The Silent Call

by Edwin Milton Royle

Other enthusiasts threw confetti over him.

This was civilization's welcome to him! He tried to take it good-naturedly but upon his face was a fixed look of disgust.

The cab got ahead a few feet at a time, then stopped in another block, and he went through the felicitations of these joyous citizens all over again. To his immense relief they at last reached the hotel. Here at last was a haven of refuge. How much was it, he inquired of the cabbie.

"Ten dollars!"

Hal smiled incredulously. He invited the jehu to guess again, to think it over. That worthy reminded him that it was election night, which was put forward as an argument that was in its nature unassailable. Hal patiently explained that he didn't see why he personally should pay five or six times the price because some one had been elected governor of a State which apparently stood in sore need of government. He reminded the obstinate and aggressive person that it was not over half a mile from the station to the hotel and one dollar was ample—two extravagant. He offered to compromise on two. This was received with profuse profanity of a highly inflammable character. In the interstices between expletives were interjected various allusions to the hours it had taken to go the half-mile, to the fact that the cab was scratched, that the horse's life had been endangered, and other more or less irrelevant matters. Hal thought he saw the cab-person signal to a police-person standing a little behind him. Finally the gathering waters of affliction broke and poured forth in righteous wrath. Hal stated with picturesque additions that the man was a crook and a thief.

The burly brute tried to strike the young man with the butt end of his loaded whip. Hal avoided the blow and caught the man square on the jaw, and he went down for the count.

That was all Hal knew until he came back to consciousness in a police cell. It was a very painful consciousness, associated with bandages, a head bursting with pain, and most unpleasant surroundings. Then little by little he came to a vague realization of what had happened. He was practically a stranger in New York. To whom could he turn? He was a British subject. Perhaps he could communicate with the representatives of His Majesty's Government.

In addition to having been very thoroughly beaten, he found that he had been very thoroughly robbed. It was therefore with some difficulty that he could persuade his jailer to communicate with the British Consulate. The promise of a considerable reward finally held out inducements. Fortunately for the prisoner, the British Vice-Consul, Mr. Percy Holmes Tracy, proved to be an old friend of his father's family. Mr. Tracy supplied the prisoner with immediate funds and bestirred himself in his behalf. He found that Hal was accused of being drunk and disorderly, resisting arrest, and striking an officer. Fortunately for the prisoner, Mr. Tracy found that the hotel detective had been a witness of the brutal assault. The detective told the Vice-Consul that the policemen's use of the night-stick was totally unprovoked and unnecessary, that Hal did not resist arrest, that he had no chance to do so, that the policeman and cab-driver were pals who had been suspected of "working together" before, etc., etc. Hal expressed the enthusiastic desire to "make it warm" for all concerned, to have the policeman "broke," etc., etc. All of which Mr. Tracy admitted to be a perfectly natural and justifiable feeling, but he reminded the young man that it would be a somewhat tedious and exacting undertaking. How much time was he willing to devote to it? Could he stay and give it his undivided attention? No, he could not. In fact he was due to sail at once for London. Ah, well, that was another matter, was it not? Under the circumstances it was Mr. Holmes Tracy's advice to pocket his losses, swallow his pride, smother his indignation, and set it down to valuable experience. It would have been cheaper to have paid the ten dollars. These are some of the disadvantages of a highly organized society. And so it happened that the man who had, single-handed, arrested desperadoes in a country where men carry a gun and know how to use it, was made the foolish victim of the polished machinery of "a highly organized society."

Mr. Holmes Tracy's advice was too obviously wise to be ignored. Confronted with the hotel detective the police-grafter was glad to withdraw his charge, with the understanding that no countercharges should be preferred against him. It wasn't altogether satisfying. Community life was a series of compromises; its law expediency.

The two days Hal had intended to spend in Washington had been spent in prison. Perhaps he was safer there. He and civilization had never been friends. Hal welcomed his escape from New York. He was glad to get out of her canyons and pigeon-holes into the light and air. He was glad to reach the boat. When he left London and had turned his face to the West there had seemed a conspiracy to help him on. The winds and waves had romped about him in the sunshine, and hope and joy sang in his heart. He had not felt lonely, but a great content had brooded over him. Now the elements frowned on him. Head winds blew a hurricane the whole way over. Huge waves smote the ship and shook her angrily. Now she rode them down, now shouldered them aside, now cut her way through them, then bowed her head to the blow, shook herself free, throbbing, quivering in every joint, every muscle and nerve and sinew of her crying out against the incessant wear and tear of it. And over all brooded a sky of fleeing gray and black demons. Not a ray of sunlight crept through the clouds. The voyage was a nightmare. Wind and wave were screaming to him to go back; trying to force him back. He was ill and frightfully depressed. He was as eager almost to get out of the ship as if Love's welcome waited for him; as it seemed to do for all but him. But it was scarcely better on shore. He rode up to London in a cold drenching rain. The land looked old, tired, and discouraged. And London!—this Mecca of the exiled Briton. How many hearts turn to it in far off-India, China, Australia, Canada, and the waste places of the earth! How many eager eyes look back to it or look forward to it! What memories it holds for those who know in their souls they can never see it again, and what radiant visions it offers to those who sweat and save and suffer and perhaps lie and steal that one day they may come back to it, and bring it the tribute of their blood and treasure. London is compelling like some great sad song that tells of sorrows and wrongs. But it had no message and no welcome to this returning pilgrim. Before they reached the city they rode out of the rain and into one of those fogs which creeps out of its tombs and graveyards and buried horrors, and tries to materialize itself and once more take possession of the actual life of the city.