Elizabeth Robins

“ Lady McIntyre said half aside to Nan, "if you'd make Greta bathe her temples and lie down."
"Yes, let us go. All this—" Nan looked round the hall through a sudden bewilderment of compunction which fell like a veil over her brightness—"all this is dreadful for you."
"For me! Oh, no!"—Miss Greta held her head higher than ever—"it's not dreadful for me." She smiled a little fiercely,—to Napier's sense—as she left the hall, Madge on one side and Nan on the other. ”

“ Julian halted an instant before the problem. "How much right has a man to the wrong opinion?" Upon the answer to that, he knew, had hung much of the history of politics and religion. In another mood Julian would have maintained, till all was blue, that an intelligent bricklayer had as much right to a voice in the policy of the country as a peer of the realm. None the less, in his heart of hearts, as Napier was whimsically aware, Sir Julian felt that, for all Sir William's official position, he hadn't any such valid right to press his views as had a Grant of Abergarry. ”

“ The thought of the Pforzheims flashed across Napier, bringing a kind of relief. Miss Greta might quite innocently have remembered and retailed enough to Mr. Ernst for him to turn to account.
For the first hour and a half of that memorable sail, the Kelpie ran lightly before a delicate breeze. An eager girl at the prow, a watchful woman at the stern, youth and manhood on board—a cargo of fair hopes borne along under skies of summer to airs of extreme sweetness. It was the very light opera of seafaring and of life. No faintest hint of the weightier merchandise—for which mankind takes risks. ”

“ Neutrals argued more or less openly, betraying in every word the impossibility of neutrality. The old German couple at the end of Nan's table sat marooned. They glanced now and then, wistfully, at the all-German table next them. The sound of their tongue rumbled and clashed above the jar of crockery and service metal.
"Isn't it strange,"—Nan leaned to Newcomb as she lowered her voice,—"when I used to hear German, I'd think about music and poetry and beautiful words like Waldesduft—"
"And what do you think about now—words like Belgium?"
"That isn't fair," she said quietly. "All war is awful." ”

“ She had sunk down farther in the chair, a huddle of coarse serge and misery, and her hands slipped off her lap and hung at her sides.
"The strain is too great," she said under her breath, speaking the truth at last.
The strain was too great. It had broken the Greta of old days. And just as, after the wreck of some great liner, only trifles are left floating over the grave of the Titan, so the woman's surface theatricalism survived the loss of more considerable things.
"With people like us, our hand is against every man," she declaimed in a husky voice, "and every man's hand is against us." ”

“ Stark astonishment, as much as anything, sent the man stumbling back a couple of paces. The woman darted past into a region of piled barrels, casks, and cases, policeman and reporter in pursuit. Napier had fleeting glimpses of a game of hide-and-seek, grotesque in spite of the fact that it was played with passion, Greta appearing, disappearing, the others hot on her track, Greta tearing off scarf, ulster, and jacket as she ran, and casting them forth for her pursuers to catch their feet in. The policeman again fulfilled her hopes, but in vain was the net spread in sight of Singleton. ”

“ Only the other nations play at it, and we work. No questions with us, no limits. You others, yes, all of you,"—she flung it out,—"you paddle. We? We're up to the eyes!" Her own, marred and mud-stained, were lifted to the opposite wall. "We're over the eyes!" she triumphed. "We hold our breath down there under the surface till we crack our lungs. And smug people judge us! People who have never done even a safe thing to serve their country—they judge us—who face death hour by hour!"
"You don't, Greta, anyway." Nan Ellis had her pride, as it seemed, though its roots were deeper than nationality. ”

“ To the unnautical mind, the shortened ray seemed to draw the lifeboat in and in, till the conning-tower stood clear to the straining eye; in and in, till to the right of the main origin of light dim figures took shape; in and in, till just before the oarsmen had brought the lifeboat alongside the shelving body, topped with its low deck, suddenly the light ray was extinguished. Lifeboat and submarine swung an instant in an equal blackness. Out of it a voice, again in those strange accents. No answer till an English tongue spoke from the lifeboat, "We can understand a little German." ”

“ Sir William and Napier returned to London to face those days of intolerable suspense, when men carried about like a waking nightmare the new proof that an impregnable fortress was a thing of the past. The defenses of Liège had failed. A vast system of forts had been pounded into ruin. Through breach after breach, the German hosts were pouring. People far away from the scenes of carnage and chaos woke in the night under a clutch of dread. What is it? What's the matter with life? ”

“ Napier took the news to Berkeley Street that same afternoon.
"But understand," he stood up before Nan's chair, leaning only on his stick, "it's right to tell you, no power under heaven will make me either in the near future or the far future, nothing will make me raise a finger to have that woman set free."
"Free! Oh, no, she can't be allowed free."
"Very well," said Napier, relieved; "just so you understand."
"She's lost her right to freedom."
He looked at her.
"And you don't think death is better?"
"Yes, death is better for Greta, but not for us. ”

“ The policeman, piloting Lady Grant, led the way out of the crowd within a yard of Napier. The girl turned to him.
"Gavan!"
"Where shall you be?" Napier made a motion to join her.
"She'll be with us, naturally," said Julian's father, his eyes resting an instant on Napier. "And you—soon you'll come—" he didn't try to finish. That "soon" had said enough. The old man could not at the moment bear even Gavan near his grief. The look in his eyes brought tears to Napier's as, forlornly, he watched the little group disappear in the crowd.
What a world! Would people ever be happy again? ”

“ The only anxious face in the group was Nan's. Miss Greta, calm as a May morning, her round eyes trustingly raised to the inspector's face, with eighty to ninety pounds in English gold on her coat, and how much more elsewhere who should say, offering her purse and keys. "One is an American lock. I may have to help you with that," she said sweetly.
Napier half-turned his back on them, but he stood so that he could keep an eye on the stricken face above the long cardboard box which Nan was carrying as if it were an infant. Through the din Greta's innocent accents reached him. ”

“ There was always a semblance of reasonableness in such preoccupation. For Lady McIntyre had fallen into the habit of going to Miss Greta for every sort of service, from somebody's official style and title to looking out trains.
It wasn't the first, by several score of times, that young ladies had shown themselves fertile in pretexts for a little conversation with Mr. Napier. He himself was not in the least averse, as a rule, to a little harmless flirtation—even with a governess. But suppose this particular young woman should, with the fatal German sentimentality, be really falling in love. ”

“ An undefined dread which had lurked in the dark of Napier's mind, masking itself as dislike of the man Singleton, betrayed more than a hint of its presence in an anxious speculation as to whether these men, licensed to break all laws of human dealing, ought to be left alone a moment in company with letters and telegrams, and God knew what, down there on the hall table. ”

“ Whether Julian didn't hear, or wouldn't hear, Napier didn't know. Nan Ellis had turned to look at the island. She leaned far out over the bow. Motionless as a figure-head, she faced the islands and the outer sea. The wind drowned Greta's protest—it blew the girl's loose hair straight back—it made a booming in the sail.
"Mr. Grant, I refuse to let them land!"
Julian stared at her. Miss Greta made an effort to speak in a more normal tone. "It's too—too dangerous," she said hoarsely.
"Oh, very well," Julian said. "They can stay in the boat." ”

“ Nan was as poor a letter-writer as Julian was admirable. One of her meager little missives reached Napier soon after the so-called "great advance" which toward the end of September, 1915, gained a fragment of French soil about Loos at colossal cost.
"I want you to know," she wrote, "that I've been learning these last months in New York what the triumphs of German methods would mean for the world. Here, in the midst of all this luxury and waste, I've come to envy loss and sacrifice. If we in America don't get our share of it, I don't know what is to become of us." ”

“ By bearing inland, Napier would cross at its narrowest the neck of what he used to think looked like the wreckage of a pier. Quite suddenly he would come into a gentler region, a gradual acclivity that led through willow and heather and bracken up to the apex of the height which, midmost of the island, commanded all points of the compass. If there was an installation, it would be there masked from the mainland, among the rocks at the top of the gorge. And if the installation was there, Napier would find it, provided somebody did not first find him. ”

“ Lady McIntyre fixed her blue eyes on Julian Grant's face. "Do you know, in spite of what William says, I can't help feeling that every one who goes out at night in these dreadful times ought to take precautions." As no one responded, she strengthened her point. "I hear the streets grow darker and darker. Every night—yes, every single night—people are run over. The only way is for everybody who goes out at night to insure themselves." ”

“ Even Meggy! Napier was ready to swear that "the child" was, after Miss Greta herself, by far the best-informed person in the house. She was, anyway, according to her mother, the most indignant. Meggy had made common cause with Nan Ellis and Mr. Grant in ridiculing and condemning the popular superstition that every German must needs be an enemy of England. Napier heard how those three had redoubled their watchful friendship, a self-constituted bodyguard to keep Miss Greta safe from any breath of discourtesy, from so much as a glance of unworthy suspicion. ”

“ As far off as you saw Gavan Napier, you knew him as a scion not only of the governing class, but in all likelihood of one of the governing families. Exactly the sort of man, you would say, to have Eton and Balliol in the past, a present as unpaid, private secretary to a member of his Majesty's Government, and a future in which the private secretary himself would belong to officialdom and employ pleasant, more or less accomplished, and more rather than less idle, young gentlemen to take down occasional notes, write an occasional letter, and see a boring constituent. ”

“ Away, he must get away. Julian had been pitying Colin and Neil, "pawns in the great game." Napier knew now that he envied them. Oh, that he too might go and fight! He walked to and fro in his room in the first access of that fever that was to beset him sore until he should be standing in the trenches of the Somme. With Julian's denunciation of war nagging at his ears, Napier hailed war as the Great Simplification. Not only of international troubles, but of private ones. Instead of ten thousand struggles, one. ”

“ For a moment even Gavan couldn'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 because—other men have died and mustn't have died in vain. The dead are the best recruiters. ”

“ Gull Island was another place with that wand of magic set up among the rocks.
He started as violently as if a gun had gone off. Only the vicious snapping of a dry twig under foot; but, Lord, the racket! His caution redoubled.
With horror he remembered that old pastime—rolling the rocks down. How they bounded and crashed! Across the years he heard again the reverberant thunder of that long falling. What if he should displace one of these.... He drew his foot back, trembling from head to heel at the slight rocking of a boulder. Could he venture down in this darkness? ”

“ On the face that had met with brazen defiance the news of a German defeat, was stamped something more than consternation. Ashmole's own nerves were not so shaken, but he saw that.
"It's all right," he said in the act of turning from her; "they won't get us. The lights are all out."
"Lights out, you say!" Greta had risen.
"Every port covered," Ashmole muttered over his shoulder.
"Fools! They must put the lights on. Do you hear? Instantly!" She clutched her chair back. "This isn't the boat they want—"
Nan had risen, too. But that was because she saw Julian at the door of the saloon. ”

“ Things have got out that they blame poor Greta for. Oh, isn't it an awful penalty to pay for her loyalty in sticking to us as she's done through thick and thin!
"Well, these secret service men—one very worrying thing about them: I don't know how to treat such people; they seem to be quite superior to their disgusting work—well, they pretend that for her sake, for Greta's, I ought—Heavens above! here they are again!" Lady McIntyre collapsed against her cushions, breathing heavily and staring fascinated at the door opposite the one by which Napier had come in. ”

“ She made her own little contribution with an air of engaging frankness. "If the war were going to be fought out on sea, the British fleet, of course—But you wouldn't say yourself, would you, that the British were a military people?"
"Not in the sense that Germany is," Napier agreed.
"In no sense at all," said Julian.
"But Germany! Every son of Germany is a soldier!" Miss Greta's tone was just a trifle too superior.
But wasn't she right? Even the Pforzheims. They, too, were soldiers. These friendly, slightly ridiculous neighbors underwent in Napier's mind a sudden and violent transformation. ”

“ Napier was knocked and jostled. The old gas-sickness was heavy on him. He took refuge on a sea-chest behind a pile of luggage, and sent Day to keep places in the train. When he lifted his swimming head, struggling still against that tide of nausea rising to choke him, Napier saw that the crowd had thinned now to a few groups of last, despairing lingerers. Even the cries for Jimmy O'Brian had sunk into the same stillness that wrapped the sailor at the bottom of the sea. A little old man in a threadbare coat closely buttoned round a meager body went up to the guard at the foot of the gangway. ”

“ Nan stood still for a bewildered instant, while Napier went forward.
"So that's why!" he said. "Very well, then, you've got to know!" Leaning on the railing there beside her in the windy moonlight, he told her what Singleton had found in Greta's room.
Before he had gone far Napier was acutely aware of the girl's stiffening; aware of a withdrawal, infinitesimal as expressed in the body, a chasm as between their souls. He could feel that she was thinking: "Gavan looked on! He allowed that baseness at Lamborough!" ”

“ I'll be haunted all my days unless you—O Gavan,—if you're sorry, take me out of this nightmare!" As he tried to draw her to him again, he felt her shuddering. "It isn't horror only. I've been through vileness, too. It's all clinging about me. I've seen a man making use of holy things for hideous ends. I've seen a woman broken by torture. I've seen—" She jumped up, with a hand dashed across her wet eyes—"If you can't do something, if you let Greta be shot, I shall never sleep again. ”

“ We, aloof in the conning-towers of love, are spared no sight, no pang. We look down with every natural sense sharpened; with some perceptions, called as yet supernatural, giving voices to the silence and to the darkness vision. But apart from these less generally recognized avenues of information, there were the great outstanding facts which filled the papers of two hemispheres.
The first six days of the Leyden's voyage were, from the steamship company's point of view, wholly uneventful. Mr. Julian Grant had come on board obviously far from well. ”