AFTER THE DEBACLE

I

Gabrielle was at her club in Burlington Gardens when the news of the riot in Stepney was brought by her father. She determined to go back at once that she might know the worst.

"How can they say such things?" she protested while a footman helped her on with her furs, and her father watched her humbly, as latterly it was his wont to do. "Why! everything is going so well, father. I had a perfect ovation this morning; it was nearly half an hour before I could get away from the people. Why should they have done this?"

Silvester said that he could not tell her. All that he knew he had learned by the mouth of a messenger, who had been dispatched headlong from Stepney and came panting with the news.

"You should not have listened to Mr. Faber, my dear. He is an American, and he does not understand our people. The ticket idea was quite wrong. It led to many jealousies, and now to this. The people think there is a great store of bread in Leman Street, and that it is being given only to our friends. I am sorry the story got abroad, very sorry! Charity cannot discriminate in such times as these."

He would have gone on to preach quite a little sermon to the hall porter and the footmen, who told each other afterward that the young lady gave it to him "'ot"—but Gabrielle, amazed and chagrined beyond all experience, immediately ordered them to get a taxi and drive without any delay to Stepney. It was then about seven o'clock of the evening; a bitter cold night with a wraith of snow in the air. The West End seemed entirely deserted at such an hour—even the music-halls had no queues at their doors, while the theatrical managers complained dolefully of their financial sorrows. London had awakened to the truth of the situation at last, and London was frightened. Even the unobservant Silvester could realise the omens of menace, and say that the city was in peril.

"I don't know what it means," he told Gabrielle, as they drove, "but I passed a regiment of cavalry as I came here, and it was going toward Oxford Circus. Do you notice how many police there are about, and mounted police? There is hardly a shop in the West End which is not boarded up. Perhaps they are wise—this has taught them what lies on the other side of Aldgate, and it is a lesson they should have learned a long time ago. My own opinion is that we are upon the brink of a revolution; though, of course, I would not say as much to any of these newspaper people!"

"If you think it, father, why not say it? Surely the day has gone by for the old foolish ideas. The government has left the people to starve, and must take the consequences. We have done our best, but we are not policemen. I feel tempted to go back to Hampstead and having nothing more to do with it. Think of the ingratitude, the shame of it all—and we have worked so hard!"

"You should not have listened to Mr. Faber, my dear; I said as much at the beginning. He is very ignorant of English people; it was a mistake to listen to him."

"You didn't think that on the steamer, father, when we came over from America. You were his bravest advocate; you called him one of the world's geniuses, I remember it."

Silvester admitted it.

"I hoped much from him. If we could have won him, it would have been the greatest victory in the cause of peace we have ever achieved. I fear now he must be called our evil genius. He has undoubtedly sold all those rifles to Germany, and that is to say that we shall have the old foolish scares again and very soon. A man like that is a terrible instrument of mischief. I think we shall have to dissociate ourselves from him altogether when the little girl is well enough to leave us."

Gabrielle sighed as though all these things had become a burden on her mind. An innate sympathy for John Faber prevented her saying what otherwise it would have been a truth to say. How much he could have done for them had he chosen to do it! His money would have helped them so—an inconsequent thought, for her charities had never wanted money.

"He was certainly wrong about the tickets," she admitted. "I know Mr. Trevelle thought so, but he gave way. If it is really true that he is keeping bread from the people to serve his own ends, nothing bad enough can be said about it, but I want to know that it is true. It has been very unkind of him to do nothing for us when he might have done so much. My opinion of him is greatly changed; I do not think he is really our friend."

Silvester was quite of that opinion also.

"He made us such extravagant promises. A house in the West End, motors—every luxury. I really thought he was quite serious when I left Ragusa. Sir Jules Achon did not wish us to go. He knows these people; he thought I was ill-advised to give up Yonkers for such vague promises. I wish I had listened to him now; he is still on those delightful waters, far away from all this. We should have been with him but for our foolish generosity."

Gabrielle avoided the difficult subject. She must have been a little ashamed of it when she remembered the gifts John Faber had lavished upon them already and the concern he displayed for Maryska. The conversation, indeed, carried her back to a somewhat commonplace reality from which she had emerged to win this temporary triumph as a ministering angel in the East End. And now they had burned her Temple and the idol was cast down. Her father would send Maryska away, and they must return to the old humdrum life. John Faber and his riches would pass as a ship of the night. Harry Lassett and the dead leaves of a withered passion remained.

"Oh," she said at last, "how vain is all we do! How vain, how hopeless! We are just like ants crawling about the earth and trying to set ourselves up for gods. We talk of peace and war, of good and evil, of what we shall accomplish and what we have done, and then down comes the great flat foot of circumstance and out we go. I lose the power even to hope sometimes. Why should we not let things drift? Who is the better for our work?"

Her father would not agree to that.

"Every stone cast into the lake of the world's ills is an asset in humanity's balance sheet," he said. "You have cast many, Gabrielle, and will add to the number. Look out there at those poor people. Is it all vain when you remember how many of their kind you have succoured? This American hardness is no good influence; I wish we could shake it off forever. Indeed, it were better so."

"We shall do that," she said quietly. "Mr. Faber will not be many days in England when the frost will let him get away."

He remained silent. They had passed Charing Cross, and now their way was blocked by a vast torchlight procession of women, debouching upon the Strand from the neighbourhood of the Old Kent Road. It was a sorry spectacle, for here were young and old, white-haired women with their backs bent toward the earth which soon would receive them; drabs in rags who flaunted their tattered beauty in the face of every male; quiet workers whose children were starving in garrets; women from mean streets who had never begged in all their lives; children who wondered if the end of the world had come. Headed by a lank harridan who wore a crimson shawl and carried an immense torch, these miserables tramped stolidly toward the West End, seeking God knows what relief from the shuttered houses. And after them went a dozen mounted policemen, good-humoured, chubby-cheeked fellows, who had never wanted bread and were never out of patience with others less fortunate.

A thousand expressions were to be read upon the faces of this haggard crew, and not a little fine determination. Here would be a woman reeling in drink; yonder a young mother hardly strong enough to walk the streets. There were sluts and shapely girls, creatures of a shabby finery, and hopeless woebegone figures of an unchanging poverty. From time to time wistful glances would be cast up at the lighted windows of the houses as though succour might be cast down thence. All moved with rapid, shuffling steps, an orderly concourse which concealed the forces of disorder. By here and there, some of the younger members broke into a mournful song, which was checked at intervals to permit of the exchange of coarse wit with the passers-by on the pavements. The whole throng seemed driven relentlessly on toward a nameless goal which must break their hope when at last they reached it.

"Isn't it dreadful to see them?" said Gabrielle when the last of the procession had passed by and traffic in the Strand was resumed once more. "This sort of thing affects me terribly; it makes me feel sorry that there are women in the world at all. Think of the children of such creatures! What can we hope for them?"

"It is the children for whom we must work," rejoined the father. "I should think of England with despair if it were not for the children."

Worthy man! Despair had always been among the wares in his basket; and yet, how often had this unhappy British people gone laughing by with never a thought for him or his melancholy gospel?

II

The menace of the streets was not less when the women had passed by and the traffic flowed again.

London was full of wild mobs that night; of savage men and men made savage by hunger, and they were drifted to and fro upon the shifting seas of authority and stranded on many a relentless shore. There was riot, too, and upon riot, pillage and the incendiary. Now for the first time since the winter set in, hunger drove even the orderly to the West in the wild search for the food the East could not give them. Long through the dark hours, in Bond Street, in Piccadilly, by Hyde Park, away in the remotest suburbs, sleepers were awakened to listen fearfully to the tramp of feet and the hoarse voices of the multitudes. Those who had the curiosity to look from their windows beheld a sky quivering with light, a glorious iridescence above many a flaming building the rioters had fired. It was the beginning of the end, men said; a visitation of Almighty God against which all were impotent. Who shall wonder that those whose faith was sure prayed for the salvation of their country in that hour of her need?

There were enormous crowds about Aldgate, and the taxi containing Gabrielle and her father made but slow headway. When at last it entered Leman Street, they perceived in an instant the whole extent of the disaster; and so irreparable it seemed that the girl's pride broke down utterly, and she shed bitter tears of shame and grief. How she had worked for these people! What a heroine they had made of her! This very morning there had been a kind of triumphal procession from the old Temple to the new. She had been followed by a vast concourse of thankful people, who cheered her as she went; while the bishop had addressed the throngs from the doors of the mission, and spoken of the "noble lady," whose services to them had been priceless. This was just eight hours ago, and now there were but reddening ashes where the workers had stood to give the children bread.

The cab made its way to the doors of the wrecked building and an inspector of police received them. The few who had been admitted within the barriers were evidently ashamed of what had been done, but quite unable to apologise for it. The inspector put it down to the hooligans.

"We breed too many of them in these days, sir," he said, "the country finds it out when there's hard times, and God knows they're hard enough now. It must have been set afire after Mr. Gedding had locked it up for the day. There were flames as tall as chimneys coming out of the roof when I was called."

This was a man who took tragedy as a matter of course, and would have used the same words if St. Paul's had been burned. When asked if the incendiary were taken, he replied that he was not, but that acting upon "information received," he hoped to make an arrest before morning. His anxiety for the "young lady" was real, and he advised that she should return immediately to her home.

"Now that there's this spirit abroad, I'll answer for nothing at all," he said; "you'd be better the other side of Aldgate, and that's certain. There's nothing but a pack of foreign cut-throats in the streets to-night, and no man is safe. Just you take my advice, sir, and come back in the morning, when they've had time to cool awhile. This is no place for the young lady, whatever it may be for us."

Silvester agreed with him, but he found it impossible to influence Gabrielle. She seemed strangely moved by the melancholy glamour of the scene; by the savage figures shadowed in the after-glow; by the reddening skeleton of the Temple which stood up so proudly a few hours ago. To-morrow there would be but a pit of ashes, where to-day a sacrifice had been offered to the nation. She suffered profoundly when she surveyed this wreck of her handiwork, and it seemed to her that her work among the people was done.

"Let us go on to the old Temple," she said with what resignation she could command, "if they have burned that also, then I will return with you, father, for I can do nothing more."

Silvester disliked the idea of it. He would have been pleased enough to have been back in his little study at Hampstead, where he might have composed a sermon upon "ingratitude," as an obstacle; but he had long been schooled to obedience when his daughter commanded, and so they re-entered the cab and drove to the old Temple. A silent multitude watched them as they went, but none cheered. The bitter cold night either sent people to their houses, where they might shiver upon heaps of rags, or it drove them to the open street where many a huge fire had been kindled that the outcasts might warm themselves. Hereabouts you would often see a whole family lying upon a filthy pallet of straw, and so huddled together for warmth that it had the appearance of some fearsome animal which had crawled from the darkness to the light. The shadows gave pictures more terrible, husbanding the dying and the dead. Starvation abetted the rigour of the winter. Nature waged war here in these silent alleys, and no sound attended her stealthy victories, which were multitudinous.

In London beyond "the gate" there were other anxieties, but these poor people knew nothing of them. War and its menace: the chimera of fabled foes crossing the black ice in endless columns; cannon rumbling where ships had sailed; England no longer an island, her ramparts of blue waters gathered up; her gates thrown open to any who would affront her—if the West End discussed all this covertly and as though afraid, the East knew nothing of it. Here the danger was not of to-morrow, but of to-night! The peril, ever present, fell upon them now at the bidding of the natural law. For the first time since the outcasts of the world had found sanctuary beyond Aldgate, their city of refuge had been unable to feed them. And now hunger bade them go forth to the land of promise, so near, so rich in all they needed. Shall we wonder that starving mobs gathered in every square; that the courts were full of desperadoes with murder in their eyes; that even the honest would listen and admit that this or that might be done?

Upon the other side were the police and the soldiers, many thousands hidden prudently from the eyes of the mobs. If the Government could do little to feed these people, it could, at least, protect the people who were fed for the time being, at any rate. Commanded by the "man of iron," the cavalry were marched hither and thither, but always to form a cordon about the dangerous areas. Special drafts of constables came from the distant suburbs to overawe poor devils whose greatest crime was their hunger. Stepney was besieged by authority, fearful that men would go out to get the children bread, and ashamed that bread should be withheld. Here had Nature's war become one of a civil people, paying a debt they long had owed to their exacting creditors, "Want of Forethought and Economy." The sword of a foreign enemy would have been the lesser peril—it was evident enough now to everyone!

Through such scenes, by the dark and dangerous streets, went Gabrielle to the ancient Temple. She found it occupied by busy missionaries, who knew neither night nor day while the work of mercy must go on. In and out they went as they returned from some mean house, or set off for another. Dawn found them still at work, the terrible dawn when the country waited for the verdict in Nature's court, and even the dullest had come to know that this was an island kingdom.

III

Faber and Trevelle reached Stepney early on the morning of the following day. Gabrielle was still at the Temple and while she had expected the visit of the resistless "inspiration," as she had come to call Trevelle, John Faber's advent was unlooked for.

"We heard you were burned out, and came along at once," he said, in the best of humours. "I guess you'll want all the masons you've got, Miss Silvester, and want 'em on time. That old factory should take five days to put up if you go the right way about it. If it were me, I'd leave it where it is, and make 'em toe the line among the ashes. That would teach them to behave themselves next time. You can't burn the house that's been burned already, and if they want to warm themselves, coal is cheaper. Say, write that upon what's left of the door, and you'll have the laugh on them, sure!"

She was chagrined at the tone of it, but none the less, she seemed to understand that he wished her well.

"If we rebuild, where is the money to come from?" she asked him, helplessly. "And what is the good of it if there is no bread to give the people? My father says the end is coming. What have we to hope for if that is the case?"

"You have to hope for many things, my dear young lady—the weather for one of them. Your good father is a little premature, maybe, and is prone to believe what the newspapers tell him. The end is coming sure enough. It's not the end he looks for by a long way."

He glanced at Trevelle, and they smiled together. There had been great news from Queenstown that morning. Why should they withhold it from her?

"The fact is," said Trevelle, "the strike in America is over and the wheat ships are sailing. You read your evening paper to-night and see what it says. We have brains amongst us and they are busy. That's what we've been asking for all along, in peace or war, not the dreamers but the brains. And we've got 'em, Miss Silvester, we've got 'em!"

He snapped his fingers, an habitual gesture, and seemed thereby to imply that he, Rupert Trevelle, had laid down a doctrine which henceforth must be the salvation of the British people. Gabrielle, however, heard him a little coldly though she was full of wonder.

"I did not think you were so interested in this matter," she said. And then, "Will you, please, tell me why the men in Liverpool are striking still?" When the scientific exposition had left her more in doubt than ever, she asked of her work once more. "Then it is no good going on here if the wheat will come in," she said; "our task will be finished then, will it not, Mr. Faber?" He shook his head at that and told her of his fears.

"It will be a slow business. I advise you to stand by yet awhile. If we get the cargoes slowly, as we shall have to do, the price of wheat will still stand high, and that's no good to these people at all. Take my advice and go on with what you are doing. The country owes you something, sure, and it is just beginning to find that out. Did you see your pictures in the halfpenny illustrateds, this morning? I like those fine; I've got 'em here somewhere, and I mean to keep 'em."

Trevelle thought it wise to move away at this point, and they were left together in the great bare hall of the Temple, whither the people would soon be flocking for bread. A winter sun shone cold and clear through the wide window above them; then voices echoed strangely beneath the vault as though they were tricked by a mutual self-restraint to an artificiality of tone foreign to them. This man had come to love this woman passionately, and he was about to go to his own country, never to return.

"Oh!" she cried, surprised and delighted when she beheld the pictures, "what a dreadful guy they have made me! Now, don't you think this sort of thing ought to be stopped?" He shook his head as though she had disappointed him.

"I never knew a woman yet whose picture was in a newspaper who didn't say they had guyed her. The thing seems well enough to me, and I must keep it for a better. Say, now, you know, I'm going away the first mail that sails. Will you give me a better portrait or must I take this one?"

Her spirit fell though she did not dare to tell him why. He was going, and the building her hope had raised must come crashing down. With this was her feeling that in some way he had failed her in the critical hours. There were men who cried out upon his astuteness, made manifest in the hour of crisis, but she had never heeded them.

"If you really think that you will remember my name when you are in New York again——" Her hesitation was the complement of the obvious, and he smiled again.

"It will be a new name. Let's hear how it sounds. Mrs. Harry Lassett! Well, I don't like the sound of it overmuch, but I suppose it's not my say. The wedding, I think, is for next month, is it not?"

"For the week before Lent. You will not build me a Temple now; it would be a mockery!"

"Why, as to that, if it's a Temple for brains, I don't know that we mightn't build it after all. That's what your country needs, Miss Gabrielle. All the brains at work to educate the people. Sentiment will carry you a very little way upon the road. Let your Temple go up to the men with brains."

"Ah!" she said, "I think we are all beginning to understand that. Even my father says that universal peace will be won by the intellect not by the heart of the nation. You will see him before you go, of course?"

"I shall try to; it will be a misfortune for me if I do not."

"And Maryska?"

"Ah, there you get me into harbour at once. I've been thinking over what Mr. Trevelle has told me about your difficulties, and I guess I'd better see you out of them by taking Maryska to New York. Does that seem to you a wise thing to do?"

Her face became very pale, her thoughts seemed distant when she said:

"Quite wise; she will never be well in England."

"Or happy?"

"Ah, who can say just what happiness is?"

"True enough," he replied. "We look up and down the street for it, and sometimes it is on our own doorsteps all the time. We say that we were happy yesterday, and talk of happy days to come when to-day may be the happiest of our lives. Some of us are not born for that ticket, and it's human nature which shuts us out from it. Who knows, you and I may be among the number."

"An auspicious thing to say, remembering that I am to be married next month."

"Pardon me, I should not have said it. It's like one of your Lord Salisbury's 'blazing indiscretions.' You are taking the line which your welfare dictates that you shall take. You have thought this out for some years, I don't doubt, and you say, there is just one man in the whole world for you. Well, that's a bid for happiness any way. I'll put a motto to it when I cable you on your wedding day."

He held out his hand, and she took it. Their eyes met, and he knew that he read her story.

"The Temple," he said; "I guess you'll want me to help you open that. If you do, I'll come."

"Shall I write to Charleston?"

"Yes, to Maryska de Paleologue, who is going to keep house for me."

Her hand fell from his and she said no more. The doors of the Temple were already open that the hungry might enter in.