a sheltered place on the promenade to rest an hour. The afternoon was keen and renovating after the slow days of heat in the Indian Ocean. Two Americans were standing at a little distance, and one was speaking with animation. A sentence of his reached the woman’s ears from time to time, between boisterous rushes of wind.... “One of the best talkers I ever heard in my life.”... “No personal hate about it.”... “Literally quartered England and fed her to the pigs.”... “No, wouldn’t give me his name, but I learned it.”... “When I mentioned his name afterward to an Englishman, he turned pale, as if I had turned loose the devil.”... “Speaking of famine conditions, this Routledge----”

Mr. Jasper, whose Indian studies had been put aside for the time by the pressing call of human interest to Tokyo, turned quickly just now at the touch of a hand upon his sleeve, and found a woman whose face he is still remembering--even as he enjoys recalling all the words and phrases of the mysterious stranger of Rydamphur.

“Forgive me, sir,” Noreen panted, “but I could not help overhearing something you said. You--you mentioned a name that is very dear to me--Routledge!”

“I did--yes. A man I met in Rydamphur, of the Central Provinces of India. Excuse me, did you say he was dear to you?”

“Yes.”

“That is so queer--a rather pleasant surprise for me. Others have felt differently about Routledge. Are you sure you mean this man--a very tall fellow of thirty-three or thirty-four, with a thin, dark, striking face, and a striking way of putting things in words?”

“Yes,” she said breathlessly.

Jasper offered his card.

“I am Miss Cardinegh, Mr. Jasper. Won’t you please tell me all that you can about him. It means so much to me.... Shall we go into the reading-room?”

Jasper assented, begging leave from his companion.... They sat down together, and the American restored Rydamphur from memory. Since he had thought much of his day and night in that little centre of suffering, he built the picture rather well. He described the manner of Routledge, and related a few of the famine facts as he had drawn them in that evening-hour at the Rest House.

“As I look back on it all, there is a queer atmosphere about the whole affair,” said Jasper. “Such a place I never have known, as that little dining-room in Rydamphur. Mr. Routledge seemed to grasp at once that my interest was sincere. His mind was filled with the pith of things I wanted to learn. No Englishman seemed to be able to talk impersonally on the famine.... I’ll never forget the baking night in that house. The punkahs jerked every moment or so, as if the coolie had stopped to scratch himself. There was a cat-footed servant hanging about, and the lamps were turned low--as if a bright flame could not live in that burned air.”

Mr. Jasper took evident pleasure in the intensity of interest his narrative inspired. “But first I must tell you, Miss Cardinegh,” he went on, “that just as I entered the town in the afternoon, I passed a little hut with an open door. The breath that came out to me, I’ll not attempt to describe: only to say that there was in it more than realism. I had come far to see a real famine, and this was my first lesson. A few steps on from the hut, I turned to see a white man coming out. It was not Mr. Routledge, but a smaller man, dressed in native garb. I have thought much of his face. It had a look as if all the tragedies that a man can know had beaten upon it; and yet it was so strong and so calm.... It was all like a dream to me. Then this wonderful talk with Mr. Routledge at dinner. Afterward, I asked his name, but he withheld it laughingly--in such a way that I took no offense--only wondered at it.”

“But you learned his name----”

“Yes, I will tell you. That night after he left me, I went to my room and thought a long time on the things he had said. I remember one of his sayings impressed me greatly--that we of the occident had learned to suffer only through our excesses--but India through her famines. He intimated that the latter process is better for the soul.... It was too hot to think of sleep, so I went out to walk in that still, stricken place. At the far end of the street, I saw a candle-light and heard the voice of a white man. And that voice I shall never forget--so low was it, so thrilling and gentle. I remember the words--they were printed on some inner wall of my brain. This is what the voice said:

“‘... Night and morning, I shall send you my blessing, Routledge, my brother. Morning and evening, until we meet again in the Leper Valley, you shall know that there is a heart that longs for the good of your life and your soul. Good-by.’... I hurried back, lest it be thought that I was eavesdropping. The man who spoke was the white man in native garb who had emerged in the afternoon from that hut of unburied dead. The man whom he addressed as ‘Routledge’--and thus I learned his name--was the one who had talked to me so brilliantly at dinner. A third sat in the candle-light--a very aged Hindu.... It is all very memorable to me, Miss Cardinegh.”

Again and again he told the story, or parts of it, to the woman; also of the doings of Routledge the next morning, before the English came. Noreen thanked him brokenly at last and hurried back to her father’s state-room. Mr. Jasper saw very little of the lady during the rest of the voyage, and lost her entirely at Shanghai, where in stopping over he is left behind the movement of the present narrative--a worthy, growing American who will have much to tell his sister of Madras and the interior, in spite of missing the illustrious Annie Besant, pronounced “_Bes_sant” for esoteric reasons.

The incident was like oxygen to the tired woman. Nearing Shanghai, the _Empress_ steamer nosed the winter zone, and Jerry Cardinegh was not well enough to go ashore. Noreen had shopping to do, and took the afternoon launch up the river for an hour in the city. Snow was falling. On the Bund, Noreen encountered Finacune, who had come down from Tokyo to get a glance at affairs from the outside. He declared that little or nothing was to be learned in the Japanese capital. Already the nation was constructing an impenetrable atmosphere about her great war. Finacune was going back on the _Empress_. As the time was short, they parted to attend their several errands, planning to meet at the launch later.

With her parcels, Noreen hurried back from the shops to the Bund in the winter twilight. Finacune, who had not seen her, was fifty feet ahead, also making for the water-front. She saw him stop short, stare for an instant at the profile of a huge, gaunt figure--in the great frieze coat! It was then that the mighty leap of her heart forced a cry from her throat.... Routledge, staring out over the darkening river, started at her voice and the touch of her hand. For a moment he pressed his fingers against his eyes as if trying to shut out some haunt from his brain. Then he, spoke slowly:

“I did not think that there were substances fine enough in the world to make a woman so beautiful----”

“Routledge-san! Oh, God, there is only a moment or two!”

“I should not have been here,” he began vaguely. “Some one may see you talking with me.”

“Don’t speak of that!... Oh, words are such puny things now! I thought we understood each other about that. Tell me, are you ill? You look----”

“No, not ill, Noreen. I shall be tiptop when I get up yonder into the field.... You startled me. I think I was in a kind of dream about you, and then you----” The old dread returned to his mind. He wondered if the man who had passed had been Finacune. “Are you alone? I wouldn’t have anybody see you talking to me.”

All that was in her heart was called forth by the spectacle of her giant’s pallor and seeming weakness. Proudly she put all this into words:

“I would not care if the whole world saw me with you. It is the same with me--as I told you on the way to Charing Cross! What you may think--does not make me afraid. You have done no wrong. I want to be with you--but the time is not yet come. It is dreadful. Why do you forget all that we told each other--all that I told you?”

“I have not forgotten,” he said huskily. “The scars of that hour in the carriage--leaving you that hour--would not suffer me to forget, but I should not speak this way. I wrong you speaking this way. I am only a world-tramp between wars.... And this war I must watch alone--from the edge where the others do not go. God, what a coward I should be--to chance your happiness----”

The launch whistled--a tearing in her brain. The call to her father was instant and inexorable.... But she clung to Routledge--drew him to the very edge of the stone-pier, blind to the glances of men and women who brushed by.

“Quick, tell me of Jerry!” he said. “Is he out for the war?”

“My father is dying a slow death out yonder on the ship. I must go to him. Already he is dead to wars and friends--all but dead to me!” She added imperiously, “When my work is finished with him, I shall keep my promise, Routledge-san. I shall come to you!”

“No--I’m going where you could not follow----”

“I shall find you!”

“But I have nothing between wars--no British press now, Noreen--only a begging-bowl in India. Why, my name is a whispered hate!... Just a begging-bowl in India, Noreen--and your sweet faith in me.”

She was splendid in the ardor of her answer:

“That begging-bowl in India--I shall carry and share with you! I shall take for mine--that name of whispered hate!... Routledge-san, you have done no wrong--but I should love you, if you led the armies of the world--to burn London!”

He helped her aboard, as the bow was putting out into the river. “In a time like this there are not big enough words for you, Noreen Cardinegh.”

“Oh, Routledge-san,--until I come, take care of your life for me!” she called.... Then, fearless, full-voiced, she added, standing in the snowy dusk: “And when I come--I shall take care of your life for you--even in the Leper Valley!”

He watched her through the big, slow-falling flakes, until the launch disappeared behind the white stern of an American gunboat.

FIFTEENTH CHAPTER

NOREEN CARDINEGH APPEARS AFTER MIDNIGHT IN THE BILLIARD-ROOM OF THE _IMPERIAL_--AN INEFFABLE REMEMBRANCE

Finacune caught a train for Tokyo, after disembarking at Yokohama, an hour or two before the Cardineghs. He wanted to prepare the way at the Imperial for the coming of the dean and his daughter. It was dark when he reached Shimbashi station and crossed the _Ginza_ to the now-famous hotel. Certain of the English correspondents were gathered in the lobby, it being not yet time to dress for dinner. These Finacune beckoned to the billiard-room, and, standing at the head of the farthest table, glanced over the faces to be sure that none but the trusted British were present. Then he whispered impressively:

“Scene: the Bund at Shanghai, snowy twilight; time, five days ago. Looking out upon the darkening river, ‘... a face thin as a dead camel’s and yellow-white like coral!’ That’s one of his own sentences, and God pity or punish the sorrow of his face--as you like----”

“Cut out the scenario,” ordered Bingley. “Who was it?”

“The great frieze coat.”

Bingley was first to break the silence.

“Nice raw state of affairs,” he remarked savagely. “I s’pose he has caught on with one of those fluttered newspapers of New York. They are grabbing up anybody over here, even the remittance-men, so they won’t have to pay expenses out. Rather raw deal, I call it,--to be forced to ride with a traitor in this campaign.”

It was the austere Feeney who answered darkly, “Recall, ‘Horse-killer,’ that Routledge rides alone.”

“I can’t see yet why the secret service doesn’t delegate a man to _get_ him,” Bingley whispered.

They had not heard that a venture of the kind had failed at Madras.

“There is a time for all things,” Feeney replied. “England never forgets a man like----”

“Are you quite sure of the face you saw?” inquired Benton Day, the new man of the _Review_. His tone was troubled. His work was cut out for him--to keep up the war-reputation of the old paper of fat columns.

“Surely,” Finacune said cheerfully, “unless the bottom dropped out of my brain-pan.”

Trollope sniffed ponderously, and was about to comment when the little man of the _Word_ resumed:

“Also, I am permitted to say--and this with a great and sweet joy--that our dean, war’s own favorite, Jerry Cardinegh, came up with me from Shanghai on the _Empress_, and that he will be here to-night with his daughter, Miss Noreen.”

The announcement was acclaimed.

“I heard he was coming,” said Feeney, “but how am I to meet the old champion--me, holding down his old chair-of-war on the _Witness_.”

“He’ll never think of it,” said Finacune. “Old Jerry is nearly out of sight--over the bay. He didn’t leave his state-room coming up--only let me see him once. His daughter is with him day and night. The old man thought he’d like to get into the zone of war once more--before he goes out on the last campaign, where we all ride alone.”

It is to be observed that the little _Word_ man did not tell all he saw on the Bund at Shanghai.

The men repaired to the buffet to break the strain. Those were heavy days--those early February days in Tokyo. War was inevitable, but not declared. Tokyo was sort of pleased at her own forbearance. The vaccine of European civilization had worked with fullness and dispatch. Here was proof: the Russian minister had been allowed to clear, double-eyed and teeth still straight. The mobs in the street did not profess to understand the value of allowing the enemy to depart personally intact--but it was being civilized. The world was watching the young yellow nation’s first venture in _humane_ war; after which, if she conducted herself prettily, the world would be pleased to admit her into the first flight of the powers, where all things having to do with economy, polity, expansion, revenue, and survival are done in a finished fashion. England was watching--and stood behind her. Japan must conduct herself in such a way as not to drag England into the conflict.

Japanese infants played soldiers; Japanese policemen played soldiers; rickshaw coolies, beneath the contempt of a soldier, dreamed of future incarnations when they should evolve into soldiers; Japanese merchants snuffled, rubbed their damp hands together, and wept internally because the Great Wheel of Fate had not skited them off into the military class, instead of among the low-brows of the shops. And the soldiers themselves--how they strutted and performed in the streets, critically mirroring each other and bowing profoundly, blind to all glory and sorrow not of the soldier, and important as a grist of young doctors just turned loose with their diplomas among the ills of the world.... Aye, funny and pitiful, the young Power looked in its Western pants and guns.

What did England think--smiling back at the peace of her Indian borders--of these wee, wet-nosed, scabby-headed Islanders (with their queer little cruet-stands buckled between their kidneys), in full cry with “Banzai Niphon” from cape to cape? What England thought was not what England said, as she reserved the front pages of her daily press for Japanese victories--whether or no. Not exactly an ally in spirit was wise old England, but an ally in letterpress--the veriest Titan of a press-agent.... Funny and pitiable indeed was the ranting, tramping Japanese infantry in the streets of Tokyo--funnier than stage infantry--quite like string-pulled marionettes of _papier maché_; but let the truth be told, the truth that rises clear from the final adjustment of objects in the perspective: The oil of all the chlorates, nitrates, and fulminates filled those queer little kidney-cruets; and these same little Japanese infantrymen proved packages--_papier maché_ packages, if you like--of lyddite, bellite, cordite, romite, hellite, and other boiled-down cyclones.

* * * * *

On one of those ugly gray afternoons of early February, Benton Day of the _Review_ received a cablegram from his chief in London, Dartmore. There are few men who would express themselves ironically by cable at the London-Tokyo rate of toll. Dartmore did it, and the message follows, with flesh and organs added to the cipher-skeleton:

The _Review_ thought you would be interested to know that Japan has
declared war and smashed part of the Russian fleet. This news from
New York. Kindly inform Tokyo war-office, which I understand is just
a step from your hotel.

Benton Day had come up from common things by strong, hard, well-planned work. He had known few defeats, and these cut deeply. The cable from Dartmore was the worst whipping of his career. Gray with shame, he sought the billiard-room of the hotel, where he found an animated group of British and American correspondents who had just heard the news--ten hours after it had been printed in London and New York. He found that Dartmore alone had taken pains to be ironical in the matter. The truth was exactly as ungetatable in Tokyo as in Mombassa--until the war-office chose to give it up. Benton Day was only to blame in so far as he was not a telepathist. This knowledge eased him greatly, but did not detract from his anger at Dartmore--an emotion which is bad for a young man to take out on his first big campaign. The little sentence in the cablegram regarding the fact that London had received the news from New York, held big interest for Feeney, the saturnine.

“Japan was busy last night,” he communed. “Her Mr. Togo smashed the Russians off Port Arthur, and her little Mr. Uriu, off Chemulpo. It’s about time,” he added with a trace of Indiana humor, “Japan was declaring war. But the thing that gets me is, how did New York know?... Finacune, my young friend, was it you who suggested something about the great frieze coat catching on with New York papers?”

* * * * *

Harrowing weeks at the Imperial followed, while armies augmented, navies fought in the dark, and the bearers of the light of the world made newspaper copy out of heathen temples and Japanese street scenes. Free lances fled to outer ports, there to hearken unto the tales of refugees and weary the world. And the names of these, the Japanese carefully ticketed to Failure, and severed from Opportunity forever.

The Blue Boar, Trollope, wore best of all. He bathed in many springs throughout the empire, peeked into strange quarters of both capitals, and ate and drank after the fashion of those who are formed of arcs and not of angles. From time to time he cabled his paper three words of hope, and eight words of expense account. Trollope strolled down the menus in all parts of Niphon--native and European menus--with fine relish, and waited serenely for the time when he should lean and harden in the field, his sleeves rolled up--one hand covering the strategy of armies, the other at a cable-end, and his sweating face reflecting the pink and pearly flush of fame.

It was not so with the others. Finacune was ragged and restless. The pale Talliaferro looked twice for his own shadow. Feeney’s dark fighting-face wasted and hardened, until it seemed hewn from a block of brown bone; and Trollope’s serene and changeless calm wrought upon Bingley’s nerves like an active poison.