2
Jeremy hastened down the stairs to the Speaker’s room in a state of rapidly increasing agitation. He did not know, he could not imagine, what it was that he feared; but he had been raised to so high a pinnacle of joy that the least touch of the unexpected could set him trembling and looking for evil. When he reached his object he found the old man alone, seated sprawling in his great chair by the open window, his wrinkled, thick-veined hands spread calmly on the carven arms. Two or three candles stood on the table behind him, flickering and guttering slightly in the faint night breeze.
“I am glad you have come at once, my son,” he observed, turning his head a little, in a tone which showed no symptoms of trouble. “You had not gone to bed, then? I wished to speak to you alone, before the others have come that I have sent for. Sit down and listen to me.”
Jeremy drew up a smaller chair on the other side of the window and obeyed.
“We have yet another battle before us,” the Speaker pronounced abruptly.
Jeremy started. “What——” he began.
“Another battle,” the old man repeated. “Do not be distressed. I know this is ill news for a bridegroom, yet it is not so bad as it seems. When we returned this morning—it was after you had fainted at the door and while you were still unconscious—I learnt that the President of Wales had made up his mind, only a few days after the Northerners, to march on London. I knew that there was trouble of some kind in the west, but I had got no trustworthy news to show me how far it had gone. But information came to me this morning that the President and his army had passed round the Cotswolds and were marching towards Oxford. The worst part of the news was that the Gloucestershire wool-merchants had joined with him. Of course, they were very much interested in what might happen to the Chairman. That was what that gloomy dullard, Henry Watkins, was hinting at in his speech to-night—I know you saw me frowning at him. I tell you frankly I thought nothing of it. It was only the Yorkshiremen that disturbed the others; and I took it for granted that our victory would settle all quarrels at once.”
“Yes ...” Jeremy murmured doubtfully in the pause.
“Well, I was wrong. It seems that a survivor got away to the west this morning, apparently just after Thomas Wells took the Chairman prisoner. I don’t know how he went. I think he must have got on to the railway somewhere and found an engine ready to move. He could hardly have moved so fast otherwise. Anyway, he found the President, with the greater part of his army, at Oxford—and the President has sent a letter to me. It reached me only a few minutes ago.” He stopped and ran a hand through his beard, regarding Jeremy thoughtfully with tranquil eyes.
“Go on ... go on,” Jeremy whispered tensely.
“That was quick work, wasn’t it?” the Speaker ruminated. “He can’t have started before seven this morning, because I’m sure the Chairman wasn’t taken till then. The letter reached me here at a quarter to midnight—less than seventeen hours. The President was in a great hurry—I know him well, I can see him raging.” He checked himself and smiled at Jeremy with a kind of genial malice. “You want to know what he said in his letter? Well, he warned me that he would hold me responsible for the Chairman’s safe-keeping; and he summoned me to a conference at Oxford where the three of us were to settle our differences and rearrange the affairs of the country.”
“And what answer will you make?” Jeremy managed to utter.
“I have ordered the messenger to be flogged by the grooms,” the Speaker replied composedly. “I expect that they are flogging him now. The only other answer we have to give, Jeremy, will be delivered by your guns.”
“But this is terrible,” Jeremy cried, springing up from his chair. “You don’t understand——”
“Rubbish, my friend,” the old man interrupted with an air of serene commonsense. “It means only that the President does not know what has happened. If he still wishes to fight when he knows—why, then we will fight him. I hope he will wish it. Perhaps when he is broken we shall have peace forever.”
Jeremy walked three or four times up and down the room, pressing his hands together and trying vainly by a violent tension of all his muscles to regain his composure.
“You don’t understand a bit,” he burst out at last, “what luck it all was. I tell you it was luck, merely luck....” He stopped, stumbling and stuttering, so much confounded by this unexpected and horrible menace to his happiness, that he was unable to frame any words of explanation.
The Speaker continued to smile at him. “You are not yourself to-night, Jeremy,” he chided gently. “You are overwrought; and it is not to be wondered at. You will find your next triumph less exciting.”
But Jeremy’s agitation only increased. It was not only his own future that was at stake, but the Lady Eva’s also and his future with her. “Can’t you make peace with him?” he demanded wildly.
“Peace——” the Speaker began in a more vehement tone. But before he could go on the door was opened and two servants appeared, dragging between them a torn and disheveled man, whose bloodshot eyes were rolling madly in their sockets, and whose face was white and twisted with pain. Just inside the room they let go his arms, and he fell sprawling on the floor with a faint moan.
“Peace!” cried the Speaker, rising from his chair and pointing at the man. “That is the ambassador of peace I shall send back to the President! Peace between us, I thank God, is impossible unless he humbles himself to me!”
Jeremy took a step towards the prostrate figure and recoiled again, seeing that the torn garments had been roughly pulled on over lacerated and bleeding shoulders. He recovered himself and bent down over the unhappy creature, whose breath came thick and short through the writhing mouth. He looked up with horror in his eyes.
“This is ... this is the President’s messenger?” he muttered.
The Speaker nodded.
“But you didn’t do this to the men from Bradford. You let them go back untouched.”
“I will make an end of these troubles!” Again Jeremy could see in the old man a reincarnation of one of the vengeful prophets of the ancient Jews. But the next moment the menacing attitude was relaxed, and the Speaker, turning to the immobile servants, said coldly: “Take this fellow out and lay him down in the courtyard. Tether his horse fast beside him. When he is able to move, let him go back without hindrance to his master and say what has been done to him.”
The men bowed, stooped over the moaning wretch and dragged him roughly away. A profound silence followed his last inarticulate, half-conscious complaints as he was borne down the corridor.
“And now,” said the Speaker, resuming his serenity of manner without an effort, “now we must make our plans. I propose that we shall march out at once and prepare to meet the President west of London if he wishes to attack us; and I have decided that you shall take command of the army.”
“I?” Jeremy exclaimed. “Oh, but——” He was overwhelmed by an absurd confusion. Once again he was in the nightmare world, struggling with shadows, wrestling with an incomprehensible mind on which he could never get a grip. “I can’t command the army! I know something about guns, but I’ve no experience of infantry. I shouldn’t....” His protests faded away into silence before the Speaker’s imperturbability. “Guns are all very well ... I don’t mind ... I can’t....” These words jerked out and ceased, like the last spasmodic drops from a fountain, when the water has been turned off at the main. Then, when he himself supposed that he had finished, he added suddenly with an air of conclusiveness: “I know something about guns....”
The Speaker made no answer for a moment or two. When he did it was slowly and with extreme deliberation. “You won this morning’s battle for us,” he said, “by the use of guns. Our battle against the President, if it is ever fought, will have to be won in the same way. None of us properly understands how to do it but you. And, after all, wasn’t there a great general in the old times, somewhere about your time, who began his career in the artillery? What was his name? I know so little of history; but I think it began with a B.”
“Napoleon,” Jeremy suggested with a half hysterical chuckle.
“Napoleon? Was that it? I thought it was some other name. Well, then, if he could——”
“I won’t do it,” Jeremy suddenly uttered.
The door opened again, and the Canadian entered. He was wrapped in a great furred gown, from the ample collar of which his face hardly protruded, looking sharper and leaner than ever.
“You sent for me,” he said in a colorless and slightly drowsy voice. “What has happened now?”
“Sit down,” the Speaker returned. “Henry Watkins and John Hammond will be here in a moment.”
Without a word the Canadian sank into a chair and drew the fur of his gown closely round his ears and mouth. Over the folds of it his small, red eyes looked out with an unwavering and sinister expression. His arrival brought an oppressive silence with it; and Jeremy began suddenly to feel the uncanny effects of being thus wakeful in a sleeping world. He looked furtively at the calm, stern face of the Speaker, and saw how the thick lips were compressed in a rigid line. Outside a faint and eery wind persistently moved the leaves. Within, the great building was stonily silent all around them; and the flames of the candles on the table danced at a movement of the air or burnt up straight and still in the succeeding calm. The hush lasted until a servant announced the attendance of Henry Watkins and John Hammond, who had been fetched out of their beds and had reached the Treasury together.
“I told you, sir, I told you how it would be,” said Henry Watkins at once in a voice like the insistent notes of a tolling bell.
The Speaker made an abrupt gesture. “You have heard then?” he asked sharply.
“We passed a man outside, sir, in the courtyard, lying on the ground beside his tethered horse,” John Hammond interposed, “and we made inquiries while we were waiting to be brought in to you.”
“I have made no secret of it,” the Speaker said simply. “Every waking man in the Treasury may know all about it by now. Well, then....” And in his deliberate and unconcerned manner he repeated to them the same story that he had told to Jeremy. “Nor am I sorry for it,” he concluded. “It is as well that we should be done with all this at once, as I think we shall be.”
When he had finished the Canadian shifted slightly in his chair. “You say they are at Oxford now?” he asked, his voice a little muffled by the thick fur that brushed his lips. The Speaker assented. “And the Gloucestershire men have joined them?” Again the Speaker assented. “Ah!” murmured the Canadian enigmatically; and he seemed to sink further into the folds of his gown, as though he were preparing himself for sleep.
Henry Watkins and John Hammond made no answer, but looked at one another lugubriously.
“Come, gentlemen,” the Speaker cried heartily. “We know now that we have nothing to be afraid of. I have determined that Jeremy Tuft shall take command of the whole army; and I am sure that the man who saved us this morning can save us again.”
“Ah, that is a good plan,” observed John Hammond sagely. He was a heavy man of slow speech, and he wagged his head solemnly while he talked. “Jeremy Tuft will command the whole army. That is a very good plan.”
“We could not do better,” said Henry Watkins with an approach to cheerfulness.
Jeremy fancied that he heard Thomas Wells sniff under his wrappings; and the justice of the implied criticism twitched horribly at his nerves. He stared out of the window into the blackness, a resolve taking shape in his mind. At last he stood up deliberately and spoke with a roughness, almost arrogance, that he certainly did not feel.
“I will not take command of the army,” he said, letting the words fall one by one. “I am not fit to do it. I should only bring disaster on all of us. I have too much at stake to risk it. It would be better if Thomas Wells were to take command.” He stopped and waited, defiant and sullen. The Canadian made one sharp movement, then folded his gown more closely around him, so as still further to hide his face, and sat on impassively.
Henry Watkins was at him at once, eagerly arguing that there was little hope, but that what there was lay in his hands. Jeremy looked around as though he were seeking some way of escape. He felt very weary and alone. He didn’t want to argue: it was a waste of time and pains since his mind was made up, and neither the most urgent nor the most persuasive reasoning could change it. But while Henry Watkins talked and he countered in stubborn monosyllables, he was watching sidelong, with an unnamed, unadmitted apprehension, the Speaker’s resolved and quiet face. Suddenly Henry Watkins ceased and threw up his hands in a gesture of despair. Then the Speaker rose, walked away, and, without a word, tugged sharply at the bell-pull. A servant immediately answered the summons, and in his ear the old man delivered a long whispered order. The servant bowed and went out, and the Speaker returned to his seat. All the others looked at him curiously, but maintained the silence which had fallen on them.
Then Jeremy involuntarily broke out, “What have you done? What have you sent for?”
“I have sent for my daughter,” the Speaker answered steadily. “It is time for her to be called into our counsels.”