Routledge rides 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.