The ancient Feeney clapped his hands. “If you had the nerve to follow troops in action, that you have in world-politics, Talliaferro, you’d have us all whipped,” he said. “You’ve got it exactly. The insulation has long been worn off between Russia and Japan, specifically between Korea and Manchuria. Japan, looted of her spoils from the Chinese war, is one vast serpent’s tooth for Russia. With England’s moral support—I say moral support—Japan will tackle Russia and sing anthems for the chance.”
“You don’t mean that such an alliance is signed?” Finacune asked excitedly, and Trollope was leaning forward.
“Exactly,” said Feeney quietly. “The Pan-Anglo wired me the story to-day, and the Pioneer here will print it to-morrow morning. Japan will now make demands of Russia that will force a war. That will pull Russia up from England’s India borders. Some diplomacy, that alliance, my boys! England has jockeyed Russia out of her aggression; rendered helpless the idea of rebellion in India because Russian support is needed there; England has put half of Asia between her boundaries and the possibility of war! The absolute splendor of the whole matter is that England calls her unheard-of alliance with Japan—a movement for the preservation of Chinese and Korean integrity! I ask you in all truth and soberness—as Saint Paul said—isn’t this humor for the high and lonely gods?”
THIRD CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE RELATES HOW A MASTER CAME DOWN FROM THE GOODLY MOUNTAINS TO FIND HIS CHELA IN THE BURNING PLAINS
Routledge parted from Bulwer-Shinn’s cavalry at Madirabad and reached Calcutta two days before the others, except Bingley, who was but a couple of hours behind him—just enough for the latter to miss the boat Routledge had taken to Bombay. The “Horse-killer” took himself mighty seriously in this just-miss matter, and was stirred core-deep. He wanted to have the first word in London as well as the last word in India. He had studied the matter of the mystery with his peculiar zeal, cabling his point of view in full. So rapidly had he moved down, however, that he missed a cable from the Thames, hushing further theories. It was with rage that he determined to railroad across India and regain the lost time, possibly catch a ship ahead of Routledge at Bombay. This was the man he feared at home and afield, in work and play.
Bingley must not be misunderstood. He was a very important war-man, a mental and physical athlete, afraid of few things—least of all, work. Such men are interesting, sometimes dangerous. Bingley was honest in material things; on occasion, hatefully so. He was the least loved of the English war-correspondents, and one of the most famous. He envied the genial love which the name of Routledge so generally inspired; envied the triumphs of the “mystic,” as Finacune had called him; copied the Routledge-method of riding frequently alone, but found it hopeless to do so and preserve the regard of his contemporaries. The careless manner with which Routledge achieved high results was altogether beyond Bingley, as well as the capacity of seeming to forget the big things he had done. It was necessary for Bingley to be visibly triumphant over his coups; indeed, penetratingly so. This failure of manner, and a certain genius for finding his level on the unpopular side of a question, challenged the dislike of his kind.
Routledge settled himself for the long voyage with much to think about and Carlyle’s “French Revolution”—already read on many seas. Ordinarily, a mystery such as he had left in India would have furnished material for deep contemplation, but he chose to put it away from him and to live in full the delights of a returning exile. Bombay was agog with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, but Routledge did not give the subject more than one of his days out of the last Indian port. He missed nothing of the significance of this great move by England, which had so entranced Feeney, but when he undertook to delve for the first cause his faculties became lame and tired, and he had learned too well the therapeutics of sea-travel to continue an aimless grind. An accomplished traveller, he put aside all wastes of hurry and anxiety and allowed his days and nights to roll together without the slightest wear. Consequently, big volumes of tissue were renovated and rebound. With Routledge, it was not “To-morrow we will be at Port Said,” but a possible reflection to-day that “we are somewhere in the Red Sea.” Frequently, he read entire nights away; or dozed from midnight until dawn, wrapped in a rug on deck. His brain fell into a dreamy state of unproductiveness, until he could scarcely recall that it had ever been a rather imperious ruler of crises; a producer of piled words which developed, in war’s own pigments, the countless garish and ghastly films which his eye had caught. The month at sea smoothed the hard lines of service from his face, as it softened the calluses of his bridle-hand.
It was not until the dusk, when his boat steamed into the shipping before Marseilles, that the old click-click of his mental tension was resumed and the thought-lights burned strong again. He found then that much which had been vague and unreckonable at Calcutta was cleared and finished, as often so pleasantly happens after a season of pralaya, as the Hindus express the period of rest, whether it be sleep or death. Standing well forward on deck, with the brilliance of the city pricking the dark of the offing, it was borne to Routledge that his life at this period had reached a parting of the ways. The divergences stretched out before him clearly, as if his mind had arranged them subconsciously, while his material faculties had drowsed in the lull of far journeying. Thoughts began to rain upon him.
“Routledge, how are you and the world to hook up from now on?... You’ve played so far, just played, scattered your years all over the earth, with but little profit to yourself or to the world. If you should die to-night you would possibly have earned five lines in a thirty-volume encyclopædia: ‘Cosmo Routledge, American born, an English war-correspondent and traveller, rode with Tom, stood fire with Dick, and ran with Henry; undertook to study at first hand various native India affairs, and died of a fever at the edge of’—God knows what yellow desert or turbid river.”
He smiled and lit his pipe, musing on. “The point is, I’ll be dead long before the fever—if I keep up this world-tramp—dead to myself and to men—one of the great unbranded, crossing and recrossing his trail around and around the world.... Shall I sit down in London or New York, and double on my whole trail so far on paper—books, editorials, special articles, long dinners beginning at eight, an hour of billiards, a desk in some newspaper office—fat, fatuous, and fixed at fifty?... Which is better, a gaunt, hungry, storm-bitten wanderer, with his face forever at the fire-lit window-panes of civilization, or a creased and cravatted master of little ceremonies within? A citizen of ordered days and nights, or an exile with the windy planet forever roaring in his skull?”