In those next days Gavan ran in whenever he had a quarter of an hour, to find a Julian very weak, yet in bewildering good spirits, visited daily by Nan, and even, for the term of the exigency, received back into his mother's favor. fectly beautiful nature as Julian!' Was n't that American?" Lady Grant smiled. "I told her I would make Sir James see it as I did, and that it would all come right." JULIAN'S way of helping it all to "come "Do they meet, those two?" Arthur right" was to employ his convalescence in asked. carrying on the propaganda from his sick "My mother and Nan? Rather. They bed with unabated ardor. get along like a house afire." If Napier had doubted that before, he doubted no longer after a little talk down in the drawing-room with Lady Grant on a certain gloomy evening toward Christmas. Whispers had begun to be heard in privileged circles of British shell shortage at the front. The Germans had shells to spare. They had been bombarding Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby; five hundred casualties, the papers said. Julian was better. You could read that news in his mother's face. "I believe he 'll be able to go over to America early in the new year," she said. "To America!" Napier repeated, slightly dazed. "It would be everything to have him out of England till the war is over." Julian's mother had broached the idea to Miss Nan. "I 've had my eye on that young woman. It's true she takes Julian's mad ideas for the law and the prophets, but a wife should. Julian might do worse, don't you agree?" "So they 're engaged!" was all that Napier could bring out. "Not properly engaged, I gather. But when was Julian properly anything? The girl's no fool. She has naturally thought we should n't like it, so I took occasion to say a word to her. She looked rather confused," said the lady, reflectively. "She must have been confused, for what do you I think she said? That I had misunderstood. That she had never said she would marry Julian. I told her he was an odd creature, but I was sure that was what he wanted. 'And I can't be wrong in thinking you care for him,' I said. And then she burst out with: 'How can I help caring about anybody with such a per That name of "Messenger" which Napier had secretly given Nan recurred to him again and again. Messenger, indeed, carrying contraband, not to say high explosive, to and from the sober precincts of Berkeley Street! The worst of it was that Nan showed no sign of revolt against being made the agent of this traffic. The cold truth was that she liked it. That was the heartbreaking thing about the whole sorry business. She would come back from private talks with Julian's revolutionary friends, from semi-public meetings, electric with excitement, brimming with her news. Julian's eagerness to hear and hers to tell did not always await the more private hour. Nan's air of tumbling it all out, equally without selective care and without consciousness of offense, did much to ease the situation between Julian and his mother. Their relationship had been too embittered to allow them any more to discuss these things. And here was some one wholly forgetting, if she had ever heard, that constraint-breeding, melancholy fact, some one who pronounced the words abhorred in an even, every-day voice, smiled the while, and sat at her ease. Too newly Julian had skirted death for his mother not to make shift to endure that which first brought back the hues and lights of life to the corpse-white face. Lady Grant did, to be sure, tighten her lips and stiffen her back in face of some of the talk that went on across her son's paper-strewn bed-table. During one of Napier's visits he had seen her rise and leave the room. When she came back she found Julian laughing as he had n't for many a day. Ultimately Lady Grant was able to confront the familiar mention of persons ostracized and implications outrageous with that patience women know how to draw upon in dealing with their sick. Sometimes the messenger did n't spare the mixed audience in Berkeley Street a graver, more passionate mood. "I told you," she said suddenly to Julian, soon after her entrance one evening— "I told you Mr. Oswin Norfolk's book was practically finished. Yes. Well, the authorities are n't going to let it be published." "What!" Julian very nearly leaped out of bed. "Suppress the greatest contribution to sane thinking since 'Progress and Poverty?' To dare to ban the 'Philosophy of Force' and pretend we are fighting for liberty!" think"-her voice sank-"the mails are n't safe." "Not safe?" She shook her head. "Not any more. Mr. Norfolk says there's a-a supervision already." "What?" "Oh, not openly." "A secret censorship! Hah! Hear that?" he challenged his friend. "That's what your policy 's come to!" "What makes Norfolk think"-Gavan began at his calmest. "He does n't think. He knows." There was a little pause. "Things don't get through. And the things that don't get through, they 're always, he says, things of a certain kind." She broke the strain "You ought not to have told him," of the next moment's silence. "I said Lady Grant said to Nan. me. Julian caught her up. "Not tell me? Of course she had to tell She knows if she did n't bring me the news here, I 'd have to go where I could depend on getting it." His mother exchanged looks with Gavan. "I told them what I'd do." Nan said it with that little catch of excitement in her voice. "I'd get Mr. Oswin Norfolk's book over to America. They would n't be afraid to publish it over there." "Why should they? The Americans are n't standing in the breach," said Lady Grant, with heightened color. Nan looked away. Her mouth quivered a little. It was clear that she was reminding herself, Julian's mother! "America! The very thing!" In the baggy dressing-gown Julian had twisted the upper part of his thin body sidewise, leaning toward the messenger. "The trouble is," she began in a lower voice, and then hesitated. "What's the matter?" Julian demanded. His impatience made him irritable. "You are n't so silly as to suppose we can't say what we like before Gavan and my mother?" "No, oh, no," she answered with a haste that convicted her. "I was just going to tell you Mr. Norfolk seems to if they did n't trust the mails, why should n't Mr. Norfolk take his book over along with your 'League of Nations Manifesto' that they're all so wanting to get into President Wilson's hands. They asked me what I thought the inspectors would be doing while Mr. Norfolk was walking about with contraband literature under his arm. Did you ever hear such an excuse? I said: 'Do you think the inspectors would stop you? Well, the inspectors would n't stop me! Yes," she added in a slightly offended tone, "they laughed, too. I did n't mind that so much as to see them accepting the-interference, and just sitting there. Talking! It made me wild. 'Do you really want to get that into the President's hands?' I asked them. 'Very well. You give it to me.'" "You 'd take it!" The involuntary exclamation slipped over Gavan's lips. Julian had n't needed to ask. "You darling!" He held out his hand. "Not at all," said Miss Nan, with flushed dignity. "And, anyhow, Mr. Norfolk won't trust me with his precious book. 'Let me take Mr. Grant's 'Manifesto,' then,' I said. But they seemed to think the 'Manifesto' was still more what they called 'inflammable material at this juncture.' 'It would be better for you to be found with a bomb in your trunk,' they said." "They are bound to consider the question of personal risk," said Gavan, seriously. "What risk? Nobody can tell me that. I'm an American. The British Government has n't any right to tell me what I may carry to my own country. Besides, they would n't find it. And suppose they did, the English could n't shoot me. I told them this afternoon. 'I 'm not bound by your horrid war regulations.' But, no," she said lugubriously through the others' smiling, "they won't send me. Everybody 's afraid." "Except you and me, Nan." Julian held out a hand again, his eyes shining in his moved face. "It's a great bond." THE last time Gavan was ever to see those two together was one evening toward the end of January, about half past six. Julian's convalescence, not so rapid as his mother expected, was steadily progressing. The newsboys, at that period still vocal in London streets, were shouting: "Zepp raid! Bombs dropped on King's Lynn!" as Gavan was admitted at the Grants' door. Nan was coming downstairs. "And where are you off to this time?" He led her into Sir James's library. "I suppose I shall hear of you on the Nelson plinth next, being pelted." She seemed not yet to have received that mandate. But again she was full of America, what America was to do for the war-maddened world, America and the labor parties everywhere. Away from that slavery to sick-room. sensibilities, Gavan could n't bear it. With a vehemence foreign to him, he poured out his indictment against a divided national policy, against the treason of weakening the home front. He flayed the stop-the-war people as though a prince of the peacemongers were n't lying in the room above. Their colossal ineptitude in thinking they alone really want peace! They had sent deputations to Sir William, who had just lost his second son! "Not Niel! O Gavan, Niel!" "Niel! Niel, too!" she cried. "If only they had been able to stop it in time!" "Stop it! Stop men from going into a war like this! I'm not an idealist myself," -he could n't, to save his life, keep bitterness out of his voice,-"but I do know there have been men who went into this war to defend the weak and to right wrong. A good many of those men can't speak for themselves any longer-" For a moment even Gavan could n't speak for them. He began again in a level voice, "In those casualty lists-nearly every friend I had." "Not the greatest friend of all; not Julian." "Except Julian," he said dully, "our lot is practically wiped out. And now the younger men, the boys, Niel and the rest. They go and they go." He turned on her with a vehemence that cloaked his emotion. "I'm not saying that all the men out there feel the same about the war, but they fight on, some of them becauseother men have died and must n't have died in vain. The dead are the best recruiters. It's the dead who call loudest, 'Come, join up!'' The tears stood in her eyes, but she shook her head. "The dead can't speak for themselves. I wish they could. Soldiers-people who 've been in it-are n't half so hot for going on with the struggle as a civilian like you." I'm gazetted to This is the last "I'm not a civilian. the Scottish Borderers. time I'll see you." "O Gavan!" She held up her shaking hands. He longed to beg her forgiveness, to say he had n't meant in the very least to tell her like that; but all he could do was to explain, "The last, I mean, till I get my first leave," he ended in his most casual voice. "O Gavan!" she repeated. And then she turned abruptly and went out of the room, leaving him without a good-bye. IT had been hard enough for Gavan to arrange it even before that awful news about Niel. "You are n't fit," Sir William had stormed. When he calmed down a little, he went and had another talk with the doctor. No medical man who knew his business would pass Mr. Napier, Sir William was told; but the need for officers was great. Mr. Napier would have his In the final issue Sir William had his. Something, Sir William said, that Gavan could do for the country that the country needed more than it needed another amateur officer at the front. Gavan was to go to America on a secret mission by the first ship. The newly commissioned officer protested with all his might. He had no experience of missions, secret or otherwise; he had no experience of America. Nevertheless, there were others in high places who agreed with Sir William. As usual in case of projects with which Sir William McIntyre had most to do, this one was quickly shaped and smartly carried through. Time was the essence of Napier's mission to America not only in view of the needs of our men in France, but in order that neither the other neutral governments nor the Central empires should know of the attempt to tide over the interval of scarcity before the munition plants of Great Britain should be established and the output secure. The night before he left England Napier received his final sailing orders during a tête-à-tête dinner with Sir William at the club. The privacy of those last minutes was broken in upon by Tommy Durrant, hot-foot on Sir William's traces. Tommy was just back from the front. Something ought to be done, according to Tommy, to lessen the ineffectiveness of the inspectors of refugees crossing over to England. He retailed the story then going the rounds about a man who spoke Walloon all right, arm bandaged, sling, all that sort of thing. Somebody on the boat did n't like the look of him, and had the wit to ask to see his wound. He was very sensitive about showing his wound. It was not unnatural, "doctor's orders," and that kind of thing. An R. A. M. C. man got the landing authorities to insist. Fearful shindy! Fella's arm as sound as Tommy's own. Did n't Sir William believe it? Very well, then. Not five hours ago, as Tommy was waiting to get through the barrier on this side, he had noticed a Belgian nun. He 'd seen lots of nuns. Why should he have noticed this one? Could n't make out till she turned her head with a backward look just as she disappeared. "And it was that woman who used to be at your house, Sir William; the governess." Napier's heart failed him for one sick moment. To be leaving England at the very moment of Greta von Schwarzenberg's return! Tommy was asking Sir William why "a lady like that" should be coming here in disguise. Surely there was something very fishy about it. "Well, you say you 've reported to Scotland Yard. Let them deal with it!" Sir William rattled his seals impatiently. Poor Tommy was having no success at all with his news. It was plain that Sir William was more annoyed at being made a participant than at the fact itself. Napier could n't refrain from warning him. "She'll be trying to get into communication with Miss Ellis-with Madge." "She won't risk that, whatever 's the explanation of her slinking back. She'll lie low for a while, anyway." Tommy registered his conviction: "She saw I'd recognized her, and did n't love me for it." CHAPTER XXII A GOOD part of that last night in London Napier spent in writing Nan a full account of the results of Singleton's visit to Lamborough. He wound up by warning her that Greta was in London, disguised as a Belgian refugee. Moreover, Scotland Yard would have full and accurate knowledge of those with whom the woman held any communication. He sealed the letter and left it in the trusty keeping of his servant. The packet was not to go out of Day's hands except to be placed in those of Miss Ellis. |