“See, my dear friend,” Bellamy exclaimed, “what great things come from small means! The document which you preserved for us, and for which we had to fight so hard, has done all this.”
“It is marvelous!” Laverick murmured.
“It is very simple,” Bellamy declared. “That meeting in Vienna was meant to force our hands. It is all a question of the balance of strength. Germany and Austria together, with Russia friendly,—even with Russia neutral,—could have defied Europe. Germany could have spread out her army westwards while Austria seized upon her prey. It was a splendid plot, and it was going very well until the Czar himself was suddenly confronted by our King and his Ministers with a revelation of the whole affair. At Windsor the thing seemed different to him. The French Government behaved splendidly, and the Czar behaved like a man. Germany and Austria are left planté la. If they fight, well, it will be no one-sided affair. They have no fleet, or rather they will have none in a fortnight’s time. They have no means of landing an army here. Austria, perhaps, can hold Russia, but with a French army in better shape than it has been for years, and the English landing as many men as they care to do, with ease, anywhere on the north coast of Germany, the entire scheme proved abortive. Come into the club and have a drink, Laverick. To-day great things have happened to me.”
“And to me,” Laverick interposed.
“You can guess my news, perhaps,” Bellamy said, as they seated themselves in easy-chairs. “Mademoiselle Idiale has promised to be my wife.”
Laverick held out his hand.
“I congratulate you heartily!” he exclaimed. “I have been an engaged man myself for something like half-an-hour.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
A FAREWELL APPEARANCE
“One thing, at least, these recent adventures should teach whoever may be responsible for the government of this country,” Bellamy remarked to his wife, as he laid down the morning paper. “For the first time in many years we have taken the aggressive against Powers of equal standing. We were always rather good at bullying smaller countries, but the bare idea of an ultimatum to Germany would have made our late Premier go lightheaded.”
“And yet it succeeded,” Louise reminded him.