GOODWILL TOWARD MEN

I

Faber arrived in Berlin three days after the yacht had put into Venice. The cordiality of his reception in the German capital surprised him. Known both as the inventor and the manufacturer of the famous "Faber" magazine rifle, the greatest instrument of war the twentieth century had yet seen, he found himself a celebrity most welcome to the Germans. Rarely had there been so much "hoching" for a comparatively private individual. Remarkable personages in remarkable uniforms overwhelmed him by their hospitality; he was made familiar with superb "vons" in accoutrement more superb. The gay city—by far the gayest in Europe at the present time—delighted him by its capacity for enjoyment and its freedom from social cant. The women flirted with him outrageously. He had never been made so much of since fortune first smiled upon him.

Bertie Morris came from Paris on the fourth day, and brought him all the news in exchange for his own. Bertie was not surprised that Faber's first question should be about little Claudine d'Arny, and what had happened to her since the tragedy of her father's death. He had come to Berlin prepared to give a good account of his stewardship in that affair, and he was very proud of what he had done. They were at dinner when the narration took place, and the restaurant of the Metropole Hotel glowed with light and colour, and the glitter of fine uniforms. There were officers everywhere; women whose gowns neither Paris nor Vienna might shame. They moved in an atmosphere of soft tints; the warmth of crimson carpets and the spotless white of polished walls setting off their "creations" to perfection. The air was heavy with the scent of crimson roses, which were on every table, despite the season.

Faber had a table in the corner of the room, and he allowed hors-d'oeuvre and soup to be served before he interrupted the journalist in his occupation of criticising the company with that running and often ironical commentary in which writing people delight. When the prettiest women had been "sized-up," famous people reduced to pulp, and the European situation dismissed in twenty words, Bertie was ready to speak of Claudine. He was too good an actor to bring her on the scene before.

"She arrived at Cannes yesterday," he said at last. "I chose the Riviera Palace because it's the kind of hotel where she'll meet the most people, and forget the quickest. Of course, Issy-Ferrault is going. It was difficult enough to do your business, but I did it bluntly in a business way. 'Marry Claudine d'Arny,' I said, 'and she'll have a guaranteed income of one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs a year.' His own douceur was to be another hundred and twenty-five thousand paid on the day the contract was signed. I put it to him as plainly as if I had a picture to sell. In the end, he bought her with no more scruple than if she had been a horse."

"Blustering first; I suppose, and talking of his ancestry."

"I don't think—there was about an hour and a half of it. Issy-Ferrault came out of the history box like pepper out of a pot. You'd have thought they made France and that Charlemagne was a bagman. When he was through with his talking, I just put the cinch on him with the remark that he wasn't writing history books but contracts. He pumped me like a tax-gatherer to learn the why and wherefore of it all; but the most I could tell him was that an old friend of Claudine's was determined to see her through and that good hard dollars expressed the measure of his determination. There I left it, and that's what he signed upon. He'll go to Cannes and marry her directly public opinion will let him do it. They are to live in London, I understand. He's a good sportsman and is out after the English shooting and fishing, so I told him to get a house in the shires, and he promised to do so. Claudine's money will tie him up all right—and as for that, I should think a girl with those eyes could hold most men. You may take it, Faber, that the matter is settled—as, of course, it was bound to be—after your generosity."

Faber brushed the suggestion aside as one which hardly concerned him. He was pleased by the news and his pride stirred at the suggestion of power, the reality of which he began to understand. Who but a man of vast fortune could have repaired such a tragedy as that? He looked Destiny full in the face and laughed at its omens.

"I've bought most things," he said, "but this is my first deal in husbands. Well, I'm glad the little girl is on the road again. Isn't this Issy-Ferrault rather a hustler in his way? I heard him well spoken of when I was in Paris; they say he's an aeroplane on the road or in the air. Do you know of it?"

"Oh, there's some talk. He was with BlÉriot a month or two back. The French army does not sleep much nowadays—a pretty wide-awake lot without any whiskers on their ideas. Issy-Ferrault is one of the aviation detachment. I suppose he'll be flying on his own account now if he can keep out of the arms of that black-eyed little girl. But he won't, if I'm any judge of women. She'll stick like the best glue; she's just the sort."

"Then you haven't altered your opinion of her since we left Paris?"

"Guess not; nor of your flaxen-haired Venus either. You don't tell me, by the way, what's become of her."

"She's gone to London to get married."

Bertie opened his eyes very wide.

"To get married! Who's the man?"

"He's a boy—knocks balls about and considers himself famous. Just one of these British boys, nice voice and manners, and legs like the Moses in the pictures. I don't think you would have named him for her choice in twenty guesses, but there it is. They've been billing and cooing on the Adriatic for a week, and now they've gone to do it in London. They're a difficult proposition, Bertie."

Bertie, watching him shrewdly, guessed the same.

"Is she in love with him—real?"

"Ask me something else. She's a woman, and being a woman, many sided. One side likes being kissed on the lips by twenty-two, who must be big-limbed and masculine. The other sides are turned toward various objects—ambition, money, and a woman's common vanities. She's at an age when they turn like a wind vane, and as often. If he catches her in a calm, he'll marry her."

"But if he doesn't—well, that's in the air. You were speaking of Rupert Trevelle a while back. He's over there in the corner yonder. Shall I introduce him?"

Faber looked up and saw a man of about his own age, faultlessly dressed, and accompanied by two pretty women in the smartest gowns. Trevelle, by his looks, should either have been a major of a smart cavalry regiment, or in "the diplomatic." He had jet black hair and a fierce moustache, large manners and a habit of authority. His party, like their own, had just finished dinner, and presently they all found themselves in the lounge where mutual introductions were made.

"My friend, Mr. John Faber, of Charleston, the Baroness von Hartmann, Lady Florentine. This is Mr. Rupert Trevelle, of whom Sir Jules Achon has spoken. So now we all know each other and may get down to business."

Bertie placed chairs for the party, and with one of his characteristic "Shall we's," he ordered coffee and liqueurs. Faber found himself between Trevelle and the baroness—a woman with a milk-white skin she was at no pains to conceal, and a method of crushing her handkerchief in a fat hand which was quite deadly with young men. She spoke little English, but that was sufficient to convey to the somewhat reserved American an intimation of possible weakness under pleasant conditions and of her own indifference to the absurdities of some modern conventions. Trevelle, on the other hand, had great news, and he bestowed it as gracious manna upon a field of fertile flirtation.

"They are talking of you at the Embassy to-night," he said.

Faber merely retorted, "Why, is that so?" and edged a little farther from the baroness.

"Indeed, it was very much so. You know that you are to have the White Cross of Prussia?"

"That's fine news. Has Sir Jules got anything?"

"Nothing whatever. They don't give white crosses for ideas, more's the pity. Jules Achon is a great man—the world will find it out some day."

"The sooner the better for its credit. What you have to do, Mr. Trevelle, is to educate the people; but I'm telling you nothing new. You know that as well as I do."

"Most certainly I do; I have told Sir Jules so some ten thousand times. He has a great idea, but he must have public opinion behind it. The people make war to-day, not the princes."

"But princes have a say in it, sure."

"They do when the people are willing that they should. At present the popular mind is pretty well where it was fifty years ago. Look at the reputation you bear in Berlin. Why? Because you have made an instrument which allows the German to kill his enemies as he has never been killing them before."

"You are saying, vat?" asked the baroness, impatient of neglect. "You are telling Mister Faber to kill ze enemies?"

"Of his own sex, madame," retorted Trevelle immediately.

"Then he is not like ze Spanish king, who do not kill his enemy because he have killed him already. I should be afraid of this friend of yours; he have nothing but killing in his mind—he live to kill, is it not so?"

"Oh!" said Trevelle, "you must ask the ladies about that."

The baroness shook her head.

"We was all to go to the Alcazar to see the Russian dancers. Why do we stay? I am all hot. I would get far from here—all hot, and yet they say dat in England is joost one good big cold, so cold dat ze nose is freeze off the face. Shall we go to dance, Mr. Trevelle?"

Trevelle said, "Certainly." He had heard of the terrible winter they were having in England, and was glad not to be in London.

"The Thames will be frozen right over," he told them, "the first time since the beginning of the nineteenth century. I suppose there is something in this story of the weakening of the Gulf Stream after two years of drought over yonder. Anyway, it's extraordinary. I wonder what would happen if the Channel froze——?"

"Ah!" said Faber, "a good many people would wonder then, and some of them would be in Berlin. I don't think Sir Jules's stock would stand very high if that happened, Mr. Trevelle."

"But you think it quite impossible?"

"Which is to say that I dictate to Nature. Well, I don't think I should do that at my time of life."

They all laughed, and went off to the Alcazar, where a Russian woman danced divinely, and was followed by a red-nosed man, who broke plates to the great delight of an immense audience. Faber was not displeased to find himself with these two pretty women in a box, where all the world could see him; and it occurred to him before he had been there very long that the house had recognised him, and that he was being pointed out to other pretty women in the seats below. Certainly, this visit to Berlin was becoming a famous thing in its way. It compelled him to understand the meaning of that fame he had won for himself and the homage paid both to him and to his house. A glamour of life, unknown hitherto, but very dazzling, could influence even so balanced a judgment and so cynical a student of humanity. Hardly one of the women, rustling in silks and velvets, bedizened in jewels—hardly one of them to whom he might not have thrown the handkerchief, if he would. The knowledge flattered his pride, and set him thinking of Gabrielle Silvester. Well dressed and wonderful as these women were, Gabrielle would have held her own among them all. He thought of her as destined to rule amid a glitter of jewels and an incense of roses. There was no house in all Europe she could not grace, he said.

A vain thought. She was engaged to a fool of a boy, who could play cricket; and that very night upon his return to the hotel, he found a letter from her in which she confessed to the folly without excuse. Harry wished for an early day. He had altered his plans, and thought now that he would not go to Australia.

II

Faber read the letter in a deep chair by the fireside—in his private room at the Metropole. Bertie Morris, meanwhile, had the English newspaper and a very large whisky and soda. Both men had caught the Berlin habit, and lived rather by night than by day. The hotel itself was then, at a quarter to one in the morning, beginning to amuse itself seriously.

Gabrielle wrote a pretty hand, round as her own limbs, precise as her own habits, with here and there a fine flourish to denote a certain want of stability. It was to be expected that she would make early mention of her charge; but she dwelt so insistently upon what Maryska de Paleologue had done that she must have presupposed an interest beyond the common. And then there was the postscript—a word of real alarm or of deep design. Faber readily granted the former, and would have nothing to do with the latter. Gabrielle was transparently honest in all that she said and wrote.

"We arrived in London after a bitter journey," the letter ran, "the frost has returned, and the cold is dreadful. I am afraid Maryska feels it very much after Ragusa, and is not grateful to us for bringing her to such an inhospitable country. The streets of London shone like rivers of ice as we drove through, and even my father now admits that there is something in a taxi. What Maryska does not understand is your threatened journey to America, and your unkindness in leaving us all with so brief a farewell. She is very strange here, and she is entirely without friends—though Harry has done his best to cheer her up, and has really developed surprising powers as a private entertainer. Perhaps the cold and the fog have affected her spirits unduly—I would not make too much of it, but she is undoubtedly changed since we left Venice, and the change is not for the better! This much you ought to know.

"Of course, it is much too early yet to speak of the house. We are all at Hampstead in the old home, and it seems difficult to believe that so much has happened in so short a time. I refuse to allow that Christmas Day falls next week, and that in twelve days we shall be ringing the old year out. If anything could convince me it is this bitter cold, this biting cruel weather, which is like nothing England has seen before, and I hope will be like nothing that is to come after. Here at Hampstead, they say the ice is inches thick upon the ponds—I can hear the whir of the skates from my windows, and everyone who passes is dressed like a grizzly bear. Maryska has seen a severe winter in America, and suffered terribly there because of the cold. So you will understand how anxious we are about her, and how very watchful it is necessary to be.

"My father says she is the strangest compound of oddities he has ever encountered. It is a description which does less than justice to an original character. Of religion she has none. Her god is an oath—nothing more: and yet to say that she is without a deep capacity of feeling would be untrue. Some of her ideas are fantastic—I suppose the orthodox would call them barbarous. She has a locket about her throat with a miniature of the Crucifixion after Francesco. I know that she has painted out the face of Christ, and made a crude likeness of her father in its place. Her trunk is full of his drawings—there are hardly any clothes, poor child, and we shall have to fit her out directly she is well enough. By that time we should know where we are to live, if I can persuade my father to see the house agents. He has a morbid idea that he will commit some great mistake, and I should not be surprised if he took a good many houses before the New Year.

"The only other news is that Harry does not now think that he will go to Australia. He appears to be capricious in his new ideas, and is ready to insist upon a crisis in our affairs. This is so wholly unexpected, that I do not know what to say about it. The foundations of the Temple are not laid, and it would be terrible if the building fell. I suppose it is all very serious, and I should consider it in that light, but I remain an enigma to myself, and am content to let the future speak for itself.

"Oh, how cold it is—how cruelly cold! I can write no more, even by a warm fireside. Perhaps Maryska will write herself soon—horrible thought, I have yet to learn if the child can write at all. When she reads, she terrifies me with the possibilities. Her acquaintance with the most dreadful words is a daily fright to me! She speaks Italian and French quite fluently, and another language which my father does not recognise, but thinks may be Roumanian. He brought a professor of Oriental languages from one of the Universities here yesterday, but the poor man was utterly at sea. I am sure he did not understand a single word of what she said—none knew that better than clever Maryska!

"She is asking for you every day, and I must tell her that you are going to America. It is a heavy burden upon my poor shoulders. Yesterday she said, 'Even his friend has gone away.' So, you see, she knows that you were his friend, and I am sure that will not be unwelcome to you.

"Believe me, with all our kindest regards,

"Dear Mr. Faber, yours sincerely,

"Gabrielle Silvester."

"P.S.—The news is not so well to-night. We have had another day of the damp cold, and I am seriously alarmed for her. Have we done right to bring such a hot-house plant to England at all? She is asking for you again even as I write, for she knows that it is written. 'Tell him,' she says, 'that he would have wished it. Then he will come to me.' I am doing my duty even if it be done without hope."

III

Bertie Morris drained his glass and then folded the paper he had been reading with great nicety. The journalistic habit inspired a restless curiosity which would probe even the intimate affairs of his friends. He knew that the letter was of great importance, and was almost indignant that his great friend did not speak of its contents.

"Well," he said, with a pretence of a yawn, "I suppose it's time for me to be trotting. See you to-morrow, anyhow."

Faber thrust the letter into his breast coat pocket and lighted a new cigar.

"If I am here, why, yes; maybe I'll not be here."

"You'll not be here! But haven't you an appointment with General Heinstein, to say nothing of the Count?"

"An excellent pair; they can amuse my man of business. I guess I'm going to England."

Bertie whistled.

"You don't toe the mark for any ceremony, Faber. What about this White Cross?"

"Let them hang it round the neck of the little girl at the Alcazar. I've seen the Emperor, the one big man in this country, perhaps the one big man in Europe, unless you care to name Kitchener. The others are no good to me."

"Then you'll be going sure?"

"Not sure at all. See me in the morning, and I'll write the bulletin. Just at the moment I'm thinking about it."

"Well, I hope you won't go, anyway. If you do, so long."

He put on his hat slowly as though still hoping to hear the reason why. That the "flaxen-haired Venus" had something to do with it Bertie Morris was convinced; and being a mere man, conviction amused him. Had Faber said a word to invite his confidence, he would have spoken freely enough. What was this multi-millionaire, who might marry where he pleased in any famous family in Europe, what was he doing in the company of a mere parson's daughter? Here, in Berlin, Bertie could have named half a dozen high and mighty personages, beautiful women with wonderful swan-like necks and the blood of bountiful barons in their delicate veins, who would have packed their traps like one o'clock had John Faber but dropped a handkerchief in their path. And here he was, restless and uneasy and stark indifferent to his social opportunities in the German capital, just because a tall girl with flaxen hair had preached sermons upon peace to him, and rubbed in the moral with some meaning glances from far from inexpressive eyes. Bertie could not make head or tail of such primitive passions, and he gave up the business as incomprehensible.

He had left Faber upon a note of interrogation, and to the man chiefly concerned it was a perplexing note enough. Should he go to England because this little waif of the world had called him, or should he leave her to forget, as forget she must before many weeks had run? If he went, he would recreate for himself all those difficulties he experienced when in the presence of Gabrielle and of her sometimes inexplicable charm. That she was drifting, drifting into the marriage with Harry Lassett, he would not deny. The tragedy of her life might be the consummation of that marriage based upon the passion of an hour and doomed to perish as swiftly. Dimly he perceived the truth about himself and about her. Both had been tempted by a physical instinct—both were born to a destiny more spiritual. He himself had stood for an instant toward Maryska de Paleologue as Gabrielle towards this very human boy. And the child had called him "an old, old man," awakening realities with her words and opening his eyes as no other had dared to do.

Long he debated it, perplexed beyond experience. Should he go to England, and if he did, what then? Day did not help him, nor the early hours of a busy morning. It was not until he had lunched that they handed him a cable from Gabrielle, and he knew that the argument was ended.

"She is very much worse. I think you had better come."

So the cable ran. He caught the night mail, and was at Ostend upon the following morning.

BOOK III

AFTERMATH