v„. 1 ^ Irs. VICl'UR il ji'^-- K p w m, 1^ A< ^^ THE LIGHT ABOVE THE CROSS ROADS Mrs. Mildred E. Youngman, Kingston, Massachusetts. MARCrs .FAXOVEK THE LIGHT ABOVE THE CROSS ROADS BY MRS. VICTOR RICKARD Author of "Young Mr. Gibbs," "Dregs" U'"'^^ NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1918 Published 1918 in U. S. A. TO Dictor "They will come back — come back again, as long as the red earth rolls. He never \Tasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think He would squander souls?'' THE LIGHT ABOVE THE CROSS ROADS The Light Above the Cross Roads CHAPTER I SIR HENRY JANOVER, K.C.LE., Governor of the Province of.Barapore. sat looking down his long dining-table, idly crumbling his bread with his strong fingers. The scene before him held none of the charm of nov- elty. The great table with its masses of silver and flowers, the shaded lights, the semi-royal livery of the numerous servants, the chatter of the guests which stormed and rose above the music of the band, were all wearily famiHar to him. He knew that the formula represented " pleasure," and " pleasure " is a necessary part of the life of a high official. It also represented entertainment, and Sir Henry made no effort to sup- plement the already lavish arrangements made for his guests' satisfaction, by any personal attempt to loin in the noise of the many voices. There was no weakness in Sir Henry Janover, his strength had the defiance of a challenge and his pride was reserved and still. Iron grey hair grew thickly on his well-shaped head, and his eyes were startlingly blue, and cold as glacier ice, his dark blue coat with its velvet collar and gold buttons fitted his broad shoulders faultlessly, and his order showed finely, increasing the air of distinctive- ness that actively claimed his right to be intensely him- self. He was still a young man, young for the position I The Light above the Cross Roads he held, and young in his intense vitality, which re- tained the driving power of a storm, in a country where vitality lowers perceptibly with every added year of service. Just then he was not troubling himself to be polite to Mrs. Jos. Digby, the lady on his right, whose Grecian profile had, it was said, acted upon the judgment and hearts of twelve of his fellow-countr}Tnen at a critical juncture of her life. He was looking down the strip of lace and glass and silver, and considering, with slow, concentrated scrutiny, the woman who sat at the farther end, officially his wife. Lady Janover was still beautiful, and art and care as- sisted her admirably in her effect of permanent success. The fact that she lived upon her emotions and was at the mercy of her own vanity was obvious to the hard eyes that watched her; that young Lord Hartfield, lately arrived in the Station, was rapidly approaching the fatuous stage of open adoration was equally easy to discern. Sir Henry Janover's mouth twisted slightly. It was the usual vulgar business. She was laughing and ly- ing, he knew, even though the noise of the band and the talk of the forty guests made it impossible for him to hear one word. He had not lived with her for one month, much less the whole of their married life, with- out having learnt to weigh her character to an ounce. A loathing of the whole painted show swept over him suddenly, and he thought of himself as he was when everything was young, and when his dream had not been within measurable distance of being realized. Now he was a ruler in the Promised Land, and the irony of the strange fatality that follows upon the wish The Light above the Cross Roads fulfilled wrought within him as it has wrought in the hearts of hundreds of men, forcing him to say that it is better never to get beyond Beth Peor's heights, and that the luckiest adventurer is the man who dies before he enters, and is buried by angels in blessed anonymity. Sir Henry saw himself tied by a thousand chains to the very greatness of his position, tied to a wife with whom it might be a dreary tragedy, yet precluded by the unwritten law of his order from taking any short cut to freedom from her presence in his house, tied to the very chair he sat on, and obliged to entertain stran- gers without the slightest hope of finding among his guests that unexpected angel sent to encourage the hearts of the hospitable. Still, he knew himself to be successful, and there was some essence of joy in that knowledge. Had he stood alone he might even have been happy, but his ambition and his pride would not permit him to stand alone and push the woman he had married entirely out of his life. She was always there. She lived in the light of her position, glorying openly in its power and using it, when it suited her, for any petty end. It sickened him, as though some one had taken a sword stained in war to kill a black beetle. She used him as a telling weapon when she posed as a neglected wife, she used everything she touched in the same way, and eternally she acted her part to the men who came and went. What she gave he could hardly assess. She seemed to have some vital inspiration animating her to continue successfully, and she blossomed with each victory in a manner that made Henry Janover realize that his wife had made a life study of the art she had practised. Hartfield 3 The Light above the Cross Roads was years younger than Lady Janover, and taking it seriously ; Willie Baring, on her other side, had been through it, and did not trouble to disguise his amuse- ment as he talked with slighting familiarity to his hostess. Sir Henry Janover fiddled again with his bread. iVVillie Baring's conversation was known all over India, and he could guess that he was growing careless, but he remained entirely unmoved. Once upon a tima he had been otherwise, but that was long ago, so long ago that he had forgotten when he began not to mind, and ceased to hate her for w^hat she did and had grown to hate her for what she was, and finally, had come to regard her as one might regard some nuisance that could not be abated at a reasonable cost. One power alone Lady Janover exercised over her husband at all times, and that Avas the power to sicken him, and raise up a latent brutality of speech in him that he neither tried nor desired to conquer. She had chosen to stay in the East, she required to share his position, and, such being the case, Henry Janover was not ex- actly the man to make her lot a bed of roses. Half-way down the table he could see Casson, the Chief Secretary, glance at her, his studied reserve betraying nothing of the thoughts within. Out of all the men and women gathered together under his roof, Henry Janover counted only Casson as his friend ; but, after the manner of men, they never touched upon the private lives of one another, though Casson knew that his Chief was not the man that popular report painted him. Lady Janover had not spared her hus- band when she proved her own right to a certain liberty of conduct, and the expression ** numbing 4 The Light above the Cross Roads pain" was one she often used; and as Janover had never permitted himself the smallest indiscretion that could be twisted into a scandal, the ever useful fiction of a vague and veiled w^oman somewhere on the border grew and prospered exceedingly. " How well Lydia looks tonight," remarked Mrs. Digby, w^ho felt that if Sir Henry stared down the table any longer people would begin to think she was failing badly, and she had a reputation to con- sider. Janover turned his eyes tow^ards her and, as she expressed it afterwards, made her feel as if she was nailed to the w^all. " Which of them do you prefer? " he said slowly. " And how you must admire her," continued Mrs. Digby. " My position gives me exceptional chances." " Has Lydia told you our Simla scheme? " Sir Henry's eyelids flickered. " I know about the Simla scheme," he said almost gently, his voice softening into dangerous quiet. " Oh, that is splendid." replied Mrs. Digby with nervous exaggeration of her manner. Janover moved impatiently. Lydia was still laugh- ing at the last witticism of Willie Baring, and the guests were sitting in suspense. In little things such as this she constantly irritated him. "Simla," he said again. "Paradise, is it not? Heaven on earth and a ballroom on chains thrown in. Who with a heart could close the doors of such a Garden of Eden to two such " Mrs. Digby rose quickly, and smiHng at her host left him with un- disguised relief. 5 The Light above the Cross Roads " Oh, my poor Lydia," she murmured in the ear of Lady Janover. " Oh, my poor dear Lyd, I should die of fright if I was left alone in the dark with that terrible Henry of yours." Lady Janover bent her chestnut head. " Then, Vi, that only shows what a fool you are. Henry would neither eat you nor want to eat you." When the women had left the long dining-room Sir Henry was always made to feel conscious of his own power to hold others aloof. He kept men not so much at arm's length as at rapier's length, and it was Casson who came and sat near him, a very marked division gaping between them and the others. Janover laughed to himself as he saw Hartfield place himself at the farthest point possible from his host. " He's an honest ass," he thought contemptu- ously, and turning towards Casson he became oblivious to the rest of the company, talking in a slightly low- ered voice. " I've made up my mind, Casson. Marcus goes home with Lady Janover next month." " It's time he went," replied Casson emphatically. " Marcus is eight, and a boy of that age gets out of hand in this country." He laughed a pleasant easy laugh. " I saw him pounding Gul Sher today. Go- ing for him with his whip he was, and when I inter- fered he cursed me with a few well-chosen words he had learnt from a Tommy who was having an argu- ment with a friend, so he told me." Janover crossed one leg over the other and shaded his eyes with his hand as he went on speaking. " I've sworn to one thing, and that is that my 6 The Light above the Cross Roads mistakes and the mistakes made by others on my behalf, shall not be his. He starts as well as I can start him, and as well as I can start him doesn't mean Eton and Oxford. I'm damned if it does. He's got to learn to live, not to play; he's got to learn that the Empire isn't a music hall in Leicester Square, and that a man's work isn't all polo and shooting. I've watched the stuff we turn out, and I wonder how it is we still are what we are, with the training we have behind us." " You know my ideas," Casson spoke very earnestly. " My people could do very little for me, but what they did has been of every use. If I hadn't gone to Germany " " That is the point," said Janover restlessly. " It's an infernal business, Casson. I'd like the boy to get his schooling in England, but if I want him to be fitted for the big things, how can I send him to a place where the Masters have to be M.C.C. cricketers or International footballers, and God knows what else, and which he will leave, unable to write his own lan- guage correctly and totally unable to speak a word of any other. If he has brains enough for the Diplomatic, he must begin with a better training than he could get in England." He paused for a moment and said very deliberately, " For many reasons that all dovetail one into another I am determined to send him to Germany." " He is rather young for school." Casson was thinking as he spoke. " Will Lady Janover stay at home with him for a year or two ? " "If she did " Janover pulled himself up abruptly. " I am inclined to think that Marcus would 7 The Light above the Cross Roads be better in some ways in a simple family, where he would learn a very^ different life from the life that induces habits of thrashing orderlies and using words he picks up on the roads. Yes, Casson, I am clear on that point." He rose as he spoke and the conversation was ended. It was much later in the evening that Janover stood to say good-night to his guests, and watched Hart- field's lingering parting with his wife. " Don't go yet, I want to speak to you," he said, approaching Lady Janover as the vast room emptied and she stood alone at the far end of the polished floor. She was playing with a long pearl chain, and she replied with a stifled yawn that she wished he could wait until any time that was not now. " It is always the same, Henry, You usually begin to insist about something just when I don't feel like it." Janover walked towards the open window and looked out at the tropic night ; below him the palm trees whispered in the first light breath of the coming dawn, and the world looked fair and full of peace. When he turned back to the room, Lydia was sitting in a low chair lighting a cigarette. " I am waiting, you may observe," she remarked with studied indifference. " What have I done now? " Janover stood with his hands in his pockets and looked down at her. " I told you that I have arranged for you to take Marcus home next month." " And I don't intend to go." Lady Janover's eyes blazed, and the hand that held the lighted cigarette trembled. 8 The Light above the Cross Roads " You propose to go to Simla with Mrs. Digby." " Well, if I do, I don't see that you can object." Janover leaned his arm on a high carved cabinet. " I have ceased to object or care what you do," he replied, without a trace of annoyance in his voice. '* But I have other considerations, Lydia, consider- ations that concern Marcus ; and where he is concerned, anything you may wish or desire does not count. You fully understand ? " " I ought to." Her voice was mutinous. '* The child will be perfectly all right up in Simla, as I have already told you, and I have no intention whatever of leaving India just at present." *' You will take him to England next month." Janover's voice was still level and calm. " And after that he goes, as I intend, to Germany, when your supervision will be at an end, and you can go to — Simla." Lady Janover dropped her cigarette on the floor and placed a small satin-shod foot upon it. " Will you admit that / am to have any say in the bringing up of my own son? " " Your ' say,' as you put it, has been his dominating factor for eight years." A touch of heat crept into his eyes and voice. " To what end? Where has his love gone? You should know something upon that subject, but it is not you he loves; the only person he cares about is Janki the Ayah. Where is his alle- giance? Do you command it? I think not; he has given that to the Havildar who rides w4th him. Whom does he obey? No one and nothing but his own child passions. Good God! You ask me if you are to have no say in the moulding of your child's life 9 The Light above the Cross Roads and I answer you Never — Never if I can prevent it ; and I can prevent it." Lady Janover gave a shrill, ugly laugh. " How very melodramatic, Henry. If the child does like the people who are with him, so much the better. As for his little tantrums, school will change all that. Why on earth all our lives should be dis- located for a child like Marcus I entirely fail to under- stand." Janover stared sombrely at her. " You would fail," he said slowly; ** nevertheless he is going where I intend he shall go." " I hate Germans." Lady Janover shifted her point of attack. " It will absolutely ruin him. What sort of friends will he make, I ask you? Germans. What sort of ideas will he get? German ideas. He will come back unbearable and nothing on earth will ever make him fit to look at. Germany is a dreadful country that is full of philosophers and waiters, and if you had ever seen a German officer out of uniform — really, Henry, when you talk of considering the best interests for Marcus, all this is pure nonsense. Of course he goes to Eton." Janover leaned forward and his eyes grew threat- ening. "You must go to Simla, must you, Lydia? You must take Hartfield there with you and drag the poor puppet about after you. ^leantime Marcus progresses along his own path, until no school on earth would keep him when he is sent there, and no discipline exists that will break him of the curse of his early bringing up here." lO The Light above the Cross Roads Lady Janover drew back in her chair and her hands gripped the arms. When Henry grew Hke this she knew tliere was no appeal. " I have many things to think of," he continued in the same tense voice : " Marcus needs special chances and special training. How will it be if, deep, somewhere in him, there is a taint that may develop? " He had her at his mercy now, and he spoke with cruel lightness. " Shall we call you a diplomatist, Lydia? If he inherits your facility he may so easily overdo the part. It isn't so safe for a man, accord- ing to our present code of ideas, as it is for a woman." " I will not go.'' She had her head down and her face looked old and set. He paced the room for a few moments and then stood before her. "If I could arrange to let you stay and send the boy home, without public scandal, I would do so. I care so little that I would do so. But since this is not possible, and I have to consider my own prestige in so far as I personally stand for a great deal more than a mere individual, I ask you to submit to the agonies of separation for the hot weather. Six months of sacrifice — surely, Lydia, your maternal heart accepts the justice of the judgment." " I hate you," she said in a suppressed voice. " You will live to regret this, Henry. You will live to be sorry that you did this, and I hope you will. I hope yon will suffer for it." Janover yawned idly. " The one certainty in life is that one will regret everything sooner or later. Good-night." She was crying now, her head on her arms. But II The Light above the Cross Roads her tears always came at the right moment, and, his hands still deep in his pockets, he strolled out of the room. Upstairs in the nursery, in a dim light, the Ayah bent over a small bed, shrouded by a mosquito cur- tain, and as she bent she sang in nasal monotone : Good Baba sogia, Mucken roti hogia. Good Baba nini, Mucken roti chinie. It was the slumber song of the princeling whom she adored, and in his sleep he turned and called her by a word which he had added to his vocabulary during the day, learnt from Willie Baring; but the Ayah only kissed his feet and droned her song in his ears. Down in the big guest-room his father and mother, whom he called " They," were fighting about him, but what did that matter? Ayah and Gul Sher loved him and he beat them, and life w^as full of entertainment; so after a long day of life and delight Marcus slept like the weary little animal he was. 12 CHAPTER II IN spite of tears, in spite of further protestations, Lady Janover, accompanied by Marcus and his Ayah, made the journey home at the appointed time, and Sir Henry Janover came to see the last of them as they embarked on the big liner lying in Bombay har- bour. His eyes softened as he looked down at the boy. They were very much alike, except that Marcus had inherited his mother's chestnut hair ; but the eyes were the same, except for what life had put into those of Sir Henry, and the defiant lift of the chin was there, and in a thousand indescribable ways little Marcus proclaimed the fact that here again was Henry Janover ready to fight his way through in his own generation. Sir Henry recognized the likeness. This was his anchor, his chief tie to life, and the long task of training and fitting the delicate instrument for high uses was definitely to be given over into unknown hands. The life of the boy was everything to him, and to let the boy have his chance he must divide him from his mother by a huge gap of years. If she loved him she would spoil and warp him, teach him her standpoint, lower his ideals, urge him to follow the ways of the men his father most despised. If she hated the child, as at times he believed she did, in some other way she would cast her shadow to blight and destroy. His own life was bound in with the life of the East, and Sir Henry Janover was well 13 The Light above the Cross Roads aware that even with his fine constitution he too, like so many others, might find the sudden end come upon him without warning. At best, he could only- see the boy now and then, for the possibilities of home leave were rare at his time, and the haunt- ing thought that Lydia would tangle the threads of the one destiny he cherished made him resolve def- initely to put Marcus beyond her power. Again and again he looked earnestly at the boy, his very soul disturbed in the moment of parting, and the pathos of the smallness and youth of the little Marcus hurt him like a wound. When they were gone and his wife had turned an indifferent shoulder towards him in farewell, Sir Henry watched the ship steam out of the harbour with a strange mixture of feelings. So much was at stake in the future, so much at the mercy of chance, so much must happen in the ultimate moulding of the whole nature of the boy, before they met again and met, of necessity, as strangers. He wondered if he would be able to help him, or if his own temperament would chill and repress his son, when they met later and he had to stand the criticism that is inevitable between one generation and the next. The sun went down behind the sea, the sudden darkness of the Tropics folded in rapidly, and as Sir Henry walked slowly back towards his hotel, he still thought of the animated child-face, the defiant eyes, and the suggestion of something brave in the upright little figure waving down to him from the towering deck. Life that engulfs so many beginnings and that thwarts so many, and that throws so many aside — what was it going to do with Marcus Janover ? 14 The Light above the Cross Roads Marcus had gone over the traveller's horizon, and his new life lay mapped out for him by the hand of his father. As for Lady Janover, Sir Henry did not think of her at all ; but, as she was a bad sailor and already sea-sick, she thought of him and added yet another item to the list of his iniquities. The burden of Lady Janover 's lamentations grew with each stage of the journey, and reached its crash- ing climax as she arrived in Hanover one sultry sum- mer evening. She saw no beauty in the domes and towers, in the flower-bordered streets, in the clean open vistas that were bathed in the strong bright sunset; her heart was in Simla, and without a heart it is not easy to enjoy anything, at least so long as that troublesome and unruly member drags the thoughts across the distance of half the world. For a brief space Lydia had enjoyed herself in Paris; but Marcus proved himself an encumbrance there as elsewhere, so she hurried on towards his destination where she could shake free and leave him. " It is a hateful country," she said to Marcus, who gazed through the carriage window as they drove to- wards Adelaidestrasse 6, the house of the worthy Herr Pastor Gail and his wife. " These flowers are like bits of stodgy Berlin wool-work, after the East; and the women — I suppose your father intends you to be taught to admire the fat stupid Gretchen type," "What is a Gretchen?" asked Marcus. " A suet pudding," replied Lady Janover with em- phasis. " However, it has nothing to say to me. Whatever sins I have committed I haven't had a 15 The Light above the Cross Roads hand in this particular crime; it is your father's own pattern and design, and it is to be * made in Ger- many,' " Marcus had very little recollection of what hap- pened afterwards. He knew that he arrived and that the house was strange, and that there appeared to be a great deal of very much polished furniture inside and tremendously solid curtains, and that there were quite interesting pictures on the tiles of the high stove. He had only a vague impression that his mother and her scent and jewels and silk dress vanished at some unknown moment, and that a very kind woman told him not to cry, and appeared astonished when he asked why she thought he was going to cry. There were first impressions of his little room up- stairs — of its almost intolerable tidiness, and of the pervading smell of camphor and beeswax that was everywhere ; and the red cross-stitch borders along the curtains, and the mats and wool-work that sank and blended into other memories all fragmentary and fluid, and yet in a sense permanent. Herr Pastor Gail, a large pallid man with a bald head and gold-rimmed glasses, towered out among the first dim figures that reflected themselves on the memory mirror of Marcus Janover. The Herr Pastor spoke English fluently and well, and was to continue his young pupil's education in his own tongue conver- sationally imtil such time as a further effort along the weary road of learning was considered advisable. It was owing, in fact, to the Herr Pastor's proficiency in the English language that he formed an extremely bad impression of the early bringing up of Lady Jan- over's son, and his manner, which had been polite to i6 The Light above the Cross Roads the verge of servility to the Gnadigc Frau, altered after her departure. Marcus loathed him with the violent passionate hatred of the very young, from the moment when the fat flabby hand patted his head and made him desire to bite it. Set against his intemperate dislike of the Herr Pastor was another feeling, however, equally strong, which also arose at the first touch of kindly hands and a voice saying in very uncertain English that he must not cry. Frau Pastor Gail, with her sweet placid face and calm eyes, was a type un- known to Marcus; he looked at her long and search- ingly, and told her in Hindustani that he thought she was good and that he liked her, and though she laughed and shook her smooth head and said things entirely incomprehensible, he felt she was soothing and soft, and in some unknown fashion like his dear Janki whom he had lost. There was very little else that remained clearly defined in the first memory of his coming, except that the Pastor, whom Frau Gail spoke of as " dcr liehe Papa," had made horrible noises of anger when she cuddled the little alien in her arms, and that she had removed him to his own small room on high, under the tiles. With all the wonderful philosophy of childhood, Marcus realized and accepted the fact that Adelaide- strasse 6 was his home, and that life there was his life, and so he grew insensibly to conform to the standards required of him, outwardly in the case of the Herr Pastor, and inwardly in the case of Frau Gail. It was better not to defy the Herr Pastor, since he was all powerful, but it remained easy to hate 17 The Light above the Cross Roads him, and Marcus made no secret of his true feelings when he thought about the question in flashes of an- tagonism. The Herr Pastor regarded little boys merely as an irritating and troublesome source of income; he taught them because it paid him to teach them, and it did not occur to him to study them as individuals. Marcus attended his classes, and had the greater privilege added of being enfolded in the membership of the Pastor's o\yn family circle; so it is possible that he was more conscious of the fact that in Marcus there dwelt a tense and almost crude re- ality, free, natural, and spontaneous, that acted upon his teacher, and did not in any way add to his liking for his pupil. The hours spent in the class-room in the company of some twenty other boys, a few of whom were English like himself, were hours of intense boredom to Marcus. He was hopelessly behind his compan- ions, and during the whole of the first year he mutin- ously refused to make the smallest effort to learn. The horrible disadvantage of his own ignorance beset him, and the simple English lessons in which the other boys were able to excel, made it almost essential to his own self-respect to decline w^ith mulish persistency to learn anything except colloquial German. It ap- peared to Marcus that elementar\' effort was shame- ful for one who had ridden the Havildar's charger, and beaten his own servants; and the only sweetness that could be extracted from the situation sprang out of the scorn he felt and uttered against the plodding fellow-students, who replied after their kind. " It is better that we learn English," said Schmidt, a pale spectacled boy of twelve, " since, later, England i8 The Light above the Cross Roads will be a German colony. Otherwise English is a monkey language. So, often, says my father." " Then your father is a liar.'' Marcus was engaged in finding the product by multiplying the multiplicand by the multiplier, and welcomed the diversion joyously. Opportunity favoured debate, as the Herr Pastor was absent during the hour sacred to his Gabelfriihstiick. Schmidt flushed to the roots of his light hair and re- torted vehemently. He stated that the English were proverbially untruthful, that they were devoid of in- tellect, that they were greedy and dishonest, that their soldiers were hired since the race was a race of cow- ards, and that Marcus himself represented ail their vices embodied in his own person. "Nun, vat haf you to say? " he finished. Marcus laid down his pen and stripped oflf his coat. " Just this," he replied; " come out from your seat, Schmidt, and I'll tell you." Noise arose around them, the clamour of the de- lighted school, and somehow, inside the ring, Marcus fought with his adversary. He knew he had hit Schmidt on the pale prominent nose, and he knew that Schmidt had got him on the lip, for he tasted blood; and he also knew that Schmidt was consid- erably stronger than he was, but he had cared nothing for that. " Gott in Himmel!" said a voice of thunder from the door, and in the middle of the fracas the Herr Pastor made a truly dramatic entrance. The cheering crowd melted back into its place, and Schmidt, holding a handkerchief to his nose, pointed speechlessly at Marcus ; over and above all else the Herr Pastor towered in his wrath. 19 The Light above the Cross Roads " He called my father a liar, he also used words against the Fatherland, that is why, Herr Pastor, there is this noise in the Arbeitsimmer," explained Schmidt in a thick voice. " Mark Janover is a savage and wicked boy, he is certainly dangerous." " He said the English were cowards," Marcus broke in, pulling his coat over his bruised arm. " But we had a good fight." Then it was that the Pastor arose in his anger, and from the raised dais behind his desk he preached nominally at both the culprits, but actually at Marcus Janover. He informed them that, as a Pastor, he knew the mind of Herr Gott, and that the Herr Gott, who it appeared was very like the Pastor in many of his ideas, would punish the wicked and disobedient child who had been the cause of this passion-storm. That child was marked out for a bad end, and, finally, for the red fires of Hell. That child would be a sor- row to his mother and a cause of shame to his father. The Herr Gott hated all such evil little boys, and the Herr Gott had a very unpleasant and marked way of evincing likes and dislikes. Conduct of this kind was unverschdmt and ohschenlich, and, in Germany, such acts were not applauded as was the case in other coun- tries, and as a punishment Karl Schmidt was divinely commanded to learn a page of the works of the great and good Schiller, and Marcus Janover, also by divine guidance, was to receive a severe caning. Having thus meted out the justice dictated to him by the Higher Powers, the Herr Pastor proceeded to execution. It Avas not the last time that the Tribal God of the Pastor showed a distinct national list in dealing with Marcus, 20 The Light above the Cross Roads and canings were frequent although he began to work steadily and well. Yet if matters stood at a disadvantage towards the boy in the bleak, draughty Arhcitzimmcr, it was quite otherwise under the Pastor's own roof. Adelaide- strasse 6 was, in the absence of the Pastor, whose duties took him away for the greater part of the day- light hours, a kingdom where Marcus reigned royally. Frau Gail, from the first moment that she had held the little boy in her arms, adored him with a deep and intense love which grew with the passing of the years. She bound up his bruises with tears, and when they were the result of differences of opinion with Schmidt or other boys, poured forth copious sympathy and much wrath mingled together. When it had to be ad- mitted that the Herr Pastor's Gott was responsible, Frau Gail's eyes alone expressed her feelings, and she resorted to the consolations of Apfelkrapfen and Kom- pot. Whatever the lieher Papa did w^as all right, and Grau Gail was essentially loyal ; nevertheless she adored her adopted son, and he responded to her unstinted affection with all the forces of his gay, free heart. When the Pastor went away for a week to lecture at Bonn, which he did once in each quarter, there was joy in Adelaidestrasse 6, and Marcus sat up late in the dining-room while Frau Gail knitted and told him stories. The old difficulty of making him under- stand had vanished with his quick proficiency in her tongue, and it seemed at times to her that the little Otto who had died was really back with her, and that he sat with his head against her shoulder and filled the aching gap in her heart. 21 The Light above the Cross Roads " Thou wilt be a great man, mein Mark, and wilt do great things. I shall be proud of thee, as also thy mother will be proud.'' " I do not remember my mother. You are my mother." " Thy mother is a very fine and great lady. Later thou wilt return to her; but thou wilt not forget thy German mother ? " The boy said with sincerity that he would never forget. " Yet I wish thou wert a German," she went on sadly, smoothing his chestnut hair with a soft hand. " Then always thou wouldst have thy home in my country. Still thou must love thy England, for all brave men love best their own land ; though the Hen- Pastor, who has been in England, says that it is a dark and dreary place, not like our Deutschland." Marcus shook his head. The awful truth was that he did not know. He fought his school battles for the name of England, and he was immensely proud of his nationality, but he knew as little of the actual country as Frau Gail herself. " I am English," he said, sitting up straight in his low chair, " even if I have never been there; also I am Irish." Frau Gail watched him attentively. " Es ist Jammerschade'' she said under her breath. *' And yet, mein Mark, I would change nothing in thee. No German boy is thy equal. Zo, Kind, a mother's eyes see far, and often as I sit and knit thy socks, I think that thy feet will travel up and up and up, even up to a far height, for the Herr Pastor hath of late said often that thou hast done well in thy lessons." 22 The Light above the Cross Roads Her knitting needles clicked rhythmically. " And where will these feet take thee, Mark ? Ach ! I have many dreams, sitting by the stove. Ever the woman sits thus as I do, and looks into the future or the past. Before I had thee to love, I looked backwards, but since that day that thou camest in the carriage sitting beside the Gnddige Frau, thy mother, it is of the years to come that I dream. Thy legs grow long, Mark " — she measured the sock with a practised eye — " it is with pleasure that I add the inch to the inch, and yet each inch brings thee nearer the day when thou wilt go to the big school and there will be no one to tell stories to in the twilight; neither, when thou comest back, wilt thou care to listen to the stories of the old mother." They were very happy, peaceful evenings, those long evenings with Frau Gail, and in retrospect they seemed to cover a huge vista of time. The whole of five years was included in the one volume of this period of Marcus Janover's life. He did not know that it was monotonous because outbursts with Schmidt, whom he learnt to like, and an awakening interest in his work, made the time pass. His loves were more to him than his hates, a characteristic that life never altered very extensively, and his first red anger against the Herr Pastor changed into a half -amused tolerance. He mimicked him, as he mimicked every one, even his beloved Frau Gail, and he no longer found it necessary to fight English wars either within or outside the Arheitzimmer ; Ireland was justified of her son, and with his cheery life and his stormy chivalry he conquered the little school world. 23 The Light above the Cross Roads Only the Herr Pastor still remained staunch to his original opinion of his pupil. The more fully he became aware that within the brain of Marcus there existed a power, greater, more subtle and infinitely more acute than that of the other boys of his age, the more he believed that Marcus would use that power for a bad purpose. He constantly found him- self obliged to curb and curtail his own teaching in the fear that with tigerish agility the boy would spring forth upon his reasoning and cause him to pause and cough before he could continue, and crush the questioner. He had, in his cold way, studied the brain capacity of the average boy of from twelve to fourteen, and he labelled and docketed Marcus as " precocious." There was, he admitted with great reluctance, some strong, dominating inward power that gave the boy a quality almost akin to an extra sense. He could achieve that rare effect, assimilate without growing like. His hands might be dyed by the colours he worked in, but, within, the soul of Marcus Janover was clean as a sword. He could and did unconsciously see everything, and behind the detail, again, as yet unconsciously, he saw the soul of things and men. He began by using force, since force was the only argument he knew of, and he had used it in the dreamy far-off days in India; but be- fore he left Adelaidestrasse 6 to meet his father and mother previous to his return to Hildesheim School, he had come to use a far greater weapon, the weapon that is like none other in its range and effect, the illimitable power of personality combined with under- standing. The little Teuton schoolfellows were never again to be his enemies, because they knew that 24 The Light above the Cross Roads Mark was vigorously, if oddly, just, with a justice that he felt yet could not explain. Otto Schmidt, sentimentalist and scientist in bud, wrote poems to his friend whom he loved with a dog-like affection ; and there was not a boy in the day-school who did not feel the depression of his departure with an in- dividual sorrow, and, after the fashion of their country, they wove him a laurel crown, which Marcus hung upon the gas-bracket and burnt to ashes amid much cheering, when breaking-up day came at last. The night he left, Frau Gail knitted in a dim corner, and blew her nose frequently. "Nach, nach," remarked the Herr Pastor irritably from behind his paper. " It is well that Mark Jan- over has gone." Frau Gail sniffed audibly and made no response; she did not love the lieber Papa at that moment. " There is in that boy a spirit that is soon to begin trouble. In my school there can be but one master." Frau Gail broke into sudden weeping. " He is my son," she sobbed, " mine loved one, and my heart is sad." "Nach, nach," said the Herr Pastor, rising from his chair. " Women are fools and sheep, they have not intellect nor understanding. Is not another boy coming from England to take his place? Is not money, the same amount, paid on his account? Was?. You will make me very angry, Schwanhield." " Mark is my son," reiterated the gentle Frau Gail, also rising; and gathering her knitting in her hand she passed through the door and shut it noisily. " Hochst wunderbar!" ejaculated the Pastor in amazement as he sat down suddenly in his chair; he 25 The Light above the Cross Roads drew a deep breath, and turned his head slowly from side to side as though he wondered if it were really his own head and his own neck. " Schwanhield," he said aloud, " das dulde ich nicht I'dnger." Mutiny in the school was one thing, and could be stopped by various means; but mutiny in the home At such a prospect the Herr Pastor's whole soul rose within him, and again he said within himself that it was well that Marcus Janover had gone from under his roof. a6 CHAPTER Iir HOME and parents were such visionary words to Marcus Janover, now arrived at the age of fourteen, that when he actually found himself face to face with both in one short hour he caught himself considering the impression first of London, and then of Lady Janover, with almost cynical calculation of effect. Holland had been cheerful and delightful. One saw roads that were interesting, and sails that be- longed to invisible boats, over green stretches of land. Further, one saw windmills, and all sorts of people love windmills, even the least romantic; little carts drawn by racing dogs, toy farms, and a land that might almost have been created by some large child who had a passion for tulips. Marcus looked out over Holland and approved of it. Then came the Flush- ing boat, and the boys of almost a whole night at sea, and then, with a high heart, Marcus prepared to do homage to his own land. The morning was dark and rainy, and the port of Queenboro' was drab and de- pressing ; the houses looked poor and the people looked sad ; an icy wind thick with sleet flung itself about him, and the coat he wore turned up to his chin felt as if it were made of newspaper. As the train raced him towards London, he stared out looking to find the thing he sought, the illusive, vague desire that fled like wisps of white steam; the smiling face of Home, 27 The Light above the Cross Roads the intense joy of return, but it flew ahead and always ahead. He was only a small boy, but he had fought for this forbidding country, and he felt disgusted that not so much as one ray of sunlight welcomed him. England was full of towns with large suberbs, at which he could only wonder, and yet she owned the East and all its glory, this unlikely home of heroes and conquerors. He wondered if it was ever fine weather in the Island of his dreams, but the water- logged fields looked as if dry days were the exception. He caught sight of other people running for other trains than his as he neared London, clerks and busi- ness men ; women also conforming to the same type. Drab, drab, and again drab. He could hardly believe it was real. This could not be the land of the Meteor Flag. As he thought, he was already coming into London where the sleet and drizzle thickened into a dirty, icy fog, and at this point Marcus Janover swore — a fact in two ways regrettable. First, that at his tender years he swore at all ; and secondly, that he swore in German. His father had taken a small house in Deanery Street. Marcus with his luggage was conducted there, the thrill of sudden contact with London touching him like an electric wire and awaking a new interest somewhere within the subtler consciousness of his being. He was, in fact, so occupied with the strange- ness of this sensation, coming like light through a suddenly lifted curtain, that he turned his mind away from the prospect of meeting these shadowy parents of his, and groped in the fog with his facile mental ability for the quickened understanding of concentrated 28 The Light above the Cross Roads power that lay behind the blurr and beyond the windows of the cab. There was something there finer, greater, grander than beauty or cities of splendid distances, there was something vital and immense in the roar and the dimness akin to the actual creation of force, and London held the fierce force of a power- house, awful, compelling, and darkly grand. Just for one moment the face of little Marcus flushed and his eyes brightened. She was " worth while," this home unknown, and his heart beat fast as he stood on the pavement opposite the white steps of the house of his destination. He thought nothing of his father or of his mother, he only drew in the thick heavy smell of London, knowing that his first cold chill had swept from his heart, and that London had touched the soul of him, telling him he belonged to her. He turned when the door opened, expecting to see his mother waiting as Frau Gail would have waited, with open arms, and was shyly preparing himself for the fond embrace ; but to his surprise a footman re- sponded without interest to his inquiries, and informed him that Her Ladyship would be down for lunch and that Sir Henry had not yet returned, but was expected next day ; that his room was ready, and that he would show him the library. Up to lunch-time Marcus wandered over the house and looked out of the windows. He was frankly bored, and there was nothing to do. His mother's boudoir was full of flowers, passionately strong of perfume, and there were a number of photographs everywhere of a young man, in Hussar uniform, polo kit, and mufti, signed " Chance." Whoever ** Chance " was, he evidently preoccupied Lady Jan- 29 The Light above the Cross Roads over. So far, Marcus was not critical, he was merely collecting vague impressions from the surroundings in which he found himself. Frau Gail also had sur- roundings. A work-basket, an account book, a linen book, a Porzellan book, a household medical book, and a large cooker}'- book; these, with a prayer book, fairly reflected the simple literary needs of the Herr Pastor's wife. Lady Janover had no visible work-basket, and a careless and somewhat heavy record of bridge los- ings took the place of an account book, but there was plenty of other literature, much marked with a heavy pencil. " Chance " liked poems of a kind, and had given Lady Janover a copy de luxe of " Poems of Passion"; he had also given her "The Garden of Kama," and Swinburne's " Poems and Ballads," hardly a line of which was read without its irritating black border. Marcus read a few verses, and wandered on, wondering if " Chance," who photo- graphically played games and rode chargers or racers in his busy time, spent his leisure, pencil in hand, underlining the purple passages he met with in prose or verse. It seemed extraordinary to the boy, and he sat down and made an effort to become interested in a book entitled A Night of Strange Sin. It sounded wicked, but, as Marcus learnt later with regard to much else, it was only dull. He dropped it on the floor, weary of descriptions of kisses, and wondering why any one should find it amusing. Presently the door opened and Lady Janover herself came in. She was still wonderfully pretty, and no longer troubled to conceal the art that assisted her effective- ness. ** Oh, Marcus," she said, as if she had just found 30 The Light above the Cross Roads him, ** what a huge creature you are ! " She kissed him quite charmingly and put her head a Httle on one side. "So you are my son? I must admit I feel as astonished as What'shername did when she found little thingamy in the bulrushes. Back from Germany and all ! " She sat down, and appeared a wonderful blending of gauzy laces, soft dark blue silk, scent, and pink roses. " You are like your father " ; she looked at him and looked away. " He said, by the way, that I was to have a day of you first, so you won't see him until tomorrow." " I'm sorry he isn't here ; " it was the first remark that Marcus made, and he said it very slowly. He thought his mother was extremely pretty, and she struck him as having a " fashionable " voice and manner, but he was not at all sure that he quite liked her; she was so new, and so aloof in spite of the ease of her manner, that he could not feel as if she had ever held him in her arms. She ceased to make him self-conscious after the first few minutes, and he listened to her with odd intentness, not attending to what she was saying, but thinking of her. She talked a great deal, and said things that sounded as if they ought to be amusing, and every now and then Lady Janover glanced at the clock. Very evi- dently she was not concentrating upon her son, and her eyes roved to the door. Marcus, whose replies were entirely unheeded, wondered inwardly what they might both be waiting for, his mother with fore- knowledge, and the boy himself as innocent of any idea of what might be coming as life is of death. 31 The Light above the Cross Roads 't-> 'A slightly shrewish look touched Lady Janover's face, and she spoke with a hard note in her voice. *' Stop thinking at me, Marcus, and do try and not look Teutonic. Passive resistance may be considered good form in Germany, but here " She broke off as the door opened and the original of the many photographs came hastily in. " Chance " in person, as often in life, altered every- thing; and Marcus was entirely forgotten, either as a newly found son, or as a tiresome little boy. " Chance," so called, as Marcus discovered afterwards, from a habit he had of saying " I'll chance it," filled all the available space everywhere, and had Marcus been sensitive or essentially an egotist he would have felt deeply and irreparably injured. That he did not feel even surprised was largely due to the fact that he had, as his mother put it, thought " at " her in his own sustained fashion, and was quite content to be- come once more a child spectator of a play he did not altogether comprehend. He was hopelessly out of it, and being out of it he made no effort to force himself within. At night, in a room furnished with the leavings of all the other rooms, chaotic in effect but quite comfortable in reality, he sat and wondered if on the morrow he would find that his father, too, was ruled and swayed by some other presentment of Chance. A different one, of course, but still equally absorbing and strong enough to complete his own negation. If such were the case, Marcus began to wonder where his niche might be, and if, indeed, there w^as any, other than the kind heart of Frau Gail. He missed her suddenly and bitterly, and he 32 The Light above the Cross Roads gripped his hands together tightly as he sat, a lonely little figure, on the side of his small bed. Lady Jan- over was dining out and had quite forgotten to say good-night. It was late next day when he came face to face with Sir Henr}' Janover in the firelit darkness of the library, and father and son held hands for a moment. Marcus looked up with his slow introspective eyes and Sir Henry looked silently down, hiding his own eagerness. The strong blaze of the log fire was full on the boy's face, and the likeness, combined with the unlikeness, to himself caught Janover suddenly with a sensation of wonder. He had made a mistake in his judgment of women, a mistake that warped all his after judgments where women were concerned, but with men he could be sure and swift. Sitting down, he turned on the light at his elbow and studied the boy carefully. Marcus was tall and slightly built for his age, and his silence had nothing of diffidence or awkwardness in its intensity. His features showed a little of his mother's beauty in their regularity, but this sugges- tion of her was so fleeting as to be almost non- existent. His forehead was low and broad, and his mouth defiant even when he smiled. But it was not of these details that Sir Henry thought as he took a rapid survey of the son he had wrought and hoped for; it was his eyes that held him, as the eyes of a man hold the eyes of a man. Where, in God's name, had the boy got those eyes, he wondered, and to what hidden power did he owe the depth of knowledge and understanding that lived so intensely within them? 33 The Light above the Cross Roads Something so inscrutable and comprehending lay be- hind the straight candid look that Sir Henry, as he spoke, glanced away. He talked of everything that did not matter very much, and cleared the ground resolutely with an effort after the commonplace. In his own mind he was thinking of one thing alone, and wondering whether Marcus the boy could by any chance be starting in life with some definite clue to the complexities and riddles, the answer to which is most often discovered when it is too late to be of use. Marcus, sitting on a low chair by the fire, knew noth- ing of what his father thought. He was quite con- tented without knowing. He felt intensely proud to think that Sir Henry Janover was, in a sense, his own. He knew instinctively that he had been glad to see him beyond need of speech, and that they understood ; that the innate suggestion his father bore about him of strife and stress lessened in the moment their hands touched, and made way for a better thing. " He is only a boy," Henry Janover repeated to himself, stemming his desire to probe into the heart that coimted so infinitely with him. A boy untouched as yet by love or wrath, far by years from any moment when he might say that there was nothing in life to believe in, nothing worth war, nothing to trust in or live for. Henry Janover's eyes grew hard and he stared at the fire. Surely his son would never write himself a hedonist, a follower of the idle, cruel, empty believers in dreary joys. " Have you any idea of what you w^ould like to be? " he asked abruptly. " For a life which includes the biggest possibilities and impossibilities, and which should get you thoroughly well inside, there is tlie 34 The Light above the Cross Roads Diplomatic. That means work, Marcus, but if you have grit as well as ambition in your outfit, it is the life I should suggest." He wondered how far Marcus had understood him and how far he had followed his own thought into the future. When ^Marcus had gone to bed, he still seemed to see him sitting on the low chair, his eyes touched witli the restlessness of an absorbing will to force the closed gates and get through to the wonderful " within." Henr}'^ Janover looked back at his own life and thought of its record of outward success. He had lived through it all, fought for the keys and held them, and had found little worth having when the lock grated and the doors opened. It appeared to him that he had lost some token or some trivial charm early in the days ; broken some little link that did not seem to matter much at the moment, but which mattered incredibly much later. The boy must never do what he had done. He thought of the hopes he cherished, and how, in the person of Marcus, those hopes took bodily shape ; and then, with a flash-like leaping from point to point of the mental process, he thought of the case of Harry Austin who had fared East with him half a lifetime ago, and whose papers he had gone through ten years after when he died in an unspeak- able house in the city of Madras. Letters written by his mother over a period of several years, and unopened by her son, lay tied together. Sir Henry bent over the fire and warmed the chill of the recollection out of his hands. These things could and did happen; his son had to take his chance 35 The Light above the Cross Roads with the others, and come out at the end either sub- missive and beaten or among the company of the men who have scored and scored and conquered the clue to the strange puzzle. Yet he too was also among the conquerors ; sitting bent over the fire he realized it, and its realization brought no thrill of pride. There was no divine carelessness in Henry Janover's retrospect, no irresponsible touch of lyric life in his memories. He had come no nearer to the hearts of men in his strong calculating defiance of the individual, which very attribute had made his path straight. Others might and did have their weaknesses. Many of his own time had been brought out by various means, brought out of the narrow way by the lures or loves or passions of their own natures, but he had no price. Neither for fear nor favour, for friend nor foe, for a beautiful motive nor for an ill one, had he ever moved one's hair's breadth from his judgments. Casson had broken when he was well on the way to follow in Janover's footsteps, broken hopelessly over the eternal stumbling-block — the personal element. Eastlake, Rawson — a dozen others he could think of — had failed because hardness was not theirs. It was certainly an advan- tage to have looked well and long at the Gorgon's head, long enough to be turned into enduring stone. But the boy was different. Henr}^ Janover thought of the odd, bold eyes that puzzled him and haunted him, and the clever twist of the clearcut mouth; the individuality so plainly felt, the tremendous hidden fire. He got up slowly from his chair and paced the room, his hands locked behind his back. He was try- 36 The Light above the Cross Roads ing to foresee even one short mile of the way that lay ahead. Two years more of German schooling, two years of English; then the solid foundation would be established. Later there would be the specialized training; the necessary reading in the book of the world. Sir Henry Janover walked wearily. He had lost a great part of his former force, and now even his restlessness was touched with fatigue, but still he paced on monotonously, his eyes turned towards the carpet and his shoulders bent as though he carried a weight heavy as the burden of Christian himself. Z7 CHAPTER IV ALL' recollection of his first holiday remained with Marcus not as a shadow thrown on a magic mirror, but as a clear, definite memory, and most of all he remembered his father. Far later in life he under- stood him, but when he returned to Germany and to his school he had not come to the stage when com- prehensive analysis of his parents became part of a process of mental introspection. Youth ringed around with all its glories was with Marcus, and its finest flavour and keenest zest was intensely augmented by the fact that in the quaint, hilly German tou^n, with its painted houses and its two schools perpetually at variance one with another, he found a friend. Eitel von Verlhof was half a year older than Marcus, and he first encountered him singing to him- self in the dormitory as he pulled his clothes out of a portmanteau. Eitel could talk English, and had flaxen hair and quizzical, kindly eyes. He laughed when he looked up and said " Hullo! " and in one minute a seed was planted that grew like the mustard seed. They worked together, played together, persecuted the Catholics in the opposition school together, shared and shared together, talked at times of their dreams to- gether, until life became a thing inseparable; and the school accepted the friendship, pointed them out to strangers, and made songs about them or laughed at them, as their natures prompted, much as long ago the 38 The Light above the Cross Roads people who watched David and Jonathan accepted them. Of all the tides of change and mutability that ebbed and flowed in those years in the school below the hillside, a permanent feature was the foundation of this friendship. Marcus had been sent to school to learn many things, but no one had prefigured that he went there chiefly to make Eitel von Verlhof his alter Ego — Eitel with his kindly eyes and his amused laugh for the rest of the world; his tolerance, set against the swift, ruthless indignation that now and then rode the soul of jMarcus, who at the end of his second year began to awaken. Eitel was quite content to take life pretty well for granted, and to avoid gates that opened into strange countries and unknown places. He was unconsciously autocratic, blessedly and cheerfully so, and for him there were no problems. Growth came more rapidly at the end of the second year. Marcus, back from a stormy holiday spent in Ireland with an uncle on his mother's side, returned seething to the very heart of his oversensitive nature. Von Verlhof listened to him with interest not unmixed with astonishment. The miseries of Ireland were nothing to him, but his friend's picturesque way of putting things awoke a distant feeling of wonder. When Marcus was savage he was always interesting, and amid the story of political warfare, which was incomprehensible to his friend, there danced in and out, like sunlight through branches, the name of " Hesper " ; Hesper Sheridan who also, young as she was, appeared to be torn by this same hot rage against Ireland's woes. She and Marcus had felt undoubtedly that they were ready to be martyrs to Freedom's cause, 39 The Light above the Cross Roads and Marcus returned to Hildesheim to pass on the torch to his friend. It was in those talks, fired still by the gusty memories of what he had heard and seen, of evictions, of trials, of proclaimed districts, that Marcus expressed his feelings on Subjection — " Slav- ery," he called it — as he sat beside Eitel on the sharp hill behind the grey turrets of the school, looking out along the tram-lines, and out away farther to where Hanover lay in the flat palm of the open land. " You can't conquer a Nationality," he said in his quick vibrating voice. *' You can stifle it and drive it under, but it lives on and on, and in the end it will become strong enough to pitch you out. Ireland will be a Nation yet." Eitel von Verlhof clasped his hands behind his blond head and laughed. " And Hesper will grow into a woman. She, like your Ireland, will learn to be obedient. They are alike, Mark, little countries and women ; and the big ones like England and Germany take them and put their power over them " " That is the shame of it," said Mark quickly. " It's tyranny." " It's common sense." Von Verlhof shifted his elbow to make his position more comfortable. " And, after all, nothing else matters. You have to see things from the most reasonable standpoint." Marcus narrowed his eyes and followed the sweep of the tram-line, which, in accordance with the law of utility, was ugly, eventless, and hard. The noise of the trams sounded like an abstract of cruelty. They shrieked and jarred and grated, but they were eminently practical. By the way of such tram-line 40 The Light above the Cross Roads arguments one arrived at the invasion of the rights of others, and in a sense the long road took upon itself the presentiment of a symbolic pathway across the world. His wayfaring soul rose to the call of winding paths, but as he watched swaying cars cross and heard them scream as they crossed, a furrow came between his eyes. He knew that Eitel was making a traditional answer to his flare of revolt, for Eitel was intensely traditional — part and parcel of the circular turrets and the densely solid walls of his father's Schloss at Waldenburg in Silesia, where Marcus had spent a holiday one snowy winter. Eitel was voicing a thought true to the soil, whispered out of the past, tinged with unregistered memories and significant in him as sacred history. " Ireland is like no other country," Marcus said slowly. " It's a strange place. I love it, and I felt as if all the Irish in me came up to the top the minute I landed ; but the people Well, the people, like us, who own the land, live in a world about the size of a toy train, and go round and round their rails and think there's nothing else; and they read the local Conservative paper and nothing else ; and as for Europe — it just isn't there ; until you began to feel that if you say a place isn't there, it doesn't seem worth bothering about." " Vortrefflich'' murmured Eitel cheerfully, relaps- ing into his own tongue. " I wish we could use that plan with the school." " Only one more term," Marcus spoke half regret- fully. He felt a sudden call of retrospection seize him as though he had caught some tinge of fleeting sadness that fell for a second over the freshness of his soul. 41 The Light above the Cross Roads "When school was done with, he was to follow witH faithful concurrence the path his father decreed he should tread. Upon that the fortunes of his life turned, and Marcus lay over on his face and pulled up the baked grass from the hot earth, reduced to sudden silence by his friend's remark. ''The world is a good place," said Eitel, "if you let it be good to you." He laughed his loud, happy laugh. " What was it the Professor told you, Mark ? He said, * In this boy there are the makings of an in- defatigable analyst.' Do you know what the old devil meant? He looked just like an alte Schachtcl in trousers; but I shouldn't take his advice anyhow." Eitel sat up and began to put his own views forward on the subject of those great words of powerful mystery Schicksal and Zufall, fate and chance, the nar- rows through which one came to a career. There was an innate bigness in the outlook of Eitel von Verlhof that combined itself with his natural personal calm. To him inconsistency was puzzling and wrong. He could not understand any condition of life that could force actions to clash with convictions, and the cross- play of human nature was beyond his knowledge. He had in him, as he sat talking in his boyish way, far more of the amazing consistency that goes to make martyrs than Marcus, who lay with his fingers dug into the soil listening half impatiently. The very tran- quillity of Von Verlhof made him the more telling, and he added an almost stoical equity to his words by the stillness of body which he preserved as he talked. His philosophy of life required but a few definite rules, and, as he saw it, the outlook was simple. 42 I The Light above the Cross Roads It hardly needed saying that he was going to be a soldier. " My father says that there won't be a war worth training for.'' Marcus chewed a tough piece of grass as he spoke. " And my father thinks otherwise." Von Verlhof 's eyes grew shadowed. " But, anyhow, you and I don't know much yet, Mark." Mark looked at his friend thoughtfully. It was quite true, they were only boys, but the strange faculty that lay deep in the soul of IMarcus Janover stirred in the depths as though touched afar off by some in- vincible premonition or prepossession which led him by a way unknown to the truth in things. They learnt at school of the greatness of the old days, greatly recorded for them ; ^Marcus had felt the grandeur of the Roman way, the wonderful conquer- ing passage of armies, the splendour that appealed to a boy's heart, and he knew that the fortunes of a nation began in the head of an individual. The thought filled him with a kind of intoxication when he dwelt on it, and he wondered if it were possible ever to repeat any of the stories of the Ages in an age that Tvas so entirely different. Eitel did not particularly want to understand anything that was outside his own idea, which was the inherited idea, yet in these great points of variance they still comprehended one another in spite of fundamental difference. " One may not know everything, because one is young," Marcus threw in the suggestion as he might have thrown a pebble into a stream, " but one may know one's own particular thing better than any one 43 The Light above the Cross Roads else. I wanted to be a soldier, but Dad chose some- thing different " He was invincibly shy about mentioning the career that his father had indicated. " I go on to Oxford." " And I — I think I shall come to Ireland when I am twenty-one and marry Hesper." Eitel stood up and stretched his long legs. " I like her name ; it is like the name of one of your British warships." "Hest? Oh, Hest is only a kid." Marcus ap- peared to think she would never progress, so little was he interested just at that moment in the evolu- tion of Hesper. " She is a good kid, and sensible." *' Are you coming?" Eitel's face was touched with the sunset reflection, and it flushed him as men flush with great joy or anger. His elbows on the sandy soil, and his bronze hair roughened and rumpled, Marcus only stared away over the plains towards the distant towers and chimneys of Hanover. Eitel sat down again; the mystery of leadership held him with its self-determined power. H Marcus was not going, it only remained to sit down and wait until he did go; Marcus was obviously meditative at times, and given to forming judgments and making plans in silence, even in the heart of the cheerful tumultuousness of their school life. If you cannot be alone for various reasons, if space declines to permit it, if you possess one of those per- ponalities that act like a magnet upon others and draw them perpetually into your life, if you have no hill to climb and no solitary room to sit in, then it only re- mains to create your own solitude by sheer force of will. Marcus did not want Eitel just then. He saw things immeasurably distant, all the thoughts that beat 44 The Light above the Cross Roads upon him coming from he knew not where, and yet very certainly his own. Totally indiifferent to Eitel, he supported his chin on his earth-stained hands and gave himself to his imaginings. After a long pause he spoke abruptly: " I'd rather raise Hell and die in a street fight than give in to force," he said violently, and jumped to his feet. " Come on, Eitel, we shall be late." So the days, the weeks, and the months passed by, and the tide of Time washed Marcus Janover gradually onwards towards the definite ending of a boy's day, towards the indefinite beginning of a man's years, towards the strife and the tangle of responsible life that is not strewn with " clean roses." Somewhere in his inner mind he felt that he was instinctively a revolutionary, contrasting acutely with the sunlit cheerfulness of his friend, whom Marcus firmly described as a reactionary. He was born to go out to life loving it, as some men love women and as others love marching tunes: the garish day called loudly to Marcus, and as all the world loves a lover no less truly than it loves a rebel if it is a young world, Marcus was unconsciously magnified and honoured and surrounded by affectionate glory owing to the very at- tractiveness of his type. Central Authority did not love him, but it knew, looking through its wise spectacled eyes, that this " indefatigable analyst " was worth all the training it was able to give. They knew, because most of them were Professors, that there is always a strong mixture of the rebel in the reformer, and that to annihilate the reformer is to destroy ad- vance. They knew, if they ever thought about any- thing beyond the school doors, that the way of the 45 The Light above the Cross Roads rebel is every whit as stony as that of the transgres- sor. Somewhere a test, as fierce as the old test of ston- ings and temptations, scourgings and imprisonments, waited patiently for Marcus Janover. Central Au- thority had nothing to do with that, but at least it could prepare him efficiently for a big wrestle with the facts of life. Whether his school-fellows, with their odd desire to think his thoughts and become his apostles, did Marcus much real good it is difficult to say. He, hearing only the echo of virile ages in his own ears, affected them deeply, because the allurements of life were set forth by him, all unconsciously, from a stand- point they had not yet reached. When Marcus let himself go in the debating society, there was a grim power in his method of speech. He appeared to know things that they did not know, he told them things that remained afterwards slashed into the very fabric of memor}', and he pictured action and always action as the supreme promise of life beyond the school. There was nothing finished about his style at that time ; the schoolboy talked, but talked with simple directness that brought with it a sharp and almost painful sense of sincerity. It was as though he saw that the thin thread-like path that lay dimly outside the gates was not and could not ever be a path of pleasure or a way of content and comfortable enjoyment; and it was evi- dent that he wished for nothing of the kind for him- self. Life, even if it hurt and maimed, was his de- mand, and life to the full measure. Most of the boys thought of patriotism as a matter for cheers and flags. Marcus discerned that in its faithful following there 46 The Light above the Cross Roads was also a service of agony; he heard the strange, alluring call of difficulty, abnegation — even of death. More than all the rest, Von Verlhof enjoyed the occasions when his friend thrilled the boys with his odd discourse, and he glowed with enthusiasm at the crash- ings of the ill-balanced thunderstorm which Marcus rode and commanded. The school forgot that he was Irish, or, if they remembered, it did not matter; they were all young together, and a sympathetic rage was with them. He appealed to the virtue which above all others is first in school life, and he, being one with them in age, cried out his message of courage, courage, and again courage. To be a skunk was to be low in the slime, crouching, crawling through life. At length the breaking-up day arrived which was to end the school career of Marcus Janover. It was a great day, an event to be marked always in the lives of the boys who threw the yoke behind them for good and all. It called out the full resources of the school, and accentuated all that was of value out of the past, forming it into the nebulous shape of a, mystic Doge's ring; an offering to the future. Hildesheim was crowded with fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles, blushing girl cousins, and friendly folk who came to hear the boys do their part in the school performance. They came gaily and yet soberly, after the fashion of their nation and natures, and Marcus, well used to having no one there to single him out for special interest, kept quietly in the back- ground. The great hall was decorated from end to end, and the crowd filled the rows of chairs set in lines along the floor. At the back of the dais the Masters formed a circle, imposing and scholarly in 47 The Light above the Cross Roads their gowns. In the centre of the Masters the old Professor who had described Marcus as an " in- defatigable analyst " sat on the high carved chair of honour. On the whole it was a solemn assemblage, almost as solemn as if the parents and guardians had been permitted to see beneath the strict propriety of their sons' conduct, and had become aware of possibilities that disturbed their placid and preconceived concep- tions of what was right and fitting. As boy after boy took his prize and fulfilled his part, the fathers and mothers of the successful Schiilcrn grew enthusiastic, and the colder sensation of constraint dissipated itself. Eitel had received his prize and was sitting between his mother and father. Baron von Verlhof, clad in his pearl-grey uniform adorned with several Orders, stiff in the back and never unforgetful of his rank, looked like a splendid presentment of legitimate war, Eitel's mother, a pretty dark-eyed Austrian, held her son's hand as though he were a child of three, and the boy blushed with pleasure as his father commended him and told him he was "" cin gehorener Deutscher." Marcus had seen and spoken to them; they had always been friendly to him, but he cared nothing about them save for the fact that they were Eitel's people. His turn ■was to come towards the end of the program, as he had taken the first prize in a school debate upon " Freiheit," and had been permitted to choose a recita- tion to be delivered in English, suited to the subject. The entertainment had begun to bore him as he leaned with his back against the wall clapping and cheering comrade after comrade ; his outward ear was attentive, 48 The Light above the Cross Roads but inwardly he drifted away until his own call came and he bowed to receive his prize. Below the dais the faces looked dim and unreal as Marcus stood in the centre, his own face pale as wax, and his half-mocking, satiric mouth, set so clean and well moulded in his boy's face, closed tightly, holding silence tmtil he felt sure of his voice. The atmosphere around him changed suddenly, to him touching the wild heart within. Before him the audience waited, but he entirely forgot them. Over their dull heads he saw the vision luminous that the lines he had chosen inspired in him, he heard the song they sang to him, and just as Eitel began to feel un- easy and terror-stricken lest Marcus could by any chance be going to fail, the heart-vibrating tones rang out clear as a bugle through the big crowded hall. Very few of the listeners understood what he said, but even without understanding, they felt that there was something here that had not been present in the personality of the other Schulern. The flash of fierce words, the voice crying in the wilderness, the chilling touch of something dimly realized — something arising sheer from the immeasurable resources of sorrow, and yet grand and stirring, — all spoke in the boy's re- pressed fervour, and burned in his eyes. " Freiheit," murmured the Baronin von Verlhof , " he is himself Liberty, Eitel " ; and she drew in her breath and watched Marcus with half -frightened eyes. Gradually gaining full courage, and entirely forget- ful of everything except the thing he saw and believed, Marcus touched the perfect conception of his great subject, perfectly expressed: 49 .The Light above the Cross Roads She, without sheUer or station, She, beyond Hmit or bar, Urges to slumberless speed Armies that famish and bleed. Sowing their lives for her seed, That their dust may rebuild her a Nation, That their souls may relight her a Star. A moment's silence followed upon the conclusion, and then the rasping voice of the old Professor made itself heard : "Gut gemacht, Marcus Janover," and a faint flush tinged his thin cheek-bones. $o CHAPTER V HARDRESS SHERIDAN, brother to Lydia Jan- over, and owner of Ardshane, had lived his easy hfe in the ramshackle, rambling old house since his return from his English School, a period of time in- definitely removed and almost forgotten by Hardress himself. His father died a comparatively young man, and thereby saved Lady Sheridan any trouble that might otherwise have arisen through finding a suitable profession in life for a young man of spirit and sport- ing tastes; and Hardress reigned in his stead. His life was in no way different from the lives of count- less others of his own class. It was genial, cheerful, racy of the soil, and included its share of hunting and poker-playing and a yearly visit to the Derby. When he was twenty-five, and his only sister Lydia was, as he put it, " off the Parish," and provided with a husband, Hardress began to think of matri- mony, and in doing so he was painfully aware that he would not be able to consult his owni taste. He liked something that caught the eye readily, and that wasn't " County'" " Thoroughly nice girls," he said in a melancholy voice, " are always the deuce." Ardshane, his setting, had been built by an ancestor with a royal disregard of coming bad times, plans of campaign, and organized refusal to pay rent. Ard- shane was the outward and visible sign of the inward personality of the Sheridans. They did not look ahead; that was the family attitude. The house stood 51 The Light above the Cross Roads nobly on a green hill, and was large enough for the owner to house a 'family of twenty children, which Great-grandfather Sheridan had with cheerful careless- ness proceeded to do. The stabling was limitless, and the gardens inside the eight-foot famine walls enor- mously vast. The avenue itself required six men to keep it as it should be kept, and the house required a regiment of servants, but these requirements were ig- nored by its present owner. Ardshane had all the shabby dignity that is so integral a part of many Irish houses. The flight of steps up to the hall doors was wide and commanding, the grey stone of the many- windowed house dated from a time when nothing was done cheaply; the flagged hall, crowded with dusty trophies, was on a scale of sheer magnificence. With typical absence of forethought the Sheridan who built Ardshane had delighted himself by adding brass ban- isters to the spacious oak staircase. Flat and wide and heavy, these banisters demanded miles of chamois leather and the elbow service of many maids. Beauti- ful ceilings, smoked and blackened with the grime and dust of successive generations, told of the taste that had dwelt in the mind of the original designer, and the long-windowed drawing-room facing the river, and ap- pearing almost to hang over it balcony-like from the height above, was perfectly proportioned. Portraits of the Sheridans hung in the hall, the dining-room, the drawing-room, and the library; they had been famous for their beauty and their bronze- red hair, and famous for their hard riding and drink- ing, but never famous for much else, for these were their gods, and they gave whole-hearted worship. Sheridans fought stoutly, but never became very 52 The Light above the Cross Roads distinguished in the profession of arms; and Sheridans who had been courtiers in the dreamlike days of old had invariably espoused losing causes, and not ended any the better for that. Their history was a history of lavish mistakes, made lavishly by a high-bred, good- looking family. There had been one parson among the ancestors who broke his neck steeplechasing. and a judge of the High Court who died of an extra bottle of port; there had been scapegraces by the dozen, and one terribly baffling and brilliant politician, who was cast out from his own people because he espoused the wrong cause and connected himself irretrievably with Lord Edward. But, whetlier because of altered times, or because they had reached some tenor of decline and decay as nations are said to do, the Sheridans were no longer the Sheridans of the great portrait era. Michael Sheridan, father of Hardress, had even failed in the family looks, and had been a colourless, unin- teresting individual, shorn of the profanity and the profligacy of his father. He neither drank nor swore; his family numbered a poor two, Hardress and Lydia. He kept on the roads, and thereby earned undying scorn in the hearts of fox-hunters; he married as he was told to marry by his father, and dribbled away the fortune which was the ostensible reason for his union. He believed in everything and everybody, including financiers, and his childish faith in gold-mines might have ranked him first as a student of Grimrns Fairy Talcs. Nothing he did prospered, and the avenue grew more weedy and the house more desolate under his life tenure, and at last withered rather than died, and joined his fathers in the family vault in the church- yard by the sea. 53 The Light above the Cross Roads The wife who had provided the fortune for which he had married her looked merely a careless, lazy, easy-going woman, who neglected her figure and grew, in later life, averse to the too regular use of a hair- brush. She adored her son Hardress with a tigerish fondness, and had her own private opinion of Lydia, which found vent in a devout " Thank God " when Henry Janover walked out of the church with her beautiful daughter. There was nothing of the " hustler " about Lady Sheridan, but behind her lassitude she was as firm and invulnerable as Ardshane itself behind its dust and cobwebs, a fact no one was more fully alive to than the idol of her heart, Hardress. To her Ardshane and the County were things fixed and immovable, great stupendous factors in life that had to be regarded. The Baronetcy and the property, albeit its yield was small, were to Lady Sheridan as valuable as Troy or Carthage, and having never travelled beyond the power of their name and charm, she was assured that the position was enviable and impregnable as a fortress. Hardress had the family looks, and though his educa- tion had been expensive and produced no visible re- sults, she saw in him, as she put it, " a man any girl would be proud to marry." To marry at all, unless to contract an alliance with one of the greater names of the County, was to stoop, for it bounded Lady Sheridan's view as entirely as the four walls of a room. Of course if money in large quantities was forthcoming. Lady Sheridan was pre- pared to shut her eyes, or at least half -close them, keeping them sufficiently open to allow her daughter- in-law to realize that she was not blind ; but money was ■54 The Light above the Cross Roads scarce in the South, and consequently Lady Sheridan became aware that there was a world outside. She did not know — indeed how could she have known ? — that heiresses could be met with in London; but she believed in American solvency because she had read of it frequently, and also because Joe Carrigan, her nephew, had actually married an American who " did up " Moyle Abbey from attic to basement, and made creditable efforts not to speak with too pronounced an accent. Cheered by the outward evidences of Joe's wisdom, and encouraged by the very evident success of his matrimonial venture, Lady Sheridan slowly made up her mind to accept an American daughter-in-law long before even the dim outline of such a possibility arose over the horizon. Meantime Hardress graduated in the school of life, and made love where and when he willed with the light-hearted prodigality of a member of a reigning house who knows, and expects the rest of the world to remember, that he cannot he taken seriously. The serious wooing was his mother's affair more than his, and though more than one girl wiTh whom he danced and rode felt that she was strong enough to combat fat, untidy Lady Sheridan, they all ended by coming to the same conclusion which the early Christians ar- rived at when they had differences with the beasts at Ephesus and other places. Lady Sheridan was that terrible, incomprehensible thing, a silent Irishwoman. With her chin on her clenched fist and her eyes full of inward storm, she could conquer an army corps by merely sitting still. One autumn, when the trees had turned an exquisite 55 The Light above the Cross Roads soft yellow brown and the skies were clear and blue, the future Lady Sheridan, unconscious of her destiny, arrived to stay with her friend, Agnes Carrigan. Moyle Abbey, with all its refinements and additions, could not call the startled eyes of Penelope Weston from her friend's face. " You don't look well," she said sympathetically. Agnes shrugged her shoulders. " Don't you marry an Irishman, Pen — they're maddening. If it isn't themselves, it's what Mother thought; and if it's not Mother, it's Father; and if it's not Father it's Grandfather, and Great-grand- father, and in the end we're back to Adam and Eve and what they thought. And out and beyond again there's the County, and all the things you do and say that the County didn't do and haven't done and would never do and 'can't pardon.' If they thought as much about God Almighty as they do of the ' County ' I'd scratch for my chance of Heaven, be- cause it would only be tlie Members' Stand at Moyle Park over again, with a gold floor to it." Penelope Weston started with a warning, but the warning did not deter her from following her own heart. Lady Sheridan, brooding in the dimly-lit drawing- room, her chin on her closed fist, repeated at different angles in tall shining mirrors, dimly as though seen through tears, heard of her arrival, and sat thinking, amid the dust and the beauty around her, oblivious of both. At last the wife she had waited for had come within reach. Had Penelope Weston been as ugly as a chimpanzee it is quite possible that Hardress Sheridan would have married her just the same. As 56 The Light above the Cross Roads it was, she was pretty, original, and well dressed, and he found her quite delightful. She appeared, too, really to appreciate the distinction he conferred upon her, and though she had a strange taste for buy- ing and reading books, and seemed to find Cork a little inferior in interest to Rome or Venice, he did not for one moment suspect her of the horrid taint of " clever- ness " ; besides, too, she was smartly clothed and she did not wear glasses. In due time Lady Sheridan removed to the Dower House, and Hardress and his Lady took up their lives at Ardshane. Once again Ardshane conquered. To renovate, to staff, and to finance Ardshane was beyond the power of Lady Sheridan. Her money seemed endless to Hardress, whose addition sums were chiefly concerned with his overdraft at the Bank ; but Ardshane knew otherwise, and gradually the old blight descended slowly upon the fresh gildings, and the brass banisters no longer shone. An appearance of comfort was retained, but only at the curtailment of all out- side expenses. Foreign travel was not, books became a luxury, Penelope Sheridan's French maid vanished, and all outlay was concentrated upon the stables and " the things Hardress liked." Penelope, bewildered as a lost child, grew thin and sharp of tongue, and Lady Sheridan, brooding in her eternal silence in the Dower House, asked in her every look for the coming of an heir, who tarried and tarried and seemed like to tarry eternally. Her son was always dutiful. From the first he had delivered up his soul and his conscience to his mother, and gone on without them, coming back to her to have 57 The Light above the Cross Roads them lent to him for special occasions; and after his marriage he frequently rode to the Dower House and discussed matters with her when they grew beyond him. She told him that he wanted to marry Penel- ope, and later she told him he wanted an heir. Penel- ope, sick of life and childless, inured in Ardshane, wondered when her mother-in-law would tell her hus- band that she was a failure. So long as Lady Sheri- dan kept from uttering that terrible last fiat there might be some hope left in their future ; Lady Sheridan could not be immortal, but while she remained above ground she menaced eternally, bitterly revengeful against her son's wife. After their eighth year of marriage, when life had grown into a condition of steady monotony broken by fits of temper on the part of Penelope and rocket-like efforts on the part of Hardress to retrieve losses by backing possible winners, the desired event at last, and without any wild anxious acclaim and excitement, be- came a sudden definite possibility. Once more old things were made new and Hardress became a lover. Joy blossomed again, and Penelope took back her youth and prettiness; even Lady Sheri- dan forgot to brood, communing with her clenched fist, and a touch of humanity fell like dew from Heaven. The County, the smart and the ramshackle, became tensely interested. Penelope was not and never had been of them, but a son stood for something definitely belonging to them all. Ardshane, the cynical old house that superimposed itself upon the lives of its owners, was swept into the carnival mood. The nursery was prepared, the cot 58 The Light above the Cross Roads that had cradled a dozen unsuccessful members of the family was renewed, and Lady Sheridan herself super- vised the arrangements. " My grandson " were words she frequently used when issuing orders to the serv^ants, and there was not a living soul, including the doctor, who dared to suggest that, as far as they knew, the sex of the child was still problematical. Hardress had been told by his mother that he was to be the father of a boy, and he accepted her judgment as final. He liked the idea of it immensely, being one of those men who are indifferent to wives after a short lapse of time, but strongly attached to their children, which embodies the most acute form of egotism. Under the sway of suggested ideas Penelope was equally sure that her child was to carry on the vague traditions of the house, which he could have done, without her effort, since merely to live at Ardshane, hunt, shoot, and try to marry money represented the bare facts devoid of embellishment. One bleak March morning the house was awakened in the cold chill hour before dawn, and by daybreak Lady Sheridan was sitting, fiercely and tempestuously silent, waiting to receive her grandson. His robe lay over her knees and his cot was placed near the fire. She had borne her own troubles differently to Penel- ope, and her scorn of physical weakness gloomed in her eyes. " Keep the fool quiet," she said wrath fully to the nurse, and ever again, " Keep the fool quiet." Hardress, told by his mother that he was not wanted, went off with his small pack of harriers, and only returned later on when the day had made up its mind 59 The Light above the Cross Roads to be steadily wet. He was not anxious in the least. His mother had told him that there was no need to be, and yet his Celtic nature was touched with a sense of coming trouble as he crossed the hall followed by a muddy hound. Everything was unaccountably still within doors, and the only servant visible disappeared at his approach like a fleeting shadow. He went quickly up the staircase and passed into the room where his mother was sitting. On the threshold he paused a moment, the stinging fear of death catching him like a descending avalanche. *' What's wrong, Mother ? " he asked in a choked voice. She rose to her feet, rending the thin flimsy robe she held as though it was tissue-paper. " In there," she said harshly, pointing at the door of communication to his wife's room, " you wull find Penelope's daughter." All the rage of the ages trembled in her tone, and her eyes looked like flints. Hardress took a deep breath. " By God," he said, passing his hand over his face, "it's a girl, is it?" And with a ridiculous plunge from the wider issues entailed — " What the We've not even chosen a name for her." Neither mother nor son thought or spoke of his wife. ** Name ! " sneered Lady Sheridan ; " the dog at your heels may give her a name for aught I care." Hardress opened the door quietly and went into the bedroom beyond. " Hullo, Pen," he said in his careless way. " so you took a rise out of us all. Where's the daughter? " 60 The Light above the Cross Roads Penelope turned feebly and touched the sleeping' bundle at her side. " I'm sorry, Hardress, but it's hardly my fault." Hardress looked at the baby with sudden clumsy tenderness. She was so tiny, so odd, and she was his own. He raised the shawl-swathed atom of humanity and held it lovingly. " I'm damned glad to have her." There were tears in his eyes, and the sad-eyed hound sniffed around him inquisitively as he sat on a low chair. Penelope neither moved nor spoke ; her bolt was shot, and she cared nothing for anything. " She's got to be called Hesper." Hardress cleared his throat, and glanced up to see the nurse motioning him to go. " She's got to be called Hesper; Mother " " Lady Sheridan needs entire rest," suggested the nurse, and her tone was full of the memory of some- thing too dreadful to speak of, called up into fresh life by his mention of his mother. Slowly and unwillingly he relinquished the soft, help- less, little sleeping thing, and with the hound padding behind him he left the room. That night Penelope Sheridan crossed the Great Divide, and Hardress mourned her in spite of the fact that his mother had not expressly stated that he was to do so. With an odd tenacity he insisted that having once called the child Hesper, Hesper she must remain. What is unlucky in the stable may be unlucky outside the stable, and he would not be induced to alter his decision. In vain Lady Sheridan, quite unreconciled to the sex 6i The Light above the Cross Roads of her grandchild, pointed out that there had never been a Hesper in the family, " Well, there's one there now," he replied doggedly, " and .what's more, it's your own doing." 62 CHAPTER VI TTESPER SHERIDAN never knew that she had J_ J[ not been wanted, she never knew that her mother had died chiefly because she was a girl and not a boy, for by the time that she was old enough to notice any- thing old Lady Sheridan had been carried feet fore- most out of the Dower House, and had no hand nor lot in the moulding of her grand-daughter's fate. By the time Hesper was thirteen, and when Marcus first became acquainted with his cousin, she had estab- lished her rule so emphatically upon the household of Ardshane, that her privileges and rights were limitless, and her father neither thwarted nor controlled her in any way. She had been sent to school in England, because old Lady Mary Carmoyle, a relative of her father's, drove twenty miles in a covered car on two separate occa- sions to arrange the affair; and eventually, by dint of briber}^ had induced Hardress to agree. She said if he agreed to her plan she would leave Hesper the thou- sand pounds she had intended to bestow upon Foreign Missions. Hardress knew the value of money, and though he hated parting with the child, gave in re- luctantly, and permitted Hesper the advantages of an education. He could not stand between Hesper and a chance of buying a good racer when she was twenty- one. So far as education was concerned, he despised it. " A good pair of eyes are worth more than a head 63 The Light above the Cross Roads full of Latin," he said gloomily, and he clung tena- ciously to the belief that if a girl could write her name legibly and read the newspaper, it was as much as any reasonable man required of a wife. His own sister, Lydia, " hadn't done so badly," and she had avoided all the pitfalls following upon the knowledge of too much grammar or arithmetic ; but, as her brother said, " she knew what two and two made, and that got her started." Hardress, after so many years of consultations with his mother, left without any one to consult, found that he had at last some love to give, and without hesitation he bestowed it upon his daughter. Hesper became the idol of his life, and the years during w4iich he sacrificed himself for her future benefit were full of emptiness for him. Again and again he swore that he would have the child back and let the thousand pounds go to the missionaries; but the odd strain of stinginess, which is not unfrequent amid all the lavish recklessness of the Celtic nature, held him back, and he endured the school terms as well as he could. Had old Lady Sheridan lived she would certainly have brought about a second marriage: but dead, she was powerless at last, and Hardress had grown rapidly past the lover's age when he wanted a wife, and in- stead he turned all his affection towards his little un- wanted daughter. Hesper was slim as a rush, light of movement, gay, quick, and songful as a young bird. Her red-gold hair floated round her like a cloud, and her green eyes had the curious effect of changing from emerald to jade as her moods varied. Without being beautiful in the ex- act sense of the word, her colouring marked her out as 64 The Light above the Cross Roads uncommon, and her character showed early signs of being entirely out of the common reckoning. She was the first Sheridan in the family who combined courage with judgment, and who understood anything at all of the normal perspective of life. All the others had accepted, without inquiring any further, everything that was accepted by their particular set and faction. Hesper had the amazing audacity to think for herself; and though she kept some of her thoughts to herself so as " not to worry Dad," the process of thinking continued. When Lydia had the happy thought of sending Mar- cus to Ardshane for his holiday one winter, Hesper felt very much as though she was about to meet a young Ulysses. The travels of Marcus appeared so amaz- ingly vast and lengthy, and she had known so few ad- ventures; it made matters easier to find that at first she could ride very much better than her cousin, and that she was also a better shot. It assisted her young vanity to feel herself superior in the matters that scored high in the County, for she knew that the only accomplishments that made any mark must be done with hands and feet, and that games and sport ranked first and last and intermediately. Still, when Marcus caught her up and did all these things better than she did, she experienced no touch of jealousy. Always he would remember that it was she who had shown him first how to sit to a rasping double, and how to cast a line unerringly, and a pride in his achievements took the place of rivalry. When Hesper left school, life seemed to pause omi- nously. She had acquired a taste for work, and she enjoyed it. Ardshane lay before her as her goal, and 65 The Light above the Cross Roads Ardshane in the holidays was a different place to Ard- shane without relief month in and month out. It be- came doubtful whether Lady Mary's deflection from Foreign Missions had been altogether justified, but Hesper's leavening of steady common sense restored the equilibrium, and she settled down to the altered condition of things. So far as she could she attacked the problem of Ardshane itself, and combated its sullen determination to get as full of dust and mildew as it well could, fighting the old house gallantly, and even making some faint impression upon its inward condi- tion. She loved it fondly, just as she loved the hounds and the horses and the purple mountains that lay be- yond the shining river, and the gay gorse hill that sloped away below the house; and in her own happy youth she did not feel the sadness of the country, or the present sense of some tragic fate which in Ireland lurks in the brightest summer day. Hesper radiated a permanent joyousness that was as full of warmth as a fire. She was a strangely at- tractive and rare mixture of feminine boyishness. Her hats cocked themselves a little to one side, do what she would to keep them straight, and Hesper going round the stables with a straw in the corner of her poppy-red mouth was as natural and as charming as could be imagined. She banded her hair close to her head and divided it at the side. It had retained its colour, the colour of an autumn chestnut leaf, tinged with red brown, a fact that Lady Mary sighed over sadly. " Your hair, my dear, is far too remarkable. What a pity you were not dark! But then, the Sheridans 66 The Light above the Cross Roads have all that odd hair. If you are plain it makes you worse; and if you are even moderately passable, people say you dye it." " I don't care what they say," said Hesper, and meant every word of it. She did not care. The County meant nothing at all to her, the select tennis club at ]\Ioyle inspired her neither with awe nor with interest, and she lived her own life with her father, apart and remote from the other lives around her. As for the County, they were moved to a dull re- sentment of her attitude. They thought she took after her American mother, which was inexcusable, and they thought too that her style was studied. Her short skirts and plain hats were considered " queer." She wore neither patent leather shoes nor pearls at the Cork Park Meetings. She had openly Nationalist tend- encies, and took no interest in the Cavalry. All these points indicated that Hesper was not normal. From her father's point of view she was perfection. She knew as much about racing as he did himself ; she rode magnificently; and her other qualities, those hid- den qualities of the brain which were at a discount in the County, were never obtruded. Instinctively he was aware that she did know a number of things ; that she appeared to take an interest in what happened in places like Russia and India; she had quantities of ideas, but they never cut her off from actualities, and he was proud to think that, " if necessary," Hesper could talk to a barrister or a bishop " and not let them have the legs of her over any course." If Hesper went walking on unknown heights, she didn't demand that her father should accompany her, 67 The Light above the Cross Roads and their strong sense of comradeship was not touched or chilled by the cold winds blowing from the fields of thought. Hardress was a Conservative, as all his fathers had been before him. He was an Irishman who loved his country, and in his heart rather despised the Britisher, yet he believed that to give the Irish one inch of in- dependence was to call down fire and brimstone out of Heaven. Individually he considered the Catholic Priest a good fellow and a good sportsman, but col- lectively he harboured a conviction that they were dangerous fanatics who desired to burn Protestants at the stake. He constantly averred that his own tenants all longed to shoot him, and that they were black- guards and murderers ; he refused to sit upon the Bench with the recently made Justices of the Peace, and cut the Board of Guardians dead. His fathers had told him that the people were bad, and anything that was based upon the ancient faith of the Sheridans was a law with Hardress. Poachers and campaigners, dis- loyal rioters, shooters of Landlords and Agents; of such was the kingdom of Munster. To hear Hardress talk politics was to hear the strangest gospel. Like Dean Swift, he was quite pre- pared to '* burn everything that came from England," but he was equally indignant towards the Irish. His wrongs were stupendous, and his ideas of setting them right were forcible and almost mediaeval. He was all for strong measures, shooting and burning, Martial Law, destruction on a large and sweeping scale, and yet it was the people who made the country, and who, through the very attributes he objected to, had made it possible for the Sheridans to be what they were in the 68 The Light above the Cross Roads past, and even in the present. He quoted the superior- ity of the Enghsh peasant, unaware that he would not have been able to endure that superiority for one short month any more than he could have borne with a staf? of highly-trained English servants in his house. If he had really meant one-half of what he said, he would have dug trenches around Ardshane and turned it into a fortress, or have left the country for another where at least life and limb were safe. He was used to talking in this strain, and he believed that he only stated facts. Had not old Lady Sheridan said she always expected to have her throat cut ? The tenants, well used to this attitude, went indifferently on their own way. They knew, none better, that the '' quality '' always talked like that about them, and they neither expected nor desired anything else. The more far-seeing of them realized that it was better for them they should be what they were. H Hesper had been a boy her Nationalist tendencies would have earned her a sound thrashing at the hands of her father, but as a woman she came under a differ- ent schedule. Women were permitted by Hardress Sheridan to have all sorts of sentimental notions. In some vague way Hardress felt that you couldn't expect any girl to be entirely sensible, and he considered it in the light of a good jest. " You've got a stag in your head, Hest," he said with his cheer}' laugh. " Poor tenants, is it ? What about m.e and the mortgages? " Hesper had ample opportunity for studying the te- nacity of prejudice, and her own lucid sense of propor- tion taught her to humour it. She even went so far as to be constantly and inwardly amused and enter- 69 The Light above the Cross Roads tained by the attitude of the class to which she be- longed, and by the superlative contempt they felt for all that was not entirely their own. They made her feel their disapproval, because of her unlikeness to themselves, and they condoned her as far as they could, because she was her father's daughter and rode well to hounds. She was nineteen when Marcus Janover came back to Ireland, before leaving once more for the Continent, this time to visit France and Italy. He had done, as was expected, brilliantly and well at Oxford, and was waiting until his father and mother came back from the East to see them before he left for his further stage on the road to Diplomacy. Marcus had never forgotten his first visit to Ard- shane, and from time to time had wished to revisit these " glimpses of the Moon " and to return to the sweet sad lure of Ireland, where all things began with bonfires and ended with a fight, where people mis- trusted one another so astonishingly, and where things that happened years and ages ago were but as yester- day when it is passed. He loved Ardshane and the stables and the sense of freedom from the decrees of time, and he still remembered Hesper and the flame- like tone in Hesper's hair when she stood in the weak winter sunlight calling to him not to hang on to the curb and to give Flying Maria a chance. And so Marcus came back again to Ardshane at the age of twenty-one, and found that nothing there had altered, with the exception of Hesper, who had grown up and was driving a golf ball with unerring accuracy and precision in the field beyond the irregular white railings half-way down the hill. 70 1 The Light above the Cross Roads His Uncle Hardress had met him at the station the first time he arrived, and he met him again this time. Hardress had cursed the groom, forgetful of his nephew's presence, the first time ; he did so again as though his life repeated itself with the incredible fidelity of a cinema film, and he laughed at nothing in particular, and said " How are you, Marcus," in a loud fine voice, just as he had done seven years before, until Alarcus felt as though he was vaguely meshed in some strange net of illusion and had to tell himself that he was not merely remembering with incredible vividness a flash of past events. The soft green light of the evening wrapped the whole country, and the wide rents in the clouded sky gleamed like silken banners flying on the wind. Be- yond the acid emerald of the near hill the mountains stood purple and gloomy, and the dark fir trees that bordered the avenue sighed at the touch of the rising wind of oncoming night. He saw Hesper running over the lawn accompanied by a hound puppy, two ter- riers, and a chow, and he heard her answer her father's shout. For just one moment Marcus felt suddenly shy. Nothing else had changed, but he knew instinctively that Hest was changed. 71 CHAPTER VII O Polly love, O Polly, the rout has now begun And we must be amarching at the beating of the drum. Go dress yourself up in your best and come along o' me, I'll take you to the cruel wars in High Ger-many. THE schoolroom piano was thready and had spinal weaknesses that rang and tinkled, but Hesper's gay voice conquered the piano and filled the " long- room." as it was called, because it ran the whole length of the house and had been designed for twenty children to play in. Marcus sat in the window, the sill was high, and he sat half in and half out, watching Hesper. " Are we not going to fight Germany? " she asked, raising her hands and letting up the pedal suddenly. " Perhaps I shall be able to tell you when I am a Plenipotentiary. Will you wait till then, Hest? " " Oh, I'll wait," Hesper nodded. ** I wonder if I shall ever get out of here? You've got out ever since you were eight ; just think of it, Marcus — you've prac- tically never been an}i:hing but out." She screwed herself round on the piano stool, her back to the long room half -engulfed in shadow, the light from the fire catching her hair and turning it into a broken aureole around her serious face. " What would you take to be a girl instead of being yourself? " " It must be pretty awful," Marcus spoke sym- pathetically. " But being Irish ought to make it bet- 72 The Light above the Cross Roads ter. You can be so many things in Ireland, somehow. You're all sorts of things, Hest. You can ride trials, and live just as you please, and you are always close to history, in a way. I remember when I was here seven years ago the butler was shot in the shoulder be- cause he stood in the lighted doorway after dark. Things like that must make life much more interest- ing." Heavy battalions of black rooks were crossing the sky towards the trees of the park, and Marcus slid down on to the floor and stood looking out. He was Hearing the end of his stay in Ireland and he felt a heart pang at the thought of parting with Hesper. " Yes, but no one shoots now." Hesper's voice held a tinge of regret. " The bad times are over and we grow prosperous. I dread that prosperity will make the people cease to fight, and when we cease to fight we shall lose ourselves and grow like those Northerners, or the Scotch, or the English, and won't be Irish any more." " But they'll begin all over again and fight each other," said Marcus cheerfully. " Don't you worry- about that, Hest." She clasped her hands round her knees and bent forward towards the fire. " A man can do things himself, but a woman can only live on echoes. There's you, Marcus, and your friend Eitel, and the whole wide world just asking you to come and do things in it. And then there's me, here in Ardshane with Dad, and what is there I can do that matters? I help Dad with the racers, I run the gar- den, and I try to keep a few inches of the house clean. I'm worth about fifty pounds a year to Dad, and I 73 The Light above the Cross Roads couldn't earn sixpence if I found I had to try. When Dad dies the place and everything goes off to a hun- dredth cousin, because he's the male descendant of the next male heir. Women are a drug in the market." Marcus crossed the room and leaned his arm on the mantelshelf. "If you were me, Hest, you might make a much better thing of the chance I have. I don't know how it is, but there are times when I feel like chucking all my father's big plan and enlisting. The very idea of going into the Diplomatic makes me wonder at my own audacity. It's one thing to do well at Oxford, but it's quite another thing to try and shove ahead in a career like that." Hesper looked at him, her eyes on fire. " That is an apologetic frame of mind I shouldn't have expected of you, Marcus. You're not funking, are you? " Marcus took the power and tapped a burning log, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. " Not funking," he said slowly. " Not quite that." " Then you are wanting me to tell you that you are a young David, and a sling and a stone is all that you require." She caught her breath. " Perhaps it is, Mark. I always believed that Goliath of Gath was really only a big swollen bluffing monster, full of con- ventional brag, and David was simply — Youth — the New Idea — the rising generation. The sling and the stone were a charm that he used, and if you have the charm it's all you need." " Eitel would tell you something quite different." Marcus smiled at her quick enthusiasm. " Eitel and Eitel — eternally Eitel. What is there 74 The Light above the Cross Roads about Eitel that makes him so attractive? " She felt a sudden gust of jealousy cross her mood. '• He's so straight. He couldn't do one set of things and think another, the way — well, if you want to know, Hest, the way I believe I could. He goes along without ever thinking a mean thing or doing a rotten thing, and nothing, no earthly, would make him. I think that is why he is such a good friend.'" Hesper held out her small hands to the blaze. " He sounds like a Buddhist who has entered the fourth stage, and is nearing the blessedness of total extinction. I can't imagine anything so uninteresting. Now you — " She stopped dead and stared at the fire. "Well?" " Well, this, then. You will go tearing on and making your own colossal mistakes, and doing bad things on a big scale and good things in the same way — you could be ridiculously good and disgrace- fully bad. and you could do wrong things, but not stupid things, Marcus. You just couldn't trundle along like Eitel until you got to Heaven's gates and boomed inside wdthout once having had a look through the grating at the fires below. He sounds so well reg- ulated, like a really expensive clock ; and yet you make him into a kind of hero." " Perhaps just because I'm not well regulated, and because if I was a clock I'd be a bad failure." He tapped the logs again and freed another flight of sparks. " I always feel so temporary, Hest. Eitel seems as though he couldn't change, he's so plumb sure, but I'm only temporary — bits of my life rented by the month, 75 The Light above the Cross Roads as it were, and then something new. I suppose I shall grow into something different " Hesper regarded him long and thoughtfully, her eyes softening to sudden tenderness. She had the level secret of balance in her own strong young nature, and she was instinctively aware that Marcus had been left without that quality, though she could not have told ex- actly what it was. As their eyes met they exchanged a look of mutual faith, those of Marcus full of knowl- edge, those of Hesper clear with wise judgment. " It's the same with the young entry," she said quickly. " Some of the best hounds won't stick to the hne; they just go off like mad after hares or rab- bits, but they settle — and you'll settle, Marcus, once the hunting begins and the cubbing is done." " I can't explain — " He hesitated and turned to the fire again. " Ever since I began to think I have had a queer faculty for understanding people. I've been able to take short cuts. I've known things, com- mon things and things that are quite uncommon, about those I meet. It helped me at school and at Oxford, and though I often don't bother about it or try to use it, it's there, Hest. I believe I've got double sight, and just as I've seen men who could find where water was with hazel twigs, I can slide my mind in behind what fellows say about themselves, and catch them at all kinds of things. Sometimes it is simply beastly, and I'd give anything not to know, but sometimes it's fine. You wanted to know why I talk of Eitel the way I do? It's because Eitel is absolutely sound." " I understand." She spoke hardly above a whisper. " I'm quicker than he is. and I suppose I've got more of a different kind of cleverness, but he has got everv- 76 The Light above the Cross Roads thing else, and what he has he has worked for, and he never thinks about himself. There is nothing in Eitel that isn't white." Hesper's outstretched hands still sought the blaze. " He'd never change to a friend or go back on a friend, and what he believes he believes right through. I'm not like that, Hest; over and over again I've got absolutely indifferent to things as well as to people that I have cared much for. I fling back and back to my- self, and except for Eitel I haven't cared about the friends I do make." " And — and " Hesper's voice trembled a little. " You, Schdne Scclc," he said impetuously, taking her hands in his. " Hest, you are simply an angel." \\'hen IVIarcus Janover left Ardshane he joined his mother and father in London. Sir Henry was greatly altered, and his work in the East being done, no further demands were made upon his powers, and already he felt the inertia of his life eat into it like a canker. They had gone back to the house in Deanery Street, and Lady Janover, with the aid of a beauty specialist, was once more preparing to embark upon any new adventure that might offer, though adventures were less frequent than of yore. She dreaded age with a morbid fear, and her husband's indifference to what she did wrought upon her nerves and disturbed her temper. Her beauty was in its de- cline, and she tried feverishly to retain her vanishing youth. The long bill that Lydia Janover had run up for the greater part of her life demanded payment, and Lydia Janover hadn't anything left wherewith to meet 77 The Light above the Cross Roads the future. In the end, she and her husband were alone, as they had not been since their honeymoon, and the cynical eyes of Sir Henry Janover reminded her silently of the fact. The circle brought them back to the starting-place where warfare had taken the place of illusion. Marcus slipped into his place in the household, haunted by his detection of the passions, challenges, and dramatic forces that stormed silently through his parents' relations with one another. He knew quite well what his father had suffered, what his mother was, and he knew that, like Helen of Troy, she shivered at the bleak air of the changed world wherein she now found herself. " Chance " and all the others who had come and gone in endless succession had vanished like the snows of yester year. It was true that years ago a man had actually been weak-minded enough to shoot himself all for love of Lydia, but if he had not shot himself and left this gory feather for her cap, he too would have slipped away after the one dance too many, the one " kiss too long." and ceased to come and ceased to write. As years overtook her, Lydia became more grasping and fought deadly and desperate battles to keep her lovers when they struggled for freedom, with the inevitable result that they had taken what she de- clined to give. She had so frequently written the lines, to different recipients, " For your sake I have lost my husband's love, for your sake my name became a by- word." that it was only surprising that she so deter- minedly refused to permit life to teach her anything. The lassitude of realization never discouraged her. and she still sought and sought eternally for the intoxica- 78 The Light above the Cross Roads tion of success in the oncoming greyness of life. Oc- cupied only with herself, she felt nothing towards her husband but dislike, and towards her son a sensation of smouldering animosity because of his eyes and the proud patient line of his mouth. Lydia was pro- foundly jaded, though she was unaware of the fact, and her son felt pity for her, a far deeper pity than he felt for his father. If she had been a little higher in the mental scale she would have suffered miserably, but being where she was. she only lost her temper and complained of the climate ; and whenever *' one of them " married, and his marriage appeared in the Times, she became subject to fits of anger against her maid that lost her two of the best she had succeeded in obtaining, and so reacted upon her own head in more senses than one. Henry Janover never mentioned his wife's name to his son if it were possible to avoid it. He lived away from the here and now, and the measure of his almost passionate coldness was beyond computation. Lydia had done all that it lay in her to do, years before, and he left it at that. It was just before Marcus left for Paris that Billy Waring came out of the East, and from long associa- tion once more sought Lydia Janover. Billy was no longer a smart-looking young man ; he was an over- smart middle-aged man, with a rough red skin and a liquid eye. His style had become a shade, more pro- nounced, and having no home ties to fill his time, he returned, an elderly prodigal, to " Lady J.," as he called her when discussing her with acquaintances. His ad- vent brought peace to the house in Deanery Street, and though Billy Waring was an unlikely dove, the gift of 79 The Light above the Cross Roads the olive branch was none the less acceptable to Lydia's husband. Only once Henry Janover spoke to his son on the subject of women. " Keep women out of your life. They ruin and de- stroy. Don't let any woman have it in her power to break you." He paced the room as he talked. " I've watched their work and I kniow the danger. They tie you up in some damned memory of scent or song. Do you suppose Herod ever forgot the tune Herodias's daughter danced to? And later on you learn that it's all pretence and sham and lies." " But all women aren't " began Marcus. Henry Janover stood and looked at him steadily. " H you let the best of them in on your life she'll tangle it for you. Do without them, Marcus, or if you must " He shrugged his shoulders and turned away. What was the use of admonitions? He could not re-live his own youth or recall one dim recollection of his one-time thrills and madnesses. To him it was all utterly trivial, utterly worthless, a mere phase that ended in disillusion. Experience had robbed life of its mystery, and yet he understood that Marcus must still be at the mercy of the pains and troubles consequent upon his very youth and hopefulness. A sudden gift of vision came to him, and Henry Janover wondered how much of his bitterness he owed to his wife. She had taken from him even when he shut her out : she still took from him and made him witness to her worthlessness, she and Waring, two civilized savages. He flung the thought of them away. " Life comes to evers^body differently, and each man has his own danger. The point is to know your dan- 80 The Light above the Cross Roads '& ger, and a knife is a good weapon. I'm not much of a theologian, Marcus, but I understand the value of a principle that advocates amputation when your hand offends you. Don't funk cutting if your judgment tells you to cut deep.'' " I think I should cut if it became necessary." His father nodded silently; he was satisfied. " Women — you will have to understand them your own way ; there are other shrines and temples where a man may waste himself; other pitfalls. If I could do so I would warn you to guard your impersonality as you would guard your honour. Once you let that go you let your judgment go." Janover met the masterful eyes that watched him, listening, " You will have to give every inch of yourself to your career. Play when you must, and learn what you have to about women and men as decently as you can ; but when a name begins to mean too much to you, forsake the bearer of that name." His voice softened very slightly. " At best life has to be lonely, Marcus, and I can assure you that there can be and are condi- tions, beside which great loneliness is blessed. It may bring hardness, and it must bring isolation, to stand away from the ruck, but it has its compensations," " I think I understand you. Father." " For the men who are content with little, and there are plenty of them — the world is crowded with them — there are music halls and night clubs, gambling hells and race courses, but you are going to make a different record, and to make it you must be tireless, determined, and hard. For you there must be no price. You can- not afford the weakness of friendship — God knows, 8i The Light above the Cross Roads Marcus, I must sound cynical enough to you, but put- ting aside ambition and the hope I have in your future, I think I should say the same." Marcus sat very still; his thoughts were busy with his father's words. Something of all this he had felt long before, and felt it with the acute realization of a fundamental truth. " Individual friendships or hates have in the main little to say to the control or actions of Nations." His father was now sitting in his chair by the big writing- table. " These questions are in some way beyond our power to comprehend entirely, but always remember that with Nations as with individuals it is Will that is the foundation of strength. Will begins in character, and character is the sole possession of the individual, so you get back to the secret source that makes conquer- ors." He moved the small objects under his hand un- consciously and followed out his own thought. " I sent you to Germany to learn, because Germany pro- duces men who dare to think — and you have been trained to think. Your own capacity for understand- ing life will tell you what I have had to learn more slowly — " He paused for a moment and bent for- ward, speaking with tense quiet force. " I have taken my place in the game against the Asiatic, where craft must be met by a sterner craft, and I know the value of the power to make men fear. Once other men, your own fellows, understand you, they cease to fear you. If you live too close to the lives of others they absorb your potentiality." He thought again for a moment and continued, speaking with no lessening of emphasis : *' Remember to dare greatly when the need comes, leav- ing out heroics. The wav of emotion and imagination '82 The Light above the Cross Roads may never be yours, Marcus. I want you to determine from the outset to banish all phantoms." Marcus lifted up his face, which had been bowed while his father spoke. " I understand," he said, and his voice thrilled as it had thrilled when he spoke on the little dais at his old school. 83 CHAPTER VIII THREE years with Paris for headquarters brought Marcus Janover to the time when his actual life work was to begin. Paris neither made nor marred him, but to his years there he owed a fuller power of thought and feeling. The pays ami accepted him gladly, and Marcus acquired an entirely sophisticated way, an air of being part and parcel of cosmopolitan society. He grew to know the French way of life strangely well, and though he regarded it as a phase, he enjoyed his hour of play, while his experiences amused him. He chose to live on the surface, and his dreams con- tinued undisturbed while he drifted through the life of Paris. With it all, his ideas were hardly touched. He enjoyed the life of the streets and the cafe's. The tired-eye wearers of splendid jewels interested him. He also made the acquaintance of those failures who had no splendid jewels, and he divined their souls. He fathomed the melancholy in the life of " daughters of joy," watching for any real buoyant happiness in that land outside the conventions. The conventions always conquered, and those who challenged them to a free fight came out of it haggard and wan long before the hour for age had struck. Marcus had no illusions connected with these years, he was only learning and he had not yet entered his own domain of life. He was there to learn the French lan- guage thoroughly, and remained there as attache, but 84 The Light above the Cross Roads he collected no memories to spring upon him in later twilights, and his heart was away in green Ireland safe in the keeping of Hesper Sheridan. One evening after he had become attache at the British Embassy he wandered into Pastini's Restaurant with an idea of dining there alone. He chose the little cafe hidden away in a quiet street with a great desire to be by himself. The night was warm and the lamps under the trees of the Boulevard lighted the passing faces of the shifting crowd who swarmed outside under the May moon. He stood be- neath the orange trees set in green tubs at the entrance and w^atched the passersby, and he felt the pulse of life beating feverishly. All the people who w-ent up and down were talking of things, all that you could touch and hold, eat, drink, smoke, or clasp ; talking of what they had done or what-they intended to do. A mood of distaste for Paris was upon him, and he felt that he needed Hesper. He wanted her there with him, and then he too would have been satisfied to walk and talk like the rest, but no other woman could give him more than a passing feeling of interest. To be free to enjoy the lures of rag fair or of the more select altitudes where love was talked of and played with, he would have had to forswear his faith, and he felt that for such a price tinsel was prohibitively dear. Nothing he had done in the interval between the times when he had returned to Ireland and seen Hesper again had ever lessened her power, rather had it increased. She supphed a thousand half-unconscious needs in his life, and the women whom he had copie close to served only to make him more appreciative of her rare attrac- tion. He would have said himself that his fidelitv was 8q The Light above the Cross Roads more a matter of necessity than choice, more a matter of destiny than selection. He loved her, and his love of her ruled him, even when he drifted. He turned into Pastini's and found a table in a far corner, and the sombre quiet of the place pleased him. He had escaped from a string band for one thing, and from young artists with goat beards and flowing ties, from the smart soulless-looking men and women who monotonously frequented more fashionable resorts, and from American sightseers. Pastini's was expen- sive and exclusive. It had a solemn dignity all its own, and only rarely the lighter element penetrated there. The eternal appeal to the senses was not evi- dent, and the Saturnalia mixed on other floors to the sugar-sweet sounds of waltzes or rioting dances. Mar- cus having once discovered Pastini's, retired there as a good Catholic might retire to Mount Mellary to con- template silently. His friends merely considered him peculiar. Pastini's was chic in a highly respectable sense, and Marcus had said that " Bacchanals were best on Greek cases " ; but then Marcus was incompre- hensible in many respects. He was no Puritan, and he was given to a freedom of speech that at times amazed his hearers; he fell in with the life of pleasure and fell out with it, but he never risked his soul for a single hour, for he broke from it always to return to his long- ing for reality and action. When he discovered finally that women bored him, he was glad that he had made certain that it was the case. He argued that if St. Anthony had possessed the courage to parley with his lady visitors, his evening would hardly have earned him a canonisation. As he ordered his dinner and sat waiting till it 86 The Light above the Cross Roads 'b should be brought, he wondered how many of his circle of so-called friends were really friends at all. Words lost their meaning in a soft greedy world where no one had the least intention of practising the smallest self-denial, and where the men who described them- selves as friends to each other, and lovers of the women they delighted to honour, had no comprehension of the conditions or the standards set by the terms they used. He was early at Pastini's, and the long, comfortable room was empty save for two politicians who were dining together and who hardly spoke, but, as he sat thinking, the curtains that hung over the entrance swayed and parted, and General Hyppolite de I'lsle came in, accompanied by a dark-haired woman with flashing eyes and teeth, whose walk was a whole his- tory of graceful suggestiveness. She was quietly dressed and wore a hat, but if she had been attired as a nun it would have done nothing whatever to alter the unmistakable invitation of her personality. De risle was of an age which Marcus decided should have taught him more than he had learned, for he was deeply in love. His face was fresh and high coloured, and his small moustache twisted tightly at the ends. His reputation gave him credit for being a good soldier with a special taste in women, and his manner to his companion was deferential and polite. When he had time to recognize Marcus he smiled and signed to him to join them, and the woman with him also smiled. She looked as lithe as a cat and every bit as feline, and her ever-recurring glance irritated Marcus Janover. He declined politely to make a third at their table, and took the opportunity to change his own seat and 87 The Light above the Cross Roads placed himself with his back to De I'lsle's table. Alone, De Tlsle would have been an interesting com- panion, but with this cat-like familiar at his elbow he would be unendurable. Marcus knew she was discussing him, he knew she was saying just the things that should never be said, and De I'lsle was being forced to outdo her, for he had a reputation for violence in words. In his desire to escape from thought of the woman to whom De I'lsle had alluded briefly as " Ursule," Marcus took from his pocket the last letter he had re- ceived from Hesper, and began to read it. " Here, one day telleth another," she wrote, " and I am looking forward like Frederick the Great to becoming " old, cheerful, gouty, and good humoured ' without ever advancing beyond the limits of Patrick Street and the Grand Parade. And you are having intermittent fever, Mark, don't trouble to deny it. If I were you I should catch every kind of fever and have no respite. What is the use of having a Map in my room ? I read the names — the wonderful names — Petersburg, Rome, Athens, Milan, Singapore, Mandalay, Bagdad, and I take a market ticket to Glanmire station. Oh, my dear, it is so long since I saw you, are you still at all wild? You were getting ominously smooth last time. When I say ' wild,' I mean the Byronic wildness, ' Yet. Free- dom ! yet thy banner, torn, but flying.' What Moyle County calls ' wild ' is quite a different thing, and I must suppose that Paris has other standards. For instance, if you hear that any one has gone from Moyle to Paris (called Parec) it is the correct thing either to look fearfully knowing and amused, or to think it wildly improper. If you told them in Paris that you were going to Moyle I suppose they would regard it in the light of a voyage to the Austral Pole. " Don't become a Frenchman, Mark. You are half Irish, which, of course, isn't as good as being whole Irish, but it is something to be glad about when you feel dull, and don't 88 The Light above the Cross Roads become German either — which reminds me of your friend Eitel. Where is Eitel? You haven't put him into the rag bag of lost illusions and forgotten gods? Last time I saw you, you had grown such a lot of young cynicism, quite a full set; whiskers and a beard. Shave it all off and come back to us. Mark, how I think of you. Love is such a big thing and it takes every day and hour of life and writes one name across them all. It takes one's little old pleasures and tosses them away over the hills to nowhere, it takes one's sleep and one's waking and says ' all this is mine,' and it takes the trees and the fields and the sunlight and the stars — and sometimes I am cold with fear in case anything should happen to me or to you, and Love puts memory marks every- where." He folded up the sheets carefully and replaced them in his pocket. The woman with De ITsle laughed a soft wicked laugh, and, without turning, Marcus was aware that she had taken out her pocket handkerchief, and a waft of scent came about him like bees. She seemed determined to intrude herself upon his thoughts, and he moved again as the gargon brought his dinner, for he decided that he preferred to face her. He seated himself in the chair he had first selected when he came into Pastini's, and was again able to see the whole restaurant. He noticed another arrival. A young man in a dark morning suit was sitting in a dim comer looking very lonely and isolated, and at the sight of him Marcus sprang to his feet and went swiftly down the room. " Mon Dieu et mon Roi! it's Eitel " ; he held out his hand, and Eitel stood up, his face flushing with pleasure and surprise. " This is amazing," went on Marcus, " come and sit at my table." 89 The Light above the Cross Roads Eitel had grown into a man since Marcus had seen him, but his face had changed, and he had altered far less than Janover. They sat down together, and Eitel studied his friend with a long affectionate look, wondering a little at the weariness of Mark Janover's attractive eyes. He ex- plained that he had been sent to Paris to learn French, and was living at a pension kept by a lady of title, who used the bath for storing potatoes and cabbages, and they laughed as he recounted his experiences. One by one they took out the old days from the hoard of mem- ories, and, with a gust of his boyish laughter, Eitel re- minded Marcus that he was coming to take the Schone Base away from the Irish Castle and carry her off to (Waldenburg. " She spoke of you in her letter," said Marcus, rising, as they had finished their meal. " Come round to my rooms, Eitel, and you shall see her last photograph.'' Eitel agreed gladly. Time was of no importance to him, as his titled lady never expected him in at any conventional hour. As they passed the table where De ITsle still lin- gered, his eyes hot with excitement and his manner fatuously loving, Ursule laughed as she had before, with the same soft wicked laugh. " That woman's laugh makes me want to burn Paris," Marcus said angrily. The streets were full of life, and the effect of dark towering houses under the sky, of light diffused up- wards and lost on the way, made the individual appear smaller in the illumination of his own making than in the strongest sunlight. Night in the open has its own loneliness, but night in the streets of a great city, where 90 The Light above the Cross Roads the faces are the faces of strangers, creates an effect of isolation with which no other lonehness can com- pare. Here and there a woman or a man walk or use a gesture that is familiar, but on nearer approach the likeness is lost and the aggravated sense of solitude be- comes even greater. One must be strongly enamoured of humanity to walk in a crowd of strangers and feel that the whole world is kin. Marcus had not yet learnt the French way of talking in the street as though he were in a room, and he hardly spoke until they had climbed the stair to his apartment and he had turned on the lights and pulled up a chair for Eitel. Eitel watched him again as he got out some glasses and a decanter. There was a grace of move- ment about ^Marcus Janover that made his smallest acts pleasant to watch. Under his smooth bronze hair his face was pale, and his mobility of expression was greater than it had been in his school-days. He sought in his mind for a word that could express his friend's dominant characteristic, and at last he decided that Marcus Janover was " irresistible." " Do you still analyse? " he asked. " Or is the time drama sufficient? I have often thought of you, jMark, since we parted." " Oh, I just live," said Marcus, smiling. " It's amusing enough. Only amusing, you understand, Eitel. It's not killing or thrilling or — anything but amusing. Life here is pleasant." " We live differently." Eitel lighted his cigar. " I am a soldier now, Mark, and German soldiers are taught Weltmacht oder Niedergang." " World power? That is a big bid, and the world takes a heap of owning, if you mean that Germany; 91 The Light above the Cross Roads won't be content with less than every inch of the globe. I'm not sure it's worth all the talk that is made about it, this same ownership of the globe and the seas and all. It is about on all fours with the idea of having a huge family. Damned expensive ; and some are sure to be ugly devils and others want all your money, and others take all the army, and others call you a dodder- ing old fool to your face. England, Mother England, could do with a smaller nursery if it wasn't for the family ties; I swear she could." " You have the past," Von Verlhof spoke almost sadly, " such a glorious past — but it is useless to look back. It is not the owners of the past but of the future who are to count in the new reckoning." Marcus Janover laughed, and swinging his legs over the arm of his chair burst into a mood of gaiety. '' Mein Gott und mein Gott, Eitel, I know those senti- ments. Conrad, Barbarossa, Otto Friedrich, Hilde- brant, Bemhard bf Saxe Weimar. Cock-a-doodle-do ! Blessed are the butchers for they shall enter into Paris and London. Mother England w-ill sit there until you are sick of Blood and Iron. She had heard Napoleon talk just as Berlin talks today. Napoleon who made your conscripts march under his flag. Mother Eng- land won't even wake to the fact that you are thrusting her with a knife until you have slaughtered half the nursery, but, once she does, she wall put on her elastic- sided boots and kick hard, for she can get very cross." Marcus pulled a cushion behind his head. " War with Germany is an academic problem ; the Staff every- where has to have one to exercise their brains. You teach your fellows how to land on the East Coast, and we teach ours how to burst through above Metz." 92 The Light above the Cross Roads " What do you know of war, Mark? " " Nothing," said Marcus amicably, " That is why T can give an unbiased opinion. I am out to under- stand people, not theories that only fit exceptional con- ditions. If I could sit here and tell you that I under- stood w^ar — well, I should be able to make your heart turn to water and your soul turn sick, if I could extend my comprehension as far as you, and make you under- stand. You talk of war, mein lieher, but you do not understand it; if you did you would say nothing further about your IVeltniacht. I could make you a sermon on your own text. For what shall it profit a Kaiser if he gain the whole world and lose — my God, not his individual soul, for that wouldn't matter, but the many million souls that make armies." " War is the finest training there is," said Eitel stub- bornly. " And for what ? To break the average man in gently for a better appreciation of Hell? Don't let us talk of it. I'm still cursed with that infernal imagina- tion of mine, and words have a power to call up sights and sounds to me. Himmel! Eitel, I'd rather talk about women." "Ah," Eitel smiled, "and die Damen, Mark? What thoughts do they evoke in that red-hot head of yours? " " I have dined and danced and fooled with them. I have made a little love to them, not meaning it, and," his expression grew dreamy. " I can lie to them even better than they can lie to me — but for the most part I do not think of them at all — unless you count Hesper." 93 CHAPTER IX EITEL had ample opportunity for studying Marcus from several points of view during their months together in Paris. Marcus was not an ordinary young man, any more than he had been an ordinary boy. He did not look ordinary, and he complained to his friend that it was a great drawback in life to be just a little different from the rest. " H you have the approved solidity that is expected of an Englishman abroad, it makes everything quite simple, but if you are not ex- actly what you are expected to be then you have to in- crease by dulness what you lose in the general effect. I don't look dependable, and I don't talk slowly," he explained. No woman ever really believed that Mark Janover was dull, even when he propped the wall in a state of utter boredom in the great guest chamber at the Em- bassy. He might have walked out of classical lands, or sheer and direct from the fifteenth century, and he courted his ideal attitude of reliability on these occa- sions with a steady determination not to be surprised into enthusiasm. There was another Marcus who ap- peared usually late in the night at less select rendez- vous, coming in like a tempest and departing like a storm. He was exotically French in these moods, and if he inwardly despised his company, he played at their game with a spirit of active liveliness that made him vociferously welcome when he chose to make his ap- pearance. 94 The Light above the Cross Roads And, again, there was still another Marcus who took no colour from the blending of atmosphere that sur- rounded him, and who stood out like a blazing house, burning at night upon a hill, fierce, intelligent, and de- liberate. But in each incarnation he was always the man Eitel loved above all the men or women he had ever met or known. In June Marcus told Von Verlhof that his days in Paris were likely to be short, as he expected a move. Any form of going was acceptable to him, and he felt he had been long enough where he was. He and Eitel had gone for a week to Wimereux, and they sat under a striped awning on the sand, looking out to the sea. " Blue and yellow and white," said Marcus, tilting his Panama over his eyes. " How a French watering- place stares and stares at one., There is no shyness in its psychology. Audacity is pleasing in some people, but in places it offends me. Now in Ireland — " a sudden idea struck him and his eyes lighted with pleas- ure. " Eitel, you shall come with me to Ireland when I leave next week. Yes, you shall, by George, and you can add a brogue to your other linguistic accomplish- ments." " I could be away a fortnight longer," said Eitel. " It would be a real pleasure, Mark." " Ireland is supreme in one respect. More lies are fabricated about her than any other country under Heaven. When women or countries are worth lying about you may at once conclude they are magnetic. Amiable men with wives and families lose their sense of proportion, and shake their fists when they talk of Ireland." He laughed reminiscently. " But taking us all round, we Irish aren't satisfactory. We lack Brit- 95 The Light above the Cross Roads ish emotion, and there is that damned dramatic instinct in our composition which is so puzzHng to the ordinary observer." " And which is out of place in the British metrical system? What does it matter, Mark? I shall cross the Irish Channel, and shall forget everything except that I feel very sick. Are you certain they will want me?" " Certain," said Marcus with conviction. " My Uncle likes any one who hasn't heard all his stories at least ten times; then the fact of your being German will be such a surprise to him, and he will shout at you, because he thinks all foreigners are deaf. Hesper has, of course, known you by proxy for years." Eitel flushed and moved uncomfortably. " You did not repeat my hetise about Waldenburg? " " Did I ? I don't remember. It doesn't matter if I have." " It matters very much." Von Verlhof stiffened his back. " It would appear a piece of effrontery — im- possible " Marcus laughed irrepressibly. " Hesper would think nothing at all about it. But then I can't make you know her as I could make her know you. She is above and beyond description. Wait until you meet her," A week later Marcus and Eitel had left France be- hind them, and were at their journey's end. Von Verl- hof stood in the big square hall, talking to his host, as Marcus had disappeared through a door into some un- known region. Von Verlhof was very polite, but his eyes wandered, and he looked in vain for the girl whom 96 The Light above the Cross Roads he had said he would come to Ireland to sweep away with him to the forests of Waldenburg. For the first time in her life Hesper had not been on the steps to wel- come Marcus. This time she wanted him to come to her, and she waited in the big drawing-room. She could not meet him with any eyes to watch other than her father's, who was gifted with a faculty for never seeing anything that he did not know all about before- hand, and could be trusted to notice nothing; she felt that the moment was too great and perfect to spoil in any way, and so she waited for Marcus. She was dressed in filmy white, and her smooth head shone under the light of the candles in the great glass candelabra that hung from the ceiling. Outside the lilac-tinted evening was full of the scent of flowers, and the birds sang evensong to the quiet skies. Her heart beat furiously as she heard Janover's quick, im- petuous step come towards the door, and she held out her arms towards him silently. " Schone Seclc," he said, and his eyes were touched with the awe and power of love. *' Hest, I have missed you so." For a little while there was not any need of speech between them ; they passed upwards from level to level of the ascending range of joy, no flaw in their perfect happiness, for it was the hour of meeting forces, and all else was flickering, inconsistent, and unreal. Words could tell neither of them anything; the actuality of being and the actuality of love lifted them both beyond the reach of any need for expression. At last Hesper broke the spell. " Marcus, ]\Iarcus, we have lost our manners, you and I. You left yours in France, and I must have mis- 97 The Light above the Cross Roads laid mine somewhere in this room, for I really do usually carry them carefully about with me. Where is Eitel ? How could you leave the poor dear with Dad ? He will be drinking three kinds of whisky before he gets up to dress for dinner. Dad still believes that hospitality consists of trying to make your guests dnrnk as quickly as possible." She slipped from his arms and ran to the door, " Come back, Hest," he said vehemently. " I don't care if I have to carry Eitel up to his room, or if he gets there on all fours." " But I do," she replied over her shoulder. Her eyes were shining like stars when she came into the hall, and Eitel turned from listening to an account of the pulling of a horse in a local race meeting and looked at her. That was how she first appeared to him, and she radiated joy in every gesture of her body. She was full of such buoyant gladness, and such ringing life, that he could have sworn that the very fire blazed up to greet her, and the light grew brighter everywhere. She walked towards him, and at the same moment Eitel von Verlhof received her into his heart, and set her there, kneeling in spirit before her dancing feet. Outwardly he only bowed formally, and made a polite statement about the weather and the crossing, and once again Hardress lassoed him back to his sub- ject. Hardress had taken an immediate liking to Eitel. he thought him a very fine-looking young fellow, with his height and his solemn dignity of manner, and he also thought it would cost him a long figure to buy hunters up to his weight. He thought it wonderful that Von Verlhof understood all that was said to him, 98 The Light above the Cross Roads and he admired his slightly foreign manner and exces- sive formality, for Hardress himself was never formal, and the novelty of his nephew's friend pleased him extremely. Hesper had not waited for any introduction, but came towards Eitel with a smile, wondering a little at his sudden flush as she took his hand. " Marcus will show you your room," she said, look- ing back towards Janover, who came slowly across the hall behind her. ** I am so glad to have met you at last, for I have really known you for years." " I hope, gnddiges Frdulein, that you have only heard good of me." *' I heard " her eyes danced. " No, I shall not tell you." " You did not tell her? " Eitel enquired anxiously as he followed Marcus along an immense corridor. Marcus lifted the light he carried over his head. " Hullo ! Eitel," he said with a laugh. " You are growing self-conscious." He went in at a door and lighted the candles on the mantelpiece and dressing- table. In the great size of the room the light was engulfed. " In any case if you want to tell her yourself, noth- ing I said forestalled it." He spoke lightly, but his eyes were suddenly arrested by the expression on Eitel's face which he saw reflected in the mirror, " We shall be late for dinner," he remarked hastily, " so stop dreaming and get ahead with your things." " Stop dreaming." Eitel repeated the advice to himself as he dressed, and he repeated it again and again as the days of his stay went by. but the strong secret force that hunts the universe had caught Eitel 99 The Light above the Cross Roads von Verlhof in one swift moment, and the magical sweet passion full of fire and yearning moved his heart. Hesper brought into his life with one rush of conquest all the colour and music that lives in the wind and the sun, and flooded his being with a tragic, tender radiance. Some days after the arrival of Marcus and Eitel, Marcus and Hesper were walking in the woods below the house. Von Verlhof had gone with Hardress to see some horses at a dealer's ten miles off, and Hesper watched them go with a long and somewhat pensive look. The day was full of soft, misty sunlight, and the river lay like a dream river under a gauze veil. Now and again a bird broke into vivid song, and the flags along the bank whispered with little rustling sounds. An old cart track, thick on either side with bluebells, led through the wood, and in an interspace of green lawn, sheltered by tall beeches, a felled tree made a wander- er's seat. Marcus sat down on the grass, leaning against Hes- per, his arm across her knees, and she bent down towards him. A faint, delicate breeze blowing from out of a rent of sky torn in the soft clouds, and bring- ing with it the fragrance of violets, touched her hair. The sweetness of the day and the wonder of her beauty brought to him a sense of something that ap- proached sadness. His joy in her was so full that it became akin to pain. What was the use of any life to him, if he was to be separated even for a time from the woman with the indispensable gift? Hesper expressed everything his youth desired, and without her all living lOO The Light above the Cross Roads was only partial and incomplete. A madness to pos- sess her crept up in his heart. He longed to bind her to him, never to let her go again, to make their lives one, shining into perfect unity year after blessed year ; and out of his longing a pang tore his heart to think what he should lose if ever he lost her and the love she gave him. Just overhead a lark broke out into wild song, and he caught her close to him. " Hest, you will never change to me. As God sees me. Hest, I will love you to the last day I live, and wherever death takes me."' She let herself go to him, mastered by his sudden tempest of passionate challenge to the unknown years. " In Ireland nothing ever changes." she said in a voice that faltered a little. " I won't change, and I couldn't. Partly because if I tried it would be no use, and partly '' She laughed as though to break the seriousness that was over them, " Oh, it's the locality, I expect." " You sweep everything else clean outside my life. I loved you when I was a boy at school, though I didn't understand. Paris taught me how much I loved you ; I suppose it is like that " he spoke thoughtfully. ** Every step of the way one learns how utterly one is bound to just one living soul out of all the millions on earth." " Everything is you to me." She stroked his hair. ** I have nothing else, Mark " " I love your voice, Hest," he went on, watching her. " It is full of your brave free soul. You have a dozen ways of saying even one word. I listened to you say- ing ' Yes ' and ' Yes ' and * Yes ' to Eitel last night — lOI The Light above the Cross Roads you said nothing else to him, Schone Seek, but all your * Yeses ' were quite different ones. How do you doit?" " One always says * Yes ' to Eitel," she said, sitting back a little from him, " because he seems to be always right." Marcus looked at her, and his eyes held hers deter- minedly. " Do you know that he loves you ? " The colour flooded her clear skin, and then ebbed slowly away, leaving her very pale. "Hush, Mark! I can't bear you to say that." " I might have foreseen it. When I brought him here I might have guessed — I might have kno\vn." " He cannot — he must not love me," she said, put- ting her hand over her face. She was empty of joy in one moment, and her distress was deep and sudden. " It seems so indiscriminate, so fatally impracticable — »■ so more than cruel, if he does." " Surely, Hest, you must have known it yourselt? ** " It is so sad," she replied vehemently, and she got up and stood gazing before her into the green shadows of the wood. Marcus stood beside her, and put his arm round her shoulder. " I don't see Eitel as you do," she said, raising her face to his. " To me he appears like a purpose. In- exorably still and calm, and his own ignorance of him- self, his own simplicitv. makes him more full of dan- ger." " Danger? I don't understand you." " Fate will use him. Mark, that is what I am trying to tell you. Oh. Marcus ! " — the name broke from her like a cry — " I felt as if you and I might escape from 1 02 The Light above the Cross Roads the strong terrible law that takes and uses our lives up for something that is not our own little destiny, but if Eitel is joined to us we cannot get away from the fatality that he brings with him. I know it — I have known it from the first minute I saw him. Eitel is not lucky for me or for you ! " Janover looked at her silently and then he smiled. " Hest, it's the very first time I've ever seen you jumpy in the nerves. Xot * lucky ' ! You Irish- woman! Why, Eitel would give his honest soul for you to walk over, and he would do more for me than any man I know." Hesper smiled back at him, but her look was shadowed, and she turned quickly to other subjects as they walked together along the cart track back to Ard- shane. In her quiet way Hesper Sheridan was entirely Celtic. Like most women she had an intuition where love is concerned, and she guessed almost at once that Eitel von Verlhof loved her. She knew also that he would not speak one word of his love to her, and as she sat alone in her room that night she deter- mined that he should break this resolution. She was haunted by one thought, and she was dominated by inexplicable fear. Reason and logic were useless to her, and she was certain alone of her deep-rooted pre- monition that in Eitel von Verlhof lay a power to at- tract dread events. She could not explain nor under- stand her own certainty, and she felt that even if she conquered it, and the strength of her feeling receded, or she lost the conviction that now gripped her, she would evade nothing, and only go on blindly to the 103 The Light above the Cross Roads moment when her present madness would be explained and accounted for with the exactitude of a mathe- matical problem. If she could really do anything, the one way to achieve her purpose was to make Eitel understand that she felt this fear, and, by the force of her own con- viction, persuade him to stand outside the life of Marcus Janover. She realized the cost of what she intended to de- mand, and she felt a great pity towards Von Verlhof, but it did not shake her purpose. The morning brought no change to her determina- tion, and she sat behind the large silver urn and waited for the moment when she could ask Eitel quite naturally to walk with her to the top of the hill behind the house to see the great boulder tliat rose up there lonely and isolated in a sea of heather. To those who first came to the " Motto Stone " was the privilege of wishing for something that was bound to come true. It made an excuse to take Eitel away into the purple uplands, and she intended to introduce the subject carelessly when her moment offered. Marcus was talkmg enthusiastically ; he had just received his orders to go to Berlin, and Eitel was also moved to enthusiasm. " You see, mein licher," he said, his eyes on ^Tarcus, " I am a good prophet. When you talked of Peters- burg and Christeffsky and living in the heart of the White Nation, I said * Berlin.' When you talked of Ice Carnivals on the Neva, and Lyof Tolstoi and Pacificism, I said ' Berlin.' " " And now I am going to Berlin," replied Janover. ** Zum hochstcn Dasciti immerfort zu strebcn. You 104 The Light above the Cross Roads watch that old Rhine of yours, Eitel. I shall dimb into high diplomacy after a year, I warn you, and then I shall smoke a meerschaum, and talk about limi- tation of armaments." "Germany?" said Hesper suddenly. "How strange." " My country." Eitel spoke with a touch of emo- tion. " Now perhaps, Fraulein, you will come there." " Indeed she will not," interposed Hardress. " She can't be spared." *' Berlin shall be hung with flags in your honour," went on Eitel, smiling. " We should make your ar- rival a day of rejoicing — like a victory." " Victory is so one-sided," objected Hesper. " It means somebody's defeat. No. you had better both come back, and I will get the Young Ireland band out to play you up to the house. We may even be a Nation then, if Dad hasn't prevented it." " I still hope you will come." Hesper nodded her head wisely. " If you really want me to come up there, you shall have your chance. I will take you up to the Motto Stone, and you can wish. Only in Ireland could you find such a friendly stone as that. You climb up a little rail and stand on the top, and the winds carry away your wish to the place where wishing comes true — and presently you get it, when it has grown strong enough." Eitel lowered his eyes, and tried to hide what he felt must be plainly evident to her had she seen his glance. " I will be delighted to accompany you," he said formally. Hesper and Eitel walked to the top of the hill, 105 ,The Light above the Cross Roads and though it was a hot brooding day down in the valley, there the wind was awake, and the sweep of purple heather was clear and empty and vast; one of those fine ultimate spaces where words become small and fall away, and human beings are silent, no matter how much they adore and desire, or long to express the meaning of their souls. They sat down at the foot of the Motto Stone, and Hesper gave herself up to the mood the surroundings evoked in her. As Eitel watched her he thought that in aftertime he would always remember her. sitting in the shadow of the rock. She represented her own country to him, embodied it, and exhaled its mystic attraction like per- fume. And though he knew she loved Marcus Jan- over there was no trace of sentimentality in her at- titude. She belonged to something more than a great individual love, she was Ireland, and the mirth and the tragedy of Ireland lived in her changing eyes. " You are wondering at me," she said, catching his long look, " and at my manners. We pride ourselves on our manners, Herr von Verlhof, for we haven't got big obvious things that make us rude and rich. Irish people are never supposed to make any one feel themselves a tax, or a bore, or a fool. The English are different — they are virile, they have that wonder- ful honesty that yawns in people's faces, and they think it ' only right ' to make any one they dislike, even a little, fully aware of their decision. In our barbaric country we call it bad form, and they retort that we are insincere. Just then I was paying you the compliment of thinking about something, with you sitting beside me." io6 The Light above the Cross Roads " Which am I, gnddige Fr'dulein, a tax or a bore — or am I a fool? " Hesper smiled slowly. " I wish I were a fool and we might establish a re- lationship. Oh! I am such a fool. Do you think, being as you are a German and probably very wise, that you could understand my folly which sounds like utter — oh " she felt about for a word, and then spelled it — " B-o-s-h." The sudden intimacy of her manner tried him beyond endurance, and he smiled back at her, a wrung, washed-out smile. " I believe I could always understand you." She bent forward and looked at him closely. "Always? And why?" " Gott, I will not tell you," he said fiercely. Hesper did not move and her eyes narrowed a little. " I am afraid of you, Herr von Verlhof ." " Then my beautiful Fraulein, you do puzzle me a little." She pulled up a little bunch of heather and studied it carefully. " You love Marcus Janover? " Her voice was low and breathless. " And I am not alone in doing so." " You are not alone, for I also love him." She looked up at him steadily. " And yet you have no feeling of fear, no indefinite foreboding. You know nothing that isn't as solid as that " — she pressed her hand on the ground. " You have no inspiration about the future ? " 107 The Light above the Cross Roads Eitel moved a little, and he took the heather from her hands and held it in his hollowed palms. " Perhaps I have no nervous system. 1 am Teutonic. But what is it that you fear?" He put the sprig of heather in his coat, and taking her hands in his, kissed them. Hesper's eyes grew tender as she looked at his bent head ; his act was devoid of the smallest bid to excite compassion, and yet it was full of pathos. " Could you stand away from this new beginning in jNTark's life? Could you keep from having any- thing at all to say to him while he is in Berlin? " Von Verlhof looked at her in blank astonishment. " Stand away? Give Marcus up entirely during the years he will be in my owti country? Fraulein. what have I done that you should mistrust my influence? When he leaves Berlin he may go anywhere — to Japan, China, the ends of the earth from me." " You have done nothing." She gazed out at the empty country, her eyes full of indefinite trouble. " I ask because I cannot help asking. There is a deeper cause for it than I can explain. ... I only know that you will bring some grave crisis towards him. sooner or later, and I do not know how I know it." "I bring him trouble? Fraulein, I would do any- thing for Mark." " Then keep away from him." She held out her hands, and when he took them in his they were icy cold. " I can feel things coming, just as one hears footsteps along a frozen road long and long before they reach the house." Her eyes held his as though she listened to something he could not hear. " And ^o8 The Light above the Cross Roads I hear you step, and you will bring with you some fatal hour for Marcus." She could not restrain her emotion, and her voice was charged with the force of her deep conviction. " When I was a child I read a story of one of Napoleon's w^ars, and it haunted me, coming back to me in my dreams; the story of a pitch dark night full of icy wind and the thunder of guns, and over it all a voice shouting ' A la hdionnetU/ Last night I dreamed of it again. Think of what I say, listen to me now, and do what I ask of you." He kissed her hands desperately. " Mein Hcrta, mcin Hertz," he replied brokenly, " what is it in me that makes you believe I could bring woe or ill to Mark? I am only a soldier, and am ignorant of many things. Must you ask this of me?" She put her hands on his shoulders. " You and I don't matter, Mark alone really counts. If I felt that I might be wrong somehow in his life I would go out of it utterly. It is for him that I ask.'* He thought for a time, and then he spoke quietly. " Will it bring you peace of mind if 1 promise ? " Hesper's eyes lighted as though a great weight was lifted off her mind. " Thank you," she said gently, and she kissed him as a child might have kissed his kind honest face, out of sheer love and trust in his goodness; and Eitel was content, knowing that he had been able to make her heart glad. Von Vcrlhof did not see Hesper alone again before he said goodbye, for Hardress had collected a " poker crowd " after his own heart, and they never broke up 1 09 iThe Light above the Cross Roads [until long after midnight. There was no opportunity if or sentiment, even if Eitel had sought for it, which he did not. ** And our Irish fortnight is done," said Marcus as he sat on Eitel's bed; outside the open window the dawn was growing clear. '* Yes, it is done." Marcus took a pack of cards from his pocket and threw them on the floor where they scattered and fell. *' There is my friend the ace of spades," he said with a laugh. " Turned up to me. by Jove. We have a saying, * What falls on the floor comes in at the door.' That old black fellow carried a Macabre significance, he means Hell, or something unpleasant." Eitel did not turn from where he stood at the >vindow. " I am glad you brought me, Mark, I shall always remember." " No one ever forgets their first taste of Ireland." Marcus joined him at the window. " Dawn over the blessed Old Country," he went on half sadly. " What shall we both have been and seen and done before we watch it here again? Or shall we see it, standing at the same windows, again, I wonder? " Eitel stood silent for a moment. " If destiny wills," he said, after a long pause. no CHAPTER X ONE autumn evening, some months later, Marcus Janover walked towards the Tiergartenstrasse, going slowly to the house of Lord Shaw ford, his Chief. The trees were turning into fountains of yellow leaf, and the line of ambre and sunset ran, like a presentment of Nature's decadent ecstasy, before and behind him. Overhead a clean blue sky spread in- tensely clear, and the gay life of fashionable Berlin rode and drove and walked with him as he went. Face followed after face, personality after personality, nearly all going in the direction of Unter den Linden by the way of the Tiergarten where the statues of the old rulers of the German Empire stared solemnly at them, as though wondering eternally at the folly of their lives. It seemed to Marcus that there was a smell in the air of old Berlin; the little forgotten village rose be- fore him and he experienced the uncanny feeling of realization of unnatural grow^th. Old Berlin caught him out of the fresh autumn evening as though it had a secret to reveal. Dim mists clouded the distances like swaying blue chiffon scarves, and even the crude- ness of new Berlin became absorbing for a moment. .The sheer romance of the beautiful perspective of trees, vague in the distance and the rising damp, the red bars of light growing vivid as the sunset clouds III The Light above the Cross Roads began to gather in the upper sky, the pageant of pass- ing life and the fleeting show, all acted upon his fancy and made him feel suddenly as unreal as though he were a disincarnated Berliner looking for his small lost house by the Spree. A woman in a remarkable and original dress passed him in a large purple motor, drawing his eye, and slightly to his surprise he recognized Ursule. She was accompanied by two joyous young officers and she neither saw nor recognized Marcus, who did not particularly desire to recall their old acquaintanceship. He remembered her laugh ana hurried on, quickening his pace, and once again he thought of the little lost Berlin, of which no fleeting echo wandered in the life around. Here there was no place for simple mem- ories. All was colossal, nouvcau richc, and tainted to the core with strong materialism. Only the au- tumn evening lent blue scarves of gauze and mystery, and lent something ethereal to the dense afiluent solid- ity. The lyric life belonged to the sunset and not to the railed roofs and towers and spires of the vista be- fore him. A chime of bells rang out intensely sweet and clear from the Dom, its harmonies swinging into the evening, and its slow\ clear tone making quivering notations in the air. For a moment he paused to listen and then went on until he came to the big house in the Tiergartenstrasse. Lord Shaw ford's private apartment was a lofty room with large doors on the same floor as the hall. A fire burned in the big grate and the books around the walls made the best and most expensive mural decoration known to man. A few large engravings 112 The Light above the Cross Roads of British notabilities hung in the spaces left by the bookcases, and on the writing-table a powerful electric lamp was already lighted. Lord Shaw ford was a large, bulky man of heavy build with keen, quiet eyes; he wore his clothes care- lessly and his hair was constantly worked into wisps owing to a habit he had of recklessly passing his fingers through it. When IMarcus came in he glanced up and nodded. " There is something in the air,'' he said briefly, and plunged back into the pile of papers before him. Marcus sat down by the fire and warmed his hands. He knew Lord Shaw ford would have more to say when the moment came; and after a little he ceased to turn leaves and looked up once more. " This effort after a better understanding between England and Germany isn't within the scope of common sense," he said, with a touch of fierceness, in a dry, metallic voice. " It is nothing — it does not exist. They might as well talk about universal peace. Poof ! " He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs. " England refuses to admit that there is such a locality as that interesting Bureau in the Koniggriitzer- strasse? " " England still lives on the Manchester doctrine," Lord Shaw ford snapped out his rejoinder, " and their peace cry is * Cut down the x\rmy, economize on the Navy,' draw out teeth and claws and " He broke off with a gesture of disgust. " One man in the Cabinet doesn't want this and another doesn't want that, and what they all want is to save public money 113 The Light above the Cross Roads and show a good balance-sheet." He twisted his mouth grimly. " They'll have to dip deep in their damned pockets for it yei." " I suppose they won't understand the simple fact that a nation which is an army is hardly there to play with armaments and picnic manoeuvres." Marcus stood up and leaned on the mantelpiece. It was not the first time that Lord Shaw ford had sent for him when his wrath was at boiling pitch. ** They knoiv it is not. They know that the forces which Berlin would control in a war would be 9,000,000, and if the Dual Monarchy came in with Berlin you may double the number. Good God ! what it must be to be able to run an army without political interference. When I think of our system set against this model of efficiency it becomes tragedy. Here one man's signature means war if he wants it, and we have to pull a dozen strings and open a dozen doors and ask the people who know nothing if they are satisfied, down to the crossing-sweeper who has a vote, before we can begin to work ; and all the time this army of aggression is clothed over in sheepskins by our men in Parliament who represent the country." Lord Shaw ford leaned forward and balanced an ivory paper knife over his finger, rocking it up and down. " You never make notes, do you, Janover? " Marcus shook his head. " I can trust my memory." Lord Shawford glanced at a pile of papers at his elbow. " I can trust mine about as much as I can trust the 114 The Light above the Cross Roads •Balkans," he said irritably. " When I inform the Government of possible phrases it means endless writ- ing. There is another Conference on foot now with the usual difficulties. At this conference recorded strengths will be stated and data of navies and so on, and there is the eternally problematic question of the United States, ^^'hat I chiefly wanted you for this evening was to ask if you knew Count von der Schultz, late of the Erste Dragoner Garde?" Janover nodded thoughtfully. *' The man we call ' Hans Breitmann,' " he said with a quick smile. " Every one in Berlin knows Hans." " Well, Von der Schultz is a man whom I recognize as a dangerous enemy. H we are to be hypnotized in England, and if we are to be deaf. dumb, and blind to the warning of coming events, it is probable that Berlin will send Von der Schultz to London. They study every effect over here, and he looks British, talks English, races, and is just the man to hit popular English sentiment. He may be a second-rate states- man, but he is a picked man for all that." Lord Shawford drummed his fingers on the table and was lost in thought for a moment. " If he is admitted on some pretext to the Con- ference. I shall know that they mean sending him." "And if he goes?" *' Then it will be a case of no compromise. The volcano will burst. Von der Schultz is kept as certain men in my old Parliamentary days were kept — for bringing things to a crisis. What is needed for that is impudence. Von der Schultz can be trusted by his party, I infer, and until the moment comes that they 115 The Light above the Cross Roads want him, he can run horses for the Derby and look like an Englishman. Up to that moment the control used will be strong." " Then the crash will come in the very heart of peace." " Exactly. There has been too much war talk from the wrong sources. If the one set of journalists or politicians shriek * War with Germany ' it only harms and retards, it assumes the nature of a party cry, and God knows I ought to realize this point. Who are shouting it now in the streets of London?" He shrugged his heavy shoulders. " And yet they are only speaking the solemn truth." He turned over the papers beside him, his bushy eyebrows drawn into a close frown. " This Von der Schultz," he said, waking from a deep abstraction, " you say you know him. You are able to mix easily with these men on account of your own training. Where did you first meet him ? " Marcus explained that Von der Schultz had been one of the elder boys in his school, though he did not add that it was he who first called that now well-known personage Hans Breitmann. and the name had stuck. "What is your opinion of him?" Marcus thought steadily for a few moments. " Outwardly — socially, I mean — he is popular, open-handed, and entertains rather a varied assort- ment of friends at the Cafe Bauer. I should describe him as a cheerful social animal — but behind that " " Ah, that is the point." ** I should say his political passion is strong. He ii6 The Light above the Cross Roads guards it very carefully, but it comes out now and then. He is not always strong enough to hide it." " Rather more than a year ago Von der Schultz came into prominence," said Lord Shawford reflec- tively. " Certain enquiries were being made by one of our agents, and in papers we received it transpired that Von der Schultz was in with the War Party to a very exceptional extent. With regard to his future activities I do not wish to be left in the dark. Can you assist me? " " I shall find it quite easy to join Von der Schultz's social " Marcus paused, he was about to say " menagerie " and altered the word to " circle." " He went to Heidelberg after he left my school. We have memories in common." " Which is not always a good passport," remarked Lord Shawford drily. " However, as he is a Prussian he is likely to brag, and if you hear him do so you can memorize the fact." " You think he knows already that he is likely to be chosen for a mission ? " Marcus looked steadily at the fire as he spoke. " Sent to the Embassy in London to take over some extraneous work there ? " " I consider it very probable. He stands just now for the weather-cock which will show us where the wind will blow from, and the sooner I am certain the better prepared I shall be." Marcus walked down the steps of the house pro- vided with more than sufficient food for thought. I-XDrd Shawford had shown him over and over again that he trusted him and could feel confidence in his judgment, and Marcus would hardly have been human if he had not immensely appreciated the fact. This 117 The Light above the Cross Roads question of coming into touch with Von der Schultz presented the interest of a game whereby he might happen upon an unrevealed secret. His power of see- ing things in lucid flashes would be of enormous help to him, he knew, and he hoped that the dense material- ism of his old school-fellow would not cloud his per- ception of the man behind the mere brute instinct. Every one he passed in the street had some secret that explained them, and for a moment they became trans- figured as he walked towards his own house behind the Dom. It was dark and the softness of evening had flown. Berlin was bright with its night gaiety, and he crossed the Friedrichstrasse watching the crowd. The oppression of numbers swayed over him as it had done many times in London, and the people on the pavement and the people in the road suddenly became, not people of form and flesh, but countless myriads of souls. The idea of the forces compelled by their thoughts weighed upon him and was almost horrible to him. He knew that he always suffered from contact with crowds; they gave him glimpses of uncontrolled things, until he realized what it was that drove anchorites and philosophers into the wilder- ness, and knew how easily he himself might come to hate this monstrous nearness of other lives. He had a sensation of choking revelation, and the grasp of it caught him at the heart. The gay women, the Windelstraus, passing with a flutter of skirts and wandering glances, appeared sadder to him than anything else in the throng, and saddest of all because of their raffish gaiety. They might belong to the scheme of the Universe, but it seemed to Marcus that to dispose of them as an ii8 The Light above the Cross Roads immemorial necessity was essentially false. Men, placed in the reverse condition would be unthinkable. Plordes of well-dressed men wandering for hire. The idea was appallingly nauseating, and yet men were taught to reverence women! He walked on quickly, unable to find any solution of the mystery. He dined alone and wrote a short letter to Hesper before he went out. It was late when he got to the Cafe Bauer, where, as he expected, Von der Schultz was entertaining a noisy party. The great room was crowded and fumes of cigar smoke mounted to the gilded ceiling. It struck Marcus that it might be an ornate corner of well-dressed Hell. A string band on a raised dais played alluringly, but no one listened, and the tables were all crowded. To be sure of a table it was neces- sary to engage it before the theatres closed, and Marcus had deliberately taken no such step. As he stood with his marked air of calm insolence looking over the heads of the seated crowd, he caught the eye of Von der Schultz, who raised his glass and waved a table napkin vigorously. Marcus threaded his way with slow deliberation to the large flower-laden table. Von der Schultz had five women and eight men collected as his guests, and one of the women, the most daringly clad of the five, was Ursule. The words of the song that had given Von der Schultz his name danced thought the mind of Marcus: O crown your head mit roses, lof, O keep a liddle sprung; Onendless wisdom is but dis, To go it vile you're young. 119 The Light above the Cross Roads Und age vas nefer coome to him, To him spring blooms afresh, Who fints a liffing spirit in Der Teufel and der Flesh. " Hullo, Hans," said Marcus carelessly. " I'm the day after the fair so far as a chance of supper is concerned." Von der Schultz, his face flushed and his eyes hquid, laughed a stentorian laugh. " Nichts cu danken, Marcus Janover." He glanced at his guests. " What lady will oblige the imperturb- able Mr. Mark Janover of His Britannic Majesty's Embassy with half her chair? — Ursule, mein Turtel- taube " " There is room in my place," suggested a pallid young lieutenant, who looked as though he had already drunk rather too much of his host's Champagncr. He got up a little unsteadily. " Ich soil — Ich imll — Ich muss " Marcus took his place and sat down at the table. "What is the matter with him? Why is he con- jugating verbs? " " He is young," said Von der Schultz, " and 1 put him beside Ursule. Ach, you and she are ac- quainted? " " We met in Paris." She stretched a bare arm across Marcus and drank from Von der Schultz' glass. " But we did not know each other well." For a moment Marcus studied her. She was hand- some, heavy-lidded, audacious, and was, as he first had judged her, feline and cruel. When she raised her chin tlie gesture was suggestive of a cobra about to strike. He wondered what chance had brought her 120 The Light above the Cross Roads to Berlin, or if it were anything in the nature of chance. Ursule was deliberate and calculating and hard as the nether millstone. A sudden curiosity awoke within him. "Have you been in Paris, Hans?" he asked care- lessly. " Not I." His light eyelashes flickered as though some inward thought amused him. " What need for me to go to Paris when Paris comes to me; is that not so, niein Wasserlilief " The term of endearment he used was simple enough, and yet jNIarcus realized that the Waterlily 3vas not pleased ; he did not, however, glance at Ursule. " Count von der Schultz and I were at the same school," he said in the stiff reserved voice which his company believed to be essentially British. " He was a senior boy. I was only a nonentity." ** And now he is a fat man and you are so pretty," threw in a fair-haired girl across the table, " so that if he was cross to you then, you can make him suffer now." Von der Schultz laughed joyfully. " He may have you, Lisbeth ; we grow as dreary as an old married couple ; but Ursule he may not have." Marcus wondered exactly what the meaning could be. As he ate his supper and the night wore on, he became more and more certain that there was some- thing else than a mere light connection between Von der Schultz and this woman who laughed and smoked and used amazingly lurid language. The Cafe Bauer rang with music and laughter, and parties greeted each other from end to end of the building. 121 The Light above the Cross Roads "If we were in London," remarked Von der Schultz, " we should by now be parading in the streets, wasf London is entirely uncomfortable. After mid- night, Klops! all the doors shut. It is very stupid." " Why do the doors shut? " asked Lisbeth. " Because the English are so good, so good, and it is time zu Belt su gehen." He chuckled and, standing up, poured the remainder of a bottle into Marcus Jan- over's glass. " I do not love your London, Mark." " Well, you haven't got to live there," Marcus said almost offensively. " You are too valuable at Span- dau, I suppose." " Perhaps 1 am — perhaps " Ursule, who was apparently not listening, beat her hands on the table and broke into a song as the violinists played madly. " Je suis chauffeur d'un automobile," sang Ursule in a shrill soprano. " Join in the chorus, Monsieur, it is delicious." Marcus was becoming extremely tired of the party, but he had fully determined to see it out, and towards the small hours of the morning he at last disentangled Von der Schultz from his friends, and without quite knowing how he managed it he found himself sitting in his host's car, as they slid along under a brilliantly starry sky towards the Kurfiirstendam, in which ex- pensive locality the Count lived. " I never would permit Ursule or Lisbeth or any of them so much as inside my door," he said with virtuous determination. " Ursule was angry. Gott! what a temper she has ! " " I thought she seemed peevish," Marcus rq)lied, 122 The Light above the Cross Roads lighting a cigarette. " However, I expect you caii manage her.'' By the light of the vesta which he held Von der Schiiltz winked heavily and said nothing. '■ Nun, you will have a drink — a dam' whisky- soda, was?" " It's so late." Marcus looked at his wrist watch. " Nonsense, we aren't in London. Come in," and the hospitable Count opened the door with his latch- key. Marcus entered half unwillingly and followed Von der Schultz into a sternly furnished room. " This is where I work. You have hidden your- self, Janover; I believe it is the first time you are here?" " And this," thought Marcus, " is the room that reflects the other side of your mind, my friend." On the table in the centre of the room lay Treitsche's Politik and Deutsche Kampfen, which Marcus glanced at as the Count poured out a drink for him at a side table, and returned carrying a plate of sandwiches. "And do you like Diplomacy?" he asked, sitting in a deep chair opposite Marcus. *' You would. You think me a bad judge of women, but I am a good judge of men. I never over-estimate the wisdom or folly of others." " I didn't say anything about women," said Marcus, laughing. " But you thought, ' Here is this old fool Hans tied to a petticoat string.' Oh, I know very well that you did." Marcus blew out a spiral of smoke very slowly. " Perhaps I did." 123 The Light above the Cross Roads He began to feel something tangible at last. Von der Schultz was vain, and a vain man is invariably- vulnerable. " No," he added, as if the concession was wrung from him against his will, " you are not a man to be at the mercy of a mere intrigue — and besides, you have obligations." " My good Janover, I am most acutely aware of that fact." He moved restlessly in his chair. " And all goes well in the Embassy. We are upon the eve of a better understanding? " " An absolute millennium." " Gut. I am almost as much English as you are German. France your Ally! Gott in Himmel. it is farcical. There is not one point upon which you stand on level ground — not one." "Level ground — I think not." Marcus lifted his glass and looked at it sideways. Von der Schultz looked at Marcus with a shifty eye. "You are talking of your Navy?" " Not I." Marcus met his look with astonishment and candour. " Don't let your own attachment to diplomacy lead you to suppose that I should fence with you, Hans. I'm hardly sufficiently in the know to attempt such a ridiculous exhibition." He became more earnest and slightly confidential. " I have the archaic objection to my own nationality to conquer before I get well inside. You know I am Irish? " The Count looked at him curiously. " Ach," he said dubiously, " I have heard — no matter. But surely you are not any the less valuable to them for that reason? " 124 The Light above the Cross Roads " Less valuable ? " Marcus asked, speaking with sudden heat. " Good God, Von der Schultz, do you know what you are talking about?" He laughed and lay back in his chair. " England owes us almost everything she has. Her best generals, her best statesmen, her best colonizers, her best soldiers. It is the Irish in me that is all that is worth while." Marcus was riding boldly, and he saw Von der Schultz looking at him again. "Why, of course, Mark Janover," he said, slapping his hands together. " It was you who got the prize in the Freiheit debate. Are you still a revolutionary, mein Liehcrf " He laughed his hoarse guttural laugh. " Is one ever anything but the same as one began ? " " Never," said Von der Schultz restlessly. " The heart cannot alter." " You were for German world predominance. I can see it all now," said Marcus, his eyes half-closed. " You were very much of a man to me, you and the six old boys from Heidelberg who came to the great debate. You quoted the Great Elector, Friederich, Stein and Scharnhorst. What dreamers we both were after all. You said that if Germany submitted to peace, then Bismarck had lived in vain, and I said — God knows what I said. Yet here we both are drink- ing to Friede, and each in our own way trying to help it on." Von der Schultz pursed up his full red lips and nodded. " Certainly," he remarked. " Peace." He drew a quick breath. " Of the nature I understand it to be." " I wish to God they would send you to England," said Marcus, still sitting with half-closed eyes. " You 125 The Light above the Cross Roads know how much can depend upon representation. But there, of course, you are too young from the Berlin standpoint, and besides," he smiled, " there is that razzle-dazzle reputation of yours as well ; England expects something different, and I don't honestly believe, Hans, you could do without your Ursules and your Lisbeths." Von der Schultz reddened with quick annoyance. *' You are not infallible, Janover. I could show you a letter that might surprise you a little. I may not go to England, but the suggestion has been made " He pulled himself up with difficulty. " I could go." " Well, it only shows your fellows have more sense than I expected," said Marcus with refreshing in- nocence. " You're a sportsman, you hunt and race, and you could enter into their social life." He got up with a stifled yawn. " In fact, you're very English in heaps of ways." Von der Schultz looked half-uneasily at Marcus. ** You are a queer devil, Mark," he said as he saw him out of the door, bidding him return soon. " A queer devil," he said again as he went back into his room. " And if ever they hit you at the Embassy you may be queerer still." Marcus walked back to his house behind tlie Dom just as the sky was clearing for sunrise. " It was a damnable evening," he thought as he got into his bed, *' but at least it wasn't mere waste of time." 126 CHAPTER XI ABOUT the time that Marcus Janover took up the dropped threads of his old acquaintanceship with Count Karl von der Schultz, he experienced one of the first bad disappointments of his career. Affairs in the Balkans had for some time been caus- ing a considerable amount of interest tliroughout the Diplomatic world, the world that knew well that small nations can be fractious and disposed to indulge in the luxury of sedition when circumstances permit. Serbia and Bulgaria, with ancient dominions to estab- lish, were calling to mind the fact that once Prussia had also been a small Power, and felt that an hour might soon strike which would release them from the shadows, and England stood in the eyes of those who held the helm of the smaller ships of state as a Power ready to encourage national feeling. Germany rattled a sword still in its scabbard, and Austria turned a cold gluttonous eye towards Belgrade and the Serbian country. To be sent to Belgrade on however small a pretext from Berlin was to be sent to a point of acute interest, and Marcus Janover felt his heart beat quicker at the prospect. Hamer, one of the military attaches, spoke to him about the prospect of his going. " Even if it is only a Messenger's job it is sure to be lively. You can always take local temperatures. Serbs don't much appreciate Teutonic culture." They were standing on the staircase as he spoke, 127 The Light above the Cross Roads and Marcus was on his way to an interview with Lord Shawford. " It might be pretty," said Marcus, his eyes hghting. " A game of euchre, where the Jack takes the King, is always full of possibihties." " I expect you'll be standing behind the chair of the man who holds the Jack," said Hamer with a laugh. " Good luck, anyhow." Yet when Marcus went into the vast room that always seemed like a room in another world, so full it was of shadows, nothing was said to him of what he desired to hear. Lord Shawford appeared unconscious of the exist- ence of Balkan States and their warfare, he only wished to enquire after the health of Von der Schultz. He was glad to know that Janover had renewed old ac- quaintance and that Von der Schultz had openly hinted at his chance of going to London. He was only faintly interested in Ursule, and turned down the corners of his large mouth cynically. " Lepers." he said tersely, swaying the ivory paper-knife, which seemed like a familiar spirit to him, over his thick forefinger. " When this woman was in Paris whom did she attach herself to? " " I used to see her with Le Cornu, a journalist, but later on, sir, she was with De I'lsle, a French artillery general." " Artillery generals should have more common sense." Lord Shawford shrugged his heavy shoulders and expressed himself on the subject of women in general. " They are all bom spies. They do it for their own 128 The Light above the Cross Roads entertainment. They spy on each other and ferret out their ages and incomes. Women are queer, always queer, Janover. The Government that trusts to reports from governesses and cocottes, the two easiest roles for the spy, is trusting to a broken reed. I hate women. Always have, thank God." ]Marcus lingered as long as he dared, still hoping to hear that Lord Shaw ford was inclined to indicate that he had approved his temporary absence, but no hint came, and he was obliged to take an entirely reluctant departure. On the steps of the Embassy he met Reynolds, whose face outshone the morning stars. " By George, Marcus, I never expected this bit of luck to come my way," he said, walking beside Jan- over towards the Domstrasse. " Come and have a drink in my rooms on the strength of it," Marcus replied with forced enthusi- asm. There was no need for any question on his part. Humphrey Reynolds had been taken and he had been left, and he cursed Berlin in his heart. " It isn't much of a job on the face of it," con- tinued Reynolds. " I have nothing at all to do." " All the more time for enjoying yourself." " By George," said Reynolds again, " it is a sur- prise." Reynolds and Marcus stood about level as to senior- ity, but Reynolds himself would have been the first to admit that Marcus must have the first chance with every opening that in any way affected the Juniors. They walked together to Domstrasse 3. and into the grey and gold room that Marcus loved and had furnished entirely according to his own taste. After he had poured out a drink for Reynolds and one for 129 The Light above the Cross Roads himself, he stood looking abstractedly at a vase full of yellow irises. He had an almost feminine love of flowers, and just at that moment the sight of the irises comforted him in some strange still way. " I thought it would be you," said Reynolds, repeat- ing himself and sitting down by the fire. " I can't imagine why it is not." " I can," thought Marcus, inwardly cursing Von der Schultz. " Good luck, anyhow, Humphrey," he said aloud. " The answer to your riddle will be Russia. I'm told that they pave the streets of Belgrade with roubles these days." "It's a wonderful life," said Reynolds. "Even you could hardly complain that it is dull." "Even I? Am I so difficult to amuse? I'm a little bit too well entertained as it happens. I've thought of going to Hanover for a rest to see the finest man I know, Eitel von Verlhof, but the cross- grained devil is never there when I want him " ; he spoke impatiently. " I'm off colour. I supped too well last night again, and had to sit and laugh at that great gross Von der Schultz until I got a swimming in the head. " And," added Reynolds, smoothing his fair moustache. " His Excellency sent for yon" " And had me on the mat — oh, yes. rather," Marcus agreed. " It doesn't do to be seen at four in the morn- ing at the Cafe Bauer." There was a moment's silence between them. " I'm damned sorry, old chap," said Reynolds in a gruff voice, for he was past master at emotional tact- lessness. " I expect that's why " " Not a bit of it," Marcus spoke cheerfully. " It's 130 The Light above the Cross Roads your luck. While you are disporting your diplomatic body at Belgrade, I shall be at the Koniglichenschloss, standing with my back to the wall in the Black Eagle Room, watching the beau monde, and wondering when I shall get some punch to drink. Amusing? Oh, it's wildly amusing. I've often wondered if the Obcrhof- Marschall enjoys it all." " Still," said Reynolds, who was tenacious of an idea, " I wouldn't mix up with that Cafe Bauer lot too much." " I have four corners to my bed," said Marcus, taking a cigarette from the box on the table. " I have four angels round my head — the Crown Prince, Prince Adalbert, Prince Eitel Fritz, Prince August Wilhelm — and Pm afraid there isn't room for Joachim. Even a Chef de Mission may flutter in the lower spheres. You'll get your invitation to the Ordensfest when you come back, and I foretell that you'll finish up with medals and orders all over the front and the back of your coat — and as for riblx)ns, there won't be a flapper in Southsea to equal you in your collection." "And what about you?" " Oh, I don't know " ; Marcus looked up at the ceiling. " Some one who knew a lot once said that beautiful women saw the worst side of human nature, because equally they dealt with the worst of men. I think Pm rather like a beautiful woman in that re- spect, Renny." " That sounds very cynical," said Reynolds. " You aren't growing cynical, are you, Marcus? " " I am no more cynical than the wind blowing through the forest. I suppose I am ruled by some 131 The Light above the Cross Roads motive that I hardly understand. Most of us are. You and I and all the others, we think we are playing the game, but I have a notion that it's the game that plays us." " Oh, I don't think that," said Reynolds with con- viction. " It's brains that really count." " When you say * brains,' I say * instinct.' You may have brains enough to fill a tub or write a history, but it won't help you in times when life is cheap and formalities are nil. We of the Corps Diplomatique know that such times are upon us, or staved off us, by something less tangible than brains." Marcus got up and began to walk slowly up and down the room. "After all, you or I might become prominent men; or we might become simple respectable members of society and pay our bills weekly, or we might take a pickaxe or a spade and have a hand in making a new Heaven and a new map of Europe." " You won't do that with a spade," said Reynolds, pleased at his own quickness. " Yes, you will." Marcus stood and smiled down at him. " A spade, my good Renny, is not an imple- ment to despise if you want to re-organize National destinies. I^erhaps you may live long enough to understand what I mean when I say that." He sat down again. " What is the real point is whether one's right to an individual life is undisputed or not — whether mortal existence is not really given us like gold, to spend on others. H we have to act inevitable parts, wouldn't it be rather a queer stroke of fate to be cast for the inevitable failure, or the inevitable Judas, or the inevitable Scmiramis, and to dance down the Hollcntreppe, with all the sins of the successful and the 132 The Light above the Cross Roads righteous in a bag on your own damned shoulders." Reynolds said nothing. He felt that Marcus was bitterly disappointed, and that his strange way of talk- ing was the result of his own success, and yet he could not quite believe this to be the case. Marcus was glad when he got up to go. He liked Reynolds. Every one liked him, and there was a crystal clearness of honesty about him that made him command respect. " He should have been a Consul," was the opinion that Lord Shawford held of him. ** The integrity of England and the valour of St. George are about him." And now Reynolds was go- ing to Belgrade. Not on any great mission, it was true, except in the sense that most missions may be great ones. Marcus wondered if he should have been chosen had it not been for Von der Schultz, and he began to doubt. He cursed himself for his own over sub- tlety. It is as bad to be over subtle as it is to be over stupid. He knew that Lord Shawford's eyes were as keen as a razor edge, and he wondered if he looked upon him as a man who is spoilt by a too intense quick- ness. As he was asking himself this question, to which he knew no answer, his man came to him with a pile of letters on a tray, and on the top lay one from Hesper. " Marcus," she wrote, " are you sitting in a palace in Wil- helmstrasse, all dressed up, with a circle of Kings and Dukes and Princes and Ministers around, saying polite things to one another? I cannot imagine your diplomatic entertain- ments. How could I? My only idea of Germany is a place where you went to school, where cheap things are made, and where Christmas-trees and sausages and beer all come from. The Light above the Cross Roads I suppose there must be more in it than that, but it hasn't reached us yet in Cork. One thing I am pretty sure of is that human nature is much the same there as here. Do you go to Church? You said you had a Dom quite handy. If you do, do you ever wonder if those good people who also go there ever really think at all about what they profess? In our locality there are twenty families. Six aren't on speaking terms with the Rector; ten don't acknowledge the existence of the other ten, five are at open war with fifteen, two are not only at war with all the rest but fight among themselves, and yet I have heard them state that they are 'in love and charity with their neighbours.' If their attitude represents either I hope you don't love me much, Mark, for it might be most unpleasant. Doesn't it make one laugh ? What can their candid opinion of God really be? Dad is very strict about Church-going. He does it because it is the one chance he gets of publicly cutting old Sir Jeffrey Spencer whom he fought with twenty years ago, though he couldn't tell you now what it was about. And so it goes on, and it is one of the most amusing subjects for consideration on a cold afternoon that I have found for some time. Per- haps these awful Victorian Churches make people ill-natured, and in the country no one forgets a grudge. You nurse it like a sick child, you fatten it like a Christmas turkey, you talk of it or brood upon it and it becomes Art, Literature, and Science to you. It is astonishing what you can get out of some, quite possibly, non-existent injury if you treat it well. " But here I am, dragging you back when I ought to be taking the wings of any reliable bird, and trying to leave all behind and ' clear my mind of Cork ' for a lucid interval. "What do you do, Marcus? Diplomacy calls up visions of armed kings sitting with a map on a table, playing at land grab, and making quotations from Alice in IVottdcrland ; the cartoons in Punch really impressed me with that idea. It is unthinkable that it can be anything else. The very word ' European Powers ' makes my head whirl. Are they men, dear man of mine, who walk up staircases, or do they con- gregate like Macbeth's witches? The Light above the Cross Roads "Lady Mary is dead Do you remember Lady Mary? She insisted on my getting some schoolmg, and bribed Dad with a thousand pounds. Well, it isn't there to have ; poor dear, she lived according to the principle of ' v^hat I saved I lost,' and when the will was opened, though it read very well, there was, the solicitors say, ' nothing to it.' Dad is very angr\-. He says Lady Mary was unscrupulous and un- truthful, and he really has ended by persuading himself she was a saintly swindler. I don't care. ' There was mair lost at Shirramuir where the Hieland lad lost his faither and his mither and his gude bufiF belt worth baith of them.' " One point is clear, and that is that Dad, having always believed me ' provided for ' by the prospect of Lady Mary's thousand, now admits that he has not ' put by,' as he calls it. He wouldn't ever have ' put by ' anyhow, and he has the sat- isfaction of feeling that my future insolvency is entirely due to her and not to him. He has taken to sitting in the eve- nings rubbing his chin and saying at intervals, ' Graceless old woman ' or ' Deceitful old wretch,' and he asked me last night if 'that nice Dutch feller' had a big place anywhere. Dear old Dad. I told him that I thought Eitel had a Schloss in Spain. Dad is beginning to matchmake, and I foresee how very troublesome he will get the more the idea grows upon him. I thought of telling him that I was going to marr>- you when you are an Ambassador, but felt that it might be wiser not to allude to it at present. When are you coming back to Ireland? When will you be able to disen- tangle yourself from all those Crowned Heads and Lord High Everythings and return to the middle classes? I must go out now and see that Donovan is heating a stupe for the chestnut mare." Marcus laid down her letter and smiled. She had the power that defied .'^pace when she wrote, and she brought herself to him vividly and clearly. There she was — one had but to hold out a hand to touch her. He thought of her in the dark stable, with sounds of stamping and mtmching and snorting 135 The Light above the Cross Roads all around her, and he wondered if there was any life really better in its way than the life she lived and that contributed to making her what she was. He loved her, not with the wild passionate love of early manhood, but with the enduring love of life behind life. She was his. There was nothing he did not understand in her, and every tiny " way " of hers was so known to him, even to her trick of tapping her thumb against her forefinger when she was thinking and of opening her eyes wider than usual. She was essentially and entirely his woman, the very mate of his soul. He longed for her to be there with him. to hear how sick he was, how disappointed and how sore. And then his mind slid almost im- perceptibly from her to Eitel. Eitel was another disappointment. Some in- superable barrier had come between them, and held them at a ridiculous distance. He felt if he could only see Eitel that this nebulous fog would be dis- persed entirely, and he got up and wrote a telegram begging his friend to come to him if it were possible for him to do so. And then, with a sudden veering to another mood, he tore up what he had written, and wrote, instead, a long letter. He had heard a rumour that Eitel had been duelling and that he had put a bullet into the forearm of Herr Leutnant von Khele. While he was writing he thought of Hesper again, and stopped suddenly. She had mentioned Eitel more than once in letters, and Marcus knew that there must be some trace of a woman's tenderness towards a man who loved her, in her thought of him; and for the first time he wondered if it was because of Hesper 136 The Light above the Cross Roads that Eitel held himself apart. Yet he could not bring himself to believe that it was so; he knew that if their cases had been reversed and that Hesper cared most for Eitel and had given her heart into his keeping, he would not have loved his friend any the less. These things were above and beyond all choice, and he knew that Eitel had a horizon as just and as large as his own. It seemed so natural, even if it was cruel, that they should both love the same woman. Marcus looked out through the window beyond his writing-table and his eyes rested on the autumn colours of the trees. For some reason his destiny and the destiny of Eitel von Verlhof were linked inextricably, and the dim unreal pathway of thought leading eternally to the feet of Hesper Sheridan was thronged by the passing of his dreams and the dreams of his friend. Marcus knew that Eitel gave no half love to her, any more than he did himself. He knew that both of them must turn towards her as men turn towards a shrine. He knew that out of his heart Eitel would call her name, as he himself called it; he had been chosen, and Eitel was to stand eternally out- side the closed door. Marcus leaned his face on his hands and tried to comprehend it all more clearly as he made a desperate effort to look at life through Von Verlhof 's eyes. If Hesper loved Eitel and not him; if she did — a sharp pain caught his heart — how would life be for him? It seemed impossible to say that love was merely some accident, some trifling chance of opening a door or crossing a road. Marcus probed the question with all the curiosity and fascina- tion that he found tracing events almost grimly to their sources. 137 The Light above the Cross Roads Eitel had been at the mercy of a chance visit to Ireland, and yet he claimed, as all true lovers claim, some right to consideration. Honest, uncompromis- ing Eitel, who so determinedly shut himself away in Hanover, and lived his life and fought his duels there behind a mysterious curtain of silence. There could be no transitoriness in the love he gave to Hesper; there was nothing whatever of the vagrant lover in Von Verlhof ; and no end to the pain he was certainly suffering. Marcus stared at the closely-written page under his hand and wondered if it was all the result of unmeaning accident, and, if so, was not the gallant world a fearful place of prison, and life with all its smiles and promises nothing better than a trap? He called up his memories of Eitel, and all his deep- rooted love of his friend came over him like a tide. His own place and part seemed to identify him almost tragically with Eitel's burden, with his barren years ahead, with his permanent sense of loss. The contours of chance and destiny seemed so distinct and clear, and he saw, like a path over a hill, the track their feet had followed. It could never be retraced, and never in the years to come could he and Eitel be just tlie same to one another; not even though they stood as comrades in the same friendship and could look each other straightly in the eyes. A fiery red sky lighted suddenly with sunset over the grey wall of the garden below his wnndows, and a great restlessness overtook him. He returned once more to his own disappointment in being held where he was. A daring new departure of some sort would have swept his brain clear of the strain of introspec- tion, and he called himself a morbid fool. Even if he 138 The Light above the Cross Roads willed to do it he could not relinquish Hesper. If he espoused poverty, chastity, and obedience in a Dominican cloister and buried himself out of human sight, Eitel would gain nothing by it. The fall of the cards was to him, and he felt his vigour revive like a flame. In a world of men, saints and dreamers w-ere at a discount, Eitel was a man and would face his hfe with a man's courage. Marcus tore up the half-written letter, as he had de- stroyed the telegram, and stood by the window; he was still standing there when his servant came in carry- ing a telegram on a tray. Tearing it open hastily, he read, " Your father seriously ill. Come immediately." Once more the inevitable was at work with his life, and had entered it with violence and without warning. 139 CHAPTER XII SIR HENRY JANOVER was facing death in his room in Deanery Street. All fixed outlines had vanished, and at last he was a tranquil spectator facing the inevitable phenomenon of experience and finding it merely another phase, somewhat hampered by diffi- cult breathing. From time to time he looked at the door, and his unconscious stoicism touched the heart of his white- capped nurse, who watched over him with silent care. She was behind so many tragedies that she thought not at all about it when he declined to permit his wife to invade the solitude of his last hours. Carefully and equably he explained that he did not wish her to come, and that he saw no reason for seeing her, and yet he was visibly troubled and distressed at the delay that J^ad to be endured before Marcus arrived. " I've not done what I wanted," he said wearily to the nurse. " That's the only thing — and yet per- haps it will work out right." Visible things, things audible and sensible, were distant from him, and he fought with shadows, always looking at the door, wait- ing for it to open and admit his son. " Time is always the trouble." He took a glass from her hands and drank its mixture. *' Just not enough of it. When I am on the side of the dead it won't matter — so one comes out of the sunlight to die in London." He leaned back and rested on his pil- 140 The Light above the Cross Roads lows, and a smile twisted his lips. " The exclusive supremacy is always a question of minutes." Lady Janover tapped at the door. She did not wish to see Henry, but it seemed the right thing to make a fuss about it. Often she had wished him dead, and had thought of what she would do if he were tactful enough to die at the right moment ; but now she feared the future desperately, and not without reason. She knew that Henry had been investing and losing and doing mad things about money, and also his pension expired with his last breath. She retired from his bedroom door feeling very much irritated. Henry was evidently desirous to die in as much peace as he could command, and declined once more to see her upon any pretext, and she was entirely helpless to force entrance upon his privacy. Doctor Harvey had condoled with her, had looked at her with an appreciative eye, and had said that sick men's fancies often took these turns at the last. She knew by the pressure of Dr. Harvey's fingers when he said good-bye to her that she had his full sympathy ; and she revived at it. li her husband rejected her, other men were wiser than he. Lydia never thought deliberately. Her mind caught reflections and then broke them up like a fluid surface, and all that really concerned her was whether Henry would leave enough to keep her comfortably. She began to wonder if she would marry again, and if Willie Baring might ever be regarded in the light of a husband. After a time she dismissed the idea. She felt that she knew him a shade too well. It would be a mistake to marry an old lover, because people would say things, certainly, and also a stranger — again her mind broke up the 141 The Light above the Cross Roads reflection, and she recalled Harvey's eyes and hands. She shook her head. One didn't marry doctors, one called them in when one was ill. There was a very material suggestion about the medical profession. She pushed her narrow feet out towards the fire and men- tally declined to ally herself matrimonially with her husband's medical adviser. No one she knew had ever made such a mesalliance. ]\ren whose profession de- manded that they should sit beside beds were not to be taken seriously, and as she sat thinking she saw no very definite beacon lighting her way ahead. It ap- peared almost necessary to marry again, because the policy of drift makes for eventual isolation, and Lady Janover detested the idea of being " carted " in that respect. Women who drifted became odd, and never heard what you said to them, or remembered names you told them, or knew anything about anything that was happening or had happened during the last ten years. Then also it was impossible, nearly indecent, to be seen about without a man, and unless you married him one of those younger people, one of " those fools," got hold of him, or he grew too old and too selfish to be of much use. Lydia Janover got up and studied herself in a long glass at the end of the drawing-room. Some women, if their husbands lay dying in the house, would look at their reflections and know that their mouths would never again be kissed, and that the word " Love " would be eternally erased from their diction- ary. Death would take in one moment what life took after years. Lydia Janover shuddered and stared at herself. She was still quite beautiful enough to make Harvey thrill and flash and respond, and she knew that, rather than relinquish her right to the ways of love, 142 The Light above the Cross Roads she would draw him into her life even if she all but hated him and his black bag and his suave, consolatory manner. It was like Henry, she thought with sudden anger, to wait on and on until she had lost her best chances, to wait until the men she used to sway were beyond recall, and her Simla days a dream of a passing gen- eration. A middle-aged widow was a pitiful object, and yet she had been so wrapped about with the sem- blance of love that it hung around her still. She smiled at her own reflection, but in spite of herself she knew that summer was past and done. She might still find plenty of men who would come and praise her hands and her hair so long as Henry lived ; but with Henry dead she was as dangerous as any debutante to the man who had no idea of marry- ing. With the fall of the insuperable barrier, Lydia Janover lost more than half her power, and the shears were busy with Samson's locks. Henry had been her fortress, her guarded approach. Without him she was in the position of seaside lodgings devoid of need of assault or mystery. Already Willie Baring was be- having as if she were holding a wedding ring behind her back, and as for the others, she realized bitterly how soon they would adopt the same language of excuse. No man ever did anything he didn't want to do ; she was certain of that. She recalled the startled eyes of the curate whom Henry had forcibly declined to interview on the subject of his soul; and she thought with a sense of horror of her own death; not that she feared death, for Lydia had her own race courage, but only because she saw herself at the end with no other companionship than some one like Henry's 143 The Light above the Cross Roads curate. Harvey, black bag and all, would be better than isolation. Even if the other women laughed, the women whose husbands went on living and giving them their atmosphere of illusion, it wouldn't matter so much as other things could matter. Harvey was ten years her junior, and that might be counted as a score in her favour, and as long as he was a comparative stranger the touch of his hand could give her a faint thrill of adventure. She bit her lip and tried to think of him as something other than he was. lean, dark, and sleek of head, smelling slightly of disinfectants, and terribly polite. How Willie Baring would laugh ; but even if he did laugh he would return in due time, and illusion could be recaptured ; the barrier would remain. It was worth thinking of. Harvey with his smooth- ness and his way of bounding to the sugar bowl, or bounding to the door, or bounding to pick up anything and everything that might be dropped about, would be easy enough to control. It would be horrid to be a doctor's wife, but at least doctors with a large practice could be trusted to be out of the house the best part of the day and night. Lady Janover smiled once more at herself and strolled back to the fire. She had made up a few bits of her mind definitely, and the future cleared itself of doubt. Glancing at the clock, she remembered that Marcus was due to arrive shortly, and she rang the bell and told the servant to make up the fire. " Mr. Janover has arrived. My Lady, and has gone up to the master's room," said the footman, whose politeness recalled Harvey's manner and caused Lady Janover to stifle a smile. " I am here when he comes down," she replied, 144 The Light above the Cross Roads taking up a book and seating herself in a low chair near a shaded lamp. "If Dr. Harvey calls again this evening," she added, " show him in here, Tyles." Upstairs Marcus was standing beside his father's chair. Sir Henry had been moved from his bed, and was sitting, propped up, by the blaze. " They could only give me a day," said Marcus re- gretfully. "I'm sorr};. Dad. but " " Then they want you. and I don't," said Sir Henry shortly, signing for the nurse to leave them, ** I shall not want any one after a little longer, Marcus " His voice faltered a little. " I've got to make some- thing clear to you. It has to do wdth money." Marcus looked round the room and took in all the details of its careful neatness, its preliminary loss of individuality, its suggestion of a hospital ward, and its lowered light. "Why worry about that now. Dad?" he asked, looking at the strong old face against the pillow and noting how tensely the weakening hands gripped the arms of the invalid chair. " Because you must know, boy. I've been thinking it over. It's everything to you to have enough for you to go on where you are for the next three years." Marcus gave a slight involuntary start in spite of himself. If money was such a question as to resolve itself into the mere fact of being enough for his at- tacheship, things must indeed be in a bad way in Dean- ery Street. " To do this, Marcus, I shall be obliged to cut down what your mother is likely to expect; she is extrava- gant, as you know, and there will not be enough for you and her." He paused and folded his hands quietly 145 The Light above the Cross Roads one over the other. " She has no right to exact what is necessary to you, and I am leaving it " He coughed and breathed hard. " I am putting it to her as strongly as I can in a letter to be read to her by my executors, that for three years she will make provision for you out of the settlement I made upon her — made in the days when — well, there is no use going over old ground." He looked earnestly at his son, " There should have been ample, but I failed badly. The will was there, but the plans miscarried. Now I am forced to cast your future to the chances of her having a conscience.'' Again he looked at Marcus. " She must do her share." " Don't worry about me, Dad." Marcus touched his father's hand for a moment with his own. " I shall be able to make my own way all right.'' Sir Henry nodded and looked at the red heart of the fire. " It is usually so," he said in an abstracted voice. " It is nearly always a woman who has to be arbiter. Some women one could feel sure of, but Lydia — Lydia could juggle on a tombstone, and the core of her is as hard as steel. You see, Mark, it means compara- tive poverty for her." " Then that settles it," Marcus thought inwardly, but again he reassured his father. That moment was not the moment for selfish thought or selfish repining and he spoke cheerfully. " Don't give it a thought, it is perfectly clear. The Sheridans are Irish, and mother has the sporting in- stincts of the family." Sir Henry's face lighted with a bitter smile. ** Her brother offered to toss me for the present 146 The Light above the Cross Roads terms of this very settlement," he said grimly, " and I declined. In the light of after-events I recognize my error." Marcus laughed in spite of himself, and called up a mental vision of Hardress making the offer to the stiff-necked young Englishman who was about to marry his sister. He could see it all, and could call up the picture of his uncle's face as he made the offer. For a long time he sat beside his father's chair talk- ing to him and telling him of his life. " You think I did well to give you those years in Germany?" asked Sir Henry with almost passionate persistence. " I do think so," Marcus said slowly. " It has added to my value and is, I believe, the reason why I am kept on in Berlin. Lord Shawford considers me useful there at the present time, and even when I ex- plained to him the urgent necessity for leave, he still would only give me just time for a few hours in London." Sir Henry bowed his head forward. His dim eyes saw massed and heavy clouds gathering over the whole of Europe. *' Is it war? " he asked in a subdued voice. " I believe it will be war," Marcus replied with con- viction. " And if it is, it is not far off now." " Tomorrow you go back." Sir Henry sat up in his chair and looked at the man whose destiny meant so much to him. " At least, Marcus, you do not re- gret my choice of your future? I should like to be sure of that." " I have never regretted it, Dad. I am living. 147 The Light above the Cross Roads Never doubt it. Life takes one up queer streets now and then, but I am not wasting my time." " Your country may ask for your life yet, but life at least is a thing we never grudge to pay. I gave my brains, ^lark, and the demand upon you may be a bigger one." " Whatever is asked I shall give if what I have is worth giving." Marcus Janover's eyes lighted as he spoke. " Brains such as mine w-ouldn't make any ap- preciable difference to the balance of power, but if it is war I hope to do my share with a rifle." he laughed. " My nerves are worth more, I imagine. Thank God, I think I've inherited something of the family calm." " You had better see your mother uefore you leave." Sir Henry's voice was weary, and Marcus rose to go. " You may influence her, Mark. So much depends upon what she thinks fit to do in the next three years." When Marcus Janover went into his mother's draw- ing-room. Lady Janover was interviewing Dr. Harvey at what seemed to her son unnecessarily close quarters. Harvey was obviously awkward upon his arrival, and immediately began to explain that he was waiting to see his patient. When he had apologized himself as far as the door Lady Janover glided swiftly after him, and a murmured conversation took place outside, act- ing disagreeably upon the mind of Marcus. He picked up a book of neurotic poems and threw it on to the sofa by the window, knocking over a bowl of roses with it as it fell. Just at that moment he disliked Lady Janover in- tensely, and yet he was there to propitiate her, since evidently it lay with her to close the gates of his future. He made no effort to replace the fallen flowers, and the 148 The Light above the Cross Roads drip of spilled water filled the silence lying across the murmur of voices outside the door. After a few minutes Lady Janover came back and sat down gracefully in her chair. It occurred to nei- ther of them that no greetings had passed between them. Lady Janover's eyes were bright and she bit her red lips as she smiled under her lowered lids. " I have seen father," said Marcus in a dry voice, ** and have said good-bye to him. I catch an early train and shall not disturb him before I leave." " Poor Harry." His mother's voice was carefully subdued. " It will leave an awful blank." " He is worrying about money matters." Marcus sat down, his hands clasped between his knees and his eyes on the carpet. " I don't think he ought to have anything on his mind, and that is why I feel it may be best for us to — well, to come to some sort of un- derstanding." " I'm sure I don't want to worry him," replied Lady Janover. her eyes hardening. " Loss of money won't much matter to your poor father. I know nothing of his affairs." " He tells me," Marcus spoke very carefully, " that your settlement will take everything there is, and it is on my account that he is anxious. He thinks I may have to give up the Diplomatic. Unfortunately I shall not be independent for some time." " That is unfortunate," agreed Lady Janover, nar- rowing her eyes. " You see, Mark, even the settle- ment money only just keeps one's head above water. This house can't be run on air. In fact, I shall have to give it up if things are as bad as you say." " I see." Marcus stood up and leaned against the 149 The Light above the Cross Roads mantelpiece ; he looked at her very directly as he spoke, " I think I should not ask you to do anything for me if I was not fully aware that my father wished me to. If I left without asking you if you are prepared to do anything I should always feel that I had evaded an unpleasant necessity. Mother, do you realize that if I have only about a hundred a year, which is all I can count on, my training is wasted? " Lady Janover pinched her lips. " I was always against all this Germanic fad. After all, Marcus, there are other things a man can do." " With training, yes. But " " And you must know heaps of influential people. A parliamentary secretaryship, for instance, would be every bit as good, and could be got if you tried to work it." " Oh, I might cadge a job.'' The ice of anger pene- trated his voice. " But there is one's ambition. I know it is rather useless to allude to it. As it happens, the Germanic fad, as you call it, is my chief stand-by where I am." *' Then if you are so useful it is ridiculous nof to be paid for it,' said Lady Janover. "If they felt they might lose you they might offer you something better.' Marcus closed his sensitive mouth firmly and kept silence. " You see, Mark dear," Lady Janover's voice took a sugary note, " I don't know what / can very well promise. It would all depend on what I had left over when these dreadful expenses are paid. And aren't there those terrible death duties? And there will be yards of other things to pay — I am so afraid of mak- ing any definite arrangement, but of course I would ICO The Light above the Cross Roads simply live on potato skins and milk rather than dis- appoint you and poor Harry." Still Marcus said nothing. " I'd just love to feel that I could say straight away, ' Take it all, every penny of it/ but then there is this hateful fact that one must live." " It hardly seems worth discussing," said Marcus shortly. " Don't let us go over it. Mother. The simple fact is that you don't see your way, and with regard to my own future " He made an almost imperceptible movement with his shoulders. "Lord Shaw ford could get you into Somerset House," suggested Lady Janover, toying idly with her chain. " London must be far nicer than Berlin. I should ask him, Mark; and then," again her voice grew sweet. " I should have you near me." She was ob- viously listening for steps on the outer stair. Marcus lifted his chin. " You had better tell Harvey to make it clear to father that tilings are arranged as he wished." " If you think so " ** I should like his mind to be at rest about it. As far as you and I are concerned, Mother, subterfuge is hardly necessary." He bent his strong eyes upon her. " You can put all that aside. What you do in the future or what I may do will not be a matter that con- cerns either you or me." Lady Janover fired up suddenly. " For years," she said vindictively, " your father has spoken to me in the same way as you speak now. He has bullied me, and tried to break me. I did not allow him to break me, and I assure you, Marcus, that what I did not permit your father to do I will not 151 The Light above the Cross Roads endure from you. You have a hundred a year, and thousands were spent on your education. If you had any pride you should be glad to be independent, and yet," she rose to her feet, " you are evidently prepared to accept far more than you could ever expect from mc." Marcus walked to the door. " I expected exactly what I got," he said indiffer- ently. " Had you said anything but what you have said I should have been very greatly surprised." He closed the door behind him almost gently, and Lady Janover stood looking after him. After a min- ute she glanced away, and her eyes met her own mir- rored reflection at the farther end of the room. She looked towards it lovingly, and with her easy, drifting walk came to meet herself. She had already begun to forget Marcus and his unpleasant way of .'^peaking, and she returned to the joy of realizing that Harvey, in spite of the fact that he was not at all sur la mcvtc assicttc as her former friends, was able for the moment to blow upon the ashes and bring forth a little tingling flame of interest. That was how Lydia invariably scored. She had indeed much to thank her tempera- ment for. even if. in the wider issues of life, if might be regarded as slightly disastrous. 152 CHAPTER XIII WHEN Marcus Janover was faced by any partic- ularly acute crisis in his life, the longing for immediate action became a crying necessity. He saw before him the one thing that had to be done, the one sudden shearing down of all his ambitions, the one inevitable act that shut the door with a bang in the face of his hopes. After that was accomplished he proposed to think out some scheme of life that might offer possibilities of interest, and he told himself that having cleared the way of all cherished ideals, there was still a future of action for a man with a fine con- stitution and a steady aim with a rifle. As he walked towards his Chief's house, hastening to put the inevitable interview behind him, he tried to find comfort in the fact that honour is a better thing than fame, and that a man marching in the ranks, with a by no means uncertain prospect of war before him, might easily intensify the zest of life to a degree un- guessed by statesmen and diplomatists. There would be a very definite reward in such a life, even though he knew nimself to be an instrument made for other purposes. All the subtlety and all the skill and all the queer intoxicating excitements of the game which poverty was about to force him to leave could only be replaced by something so full of the thrill of danger that he might forget the tenser joys of mental conflict. As he walked (|uickly along the wide street his mind craved for the thunder of guns — that ominous fateful 153 The Light above the Cross Roads thunder which those of his own house were straining every nerve to postpone or avoid. He looked back at the towering Dom, and a slight shiver touched him. His depression was gone, and he felt strangely elated. Now and then there can be a curious secret joy in the knowledge that things are not what they seem, and the wind of the spirit stirred and exalted him. Von der Schultz, passing in a regal car, hailed him cheerfully, and shouted a raucous " IVie gcht es, Mark? " as he sped past. Lord Shaw ford had expected to see Marcus Jan- over at the exact hour when he actually arrived, for the simple reason that Marcus had never yet been late upon any pretext, and even if his father were dying — that hardly seemed to count just then to Lord Shaw- ford, who was not in a mood to consider the question of dying parents. A huge fire burned in the grate; Lord Shawford objected to the Teutonic stove. " An infernal thing that stews your brains," he said ; " I hate the sight of them," and before the fire Lord Shawford stood es- tablished with the fixity of fate, his hair rumpled and his mouth more than usually depressed at the corners. When Marcus came in, he nodded to him abruptly and told him to sit down. " Things are travelling," he said, lifting his heavy shoulders, " not at the rate of a whole gale, but fast enough. They won't send Von der Schultz to Eng- land." "Have circumstances changed?" Marcus looked up. " Yes." Lord Shawford spoke curtly. " In so far that the aggressive attitude is not what is needed by 154 The Light above the Cross Roads our friends up the Strasse. If you hold out your cheek to the smiter and call him a damned fool at the same time, it's sometimes more politic than getting him in the jaw yourself in the first instance." Marcus waited for a few moments. He had to think carefully over what he was going to say, and then, as Lord Shaw ford crossed the room and sat down at his table, he stiffened his shoulders and stood up, the great fire roaring behind him. At first when he spoke he could see that his Chief was too preoccupied to listen, but suddenly, as though the full extent of his statement struck him forcibly, Lord Shaw ford turned on his revolving chair and stared at his young attache. " You are telling me that you are forsaking your career, and at this hour? " he asked. " Rather that it is forsaking me," replied Marcus, his mouth twisted slightly as he spoke. " Money bfeing the obstacle? " Marcus said nothing; a quick pain touched his heart. " I see," said Lord Shaw ford slowly, his eyes low- ered. The silence in the room grew suddenly tense, and Marcus Janover waited, listening to the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece behind him. After what seemed an interminable pause, Lord Shaw ford spoke again. " A choice is sometimes most difficult." He spoke, as it seemed to Marcus, more to himself than to him. " Janover, I am going to ask you to do something that it is not easy to ask of you." Marcus flushed slightly. " Here," he thought, " comes this infernal offer of money, which I will never accept." 155 The Light above the Cross Roads " I may as well tell you candidly " — Lord Shaw- ford spoke more quickly, and his eyes softened a little — " that I find you, and have found you, very useful. I know your special qualifications better than you know them yourself, and you are and you can be so use- ful as to be invaluable to the interests of your country." He got up from his chair and paced the room very slowly. " Your knowledge of Germany is intuitive as well as thorough, and " He broke off, and stood facing Marcus. " I'm going to ask you to do some- thing that is harder for me to ask, and that will be harder for you to agree to, than anything I can express. Will you, under the existing conditions, undertake a form of secret service which is unlike any that we have it in our power to employ? " For one moment Marcus felt as if he had been struck between the eyes, and he met Lord Shaw ford's direct glance with a flash of quick refusal. " Wait," said Lord Shaw ford, laying his hand on Marcus Janover's shoulder, " I do not intend to gloze this suggestion over. I am going to be brutally frank. * Spying ' is an ugly word, and the men and women who spy are not a corps d'clite; but, at a time like this, the man who can live entirely within the inner circle, and who holds the confidence of those who are working night and day against us, is doing a service that is. beyond all reckoning, more useful than any other he can render. H you are that man, Janover, what right have you to refuse the work ? " Marcus did not move ; his hurt defiant face was set like a mask, and his eyes never left Lord Shawford's 156 The Light above the Cross Roads face. Once again the older man returned to his table and sat leaning forward on his elbows. " If I was able to offer you a chance to go ahead towards recognition, I should gladly do so. Of all the younger men, Janover, I would rather see you with such a chance ; but," he shrugged his shoulders, " what I offer you has no reward attached to it. I am asking you to undertake a mission that imposes terms upon you that are simply damnable if you achiev^e them, and, if you fail, you get a black handkerchief round your eyes and a shooting party at dawn." He cleared his throat violently. *' Such being the case, you can con- clude that my calling upon you and making this de- mand is not done without due consideration. For some months I have wondered if any circumstances would arise to make it possible." Marcus spoke at last, and his voice was very clear — " I cannot accept." Lord Shaw ford held up his hand. " Janover, here in Germany, as you know, there is no such word as * I.' All moral and ethical justifica- tion is waived aside, and that mood, that deep relentless conviction, is what England, asleep behind her seas, will shortly have to arise and fight. I cannot com- mand you to undertake what your own conscience re- jects, but I can at least tell you this — " his hand on the writing table clenched quickly — *' If you recognize the power of the forces now gathering, and if you refuse by any means that lies within you to aid your country, ask yourself honestly if the knowledge that your hands are as clean at Pontius Pilate's will be of comfort to you on the day when Germany attains her aspiration." 157 The Light above the Cross Roads Janover gripped his hands together. " It means Hving a he," he said slowly. " It means selling men who think me honest. It means that every day I should have to deny my birthright and stand as an outcast even in the eyes of the men whom I am there to betray. Good God, sir, what have I ever done that you should single me out for such a part as that?" The pain in his voice reached the remote place where Lord Shawford stood above personal consideration. " I am fully aware of all you say," he said, " and yet in spite of that, Janover, I retract nothing. The fact persists, whatever may be urged against it. You have friends among the Chauvinists ; you have the natural gift of adaptability, which is unquestionably necessary. There is no need to force entrance in your case ; you walk in accredited. I am not asking you to sell yourself, Janover, I ask you to give yourself." Marcus walked to the window. This was what life had for him as the ultimate destiny; this was to be his metier, and the valiant way of the sword, the path of dignity and honour, was to be closed against him, and instead this murky back way, a way leading abruptly from all social decency and honour. Life without promise and without beauty, with a possibility of death led up to by a whole army of lies until he reached a point where some one who had the wit not to trust him caught him at the dirty game of cheating. No " clean roses," no martyr's monument, nothing but a mission of betrayal, to be carried through with a laugh. Behind him, he could hear Lord Shawford's pen scraping over a sheet of paper; his Chief was giving 158 The Light above the Cross Roads him time, he was well aware, and he was equally de- termined to give himself time. He thought of Hesper, and of the look that would come into her eyes if she knew; and almost at once his thought travelled from her to Eitel. Women were strange, incomprehensible people, and it was just dimly possible that Hesper might understand; but what of Eitel von Verlhof ? Silence could intervene between him and Hesper and cover his love with a decent burial. He would not be asked to take her hand and look her in the eyes, but with his friend it would of necessity be far otherwise. All the youth in him cried out for Romance and the glamour of a Quest, and all the egotist within fought against the oblivion of this crooked way. Never be- fore had Marcus Janover felt himself so qualified to follow a clear wide path out through an open land, and never before had he so intensely realized how much he had expected of himself and how much had been expected of him by others. In his own way he had stood for something firm and earnest — something that meant much and faced towards the East, where lay a dawn of a wider day. He had made the great refusal of the mere illusions of life, he had been governed by an abiding purpose, and his spirit had yearned intensely to bequeath great memories to others who came after. With his elbows on the window-sash he thought stead- ily of all this. To be forced to renounce was hard, and when he had accepted renunciation he had suffered very much, but his quick fancy had provided him with an alter- native that was locked into his boy's dreams of years behind. Now this cup was not for his drinking, and 159 The Light above the Cross Roads instead his metier was allotted to him, pointing him down a hidden way, and making him for ever a disciple of Betrayal. He had never trained his mind to see the world in a mass. It revealed itself always in mi- nute detail, which compelled him to know actualities as they literally were. He vivSualized his career as a thoroughly successful spy, and his strange inward con- sciousness of his own powder to simulate informed him that Lord Shaw ford was certainly not speaking at ran- dom. His other self stirred, and Marcus Janover's eyes hardened and narrowed. He was to release this otlier self if he was to accept Lord Shaw ford's sug- gestion, and the game, however vile, would be amaz- ingly exciting, so that conscience could be slaughtered. He was on the threshold of the great productive pe- riod of his life, and his freshness and buoyancy which were meant to give wings were to give a devilish touch of conviction to his part. The art of cheating — Mar- cus shut his mouth tightly into a tense line. No one living could ask Eitel von Verlhof to cheat, or Reyn- olds, or a dozen others he could think of. There were other men who knew the country as well as he did, but they would not be asked. " Young men see visions and old men dream dreams," said Lord Shaw ford without raising his head, ** but the greatest obsession of all is the obsession of National superiority. The Germans have their Auf- richtigkeit, Janover, and the greatness of Prussia is above everything." Marcus laughed a quick hard laugh. "And they have the sword of Sigurd." " And," added Lord Shaw ford. " the day of reck- oning with England, Think again, Janover." i6o The Light above the Cross Roads "Is there no other way?" Marcus spoke impul- sively and almost violently. " There are always a hundred other ways," replied Lord Shawford, throwing down his pen. " To a man of big promise and marked capacity the ways are many. It is not a question of how many for you, it remains merely a question of the thing itself. I told you I offered you a career of disaster, devoid of tri- umphs and glories, but at the same time a career of very extensive usefulness. If you decline, I have no one who may replace 5''ou." He paused for a moment and laid his big hands flat on the blotting- paper before him. " Renunciation is a hard word to swallow at your age. and I know that you are ambitious. Heroism and the doing of great things is a young man's dream, but there is also the way of self-cflfacement, and the way that tells a man to live and work, and not always to die for others." Still Marcus said nothing; but his eyes were re- proachful, and Lord Shawford looked at him keenly. He saw in the younger man's face the foreshadowing of that strange still strength that made it fit for suf- fering; Janover was half defiant and hurt, but his es- timate, he felt, would be inevitably just. This was the man who Lord Shawford knew could move men's minds, and bring thought to its volcanic birth. Jan- over promised perpetually, wherever he found himself, that was his supreme value. 16I CHAPTER XIV VON DER SCHULTZ was sitting alone in his room, thinking ferociously. He had had a little trouble with Lisbeth and a little trouble with Ursule. Ursule was volcanic, and there were times when the placidity of Lisbeth appealed to Von der Schultz as a pleasant contrast; moreover, he was accus- tomed to Lisbeth, and though necessity, combined with inclination, made it more acceptable to him to receive Ursule to a certain extent into his affections, he wished that the paternal Government of the country had not decided that he was to pay and exploit that lady, and to keep her at all costs from the attentions of a more than suspected Italian Count, and an at- tractive young Roumanian who lingered at the Em- bassy and exhibited his fascinations wherever society was gathered together. If Ursule became foolish, Ursule would suffer, but so also might Von der Schultz. He had managed women extensively for years, and he knew their ways, or he believed he did ; and in dealing with women in the game of politics it is necessary that the man who un- dertakes to make use of them as a means towards an end must have special gifts. Von der Schultz was well used to asserting his sway, and his reputation assisted him; he was qans in der Mode, and his suppers the noisiest in Berlin. Ursule had been in the pay of many officials, and 162 The Light above the Cross Roads was cosmopolitan; she had been loved to distraction by a French artillery general, who shot himself, as some said, because his heart was broken by her infidel- ity, and, others believed, because he preferred death by his own hand to a court-martial on account of a betrayed secret. The paternal Government did not as yet trust Ursule entirely; she had a potential value, and Von der Schultz, when he saw her, decided that the matter might be considered his affair. She was entirely mer- cenary, entirely wicked, and most amusing as a com- panion, besides being, if not beautiful, quite bizarre enough to be seen about with. Von der Schultz progressed serenely enough as far as Ursule was concerned, until he made the annoying discovery that he preferred Lisbeth, who understood him, to Ursule who expected him to understand her. Earlier in the day Von der Schultz, who had driven her down the Siegesallee, had all but quarrelled with his kleines Schatzchcn, and she had not shown any docility whatever when he warned her that she must be quiet and remain contentedly in her flat. The pas- time of Satan appealed to her, and she talked of the gates of Bagdad and other distant and alluring spots. Von der Schultz retorted with his laugh that she was a pert, leaping, jumping flea, and that he had her safe between his thumb and finger. For a moment Ursule's appreciation of his wit appeared to desert her, and she told him with great energy that she was not a tame woman ; and she had spoken lightly of the opera, of crowned heads, and of other cherished institutions. All this had shocked Von der Schultz and disgusted him. Lisbeth, in contrast to this well-dressed vagrant, 163 The Light above the Cross Roads in all essential points was so different, so respectable, so calm. Nothing in the world is so annoying as to be forced to think of some small irritating circumstance when you wish to concentrate upon great events and great subjects. Von der Schultz had great things to consider as he sat in his room, and yet Ursule haunted his imagina- tion. All the soldier in him was thrilling with the progress of events, and he v/as impatient for the fu- ture, for the dawn of the great prepared day. and for the quick, terrible war that was to follow. The grand, dark, indefinite future held food for thought ; but as he had described Ursule as a flea, he was irked by her rankling speech of the earlier hours, and he stopped every now and then to construct fresh phrases by which he would (|uell her when they met again. A map lay open on the table before him, and he studied it with intense and anxious care, hastily scrib- bling a note across the little patch indicating Luxem- burg. Von der Schultz stood up and drank, and paced his room for a time. One long window opened out into the garden, and suddenly, as though his quick ear heard a sound beyond, he stepped back to the table and threw his pearl-grey coat over the open map. It only took him a moment, and almost at once he turned the handle and opened the window. The cold wind of twilight hit him in the face, and he stepped back as he saw some one coming towards him. It was very unusual for his visitors to make their entrance by the garden, and in the darkness he 164 The Light above the Cross Roads could not make certain whom he was about to receive. His nerves were jarred, and he spoke irritably. " You're damned polite, Hans," answered a voice he knew. " I've come round to get a drink before I go to join the Russian Army, or the Legion Etrangere — or " Von der Schultz held out his hand enthusiastically. " Mein Gott! It is Mark Janover! Come in then, Mark, and you shall drink. I have not yet seen you drunk." He opened the door wide. " That would be a sight, zvasf " Marcus passed him and flung himself into the room. His face was ashy w^hite, and his eyes let out the vio- lence of his soul so markedly that Von der Schultz stared at him with something akin to dismay ; he hardly noticed that Marcus sat down on the coat that lay over the table where his map was spread. Marcus had driven maps from his mind for the moment, and he realized that something very unusual must have hap- pened. " Stop staring at me, Hans, for God's sake, and get me a drink." Marcus leaned back on his hands and laughed. " And we'll drink to Liberty again, and oh, my God, to the price of Liberty." Von der Schultz poured him out a drink. He had always liked Janover, and had always looked for un- expected things from him. He had not the least doubt in his mind that Marcus was living through some acute and tremendous crisis, and he felt the sense of his own rightness of judgment in things psychological when he considered that he had foretold this for many months. 165 The Light above the Cross Roads " Thank you, Hans." Marcus took the glass from his host. " Here's to my damnation, and Am Tag, and all the rest of it." Von der Schultz sat down in a low chair. It was unfortunate that Marcus had chosen the table, and in his present mood he might at any instant sweep the coat away and look at the map, which Von der Schultz had no desire that he should see. Marcus had good eye- sight, and Von der Schultz wrote a clear hand. He decided to wait until Marcus might be induced to take a more conventional seat, and meanwhile his curiosity got the better of all other considerations. " I've got the push." Marcus set down his glass, which he had hardly tasted, at the edge of the table. " They've no further use for me at His Britannic Ma- jesty's Embassy." "Mcin Goti." " It is ' Mcin Gott ' ; you've sized it up. Hans. I'm on the move now, and come, for the sake of all the suppers we've had together, to say good-bye." " But ' no further use,' ' the push ' — why ? " " The usual reason given to the men of my country when they want something they can't have. Too much brains and too little money," he spoke suddenly and fiercely. "Do you know that ass Reynolds? The fellow with the serious red face and a manner like a sick owl? " " Yes, yes," said Von der Schultz eagerly, " a true- born Englishman — I have often noticed him." " He and I stand equal as to time, but if I thought any other equality existed " Marcus broke off. '* Anyhow he has been put over my head, and he has got something that was practically promised to me — i66 The Light above the Cross Roads I know one should stand down and take it smiling, and I tried to smile pleasantly." There was a silence, and Von der Schultz waited with patience. In a little time !vlarcus Janover would go on again, and far away a nebulous idea began to form in his brain. " Zol" he said in purring guttural, and again " Zo?" '" My father, who gave his life's work to England, is dead," went on Marcus, his face turning a shade more grey. " He died a poor man, and I have about enough to keep body and soul together, but not enough for ruffling it in the Diplomatic Corps." He put one hand up to his face and shaded his eyes as he threw out the words with contemptuous bitter- ness. " So you must not be astonished. Hans, if I am a little less patriotic at this moment than I might be if I was a saint first and a human being after. I had my ambition, and I realized that I was worth some- thing. Shawford, with his power to bind and to loose, has pointed out to me that I am not of the Reynolds pattern, and that no doubt a useful and worthy exist- ence may be maintained in other spheres. You under- stand I leave the Embassy without a blemish on my character, but they aren't weeping there at my depart- ure." " They are mad at your Embassy," said Von der Schultz with deep conviction. " No, not mad, Hans. They're damned conven- tional and damned respectable. I've not had the same chances — I'm not even an Englishman who once was Irish. I suppose I could have persuaded them to keep me on, but asking for anything is a particular form of 167 The Light above the Cross Roads human misery- that I prefer to avoid. I asked for nothing, which created a bad impression possibly." " My friend," Von der Schultz spoke with anima- tion, " you have come to a man who imderstands you. Are you in need of money? " For a moment it seemed as though Marcus hardly heard him, and then he looked at Von der Schultz with a look that made his host draw back into the depth of his chair. " I asked you in sincerest friendship," he said apolo- getically. " I want nothing." Marcus shivered slightly and relapsed back to an inward mood of thought. Von der Schultz considered it advisable to remain silent. After a little, he walked to the window and drew the curtains. '* You're right, it is cold," said Marcus slowly, folding the skirts of the grey coat over his knees. Von der Schultz coloured quickly. " Come to the fire, Mark. That is not a seat for you." Marcus laughed as he slid ofif the table and took the coat between his hands. " This smells of Which of them uses Phulnanaf By George, Hans, I've swamped your pretty map with my drink," he fini.shed regretfully as he picked up the empty glass and mopped the stain with his handkerchief. " Come over here," said Von der Schultz with an effort at calm. " You shall have anotlier drink, Mark." " I'm not going to stay." Marcus pitched the coat over a chair. " I'm leaving by the midnight express." "To do what? To throw your ambition into the i68 The Light above the Cross Roads refuse heap of the Legion Etrangere?" Von der Schultz laughed. " Are you at all ready to listen to advice? England has treated you as she treats many of her sons. As individuals you are amazingly heroic, just as, collectively, you are transcendentally stupid. I am speaking of what I well know and understand. (You are cosmopolitan enough to realize that I make no spiteful criticism. I only state facts." " Stating unpleasant facts about a man's country is not alwavs tactful," said Marcus with indifference. *' However, from today I have no nationality except what Ireland gave to me. Ireland " His eyes softened suddenly. " Ireland has never won the trust or esteem of Eng- land." Von der Schultz lighted a cigar as he spoke. " Against Ireland I have heard the most extraordinary outbursts of hate, while staying with English people." " What is the use of going over all the old ground? " Marcus asked wearily. " I'm sick of life tonight, Hans. It's odd, isn't it? I was prepared to do any- thing, and look at where I am." He glanced round the room, and his eyes rested for a second on the table. *' Look at your map." He bent over it. '' Here's a way to decide things. I'll stick my finger down at random and find if Destiny gives me a nice new cradle to begin all over again in. Here's Europe, and here is Marcus Janover." He threw his head back and laughed, shutting his eyes, while Von der Schultz hur- ried to his side. " Mein Gott, Mark, you haven't to go far. Your finger is upon Berlin. It is here that you find your Destiny." Marcus thrust his hands deep in his pockets and 169 The Light above the Cross Roads looked, as though fascinated, at the point indicated by Von der Schultz. " Now you will sit? " asked Von der Schultz. " Yes, I'll sit." Marcus pulled his chair to the fire. " I've seen your note, by the way," he added, and his voice sounded dull ; " I suppose I ought to tell you that I understand pretty clearly what it referred to. The date grows near? " " I am not talking of that." Von der Schultz waved his hand as though dismissing an unwished-for in- truder. " We all have our own theories and fancies — I have mine, but it does not follow that they are those of the Supreme Command." He hid his eyes for a moment under his heavv lids. " Tonight is a Friendship night, Mark, and belongs to you. What I say is said as between friends. Nicht so? " " I tell you I am no real use to any one, and not much to myself. What are you driving at, Hans? You usually have a purpose somewhere in your wan- derings." " There you are right," said Von der Schultz ; " I have a motive." " Damn it, man, can't you realize that I'm derelict, foundered, piled up on a miserable little shoal, and that I have no future? I'm done with England, and so there is no use wadding me up with suggestions to be hinted at to Shawford. In any case, your amazing sacred aspirations make such things impossible. You know, and I also know, that war is inevitable." Von der Schultz looked at Janover with hot ex- cited eyes. " You're done with England ? Then where do you turn ? Is not Germany your country as much as Eng- J70 The Light above the Cross Roads land ever was? Germany has a genius for empire, and a genius for understanding men. It may surprise you to learn. Mark Janover, that you are a man who has been watched and counted upon. You have vital energy, repressed forces, and an imperious will. You see I make no secrets, I am straight with you. It has been thought by Eisenhardt, who, as you know, is a man of immense influence, that if you could be per- suaded sincerely to desire a great alliance that you, young as you are, could be of great use to us in diplo- matic negotiations " " For God's sake, don't talk like this." Marcus spoke with almost anguished irritability. *' I was as much in the inner knowledge of things as Seine Ma- jestdt's valet, and never opened my mouth though I've sat and listened over and over again." " And yet what I tell you is true. Now you are done with British muddling, and as for her future — Quatsch! You shall live to see much." Von der Schultz threw out his great hair)' hands. " Come to our side, Mark Janover. England has thrown you down the backstairs. You shall not sit still ; you shall be given wide power, and you shall have the pleasure of pitting your wits against your late colleague Reyn- olds." He laughed a loud boisterous laugh, as though borne on irresistibly by the vigour of his elo- quence. Marcus Janover flushed up to the roots of his bronze hair. " By Gad," he said slowly, " you're not a bad mod- ern edition of the serpent, Hans." " I do not tempt you — I should hesitate " 171 The Light above the Cross Roads " You're right. Goods bought at auction price are not always bargains." " Yet, naturally, if you worked for us you would be paid." Marcus got up quickly and walked to the window. " Good-night, Von der Schultz," he said roughly. ** You have still to learn a few points in your game." " Come back, Mark." Von der Schultz caught his arm and stopped him. *' I am no diplomatist, I'm only a Prussian and know Prussian ways. I ask you not to go out into some stranger service. Here is the country of your childhood — what more do you seek? " Marcus turned again to the room, and, \valking to the table, bent over the open map. " I look for liberty," he said in a low voice, " and I do not find it in your notes." His keen, restless eyes brooded over the outspread page. " God knows I'm a sick man tonight, and much of all you say may be very true. But if I do begin again and cast in my lot with you and yours, I'll do it as a free man and take nothing from you." Von der Schultz nodded silently. " If I do, I'll do it my own way, and I shall use my own discretion as to what political mission I am sent upon. For one thing " — he wheeled round quickly — "I will not go East. I'll have no lot nor part in stirring up those fires. You understand, Von der Schultz, I'm not in any sense in your pay." His mouth tightened suddenly. " I stand alone. You said I was brought up in Germany, and it is true that most of what I have in the way of memories that count were given me by Germany." He turned so white that Von der Schultz put out his hand, as though he 172 The Light above the Cross Roads expected him to stagger and fall. " I can imagine nothing more tragic, more awful, and more full of sor- row from my own point of view than this coming war." Marcus pulled himself together with sudden violence — " England has decided so far as my small lot and share is concerned — and so Well, it has been known before that men have loved their foster-mothers best." He raised his head and stood looking upwards, and Von der Schultz Vv'atched him with tense excitement. They had come to some solemn and almost awful moment, and the hush that was upon them both was heavy with the comprehension of tremendous force.: Over the grief that stamped itself upqji the face of Marcus Janover a light broke suddenly, only touch- ing his lifted eyes; there seemed no doubt left in his mind. In the silence Von der Schultz realized that he saw before him a man whose greatness made his gain more than ever valuable to Germany. England had suffered defeat in his room that very night, and it was he, Von der Schultz, who had conquered. " I have not bought him," he said to himself. " He could not be bought; but I have made him see," and he straightened himself up from his leaning position. Marcus moved suddenly, and looked at his host straight in the face. " I am not out for revenge — there is not any per- sonal feeling in all this. I am not playing my hand in that way — you understand this, Von der Schultz? " " It is entirely understood," Von der Schultz replied gruffly; " also, Mark, you will stay with me, will you not?" Marcus shook his head. 173 The Light above the Cross Roads " No," he said shortly. " I will take other rooms. There is a burrow off Leipzigstrasse that will do." " Come on with me to the Admiralpalast." Von der Schultz folded up the map and locked it away, and, taking his coat, pulled it on quickly. " Let us play while we can, Mark. Soon the telephone bells will keep you busy, for there will be work to be done. Make the most of Kaiser Weather while it lasts. Graf von Vald, with the big gim interest behind him, may be there, and I should like to intro- duce you as a friend." Janover cast his still mood from him, and his face altered suddenly with the quick diversity of his nature. " Yes, I'll come," he said. " Music and noise and hot humanity will be more tolerable. I have nothing particular to say to Von Vald. By the way, I think I should prefer Ursule, if she is invited. I like your Ursule, Hans ; she is as wild as a jackal in full cry. There are times when her happy perversity is aimost stimulating." Von der Schultz pushed out his underlip dubiously. ** I have information from her that was worth what it cost; but women are difficult — she would be safer in some mud hole in Poland. I am not a fool, I do not besot myself, but she loves me desperately." " You should hardly blame her for that weakness." Marcus took up his hat. " I take it she is on the Secret Register?'* _ " Certainly ! But there, women are sly, and Ursule I is a true v/oman." Marcus looked round the room as Von der Schultz opened the door into the outer hall. In one hour 174 The Light above the Cross Roads the imperceptible change had come upon him, and the interior of the dark heavily furnished room, with its book-shelves and tapestry curtains, had inclosed that hour. **' The car is ready," said Von der Schultz in his loud strong voice. ** Now, Mark Janover, for the champagne and the painted women — but also business and Von Vald." " I'm coming." Marcus moved slowly away as though the place fascinated him. '' Sehr sch'dn;' replied his host. " We shall be amused. If Ursule is still disagreeable I shall punish her — she shall not talk to me, she shall talk to you." Marcus settled himself in the seat beside Von der Schultz. " I hope she may enjoy her punishment," he said carelessly. 175 CHAPTER XV NOT a week after his interview with Von der Schultz Marcus Janover found himself on the move. There was nothing to attract remark in anything he did during his last few days in Berlin. He called at the Embassy, but was not received, and he was thankful to know that Reynolds was not likely to come back until after his own departure. Outwardly his life was very much what it had been, and only a few knew that any change had taken place. Rumour had it that Janover was leaving for some other work; but rumour was vague, and had no circumstances to offer and no detail to supply. Jan- over was one of those ubiquitous beings who might go anywhere. As for Marcus himself, he had two things that he wished to do while his hands were free. First, he desired intensely to see Eitel von Verlhof once again ; and then to see Hesper. He felt that he could not juggle for an hour of happiness, and that once he had begun that mysterious report which he was to make for his new employers, he could not seek either Eitel or Hesper ever again. The notes he had taken mentally, gathered from his observation of Von der Schultz' map, were also unrecorded elsewhere than in his brain. With a kind of fanatical rage he desired to feel clean for just one little space of weeks. He carried this thought firmly and held to his conviction 176 The Light above the Cross Roads in spite of Von der Schultz, whose hoarse laughter and terrible geniality became all but unbearable. The evening before he left Berlin, Marcus, while walking with Ingolstadt of the Bavarian Army, met Lord Shawford in Unter den Linden. Ingolstadt walked on slowly to permit Marcus to speak to his late Chief. " Anything to report, Janover? " Lord Shawford's eyes were interested and keen. " I can make no report yet, sir." Marcus stood with a slight suggestion of defiance in his attitude. " I am going to Ireland." "Ah? To look for possible joints in the harness? Let me hear when you know by what gate our friends propose to enter French territory. I am anxious for certainties." He glanced towards Ingolstadt who was standing out of earshot. " I suppose T had better be rude to you, Janover," and shrugging his heavy shoulders he passed on without even the small civility of a nod. Ingolstadt smiled as Marcus caught him up. " A civil old gentleman, heinf" " And yet I did my work efficiently, he used to say." Marcus spoke indifferently and stopped to take his hat off, with a little exaggeration of politeness, to Ursule, who passed them driving with Von der Schultz. Ingolstadt laughed scornfully. " She will be one too many for that Brandenburger. As it is, I fancy she is more than a little taken with you, my friend." " Heaven forbid," said Marcus with deep convic- tion. " She is too expensive. The entertainment she provides me with is strictly impersonal." He was glad when the time came that he could 177 7"he Light above the Cross Roads leave Berlin and he could feel a little respite before him. His orders were clear and concise, and he had been entirely absolved from any interview at the Secret Agents Bureau either at the Blumensale or in Koenigergratzerstrasse. An extremely formal and courteous letter was given him by Von der Schultz, in which it was conveyed to him that if he were going to Ireland much interest would be felt in any report he could make upon the probability of civil war in that country. Nothing was required of him except this, and he was invited to consider himself regarded in a special and unusual light. Von der Schultz read the letter over his shoulder, and expressed himself entirely satisfied. " Grossartig! " he said, rubbing his hands together. " There will be war in Ireland. Those Grangers are as bitter as vinegar, and the Catholics never" for- get." ** Do we favour any special cause, Hans? '* Marcus folded the letter and put it away in his pocket. " The cause of Deiitschland iibcr allcs; and your little Irish island flaring up into flame will make a good candle to see the way to I^ndon, that is all." " I am not squeamish exactly," Marcus spoke slowly, " but I have a few little scruples. I do not go to Ire- land as an agent — merely as an observer, — and I will give you a truthful record, which is what your agents won't do for you." " Do not delay too long, Mark." " I have taken a month's leave," said Marcus fiercely, " and I'm damned well going to have it." It was midnight when Marcus Janover arrived at 178 The Light above the Cross Roads Metz, where Eitel von Verlhof was in garrison with one of the ten squadrons of cavalry quartered in the great stronghold near the vast forests of Lorraine. Boundaries always had a curious fascination for him — the sudden end and the sudden beginning, the mysterious unseen line that divided nation from nation, and that was entirely invisible and yet strong and steadfast. Metz enkindled new emotions in his heart : the force it expressed, the magic of the frontier land, and the marvel of the external world. The eleven great fortresses represented the material embodi- ment of a thought that was fiercely bent upon war and destruction, and yet thought itself was of the nature of dreams and imaginings. Thought was behind all life's outward semblance ; the great conception of the creation of the earth and its myriad life, the concep- tion of man, himself an embodiment of Divine will ; the mystic on the hillside, the artist, the soldier, and the little child, each busy w4th their inner life. Metz had taken to itself the character of the ideas that had gone to make it ; it was a soldier in stone and rigour, as some towns are monks and priests and others middle-class shopkeepers. Marcus caught himself thinking quickly of the possibility of collecting infor- mation as he drove to the house where Eitel von Verl- hof lived, and a sudden pang seized him. He wondered if it were possible to fall so quickly into his new role; already he began to realize that it held the vital spark of excitement and adventure. For one moment he had actually reckoned on the possibility of using Eitel as a means towards his end, and he wondered with dismayed amazement at his own power to put the past behind him, and to assimilate his new 179 The Light above the Cross Roads life with such incredible vividness and rapidity. It was only when he sat at Eitel's table and looked at his friend's blue eyes and kind honest face that he knew, as all know at certain times, that the past does not die nor change; it is only hidden by the immediate present, and sometimes the near things vanish utterly, leaving us back in the past. All the old days rushed back upon Marcus Janover, and though he tried to fight against the flooding memories, the present was remote and strange and alien to him. Eitel in his gay uniform, sitting in the bright light, brought back little Eitel and little Alarcus, and the resurrection was terrible in its poignancy; he brought with him also other memories that carried the un- spoken name of Hesper towards both of them, and when Eitel, at the end of their midnight meal, offered Marcus a cigar he asked suddenly how she was. " I am going to Ireland." Marcus struck a match and watched it burn slowly. " I shall see her then." Eitel von Verlhof got up and rang the bell for his servant to clear away. He had progressed to full man- hood, and all the promise of the earlier years was more than fulfilled. As he stood by the stove Marcus looked at him and realized that his old friend was in- deed a man. His fair open face was grave and slightly serious, and his eyes were the same kind eyes with just a suggestion of wonder in them. As Marcus watched him he felt a stab of self-pity. No tribulation had touched the life of Eitel von Verlhof, and he had never been forced to make any choice of ways. His one sorrow, his unrequited love of Hesper Sheridan, was a sorrow that had ennobled and not de- i8o The Light above the Cross Roads based. Eitel remained Eitel, permanently and for- ever. The great gulf lying between them yawned wide, and behind his well-controlled manner Marcus Janover saw the sorrow of his own soul. Again he struck a light and pulled thoughtfully at his cigar. *' All this you tell me about leaving the Embassy is very unexpected," said Eitel, returning to the subject with which Marcus had opened their conversation. " We only know very little really, Marcus, and of course I speak openly to you, but there are big events on their way. A frontier town is always aware of changes, and we have had a dozen or more of Krupp's men, who understand the siege guns, sent here within the last week. You probably know if England will be in the war or out of it — God send she stands out, — but anyhow, if your way is clear, it would be some- thing to feel that you and I shall not stand facing one another in enmity.'' Janover knocked his ash into a little silver tray. " I think it will be a case of shutters up at the Em- bassy," he said thoughtfully, " and so perhaps I am better out of it. I'm oddly placed, you see, Eitel, damned oddly placed." Eitel loked at him questioningly. Marcus fiddled with the little tray and upset the ashes on to the polished table. " England for the English — but then you see I'm not English. Oh, for God's sake don't interrupt me, Eitel — I'm not English. I don't understand them — I'm one of the blasphemous irresponsible Irish. It must all sound strange to you, but we Irish are girded and carried i8i The Light above the Cross Roads where we would not, because we are always aliens." He collected the pile of ash carefully, not raising his eyes as he spoke. " I shall run my own little re- bellion, and practise my own little heresy, for virtue and hard work have not helped me. I'm reasonably true to my convictions " He hesitated. " You must believe that, Eitel. I'm not simply a disap- pointed suitor espousing an enemy's cause " " Mark ! " Eitel's voice was low with reproach and distress. " Never say such a thing to me." Marcus flattened the little grey pile with his palm. " Oh, it sounds foul enough," he said in a hard voice. *' There is abstract right and so on, and there is much that you or any one might say. The highly respectable won't find much excuse for me because I see fit to cut all my connections with both the Embassy and the Power it represents. Briefly, Eitel, I've been natural- ized." Eitel moved uncomfortably in his chair. " You've been " " Naturalized. Good God, man, can't you find any- thing to say?" Marcus looked up at last and his eyes were strained. " Germany was my home as a child, and when it came to pack and quit, I decided in favour of a country where I had ties — of course I dreamed on for a bit about Persia and about the Far East, but eventually I took this step." He leaned forward a little. " Does it seem strange to you, Eitel?" Von Verlhof sat quite still watching the thin blue curl of smoke from his cigar. " I am glad," he said slowly, after an almost un- bearable silence. *' Even though I cannot understand, 182 The Light above the Cross Roads I am glad, Mark." He held out his hand and breathed a long deep breath, and when Janover's hand met his for a moment, Eitel wondered at its icy coldness. He had heard Marcus speak often of new beginnings and of things he loved and longed for, and he missed the soaring hope that was formerly so much a part of his friend's whole outlook. With sudden violence Marcus swept away from the subject and talked of Ireland and of Hesper. His memory was full of the hills and the heather and the pines and the green sad light of Ireland. As he talked, the reality of it all kindled in his voice and touched the imagination of Eitel strongly. Marcus had the power to recall intensely, and through the vividness of his own memory he brought the living presentment close and real to his friend. In the room where they sat, far away and divided both by space and by the passing of months from the place where they had last been together, time turned backwards as Marcus talked, wondering, as he talked, at the tragic romance of his own destiny. Eitel was only across the table from him, and the thought crossed his mind again and again as he asked vainly why life had come to them both so differently. He did not want to think; in some blind way he felt that he must go on, and that morning must see him on his way again. If he ceased to talk of Ireland, Eitel would begin to talk of Germany, and he had done what he came there to do. He had lied fairly success- fully to his friend, and he had progressed a little further with preliminaries. To get the evening through and to get away quickly was all that remained for him to do. 183 The Light above the Cross Roads " And what a wall of reality has intervened since we were there," he said, lying back in his chair and look- ing upwards. " The house is asleep over there in Ire- land, and the ghosts are walking about it, I suppose; poor, thin lost dreams. And down in the stables it is inky dark and the good old stable reek is strong, and probably there is a storm blowing over the hills and the farms, and Hest is dreaming too, I suppose ; and there are carts going along the road, because m Ireland there always are carts going somewhere " He pressed one hand over his eyes suddenly, and was silent. " She will be glad to see you," said Eitel. ** Marcus, you understand that I love her very, very greatly. It is of her that I think ever. Life divides in a way, but it cannot divide love and friendship. In love there must be two to love to make all perfect, and you and Fraulein Hest " He stopped as Marcus swung out his arm suddenly. " No, Eitel — that's never to be now. I'm going there for the last time, and it's the last time this side of silence that I shall see Hesper. My life has suffered something not so poetic as a sea change, but there's no place in it now for a woman like her. I've forfeited my claim, and I did it knowing that I did it." The eyes of Eitel von Verlhof clouded suddenly, and his face grew stern. " Knowing that she loves vou, Marcus? " " Yes." ** Knowing that she is waiting for you?" He got up and stood over his friend's chair. " What mad impulse is on you. Mark? There is first this news of your leaving the Embassy, there is this determination 184 The Light above the Cross Roads to change your nationality, and now there is this last thing '' " Call me a damned blackguard, and have it over," said Marcus idly, relapsing suddenly into his flippant easy manner. " You are my friend," said Eitel quietly, ** but I do not understand." " It's pretty obvious, I should think." Marcus was smoking again, and he looked up with mocking eyes at Eitel's tragic face. " Absurdly simple." Eitel turned away and went back to his chair. " Now tell me to turn over a new leaf, and to make a fresh start." Marcus laughed as he watched him. " I tell you, Eitel, it's all a simple, sordid little story. There are times when I must do things that you couldn't do, and I've done one of these things — it doesn't matter which — that puts me out of the reckon- ing. There is a fascination about wrecking anything from a room to a career, if you do it thoroughly and break every bit of damned furniture while you're at it." His look was defiant, almost a challenge. " You used to think so differently. You are still you, Mark." Eitel's voice was intensely sad. " But have you lost the old Ideal? " " I'm out of the old line, and I wear no uniform. What is the British Empire to me, any more than if I were a street loafer who stands to admire the motors and the carriages going into Hyde Park? If I were to change my religion you wouldn't accuse me of having lost my Ideal — and if my faith, why not my so-called nationality? I'm not trampling on the sham- rock so far, so you can reason that out carefully. As 185 The Light above the Cross Roads for the other question " — he bent down his head and clasped his hands between his knees — ** well, some- thing happened over here that makes it all impossible." The silence between them was unbroken, and at last Eitel spoke. " I'm more grieved than I can say, Mark. But nothing has happened or will happen that can break our friendship." Alarcus lifted himself out of his chair. "Optimist!" he said in a queer forced voice; and after a moment he added, " Good-night, Eitel." When he went to his room he did not sleep, late as it was. If it was true that it is the first step that costs so heavily, he felt that he had paid a price beyond all computation. The price staggered his imagination, and yet there was more and more and still more to follow, until shelter and peace were driven out eternally and he stood utterly and forever alone. He looked around the plain little room which was Eitel von Verlhof's guest-room, and he remembered the wonderful promised land of the future that he and Eitel had often seen from tlie cliff over Hildes- heim. Marcus knew that he was to die in the wilder- ness without hope to realize the vision luminous that he had seen from afar. It was one thing to dream of things that would never fail nor betray, and to see the shining towers and turrets, but it was quite another thing to stand before the gates and demand entrance. His way did not lie there. For a little he gave himself up to the misery of the hour, but gradually he felt his vitality return. There was always something in the bottom of Marcus Jan- over's bag, something that came to him in a way he 1 86 The Light above the Cross Roads neither understood nor consciously achieved through any power of his own. He could be very desperate and very reckless, but he could not be consistently sad ; the brave self in his heart rallied and overthrew despair. His eyes changed and he stretched out his arms quickly. He was a penitent no longer. There might not be very much of life before him, and what there was, was evidently decreed by fate to be cast along tragic lines, and yet his heart felt lifted, as the hearts of all warriors lift, be they men or women, when the dark hour looms very close. " Ouvre honhomme Hiver. . . . C'est le Print emps qui Sonne/' he quoted to himself, " and, by Gad, I'll squeeze what there is of life out of this fantastic game." 187 CHAPTER XVI IT was dark very early in December, and the days were often little better than a fitful gleam that awoke after eight, and died out again long before the afternoon was over. Hesper had come in from hunting, and having changed out of her wet mudd}'- clothing, she stood in her room and looked at the clock. Such a little time now and Marcus would drive up the wet crunching gravel of the long avenue and come back. There is so much included in the two words *' come back," they spell the whole full story of sheer tragedy or great joy. Every living soul has cried them to closed doors and vacant air, has cried them to inexorable skies, utterly, terribly distant ; always they are the burden of the song of parted lives. And some do come back, and life is glad again ; and some never return, and so the strangest mystery of so many complexities plays out its part in life, and no two are ever quite the same. Hope grew in the ticking of the clock, and the light in Hesper's eyes danced with sheer exultation. Mar- cus was coming back, and that was all she wanted out of life. She knew that something had gone amiss, and that he must be grievously disappointed because of the strange and sudden end to his career ; but Hesper was Irish, and the Irish are long used both by heredity and environment to the thwarting checks that come suddenly and plant a barrier across the way. Ambi- i88 The Light above the Cross Roads tion was not much to her in any personal sense. To live vigorously seemed the only thing that could very much matter, and success was the incident that hap- pened or did not happen. Very few ever attained any- thing among her own acquaintances, and in all the stories of those of her own house, eminence was en- tirely unknown and unhoped for. If disappointment had caught Marcus like a sunk fence in his early career, and taken the flame of hope from his eyes and snatched vast projects out of his hands, there was something brave and full of spirit still left. It was not a termi- nation, so Hesper felt, and she saw no menace to Mar- cus of any sagging end dwindling off into a dry desert place. Marcus would make a new beginning and go on with no less of his impetuous zest and force. Ful- ness must be his, because he gave with generosity, fill- ing the cup of life up to the brim. He had never come out of the infinite silence to return thither without hav- ing been through wild crowded hours, and he stood definitely on the wide, breezy, momentous fields of the earth facing a brave kind destiny. Hesper's heart quickened its beating as she put on a simple lace frock that made her look very young and slim; and as she dressed herself her thoughts raced with her quick fingers. No doubt the hope of marry- ing Marcus was postponed more than ever indefinitely; but she did not think much of that, she was prepared to wait. She buried her face in a large bunch of violets, and loved their scent and colour and the mysterious magic of their very name. God's world was a good world, and the glow of the day, and the memory of the sharp run over the best of the Ardshane country just at sunset, lived in her young healthy frame. She 189 The Light above the Cross Roads looked at the clock again. It was nearly time to listen for wheels on the drive. She felt, as all youth feels, that attainment is possible and near, and that joy is a birthright, not knowing that there is but one thing that humanity may ever count upon as definite and sure. She was full of her splendid emotion when she went down the staircase into the hall, where Hardress was sitting, his feet stretched out to the fire, and his favour- ite old hound Faultless beside him. Hesper perched herself on the arm of his chair, the firelight playing on her face and lighting the tiny diamond buckles on her satin shoes. " So young Marcus has left the Diplomatic Service," said Hardress, nodding his head wisely. " I never be- lieved he'd stick to it." Hardress was invariably in- fallible after the event. *' I wonder if he'd take Bally- drishane and farm it. I'd like to have one of my own in the place; and though our day is over " — his voice grew gloomy and touched with rancour — " if there is a revolution and civil war, he'd be handy." Hesper patted her father's collar with a light sooth- ing hand. " There won't be any need for that," she said cheer- fully. " And if those damned Sinn Feiners shoot me, he'd be there to look after you. Hesper. I wanted some peace in my old age, but what with one thing and an- other there doesn't seem any peace left in Ireland." He drank from the glass set at his elbow. " Black- guards," he said angrily, " I'd give them Martial Law, and make them eat lead to teach them." Hesper was not listening to him. She had caught the first sound of wheels on the drive, and she stood 190 The Light above the Cross Roads up, her hand pressed over her heart Her happiness made her thrill and quiver, and her whole soul filled with a great sweeping joy. She loved Marcus always, but the great realization that he was close to her made her love rise in her like a dashing wave and swept her to the heights. When the wide doors were thrown open, and the wind and the rain and the terrier — who had been barking outside — and the luggage and the confusion of the first moments had all entered with Marcus in one ecstatic jumble of joy and happiness, Hesper ran to him and took both his hands in hers. " Oh, Marcus, here we are, and here's Dad and the whisky decanter, and Faultless, and little Taffy all wanting to shake hands together." Marcus pulled off his heavy coat as he smiled down at her bright gay face. " El Dorado won the Farmers' Cup at the Breffainy Meeting,'' said Hardress, pouring out a drink when he had welcomed his nephew. " You remember El Do- rado — the colt by Sir Ferdinand out of Spanish Gold." ** I remember, Uncle." Marcus sat down near the fire. " I've got rid of Barry above at Ballydrishane," con- tinued Hardress. " He was paying no rent, and was in with that rascal Geoghegan who keeps the Sheridan Arms in the town. He was up to his neck in sedition, and was a Nationalist, for all that he went to Church and not to Chapel. The house is empty now. and it's a nice place with the makings of a good garden. You could stable four hunters there if you put on a roof and knocked up a few loose boxes, and the land's worth 191 The Light above the Cross Roads putting stuff into. Barry starved it and overstocked it " Marcus felt his mind wander. It was wonderful, he thought, this power to invest life with an enormous sense of reality and permanence. He had lived much and quickly, particularly of late, and yet his Uncle Ilardress made him feel as if he was a mere illusion out of a world of illusions, set outside the minute and imvarying life that surrounded him with its effect of immortal immutability. He was oddly affected by his uncle's voice, his pale eyes, and vague determination to go on through the unending details of a long story of wrong and irritation. Evidently he had told it many times already, and the whole of Marcus Janover's own sense of life became dulled and subconscious; he had returned out of the storm and had been blown into the hall, and he was part of the very storm itself, but his return was ludicrously altered into a sudden stepping backwards into a past which surrounded Hardress Sheridan; it was not of any kin to his own past, but it held and gagged him effectually, Hesper had returned to her place on the arm of her father's chair. She, too, knew the hopelessness of interruption. Interruptions merely meant a fresh be- ginning at the beginning and only prolonged the narra- tive, and for the moment she did not wish for more than she already had. Marcus was there, and though he hardly spoke, his actual presence was sufficient hap- piness. Every now and then he glanced towards her, and his look met hers like light on water as he recog- nized her inexhaustible freshness, and smothered down the keen pang in his heart. " Oh, I tell you, Marcus," Hardress concluded, 192 The Light above the Cross Roads " things are in a bad way over here. All this talk of Home Rule is just another name for socialism, an- archy, and spoliation." He looked very dignified and distressed indeed as he summed up the situation. " We're going under. Every year the times are worse, and there's nothing to do but just watch things go to ruin." Marcus stirred in his chair and said nothing in reply. " If England gives them Home Rule and sells the Loyal North, it will be the biggest crime ever recorded in history ; but England won't. They're sensible peo- ple over there, and they won't lend any heed to what a pack of low-class Members of Parliament say. They aren't going to hand the country over to a mob of priests and blackguards. Papists in every ofiice and Papists in every job — damned rascals to a man, and the scum of the country." Marcus got up and warmed his hands at the blaze. " English brains are the best? " he asked. " Particu- larly the Nonconformist brain? All the same, Uncle Hardress, I don't believe that what Manchester thinks today Ireland will think either tomorrow or next day." Hardress grunted dissatisfaction and looked at the clock. " Time to dress for dinner," he said, and he walked slowly up the wide staircase. " He has gone on saying things until he believes them," said Hesper, watching her father out of sight. " He is changed, Mark — one feels that, somehow, and it makes one very sad." '* But you mustn't be sad." Marcus put his arms round her. " I can't bear it, Hest. I want you al- ways to be happy." He bent his head and kissed her. " Always you must be in a safe world where the sun 193 The Light above the Cross Roads is bright and the flowers are blossoming — always fair skies for you, my Heart." He left her reluctantly, and with Taffy at his heels went up the staircase to his room, his quick energetic step following upon his uncle's weary footsteps in strange, sudden contrast. A whole week passed which Marcus dedicated to perfect happiness, and during that time he would not look ahead. As the sunset of each day came he told himself that tomorrow he would end it all, and yet when each fresh day came he postponed the saying of cruel words. The weather set in stormy and held them in the big draughty house, rain dashing against the windows, the trees creaking and groaning outside. Rain over the woods and the lake and the river, rain in the heavy clouds brooding low upon the mountains, rain every- where outside in the green world under a dark sky. The long room, with its faded early Victorian effect and its odds and ends of furniture, looked bright in the light of a blazing log fire, and Hesper, curled up in the corner of a deep chesterfield, thought that Paradise would compare but badly with the long room just then. Marcus, standing with his back to the fire, looked down at her. " I love you, Hest," he said. " I wonder if even I can realize how much." " I do realize," she said gravely. " You see, Mark, you have your life, and I have hours and hours when I have nothing to do only to think and think about you. And then I make up stories about the future, and stories about us, and we go to all sorts of places that 194 The Light above the Cross Roads I want to see, and we live the most wonderful life." She waved her hand in the air. " We have adventures, and we camp and live in caravans, and the pure joy of being alive is through every bit of all my stories." Marcus sat down beside her and took both her hands in his. " And those are your dreams, Hest? " " Yes," she said, looking at him with a little touch of fear in her eyes. " And there are no gaps where life leaks out and .where anything goes wrong? " Hesper laid her head against his shoulder. " I don't suppose that it could be all perfect. We are too restless and intemperate, you and I, Mark. We would break things ourselves at times, I suppose, dear Mark, but then we'd build them again and make them even better than they were before." Marcus sat very still crushing her hands in his. " Hesper," he said, and he caught her close to him and kissed her with desperate violence. " Hesper, Hesper — oh, Hesper, I've taken this bit of happiness here and now with you because I couldn't do without it, but it would have been a better thing for you if I had never come back to you. Oh, my Girl, I haven't anything to offer you, not anything." The storm beat and rattled on the windows and drove the oncoming dusk before it, lighted with pale watery yellow that reflected itself in the wet sodden land. " Not anything ? You, Mark ? Oh, my dearest, don't talk like that to me. You know that it is only the chosen who can give, and all my heart is between your hands. Only you could ever hold it, because 195 The Light above the Cross Roads your name is there, my dear, and I don't like you to talk like this." He strained her to him with force and kissed her mouth and eyes. " Hesper," he said again, " Hesper, I think that life is almost intolerably cruel — unbelievably so. Here we are, you and I, and our happiness is with us ; I can hold all I want on earth in my arms, and yet there is no use in it. You must hear what I have to say, little Hest — no use at all in all our love and all our hope." " But I can wait." She leaned back and looked up, her eyes strong and steady. " I'm not one of the flimsy sort, Mark, I'm one of the kind that goes on and on and can stand training." She gave a little laugh. " I'll not break down in the first trial gallop, so just don't let these ideas come into your head. Money — well, I suppose one must have some, but after all that is merely a matter for patience." Marcus released her hands and pushed her gently back against the cushions. " You'd stand any sort of reasonable test or anything pretty well except one or two things. Do you believe that I love you? " Hesper nodded silently. " Do you believe that I want you more than anything on God's whole earth, and that you have done more for me than any woman ever yet did for a man? " " I believe you think I have." ** Do you believe that your love for me is my whole and only hope in life. Hest? Schone Seelc, do you realize the utter truth of every word I have said to you?" 196 The Light above the Cross Roads " I do, Mark." " And knowing all this, do you — can you think that I should ever say that my position is hopeless if I did not know the awful, damnable truth of what I tell you?" Hesper leaned forward suddenly against his re- straining hands. " Mark, Mark, you can't mean it — oh, Mark, you could not break my heart." "Listen, Hest," he said quietly. ** I've got to make it plain." He got up and walked away from her to the window, where the lonely distant stars of hillside lights were shining in the twilight. Something in their loneliness seemed to comfort him and quiet the storm of wild passion that raged in his heart. " I've got work to do," he spoke very slowly and with painful clearness, " but it's a dirty job." " What do I care? " She ran to his side and caught his hand in hers, holding it to her cheek. "If you committed every crime there is, it would make no dif- ference to me, Mark. I should love you just the same." " I can't tell you, Hest. If I could — well, you might understand it all; but it makes such an awful difference. To begin with it means separation for a very long time, perhaps for always. I may not come back. Could you believe that I was kept from you by something that I was unable to avoid, even if I never wrote ? " " I will never change." Hesper stood quite still. " I can tell you nothing," he said sadly. " I can tell no one." Hesper leaned her elbows on the window-sash and 197 The Light above the Cross Roads looked out long and intently. She could scarcely be- lieve that she was suffering acutely. It did not seem real, or that she and the Hesper of five minutes back were one and the same. " I don't know much about these things, but I know that there are lots of men who don't race straight ; but their wives love them just the same." In spite of his pain Marcus almost smiled ; the Irish sympathy in her plea was unspeakably pathetic to his ears. ** I don't know what to say to you," he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. " But I'm thinking, Hest, that it's better for you to forget," Her ashy whiteness frightened him and he tight- ened his grasp. " If you could forget " " Forget f " Her lips parted and the word came like a sigh. *' Marcus, I love you. Don't you under- stand?" Hesper put her hands up to his face and touched his hair. " Come and sit down," she said gently, and once again they returned to the old battered sofa near the fire. " You must go, Mark — and I don't know where you are going — but I know that for some reason you must go.'' She sat and gazed at the flame, her eyes full of thought as though she watched him climbing tipwards and away from the known road, beyond the lonely highermost tree-line, far from tlie beaten track made by other men. He was going to some post of danger, and going to meet stumblings and mistakes and temptations by the way, and just then she knew that the only thing she could do for him was to crush 198 The Light above the Cross Roads down her own great tearing anguish and try to send him gladly out. This was not an hour for self, and it was not an hour for her to cry to him that she could not let him go, that she must know what he was going to do if he left her to long aching silence. The brave- ness of nature was with Hesper Sheridan, and a great wide understanding that is like the strong heather hills. The sun and the winds that had been her companions helped her not to shrink in the obscure and terrible moment that had come to her like a thief in the night. She grasped the life of that moment with both hands as she had often held a bolting thoroughbred when hounds broke, and conquered the longing she felt to cling to him with tears. The women of her race had not sent their men out with tears, and now that Mar- cus was going, and going, it appeared, with a definite and unknown motive claiming him, she called herself to play her part. " You must go," she said after a long silence. " It doesn't matter if I know why or if I know nothing. What difference will it make, Mark? If you do not write I will understand," she turned her eyes towards his, " because I know that you love me." Marcus was silent, but he watched her face intently. " Think of me as you might think of the old house. Something that doesn't change, but stands always in the same place, with the same rooms and furniture, and the same lamps every night." Her voice was quite firm and calm, and a light that was almost divine broke over her whole face, intensi- fying its sweetness. " I will ask you nothing," she said earnestly. " I love you far too well to love you wisely; I hate wise 199 The Light above the Cross Roads love, Mark, and I know both what I can and what I will do." " It may be years — I may never come back." Mar- cus took her hands again. " Think what that means, Hest. Think of the long summers and the evenings when love seems everywhere in the flowers and the trees and the singing of the birds. Other men will love you as I love you and as Eitel loves you " She tore her hands away quickly and her face changed. " Mark, Eitel is not in this mystery ? Tell me that he is neither persuading you nor advising you." " Eitel has nothing to do with it." Janover spoke bitterly. Hesper settled herself back in her corner. " I like Eitel," she said, " so long as I can keep out the bogies that make me afraid of him; for I am afraid of noth- ing else, Mark, not even of you and your future, not of any single thing on earth. I'm not good at lots of things, but I am good at sticking things out to the finish. Did you ever notice the brass banisters? Look at them when you go down, and you won't ever again talk of my loving any one else but you. I stuck it over those banisters, and I've been cleaning them now for " — she paused and counted — " for very nearly ten years." Marcus came behind her and put his arms round her shoulders. " And it is I who must shut the door, Hest." ** And I who will open it again." " But there is no hope." " So they said about the banisters." She got up. "I shall talk no more of this, Mark; there is nothing 200 The Light above the Cross Roads I could say, not anything that will tell you more, and there is nothing you can say to me that will change me. If, when you have been away for twenty years or so, and you want to come back, you ever wonder — just think of Ottway Sheridan's brass banisters. — Look, the evening has cleared and the stars are up. We'll go round to the stables and have a look at the hunters.'' And all the time Hesper Sheridan's heart was break- ing unobtrusively in a still, concentrated agony of pain. 20I CHAPTER XVII MARCUS JANOVER had no need to burrow deep into the questions that tore the heart of Ireland early in the year of 1914. His own old knowl- edge of the people stood by him, and when he began to talk a little to the men who had known him as a boy he caught sight of their vision through their eyes. Ireland was his country, and her freedom, her happi- ness, and her good stood for a great ideal to him. He left Ardshane for a time and went to a small hotel on a wind-beaten cliff at Ardbeg, and with the chariot clouds and the wind and the sea all racing in the eternal freshness of their being, Marcus spent his time in semi-solitude. Again and again he felt the strange sensation of knowing that he was living in a world of fable people with dreamers and inhabited by a shouting buoyant wind, that now and then forsook the shores of Ardbeg and left them to grey misty days of ghostly mystery. He wondered at the contrast of the peaceful innocence of the land, at the persistent haunting presence of things unseen, set against his own reason for being there and its sinister intent. Even to think of war and its anguish dragging its hideous shape across the little lives that lived and died in Ardbeg was grotesque and ghastly beyond anything he could picture. The hotel was a battered house, covered with white plaster that had fallen from it here and there. A white flag-staff stood in a neglected flower-bed in front of the entrance, yet in spite of its desolation it was not 202 The Light above the Cross Roads without some dignity and careless charm. Inside it was ugly, roomy, and full of dust, the merest hostel for well-to-do fishermen who paid liberally and were not troubled with aesthetic prejudice. Above Ardbeg, in the hills over the sea, was a line of lakes, and behind again, a soaring range of mountains guarded the bay. On all sides, cut across by the lonely road, lay miles and miles of soft brown bog. Marcus knew Moran, the proprietor of the Hotel, since his own boyhood, and it was to Moran he came to ask questions, knowing he would get answers that he could depend upon. Sitting in the deserted bar at night, Moran talked freely to Marcus, and told him many disquieting things. He was deeply engaged in gun running; for his hotel was conveniently situated, and he possessed a steam launch which could evade the vigilance of de- stroyers that now hung constantly around the coast. " It's the North," said Moran doggedly, " not the South that's calling down the thunder. Look at the preparations they've made ; the newspapers say they've one man one rifle up there in Ulster, and a machine gun to a company." His dark eyes smouldered with sup- pressed rage. " Half our men don't want trouble, the very best of them. Shutting their eyes and saying that they won't believe it possible " He lifted his hand in angry despair. "Who wants bloodshed? Not the Nationalists; but they know up there in Bel- fast that to get a man to fight for you is the way to make him your best friend." Marcus nodded comprehendingly. "Who did they send out to South Africa?" went on Moran, leaning forward over the zinc counter. 20.^ The Light above the Cross Roads " And there was never a war yet that was more dead against our National principles ; but the boys went. Climbed the walls of the barracks at night to enlist so's they might be in the row; and every one of the Militia were off to Table Bay cheering like mad, while the North was sending her dozens to our hundreds. Oh, it's a waste of breath going over it all and all." "Belfast means something definite — even if it's only a good bit of bluff." said Marcus. " And they've made a fine bid for English sympathy." " 'Tis they are the crafty thieves." Moran's face was dark, "But we'll sweep them yet, they and their Boyne Water, There's some over there in America that will learn them something; and there are a few of the gentry, like yourself, who will stand in with the green flag." Marcus wondered how many of his own class would stand distrust, opposition, slander, and hostility; but his eyes were set upon the heavier clouds beyond those that menaced Ireland. " You think that the Irish Volunteers will fight? " " After the first shot is fired in Antrim the country will be up. Listen, Master Marcus, and I'll tell you the truth. You can't patch that kind of a hole with parliamentary papers. We're quiet enough and con- tented enough in our own way, and we want our due without bloody murder, but let one of them Grangers loose off his rifle, and there'll be no keeping the men within doors. When Ireland's up she's up, and she'll lay down life after life till the bogs are red, and that's what Carson is playing at as if it was a game of hur- ley at a Feis." He lowered his voice a little, and bent his heavy shoulders. " Night after night the boys do 204 The Light above the Cross Roads be drilling in the fields beyond Monamore, and they come there in their hundreds. And the talk! God be with us, I can recall the old Fenian days, and 'twould make you young again to hear them. Oh, 'tis quiet and orderly enough on the surface ; but when the flood is full, let them look to it, Master Marcus, let them look to it." ]\Iarcus fiddled with a little bit of string he had un- tied from a parcel of books. " Is this hatred of England a real genuine feeling? How much of it is talk? " Moran replenished the glass in front of Marcus. " 'Tis a wonderful small drink you do be having," he said, going back to his place. "■ But as to what you're after saying, there's anger abroad today, and maybe there'll be more tomorrow; but it's only justice we want. There's always love in the Irish for the old stock that they knew since all began, and we don't take to the new. No tramping will tramp that out. None of us want to be shooting landlords now, we've got beyond all that. ' Don't be shooting the Irish,' is what I say when the lads come in here to me, * keep your bullets for Carson's army and the English in fair fight,' and that's how they take the notion themselves. It's not the police now, IMaster jMarcus, for the police are as good Nationalists as the rest." Marcus tied two ends of the string neatly together and pulled them tight. " And do you think they'd fire Ardshane and the rest of the houses about? " " There's men who have seen their own thatches burnt over their heads who have long memories; there's men who have seen their doors taken oflf the 205 The Light above the Cross Roads hinges and thrown into the blaze; and the wide world is a cruel sort of a home, Master Marcus, so there would be an odd one here and there who might be for doing as they was done by in the old days, if it wasn't for Miss Hesper. Still, I'd be saying that Mister Hardress will be safe enough, for the people don't mean ill." " But England," said Marcus, looking into the turf fire that burned on the right of the curtained door of the bar. " Suppose, for instance. England was at a disadvantage — if Germany tried invasion, and she was cornered, — would Ireland turn her rifles on to the invaders? " Moran's mouth set in a firm line, and his eyes also turned towards the rose-red peat that smouldered flameless on the hearth. " There's been fellows around here, and I'm telling you the truth, who do be talking," he said grimly. " There's Hartmann, him who runs the Creamery business and comes from some place be- yond in Germany, who put me the same question." " Oh, he did, did he? " Marcus replied carelessly. " Any subscriptions ? '' Moran pursed up his mouth. " If a man likes to subscribe I'm not the one to deny him, and we want funds. Hartmann has a friend beyond in Antwerp who is in the way of getting rifles " " And Hartmann can bring packing-cases with new machinery into Ireland via Holland? " " How well you knew." Moran laughed. " Brayvo, Master Marcus." " But all the same you've not said what you think, Moran. I'll have it out of you, you old devil." 206 The Light above the Cross Roads Moran grew serious and moved uncomfortably on his high stool. " Is it what the Volunteers would do ? " " Yes, what they would do; not what some of them have said they'd do, and not what you told that Ger- man Creamery fellow when you took twenty — or was it fifty? — pounds off him. You've got to get the funds, and they're playing the same game up North. Every one wants funds, and if a bit of palaver gets a bit for the Cause — well, it gets it." Marcus leaned back comfortably in his chair, his eyes full of sleepy laughter, " By Gad, Moran, you are a crafty old fox, and I expect you'll get a bit off me for your powder and shot before you're much older." " I'd be proud of your name on my list if it was a five-shilling piece you gave," said Moran. " You're getting away from the point." Marcus pitched the knotted string into the fire and lighted a cigarette. '* I'll tell you what / think. I think that the old hatred of Ireland for England is valid and real, and that she'd let her go. I think the boys would come out, right enough, and collar Ulster standing alone and without any English guns to assist her. I think the old sense of wrong and injustice would flare up like a bonfire on St. John's Eve, and that they'd accept Ger- many's terms if she made them a fair offer and stood for National freedom." He still leaned back idly, but his voice sounded full of sudden vigour and life. There was a long pause, and after a time Moran spoke. " I'm not denying that there's men about in this dis- trict who's saying the selfsame thing as yourself." His face was grim enough, and he spoke with some 207 The Light above the Cross Roads bitterness in his voice. " How far foreign travel has made you feel as you may feel, to be speaking that way, would be presumption on my part to say, Master Mar- cus, but just now I said a thing to you that's true for me. It's not living together makes brothers of men — God knows 'tis disunity it does be bringing most fre- quent — but it's dying side by side. If there were no Irish soldiers, no Munster Fusiliers, no Connaught Rangers, no Royal Irish, and no Leinsters, you could count the country solid for anything you offered that spelt National freedom first. But if there is anything in this talk of war, and there's plenty talk though you read nothing in the papers, what is the first step? The lads from the country will go, and the rest will follow." Moran's eyes grew brooding and full of thought as he spoke on. " What quarrel had we with them Boer farmers? None; but the regiments went and the boys were mad to get after them. If Germany was going to declare war tomorrow, all the sense that could be talked wouldn't be worth a thraneen. It would be, * Shure and didn't they kill my brother Mick, and didn't they blind the two eyes of Paddy?' and that's the arguments that will be listened to against anything that you or I could say, Master Marcus : and I'm telling you I don't like them German Protestants too well in any case. 'Tis very sudden-like that they've taken to this great friendliness." Marcus stretched his arms over his head. ** I expect you told the German fellow something else," '* He's pleasant spoken, and the poor creature is simple," Moran said, relapsing into his usual placid manner. " Them foreigners is alwa3^s a bit queer, but, 208 The Light above the Cross Roads sure, his money is as good as the next one's ; and how do 1 know what we'd all be doing if the North w^as up and the South was up and Europe itself was up? " '* And meanwhile you pocket his cheque, and like the cheery old Psalmist you fret not yourself because of evil-doers. Good man, Moran." Marcus got up from his chair. " I'm off tomorrow," he said, his eyes on a picture of Robert Emmet that hung over the mantelpiece. " And when I come back we'll both of us know a bit more than we know tonight." " But you'll come back, sir, when the first shot is fired in Antrim? " " Yes, I'll do that," Marcus said from the door, " and you'll see big things doing — only Ardshane is to stand where it did." Marcus walked out into the night, and on down the stony path to the sea. He felt as if he was standing on the remotest edge of life. The sound of the waves and the rush of the night wind hypnotized his thoughts, and the scudding clouds that followed a clear moon sailing high in the dark blue overhead carried him be- yond himself into the loneliness of desolation that is always very near the human heart. He had done ex- actly what he intended to do while at x\rdbeg, and he had nothing now to keep him in Ireland any longer, nothing but his own desire to see Hesper again. The sea and the night winds spoke to him of her, the tender beauty of the broken reflections on the wide water that rushed landwards to his feet, the silent deserted world — all was full of Hesper, and the spirit of the place cried out to him of her, as memory cries to the living of the loved dead. They had never recurred to 209 The Light above the Cross Roads the talk in the firelight, and Hesper had, by some won- derful power of her own, put the whole of life into normal proportion, and had saved and helped him when he could not help himself. She had understood, and it is only one in a million who ever understands, when it is the moment to watch through an agonized hour. The rest of the thousands want to know all the par- ticulars, become doubtful and of little faith; they pray, preach, or lecture, or they sleep and are indifferent. Only rare love can watch and wait and stand alone and uncomforted so that it is of service to the loved one. Hesper had reached the great heights where self is left far behind, and she had accepted what Marcus told her without question. He thought of his way of under- standing men ; he could count upon Eitel von Verlhof , and he could usually arrive at complete comprehension of his fellows, but with Hesper it was all different. Over and over again he had rehearsed the moment when he was to take and break the beauty and the joy of his dream and hers, and yet when the moment came she had taken it into her wonderful quiet hands and had robbed his death in life of its sting, and snatched all victory from his grave of oblivion ; she had placed a crown of stars upon their love. Her fidelity called all the soul of him to her, and under the drifting clouds he cried to her across the distance. Her face came clearly to him like dawn out of the moonlit dark, and the magic of her eyes smiled into his. For one mo- ment he forgot the pain rooted deeply in his heart. He felt very clearly the beauty and vigour of Hesper's nature must conquer seas and torrents of ill fate, and that somehow in the end things might be well with them. Usually Marcus thought with strong faith of 2IO The Light above the Cross Roads his own future, but as he walked along the level hard sand and listened to the breaking waves, he disowned all personal claim. Nothing he had to offer could be measured against what Hesper gave without hesitation, and her gift would never lack its ultimate reward. Hesper would not be saved alone, and with her he must arrive at the goal, " one of those citizens who sacrifice honour and conscience, as others of old sacri- ficed their lives, for the good of their country." An invincible premonition came to him, and defeated his old habit of analysing all the known reason for his own beliefs. Sheer through his consciousness the con- viction smote in upon him almost with violence, and he could only accept it as a certainty that somehow and somewhere in this world where he now stood, he and Hesper, the woman who held his heart, and Eitel von Verlhof, the man he so loved, would be together again in an hour of entire fulfilment. 211 CHAPTER XVIII M\RCVS JANOVER left Ireland rid Belfast and Fleetwood without going back to Ard- sliane. and without again seeing Hesper Sheridan. The morning after he landed in England she got his letter by the late post. The postman blew a whistle at a cross-roads down the long drive each evening, then he waited to collect any outgoing letters there might be, and delivered the post for Ardshane. The sound of his whistle was connected permanently in the mind of Hesper with the opening and shutting of some unseen door, for evening posts in the country are the great event of long afternoons, and the postman's bicycle was the only conveyance that passed there during the late winter days. Hesper had tried not to hear the whistle ever since Marcus left for .\rdbeg, and yet wherever she was in the house or stables she heard it, and almost before she was aware of it she was speeding down between the rows of fir-trees and rhododendron to ask if there was anything to take back. Night after night the reply had been a reluctant negative. Patrick, the letter-carrier, hated to disappoint her, and though she smiled cheer- fully at him, he was not deceived. At last, when January suddenly turned for a day or two into sheer spring softness and mildness, and Hes- per had made a vow that she would send Fagan on the next occasion that the whistle shrilled its eerie note 212 The Light above the Cross Roads through the darkness, she was received by Patrick with a cheerful greeting. '* Sure an' I have one for yourself, Miss Hesper, and two that looks to be bills for the Master." Hesper's hands shook, but she lingered a moment to ask after the Patrick family of ten. In the days since Marcus left, reality had begim to weigh down upon her mind, and the vague fear and perplexity that folded itself about J^larcus overcast her thoughts like a heavy shadow. She fought against mental oppression, the distracting sensation of help- lessness that comes from the presence of an abstract, formless idea, which haunts the brain with endless suggestions. She knew that she could face all known possibilities, but the unknown, without form or shape, was torment beyond bearing. Vast and again vast and utterly unexplored, the nightmare of vague fear filled and loaded her mind. The ways of the common earth ended for her at the feet of Marcus Janover, and all beyond was pathless, limitless, and lonely. Marcus was going into a life as entirely unknown to her as though he were going into the Astral plane or some undiscovered region of the spirit, and all she could do for him was to remain changeless in the midst of changing things, and sit and watch with earnest, steadfast eyes for his possible return, always sure and tranquil, watching and watching through months and maybe years ; unable to catch any sound or hint of what he did to fill those silent days, unable even dimly to guess at what was befalling him or whither his destiny was carrying him. As she took the letter from Patrick, her fingers thrilled, and she felt the weariness of the days slide off 213 The Light above the Cross Roads her young shoulders. She had something tangible be- tween her hands, and she raced back to the house, the dogs barking wildly before her in the pale moonlight that shone on the avenue, turning it white as a silver stream between the firs. The blood throbbed in her veins, and the relaxation from past tension was sud- denly and swiftly sweet and precious to her. Laying the letters for Hardress on the table, she crossed the hall and went light-footed up the staircase to the long room. Her haste was too great to let her hght a lamp or even a candle, so she poked the logs into a bright blaze and. kneeling close to the flames, opened the letter and read it carefully. It scarcely cost her a pang to read that Marcus had left without coming back. She knew that he had gone, by some indescrib- able process of telepathy that made her aware of change when it touched his life. All that she most desired to know lay in the few written words. Never doubt that I love you. It is stupid and weak to grumble at Fate's decrees, and I must abide by the choice in life I have made. Some day, if all is well and I ever do get back, I will tell you every circumstance as honestly as I can. What I do I am doing from conviction, not for money or from any other motive. Whatever else you think, always believe this of me. Perhaps I may never clear myself in your eyes, but I pray you to withhold all judgment of me until you fully understand. Only believe that I love you, Ilest, and that you are my link with all that is best, all that is good or worthy, in all my life. You are the only woman I have ever loved in simple honest truth, and until we meet, ray Girl, wherever it be or in which of God's worlds it may be. I am yours. Hesper folded her arms on the faded old sofa cush- ions, and the tears blinded her eyes. 214 iThe Light above the Cross Roads She could only think at that moment that she might never see Marcus again, and that she loved him with all the force of her whole soul. She did not try to fathom the strangeness of his letter, she only called back the memory of his face as she had watched the train take him away from her, not realizing that the parting bade fair to be eternal. The struggle of her young passion tore and spent her; it was her hour of weakness, and well it is for those who wear through such hours alone. Outside the window the ivy shone in the hazy moon- light and tapped with ghostly fingers on the glass, but Hesper cared nothing whether the world beyond was dark or bright. Marcus loved her, she was certain of that ; but the sorrow of parting and absence cut her like a knife, and her pain weakened all her forces, and for a moment she tasted an utter abandonment and lethargy as of coming death. Her very arms were weak and limp, and her strength ebbed from her. With all her force she cried his name silently, and the poor human self of Hesper Sheridan lay broken against the dingy cushions. Youth takes its agony hard, and Hesper had not learnt the knowledge that life teaches later, which brings the bearing of much sorrow to something ap- proaching a fine art to those who understand life. She had not yet learnt that it is through thought that all the events of life enter, either to glorify or destroy; and, so that thought is contained by the deeper understand- ing of faith, life's fiercest and most bitter pain can be lifted upwards until the light of the vision luminous falls upon its darkness, and it becomes one with the 215 The Light above the Cross Roads beauty that lies eternally around the human soul. For an hour the mortal part of Hesper Sheridan lay sobbing her heart out blindly. Not because Marcus had gone, not that he had left her with any sick hope- lessness of disillusion to think and think and wear her- self out in silence, but for some vague and great misery that swept her and that was full of the despair as of millions of human hearts. After a time she got up and looked at herself in the grey mirror over the fireplace, and her mouth ran sud- denly into an odd little wistful smile. " I am a holy show," she said to her reflection, " and this is pretty bad business, with life ahead to be met and got through somehow." " Well, Hesper," her father's voice spoke from the door. " Have you been asleep ? " " No, Dad, I was only wondering about wings," she said, putting her arms round him. " I expect they take what old Dr. Larry Murphy calls * the Hal of a time ' to grow." "Wings?" said Hardress in astonished horror. " It's only angels that have them, I'm told. At least I heard the Bishop say that old blackguard Carrigan had them, and was singing in Heaven." " But devils have them," said Hesper, laughing as she stood away in the shadows, " only they have the leathery kind, like bats. I'll make my own, Dad, out of the moonlight mist, and tie them on with a bit of rainbow." Hardress grunted unsympathetically. " It's the Sinn Feiners will be likely to give me a pair, and not Dr. Larry. And then it will be a bad day for you, Hesper, thanks to Lady Mary and her fine 216 The Light above the Cross Roads promises. I tell you that if I meet her I'll give her the best ' what for ' she ever yet had." " Do, Dad," said Hesper, who was busy with the window curtains. " And Marcus never took the farm." Hardress sat down and beat the logs with the short poker. ** I thought perhaps Well, is he coming back? " " Not for some time." The cheerful bright voice quivered a little. *' He doesn't know when." " Humph! " said her father with a hopeless jerk of his shoulders. " That's the way, that's the way ! And the Dutch feller? I liked that Dutch feller; there's something solid about him, and he knew a good horse when he saw one. Any talk of his coming to see a bit of sport over here before the season finishes?" " He isn't a Dutchman, Dad, he is a German." " One's the same as the other," said Hardress, with a liberal disregard of foreign nationalities. *' He's a fine, sound, nice-spoken man. I'd be glad to see him." " He is with his regiment at Metz." ** Well, drop him a line, or perhaps I'll do it myself, and suggest a bit of spring racing." Hesper clasped her hands before her and stood look- ing across the room at the little liquid pool of light held by the old square of looking-glass, as though fas- cinated. " But if the Volunteers are out and there is civil war? " she said, forcing herself to speak. "If there is we'll be dead, and if there isn't we'll be at Punchestown," said Hardress conclusively. He was a man of few ideas, and having got one suddenly into his head, it remained there with all the fixity of the Pyramids. 217 The Light above the Cross Roads ** Dad, isn't it — isn't it rather headlong of yon? " Once again Hardress Sheridan struck the logs. " I'll ask him if I like," he said irritably. " I'll not be a child in my own house, with * Do as you're bid ' at every turn and twist. I know more and better than you do, Hesper, and when I think a thing is advisable I'll do that thing." Hesper said nothing in reply. 218 CHAPTER XIX MARCUS found himself in a sardonic mood when once again he plunged back into the life that was now his. His rooms in the Mittelstrasse were comfortable, and he was away from his old surround- ings, which was in itself a relief, as it jarred upon the nerves of Marcus to meet with Reynolds coming in and going out of the old quarters. Reynolds was in- satiably inquisitive and full of importance, and he shrouded all he did in grotesque folds of mystery. He had spoken seriously to Marcus, in the tones of a pa- tient elder brother, and had offered to " put things right " between him and Lord Shawford, and he wore the air of a man who carries State secrets in every pocket of his coat. Moreover, Reynolds was quite sure that he was doing Marcus a very good turn by still adhering to his ancient friendship, for he said of himself, " If 1 am anything, I am loyal " ; and though he knew no special reason for considering Marcus as an outcast, he made a point of " sticking up for him " that gradually led to a vague impression that Janover had done something shady and that Reynolds had stood between him and open disgrace. It was a bless- ing for Marcus to feel that he could work steadily and without interruption while he remained in Berlin, for he was well aware that he was likely to be sent via Vienna to Budapest, and from thence to Belgrade, the scene of Reynolds' own diplomatic adventures. He had made friends with Sachs, a chemist in the 219 The Light above the Cross Roads Aerial Corps, a stout pale young man who wore spec- tacles, who lodged also in the Mittelstrasse, and who in all his life had never been amused until he met Jan- over. Janover amused him enormously ; and as no one else had ever done so, Sachs constantly desired the company of Marcus. It was known, for the benefit of the outside public, that Marcus was working at the Record Office, that he was German born, though of English parents, brought up in Germany and naturalized, and that he could hardly speak as much English as Sachs himself. Sachs, being far set from any way of knowing where Marcus had formerly lived and moved and had his being, was entirely content with the explanation of his fellow-lodger's way of living, and the Record Office accounted for the fact that Janover had friends and acquaintances in the higher walks of life. He talked incessantly about hydrogen gas and oxy- gen gas and the structural fabric of Zeppelins. For him the world was a stupid place where people walked, and his conversation, if not heavenly, was turned en- tirely towards the heavens. There were twelve official airships and a number of non-official which it took Marcus weeks of entertainment to discover. Steadily and persistently he amused Sachs, and cursed him roundly when he talked of his work at the great sheds. " It doesn't interest me, Sachs, you old Fischhdndler ; your balloons are pure foolishness. Fly to London and blow up ' Buckinghame ' or whatever it's called — never. And your formula, your stuff that is lighter than aluminum and which is dense as steel — I know what that is made of, and it's easy to get, for it's made of Sachs' lies." 220 The Light above the Cross Roads Marcus was lying on a solid and hideous sofa which was in keeping with the furniture of his room. It was a hot day and the flies crowded on the dingy ceiling overhead. Sachs looked at him through his large spectacles and laughed. It amused him to be called a fishmonger, and he liked the way Janover swore at the flies. It suddenly came into his mind that he also could be funny, and he took a pocket-book out of his dirty waistcoat. " There is the formula." he said. " It is, oh, so easy to understand ! England and France would give thou- sands and hundreds of thousands for it, but they will never get it." " And yet you carry it around with you on your perspiring body," said Marcus, taking it reluctantly and looking at it without evincing the least interest, " There are dirty marks all over it. I have counted six — steady, man, I have a seventh " " Give it back," said Sachs in sudden alarm. " It is my own copy from here " — he tapped his forehead. Marcus held it out of his reach, puffing up smoke. *' Stop, I'll disinfect it first. So that is worth more than a Corot and a Daubigny or a Flemish Boucher " He rolled it into a ball and pitched it at Sachs. " You think of nothing but women," said Sachs irri- tably, smoothing out his treasured papers. Marcus laughed with unrestrained heartiness. " Yes," he said gaily. " all great friends of mine. I prefer them to your dirty bits of paper. But go on, Sachs. You've got liquid gas and filthy gas that chokes you, which you pack into cylinders, and you've 221 The Light above the Cross Roads got tons of dynamite to drop on my little friends in Paris. You're a bad man, Sachs; I don't like you." Sachs took off his collar and threw it on to the floor. " Ach! You should see Heligoland, that kind pres- ent from our dear friends the English." He lighted his pipe and his raggy blonde moustache lifted with the twisted sneer of his mouth. " There are sand dunes there, Janover, and the wind comes whistling like a bird straight out of the North Sea, and all around those yellow dunes, that go up and down, up and down, so — gentle little slopes, very beauti f ul I think them, and there are our great sheds. Gott! it is won- derful. Barbed wire as high as ten — twenty feet between the guard-houses, and if you so much as tip it — Zoom! there is a ringing of bells inside the houses of the marine guards." Marcus closed his eyes. " Go on, Sachs, I find your drone most soothing. It's like a bumble bee in a butcher's shop. If I go to sleep don't rouse me." " Beyond the barbed wire fence, which is so beauti- fully constructed, you meet a great high tower, and up there near the sky the searchlights swing all through the dark hours. I have often thought," said Sachs, wiping his spectacles emotionally, " that they are like the eyes of the Kaiser watching his loved children." " Hoch dcr Kaiser," said Marcus drowsily. " By means of large polished reflectors the light is intensified to the clearness of full day. Is that not clever, Janover? " " I call it an act of supererogation," said Marcus, casting the horsehair bolster from his sofa. " The days are too long already." 222 The Light above the Cross Roads " There is the meteorological department, and there are sheds and sheds, Janover, and there are no forts." Marcus gave a slight snore and woke suddenly. "I apologize, Sachs. Where were we? We had got as far as the Heligoland fortresses, which no one has ever seen except those dull dogs who are actually in the heart of the know.' " And I tell you," said Sachs — " for though you are an amusing friend, you are in no other ways very igno- rant and stupid — that there are no forts now in Heli- goland. Our great Bismarck made a fool of Lord Salisbury, a man who was head of the English Reichs- tag, and at first there were forts and big guns to blow up the English Navy, but now, my friend Janover, there are forts that fly." Sachs laughed and looked quite bright as he thought of it. *' Forts up in the sky with Diesel engines, and which also guard the Wilhelmshafen and Kiel, and that carry guns and guns. We have flown over the Baltic, over Svendborg, and back to the Fatherland, and we shall fly further yet, and the wooden walls of England will be down below in the sea." " And the sand dunes with the wind blowing over them and the sea-birds calling, where the salt fresh air is clean and stinging and pure, is nothing but a pen where chemists and soldiers and sailors sit and think of killing other men," said Marcus. " Well, Sachs, ever}' one to his taste, I suppose, but I'd hate the sight of your beautiful Heligoland." " It is so few who may see it," said Sachs reluct- antly. "I wish I could take you on a trip we make there from Stettin on X 15. Ach! X 15, she is so ruhig, she is so menschenfreundlich, so beautiful, and 223 The Light above the Cross Roads up you go — up, up, and up ten thousand feet." He tapped Marcus on the arm, his face keenly excited. " Suppose I take you as my assistant in a little chem- ical experiment, wasf " " Quatsch! to you Sachs," said Marcus, rolling over on to his back. " I can't stand heights. I once nearly fell off the top of a tower, and I once nearly fell off a high chair when I was ten months old." " But think ! we shall travel at the rate of sixty miles an hour." " Sachs." Marcus sat up and patted the greasy head. " I have met many liars in my time, particu- larly when I was travelling for the sale of an Encyclo- pedia Germanica, when I lied admiringly myself, but even including myself, I am obliged to admit that you take the prize and the gold medal and every kind of iron cross and order that I know of as the best and finest prevaricator in Central Europe." Sachs pulled down his untidy waistcoat over his stout figure. ** Janover, I shall not rest until you say to me as one honest comrade to another, * You have not lied, Kas- par Sachs. It is all true and more than what you have said.' " " Then, Kaspar Sachs," said Marcus, looking at the turgid yellow carpet at his feet, " I don't see myself getting into your schone X 15, not only to be sea-sick in mid-air, but also to be perhaps caught as an impostor and practised with as a substitute for several tons of dynamite thrown down on to the roofs of Paris. I still love my life, Kaspar Sachs, and even though the Record Office is not amusing, there are places that I find gay, here in Berlin, and there are those who would 224 The Light above the Cross Roads cry if I never came back — Corot, for instance, and Daubigny and the Flemish Boucher — what would they do without Mark Janover? I am afraid I must decline." " There need be no fear," said Sachs. " No one would think to question. You shall be my cousin, and I will explain all that is necessary. I am not a little chemist — I am a great chemist, and in my head there are other inventions. It is I who invented the process for casting lighted oil from specially constructed pumps upon the enemy's forces in the coming war." " W under schone," said Marcus. " I'll think about it." He looked at the mild pale face and the fat figure of Sachs. " When do you and the ever-gracious X 15 go off to Heaven and Heligoland? " " In two days," Sachs said eagerly. " You come? " " To be shuttlecocked into the skies? Well, if I do, fat-headed Kaspar, it is a real proof of my very great appreciation of your company. I'm damned if I'd do it for any one else ; but we're not really to travel like lightning, are we? I don't see myself going if we are." " Put your faith in me," said Sachs, his face light- ing with almost childish joy. ** Put your faith in me — and perhaps I may even get you inside to the eastern end of the island, where only the Luftschiffer Abteilung ever yet have been. Ach! I should like you to jcf it, then you would cease to laugh and talk of Sachs' lies." Sachs, after repeated and strengthened inducements, extracted a promise from Marcus that if he could get two days' leave he would go with him. The chemist said he could provide him with oilskins, and all that Marcus had to do was to remain close to Sachs and 225 The Light above the Cross Roads make notes for him while he experimented with a new invention for raining death upon a hostile country. Sachs was an enthusiast and he was deeply in love with X 15, and just as there are men who when they love a woman desire that their comrades should see and stand and wonder, so Sachs desired that Marcus should discard his levity and bare his head to the con- quering majesty of the Zeppelin that was more than anything else in life to him, and Marcus Janover was such a lustig Brudcr and was so utterly and entirely simple that it never dawned upon the highly-educated mind of Sachs that he could be in any way dangerous. He knew already that Marcus Janover remembered nothing, and that he forgot faces and dates and the ,way to places, and that he was devoid of knowledge of chemistry, even in its mildest form ; and well it was for the peace of mind of Kaspar Sachs that he was not aware that even in his early school-days Marcus had exhibited a marked aptitude for what he and his fel- lows called " stinks." " I remember the quantities exactly," was the thought formulated in Marcus Janover's brain as he killed a fly on Sachs' prematurely bald head with a resounding smack. "If they'll accept an excuse," he said, taking up his hat. " I'll come." Sachs accompanied him into Leipzigstrasse, and walking up Friedrichstrasse, they dined together at iKampinsky's, and late in the evening Marcus returned to his room with heavy lines of fatigue under his eyes. It was very late indeed when he walked out again, wearied to death, and met George Felsted, Lord 226 The Light above the Cross Roads Shaw ford's secretary, in the Siegersalle, quiet and de- serted at that hour. '* For God's sake, take care of these notes, George," he said as they sat on a bench together. " I've sweated blood to get them written out, and I'm going to HeHgo- land in X 15 on Saturday. It's to be my week-end trip." " By Gad, Marcus, Lord Shaw ford will be pleased." George Felsted was a small dapper little man with a pleasant voice, which he modulated carefully. " Von der Schultz is also away for the week-end, and at present they are all fighting like devils over the nominal pretext for declaring war on Russia and France. They still hope England won't come in," Janover went on. " I see," said Felsted slowly. " And, George, if you're tired of life and want to shorten it by years, try amusing a German chemist." " It's damned hard luck." Felsted spoke with real sorrow in his voice. " But look at your results. It makes some difference, doesn't it? " " I try to think it does. But I'll have some difficulty in getting a map made over this X 15 trip. However, I'll get the numbers of the guards and the numbers of the sheds and the probable output in Zeppelins while I crack hoary old jests and play the fool. By the way, I have noted that my amiable friend and cousin, Kas- par Sachs, has invented liquid gas pumps that set fire to invading forces." He looked up at the stars. " It's to be a pretty war, I promise you, George, and the chemists are inventing as fast as they can think new tortures and horrors, and life is to go maimed and 227 The Light above the Cross Roads terrible for hundreds of thousands because of the brain of my nice kind Kaspar. I've sat there standing him drinks while I long to wring his damned neck." George Felsted got up, *' I'll be here each night as long as it's possible," he said, holding out his hand. " Of course, once we have left and the mob is wrecking the Embassy, it will be more difficult to communicate. I've got the addresses of the men we have, both in Switzerland and Holland, who may be trusted, also in Belgium, and I'll write them down." " Not a line," said Marcus quickly. " I lock noth- ing. Keys are fatal in my profession, and if you lock up anything you ask for trouble. I've achieved a repu- tation for leaving even'thing about, including money and a few pretty fervid love-letters I wrote to myself, so as to inspire confidence. If you leave love-letters and money about on your table in hired rooms no one on earth thinks you anything but an absolute idiot." He parted from Felsted in the darkness and walked slowly back towards the Mittelstrasse. 228 CHAPTER XX MARCUS JANOVER returned from his trip in X 15 as enthusiastic as Kaspar Sachs could desire, and so great was his appreciation of Zeppelins that Sachs unfolded to his convert further mysteries that were taking place within the Government chemical laboratories at Spandau. He even explained to Mar- cus the weak points of his darling, and bemoaned the fact that she was vulnerable. Nothing stemmed the torrent of his talk, having found the one man in the world with whom he could converse, and the repeated protests that Marcus indulged in when he forbade him with oaths to mention X 15 were of no avail. Marcus preferred to dwell upon the strange destiny of Heligoland in the abstract, and the exact mind of Kaspar Sachs was irritated at his lack of accuracy. " I have told you, Marcus Janover, that it is not twenty battalions of Ltiftschiffer 'Abteilimg that are in Heligoland, but ten; and each has three hundred and fifty mechanics and artificers " " What do I care? " said Marcus. " It has nothing to do with me. What afi'ects me is the cruelty of tor- menting that little wild island, where people ought to be honeymooning and dreaming, and making it into a hideous nightmare of gas-bags." " Women, women," said Sachs, his pale eyes and yellow face looking more than ever pallid under the light from the incandescent burner overhead. " Can you not ever think of anything but Frauenhemden? " 229 The Light above the Cross Roads Marcus looked at the cheap clock on the mantelpiece. " I have an appointment," he said, getting up. " Tonight I shall spend my week's earning at the Cafe Bauer. I won't invite you, Sachs, because my little Ursule would be jealous of X 15. I think I must tell her that I have been flying over the Fatherland and looking down upon " " Mcin Gott, mcin Gott!" Sachs threw up his hands. " You are mad, Janover. None must know of our little adventure. I took you with me so as you should better understand when I talk. To permit a woman to know anything is ridiculous. I forbid you to speak of it." Marcus shrugged his shoulders. " All right, kaspar. It doesn't matter. I'll tell her nothing that need keep you awake at night. She loves me,'' he went on, with a good imitation of Von der Schultz's manner, " but then, so many women do." When Marcus had changed his clothes and put on a light overcoat, he strolled slowly up to the Cafe Bauer. On his way he passed Ingolstadt, who was in a hurry, and the Chief of the General Staff, accompanied by the Minister of Railways and the Chief of the Admiral's Staff. " The eagles are gathered together," he said to him- self as he observed the absorbed faces of the men whom he recognized. When the Gross General-Stab was agitated and keeping late hours things must be well on the way towards a climax; and last of all he saw Von Thulsen flash past in his car. If Von Thulsen was in Berlin and out of Metz, it meant indeed that the eagles were gathering from many quarters. Marcus looked up to the skies above the lighted city, 230 The Light above the Cross Roads and a strong feeling of wonder came upon him to think that the whole brain of a people was setting desperately and furiously towards war and its awful reckonings. War and the madness of war lighted the brains of the men he had passed, and soon it would light the brains of the whole country. Sachs in his chemical labora- tory was already mad, and the professors and pastors were soon to join the headlong party that shouted Deutschland iiher Allcs and shrieked for blood. After a hundred years of European peace, men were to die in millions, and the very men who were to die were shouting already in the big barrack squares because they guessed that they were soon, and very soon, to go out and kill other men about whom they knew nothing, from Russia and France, and also perhaps from Eng- land, unless England stood out. Marcus wondered at it all as he went slowly along the pavement under the strong blazing lights. Nomi- nally men went to war for reasons, good or bad, which posterity alone could judge ; but the rank and file cared and knew nothing of those reasons, and all they sought was the frenzy of destruction. The crashing of shat- tered lives and houses and the uncounted destruction of beauty and hope and happiness, all this was to be done, and mild Kaspar Sachs, who turned faint and sick in X 15 when Marcus cut his finger, thought out abominations beside which the pains of the Holy Inqui- sition were as nothing. And overhead the stars shone quietly and still, and the great Law that has decreed that whoso takes the sword shall perish with the sword remained unaltered and unchanged. Still thinking, Marcus walked up the steps and into 231 The Light above the Cross Roads the big foyer of the Cafe Bauer, which was crowded to overflowing. Through the crowd he caught sight of Ursule in a flaming orange dress crowned with a large black hat. She was talking to Von der Schultz, but her eyes were restless and wandered from face to face. Her spirit of gaiety seemed dulled and her laugh sounded artificial and forced. The music of the string band spoke of desirable illusions, making them appear lasting and full of charm, and the tragic fascination of all such concourses worked upon the sensitive mind of Marcus Janover as he shouldered through the press of people and joined Ursule and Von der Schultz. Her face changed and lighted the moment her eyes met his. and Von der Schultz went ahead with his swaggering, domineering walk, drawing the attention of the tables he passed ; even in the crowded room amid all the noise of music and voices, standing as a defi- nite personality. Marcus, who was just behind his host, saw him suddenly at the end of a long perspective, and looked in his imagination upon a Von der Schultz, flushed with victory, pushing his way through the palm room at the Savoy, and the thought caught his heart as some thoughts will and the eyes of Marcus Janover j hardened into steel. " You are a little sad," Ursule murmured to Marcus! as Von der Schultz ordered champagne with a fero-| cious heartiness. Marcus turned towards her. " It is a great mistake to go deep," he said musingly. " All the pretty things are on the surface. Underneath lie the tragedies. I caught sight of one just then and dived into a nasty sticky liquid. Laugh, Ursule, for such places as the Cafe Bauer are your heaven upoaj 232 The Light above the Cross Roads earth — is it not so? You are part of this recurring dream and you belong to the midnight, just as there are women who belong to the dawn." " One moment, Mark," said Von der Schultz. " I must speak to Ingolstadt.'' When Marcus looked again at Ursule she was dab- bing her eyes with a pocket handkerchief. " Why do you make me feel unhappy and small? " she said mutinously. ** Others have cared very much and I — I have taken and not given." "Then you aren't even an honest huckster; poor Ursule." *' You are cruel," she replied, a passionate note in her voice. " I wish I could be cruel to you, Mark Janover. But I cannot be that. I suffer because of you." She touched his arm with her hand. " I am puzzled. You must k-now that the crash is coming in a few weeks, and why is it that you are here? " Marcus met her glance unflinchingly. " I am heart and soul with the Fatherland," he said in his sensitive, vibrating voice. " My future travels the path that leads to the great Day, and so you will find me here when the hour strikes." Ursule's eyes never left his face. " You hide your heart well," she said, nodding her plumed hat. Marcus smiled. " Perhaps I have no heart in the sense you understand it. Where have you been all these (lavs — at least give me credit for having missed you?" " I don't lie to you," she said, looking down and tapping her jewelled fingers on the table. " I have been in Alsace. I am Alsacienne, and I wanted to 233 The Light above the Cross Roads know for certain how they feel down there in my country." "Yes?" "It is not going to be easy. Some look one way and some another, and there are many who only want to be safe." " I could have told you all that without leaving Berlin." " Around Strassburg and Carlsruhe the people are under the shadow of the fortresses, and they know Germany's might. But there are many who, knowing, hate the yoke and would gladly be free." "Ah!" Marcus spoke thoughtfully; "but freedom, Ursule, is not here — it is far from the world you and I know. We shall find it, perhaps, when we leave here and when death rings the bell " Ursule shrank back. " Do not talk of death. It gives me bad dreams." " Surely not ? Just a little bridge to cross and then something quite new. I don't like your Cafe Bauer world at all, where it is always midnight — and the women smell of scent. I want a different place, Ur- sule, I find this Mitternacht weary at times. Here is iVon der Schultz coming. Tell me, do you love him ? " " No, and no, and no " — Ursule shook her head — " and I used not to care. But you, Marcus Janover, you have come and made all so hard to endure. I wish I had never seen you, I wish that I could hate you." Von der Schultz sat down and looked jovially at Ursule. "So! I am back," he said, drinking to her. " Yon look handsome tonight, my wilde Bar. Ingolstadt 234 The Light above the Cross Roads admired you from his table, though he says your bones are not covered thick enough for his taste, but I said I was content, so smile at your Mops, my Schooshun- din, and be gay, for ' I vant to be amused,' as the English say." Ursule responded with a laugh, " It is tlie fault of Mark that I am dull. He talked to me of death, Hans, and he is so serious tonight." Von der Schultz leaned forward and, taking Marcus by the shoulder, talked earnestly into his ear. " You must have been wrong a1)out Ireland, Mark. Ingolstadt says that they have absolute confirmation of the date fixed for an outbreak of hostilities." " 1 stick to what I said." " Ingolstadt has the date, man. It coincides with our own affair exactly, and the British Expeditionary Force will have no officers for one thing, as they will all be commanding the little Grangers in Ireland, and the transports will be held up by both parties — gros- sartig! " '* And our own affair? " " Still the same question, by which gate we enter France, and still the old women who say that England will not fight, that she must be pleasant, and with war in the country I don't think that England will have a hand left to strike." Marcus looked around the brightly lighted room; the band was crashing out a popular retrain, and conversation was inaudible at the other tables. " Don't accuse me of dishonesty when you find that you are wrong." he said. " Naturally, Hans, I am not infallible, and you have your paid men who prophesy smooth things to you. But I know the 235 The Light above the Cross Roads heart of Ireland, and I know that though North and South are shaking their fists under each other's noses, directly there is a fight among the big dogs of Europe, they'll be into it, their teeth in the Dachshund's legs." ** You and your Ireland ! " Von der Schultz smacked his shoulder. " Oh, Mark, you are incor- rigible. England hates your country, she despises you utterly." " I know she does," Marcus shrugged his shoul- ders. " But yet when there is a charge you'll find an Irish regiment chosen to lead it. We're worth a great deal to our respectable step-sister, who has all the money, once it comes to a fight, because we live and die fighting, friend Hans, and that is the weak point in your Irish argument. You can't buy her. It's been tried. They bought one class in the old days of the Union, but never the countr\\ I know you haven't spared money, but it's a bad debt, and you'll not get any return. We're not a business people — it's not in us, and we're most of us accustomed to owing long bills. Your bill against Ireland won't be paid in this century." " You are wrong." Von der Schultz drank luxuri- ously from his glass. " All the same, I have made a strong point of what you say. and I advise that no great dependence should be laid upon Civil W^ar." Marcus laughed. ** I thank you for that cheer," he said, looking at Ursule, who sat with her eyes on his. " There's no use muttering, Hans. Ursule can lip read if she's a finished artist at her game, and she can tell exactly what you've said. I had the sense to put my head down and raise my hand." 236 The Light above the Cross Roads "Ursula won't talk." Von der Schultz drew his chin inwards benevolently. " She adores me and she is heart and soul with the Fatherland." iNIarcus made a sudden movement of his slender hands. " Ursule," he asked, smiling at her, " where is your heart?" She turned her painted face away. " It is not far off," she said, flicking her lids. " And where is your treasure? " "Why do you tease me?" She spoke petulantly. " Only because 1 want to know. Here is Hans tired of talking IVeltpolitik to me and all the time he is looking at you. C'ome and sit here." He got up. " It's time that I went to my Mittelstrasse, mcine Gnddige. Hans, I shall soon see you again, and you will have something fine to tell when I ask you, Geht's losf " Ursule caught his arm. " Do not go," she said. " I want you to stay and so does Hans." " Stay, Mark," Von der Schultz chuckled cheer- fully. " I am not jealous if Ursule finds three com- pany." Marcus stood with lis hands on the back of a chair, " Engldnder," said a woman's voice behind him, and her voice was full of hate. He turned slov.-ly, and lifting a glass from the table drank as he bowed to her. " He's no Englishman," said Von der Schultz in his loud voice. " He is my friend. You mistake, Erna." " 1 am honoured." ]Marcus held the woman with his mocking eyes. " Are not the English the best 237 The Light above the Cross Roads dressed men in Europe? I fear, Gnadige, it is my tailor who receives your compliment." A burst of laughter greeted his reply, and Von der Schultz clapped his hands loudly together. " Do not look at her." Ursule rose and caught the lapel of his coat. " She is trying to make you see that she too is here tonight." " Ursule," Von der Schultz spoke roughly, " permit Herr Janover to take his leave, and be seated." Marcus unclasped the small hands that clutched him. " She is only protecting me, Hans. ' Erna ' ap- pears to think me an undesirable alien." He spoke with a carelessness that was almost insolence and pushed Ursule into her chair. " Between all these women of yours your friends are in danger. It arises no doubt from the fact that you know how to manage them, and I am a child in such matters." Von der Schultz patted Ursule's hand. " There is a good mouse," he said fatuously. " Later on I will kiss you, kleine Sail." He waved his hand to Janover, and when Marcus looked back from the door he saw that Von der Schultz was holding both her hands. " A fool there was, and he made his prayer," quoted Marcus to himself. Ingolstadt was also leaving, and stood pulling on his coat, his gold-laced cap set at a rakish angle on his head. " Hans Breitmann is a clever soldier and a fine specimen of the true Prussian," he said, fastening his belt, " but where women are concerned — mein Gott, Marcus Janover, if you are taking charge of the pet- 238 ,The Light above the Cross Roads ticoats that he buys, and keeping them in order for him, you'll be a busy man. Further, I warn you, Ursule from Paris looks at you too much. I have said this before. Geben Sie acht, my friend — only, presently, there will be other things than Locken and Pomade to think about, and Hans is a picked man. He goes as Commandant, and he will certainly not take Ursule with him." " There would hardly be room enough inside the Liege fortress for her bandboxes ? " Marcus offered Ingolstadt a cigarette, and met his rapid glance inno- cently, " So Von der Schultz has discovered that secret? " " I don't know," said Marcus. " I may only have guessed it. I am a bad person to tell things to, as my memory is not what I could wish' it to be. . . . They found that out at the Embassy." 239 CHAPTER XXI IN response to the invitation sent to him by Hardress Sheridan, Eitel von Verlhof replied with much formality that he expected to be over in England in the month of July, 1914, and that nothing would make him more happy than to come for a brief visit to Ardshane, Hardress assumed the air of a man who has done something of solid value for his family and depend- ents, and took up three young horses with a view to getting them fit for sale. Ireland was buzzing with rumours of war, and Hardress foretold events in the near future, beside which the traditions of Vinegar Hill paled into in- significance. The melancholy which often descends upon the later life of men who live as Hardress had lived was gathering around him, and it seemed to Hesper that the very wind that blew over the hills and forced entrance into the winding passages was full of foreboding. Life had become a series of amendments and readjustments of the first glories of hope, and she saw herself altered and amended with all else. Silence lay between her and Marcus Janover; and the chilling thought of distance made the outlook grey, as if Death had intervened and cast all the best of life behind her. The ring of purple hills held all her life, and all her restless aspirations yearning eternally outwards were closed in upon by the narrow limitations of her 240 The Light above the Cross Roads days. Since Marcus left no one had come from out- side, and the great events rapidly preparing for the stage hardly touched her. Night by night she listened to Hardress talking of the preparations for civil war while he did nothing to prepare his own house, and always she answered out of her own deep conviction : " It won't come, Dad. Something else will hap- pen." Ulster had drilled and marched for more than a year, and in the South drilling was in full swing in early summer towards August. Marching Volunteers were the Sunday entertainment, but no spirit of ran- cour was yet abroad. Hesper watched them out of her dream as she might have watched a fantastic gathering of strolling play- ers, but to her there was no sense of nearness to the vSpringing up of great events. Volcanic forces were at work deeper than in the hearts that gathered to form up after Mass on Sundays, in the square below the chestnut avenue that led to the Chapel, but so far the eruption was remote. Stories of rifles smuggled into the village and of gun-running along the coast sounded in her ears like fairy tales. Now Eitel was coming back out of the busy world of towns and men beyond the purple hills, and she wondered what he would think of the Volunteer Army when he saw it out along the road. Her heart stirred a little at the thought of seeing Eitel, for Hesper knew that he loved her, and the woman in her made her tender towards him. It was something to see him back again, and to be able to speak of Marcus to the man who was his friend. 241 The Light above the Cross Roads The days were steadily fine and blue, and the coun- try looked gay with the glory of full summer. It was weather to sit out under the deep shadows of the trees, and Hesper felt more alive than she had since Marcus left her. She knew instinctively that Eitel was not satisfied in mind about Marcus, for his eyes avoided hers when he spoke of him. He told her that he had not seen him since he was on his way to Ireland, and he told her with some hesitation that he did hear of him from time to time. Ingolstadt, who knew Marcus, had been to Mctz just before Eitel came over to buy horses, and Ingolstadt had reported that Janover was in Berlin. Eitel did not feel obliged to tell Hesper what it was that Ingolstadt had said — even at the memory of his friend's coarse witticism he flushed and felt guilty. "What is he doing. Fraulein? Well, you see" — Eitel looked up at the blue sky through the thick green beech leaves overhead — " I have not been in Berlin, and Marcus never writes. He has some work there that we know very little about. I think he must have told you that he is naturalized? " Hesper's heart beat agonizingly fast, and she shook her head silently. " Do not look like that " Eitel bent nearer to her. " Remember he is really almost as much a Deiitscher as I am. I think he must have given the subject careful thought. Oh, Fraulein Hesper, do not look so sad." " But " she faltered. " It seems a little sur- prising. Of course. I know that, as you say, Marcus has been a great deal in your country." 242 The Light above the Cross Roads " All over the Colonies there are Germans who are naturalized English subjects." Eitel spoke reassur- ingly. " And if your life is to be in a country it is often better to be a naturalized subject." Hesper smiled at his anxious face. " Eitel," she said suddenly, " at times I almost love you. If you weren't quite you, and Marcus wasn't quite Marcus, I believe I should end by loving you — but then, dear friend, that is how it is. I am tied altogether to Mark and I am quite human enough to wish I were not, on the bad days." Eitel raised her hand to his lips. " I never urge you, Fraulein, I too love Marcus. The way is different that one loves a woman, but, as a man, I do not exaggerate when I tell you that I would do anything a man might do, for Mark. We both love you, mein Gnddige, and I must be content with my place in your life, and if ever I can help you it is your gift to me to permit me to help." His kind eyes smiled at her. " I dream my fool's dreams sometimes in the great fortress town where I am in garrison, and I think of you always. Some dreams are sad to wake from and some are idle, but most of all I desire your happiness, and I see a future where you have your heart's hope and yet keep a little place of friendship for the German friend," Hesper let her hands lie in his. " Hopeful or hopeless, it's one and the same for me. Marcus went and took my heart with him." Eitel thought again of Ingolstadt and what he had said of Ursule, and he would have given worlds never to have heard what he had heard. ■243 The Light above the Cross Roads " I think," he said thoughtfully, " that when one loves and does not always understand, the only way is just to wait for the explanation." " We both believe in him," *' Assuredly, Fraulein." " And we both love him, Eitel." " That is also certain." " And yet " — her odd changing eyes met his, sud- denly bright with laughter — " he does give us a bad time, and I am afraid of you, because you are like Fate, your feet are so big, Eitel, and so are your hands, and I have always been afraid that you will drag me into some volcano. Yes, you. you quiet, sensible, admirable man. What is it, Eitel? Why do I dream bad dreams about you ? " " My hands are large " — he measured Hesper's with his own — " yet that doesn't make them cruel, Fraulein, they are very willing to help you. What is it that you dream ? " " Stupid things. One goes back over the past, and when one comes to a finger-post one thinks. * Ah, if only I had taken the other road.' When I think of the last time when Marcus was here and the high w'inds were tearing through the country and all was cold and grey and sunless, I sometimes wonder if I shall ever see him again. Sometimes I seem to be living in a kind of trance, and all this talk about war between North and South goes on, and I am deaf to it. I look back at the days when it was easy to see Marcus, and think of hours when we might have been together and were not, and days when I have been disagreeable and days when I didn't live in the time that was with me — all this comes back to me now, Eitel, and the me 244 The Light above the Cross Roads that you see and talk to isn't me, it's only a kind of mockery of the old me. When there is no future one goes back and back, and the past is all I have now." Eitel clasped her hands more closely. " I wonder," he said gently, "if it would be dis- loyal in me to say that sometimes it seems almost as though, if this happiness has really flown, it would be best to try to say that it has gone. Could the joy come back, Fraulein? Not the same joy and never the old sweetness of life, but in its stead another love that is very patient and humble and demands very little?" Tears stood in Hesper's eyes as she looked at him. " That is just what I have asked myself, because, as I say, Eitel, I am human and I want to be happy in the ordinary way, with things that are cheerful to do, and a house that isn't a barrack and hasn't got brass banisters, and children who could be there to live for, and something actually in all my days ; but it's not to be. My destiny has arranged that I am to be my own ghost and haunt myself, and that like Lot's wife I am to look back and turn into salt, and that no one can reach me in the miles-away place where I am standing except IMarcus, and Marcus may never re- turn." " He vv'ill come back." Eitel dropped her hands. " He too is human, and his love will bring him along the road he knows so well " He looked down the blazing herbaceous border. " Some day it will be a good world again." At dinner in the vast dining-room, where the table lay like a small island of light, Hardress talked stead- 245 The Light above the Cross Roads ily of Irish politics: of good times that were only a memory, of bad times that grew worse, and he re- iterated frequently that his life was in danger. By this time Eitel was accustomed to the statement, and his mind wandered from Hardress and his endless story of wrath and turned to Hesper, when a tearing ring at the front door bell resounded even to the little circle of light in the panelled room. " What's that? " Hardress held up his hand. " I'd not be surprised " The servant entered, carrying a salver, and handed a telegram to Eitel von Verlhof. " The Fraulein will permit me to read it? " Hesper smiled. " I'm full of curiosity over tele- grams, even other people's." She watched his face as he opened the envelope, and she saw an unaccount- able wave of emotion sweep it as he read. She saw and realized that some sudden crashing shock had descended upon Eitel, and she met his dismayed eyes as he pushed his chair back without a word. " Fraulein," he said, and his voice broke as he spoke, " I must leave tonight." "What's that? What's that?" said Hardress, aware that something very sudden had come upon the little party of three. " No one dead, I hope? " Eitel stood behind his chair, his hands resting on the carved back, and like a man in a dream he looked about him with a helpless longing look. " I am recalled to my regiment at Metz. We are under orders." " W^ar? " Hesper's voice rang out on the word. " But not yet, ach Gott — not yet war with Eng- land." 2.^6 The Light above the Cross Roads " War? " Hardress echoed the word. " But we're ready for it, the North is armed and trained " " Dad." Hesper came round to him and put her arms round his neck. " This is the Great War. We are not talking of Ireland, we are talking of Europe — Russia, France, and us." With her hand on his shoul- der she looked across to Eitel : " And you, Herr von Vorlhof, you go out with your men " He held his hand out towards her. " I have no choice, and, Friiulein, can you give rae one good wish to take with me? " " I do wish you well." " I bid you good-bye, sir." Eitel bowed stiffly to Hardress. " And I thank you, Friiulein Hesper." Hardress got up from his chair. " War in Europe ! " he said, " and you going to fight? Upon my soul. Von Verlhof, it's the queerest thing Eve heard for years." He looked half dazed. " But it can't mean England also." " It will mean England." Hesper's voice was charged with defiant vitality. " Yes, and Ireland as well." Eitel turned at the door. " Friiulein, our peace is not yet broken." " It is war." " But, at the end, will not the old friend still re- member all that was, and forget what came between? " Hesper stood with her head lifted and her eyes on his. " There are some things," she said slowly, " that may not ever be forgotten." 247 CHAPTER XXII THE swift climax of war had descended upon Eu- rope, and between sunrise and night all the old careless happy days were swept into the past. Strange gigantic shadows of coming events darkened the whole world, and the age of blood and iron dawned dreadfully. In Berlin demented crowds sang and cheered, and shouted, " Down with Russia." " Down with France,"' and, above all, " Down with England." The horror and unreason of numbers of innocent men going forth to destroy other men equally innocent did not perturb the shouting crowds, and all the ghastly show of battle was covered over with flowers and bunting. Every one cheered with the crowd, for the sons of the Fatherland had been trained for war, and at last the hour had struck. It was with some difficulty that Marcus Janover arranged to meet Lord Shaw ford's secretary. All day Marcus was in the office in the Konigergratzerstrasse; in the tension of the critical hour he felt that he him- self might be watched and suspected, and all day long the bands went by, and the marching armies passed out through the frenzied crowds. Towards evening he discovered from one of the Secret Serv- ice men that Felsted and a few of the junior staff were not leaving until midnight to return to their " accursed country." " So that the crowd do not tear them to pieces before they get out of Berlin," he added savagely. 248 The Light above the Cross Roads " Are you recalled to your regiment? " Marcus struck the window-sash with a clenched fist, and spoke hotly. " Mein Gott! if only I were." " 1 have to go to that vcrdammt Turkey, and on into Eg\'pt," said the agent; "the English are to be kicked into the sea." " You're certain that the last train leaves at mid- night!^" " Certain. I saw the official order." " I also have orders " — Marcus dusted his coat carefully — "and I'm, nominally, friendly with Fel- sted." " Papers again ? " the young German remarked comprehensively. "They've been very careful to let none of our people in, not even the best accredited. It's amazing all they get to know at the British Em- bassy, and of late they have had reliable informa- tion." A message from the inner room recalled the Secret Service agent whose bourne was Constantinople, and he went away silently. An hour before the midnight train was due to start, Marcus was at the accustomed place under the trees. There were neither lovers nor loafers to encounter in the Alloc, all Berlin was in the streets and squares, and the wildest enthusiasm raged and roared every- where. Bands of students, eager to wreck all the suspected houses, and mad to break the windows of the British Embassy, paraded with banners flying, and the crowd held up the traffic by sheer dense weight of numbers. When Marcus had waited for more than ten min- 249 I The Light above the Cross Roads utes he began to doubt if it could be possible for Felsted to get away, and the distant roar of cheering made him long to hurry onwards and join in with the mob. Disintegration was in progress, and he felt as if he must see what was afoot. Just as he had decided that the secretary could not be coming he heard quick footsteps approaching, and Felsted hurried up. " My God! Listen to the row," he said. " I don't know yet how I got here." " They're all drunk," said Marcus. " Kaspar Sachs was drunk as a lord this morning, not with wine or even lager, but with war. He kissed me on both cheeks, dirty little swine, and I beat him on the shoul- ders till his spectacles fell oiT. Here are a few notes which you will understand." " It is simply miraculous what you have done," replied Felsted. putting the paper away. " Your vigi- lance is eternal, and I believe you see everything." " By the way, the postscript at the end refers to a most personable young spy from the Admiralty, ju5t returned to London. He got his report through." " ni remember him," said Felsted grimly. " He'll get what he needs safely enough." " Bates the Crammer is holding to all his lambs. Most of them will be of military age in another year, and Bates gets so much a head for his haul. He's full of 'Varsity lads who think him the best of good fel- lows, and they'll have lots of time to learn German, kicking their heels in an internment camp at Ruhle- ben." " Sweep ! " said Felsted through his teeth. " And he's an Englishman." 250 The Light above the Cross Roads " He's only one of many," Marcus dug his sticK into the neat border of the path. " The Club of Inter- national Wastrels to which I have the honour to be- long " " For God's sake, Marcus, don't include yourself." " Don't worry, that will be all right," said Marcus with restrained fierceness. " It's war, George, and the fortunes of war are finely varied." " You'll get all you can through to the authorities." " Yes, I've fixed that up securely. I am to be kept at the Zeughaus, so Berlin is to be my headquarters for some time yet." A moment later Felsted's footsteps echoed along the deserted Alice, and Marcus waited alone. A spasm of sudden grief caught his heart as he realized that he was entirely alone in the moment when the vital onward striving forces were carrying a cheering world with them to great battlefields, and to the chances of distinction and death in company with good com- rades. In the tree-shadowed darkness of the Allee, Marcus stood face to face with his own share, and his own part in the infinite drama. He, not less, and possibly far more than the others, was dowered with a longing for the glad going out, and the pride of race and the manifold joys that are with the soldier as an imperious necessity. His chance of joining the marching men was irrevocably lost, and impotent anger was mere waste of time ; he stood among the deadliest enemies of his own country in secret isolation, whilst the passion of hatred against England raged around him, England the mother of treachery and violence, who blocked the way to the fulfilment of the dreams of Germany. This was the supreme test, and would be 251 The Light above the Cross Roads the supreme test for Hesper as for him. He knew that whispers would soon be carried across the silence, and that people would wonder where Marcus Janover was, and presently it would be known that Marcus Janover was in Berlin. What would Hesper say when she heard? The name of "traitor" has an ugly sound, and Marcus knew that he would not be spared the constant repetition of that word. Far away the cheering broke out louder than be- fore, and it was evident that one of the Princes was passing by the Brandenburger Tor. A realization of the malignancy of the forces against him welled up in his mind, and he battled against its blinding dark- ness. Clear self-possession was indispensable to him at this juncture, and the dreamland where Hesper lived must not be visited at such a time. He was now one of the great Teutonic household ; the precise na- ture and scope of his work was clearly defined. The events contracting closely were of the weft of his own loom, and the actors, drawn on towards the wide battlefields, the awful slaughter-house of Europe, must be his one thought and his only .study. There ap- peared no cohesion about the yelling mob. mad with its joyful frenzy, and yet Marcus realized that behind it all there worked a steady mathematical brain. The doors of the trap had shut during the last few hours, and all those of his own blood, left behind, must re- main caught and caged to the last hour of their melan- choly imprisonment. All the delirious night he followed with the crowd, and flung himself into the seething heart of its great 252 The Light above the Cross Roads mystery, its devils' gaiety, and wild exuberant tri- umph. Madness was in the air, and its madness laid hold upon Marcus ; latent ferocity broke upwards through the smooth surface at the first gusty word of universal war, and Berlin flung off all rags of de- cency, and ran shouting and incoherent in its naked materialism. Towards dawn Marcus drifted into the Kaiser Keller, and climbed up into one of the windows, where he was joined by Kaspar Sachs. Below them the crowd sang and shouted with untiring zest, and the electric current of great events in the close future could be felt throbbing through the thick air of the restaurant. " Ach, but I am happy." Sachs put his arm round Janover's neck, " What a sight, Lieber Hcrr Gott! what a sight ! And the marching men ! There is no music like the sound of a marching army." " Yet better still the sound of the guns," said Mar- cus. " Fat Bertha and her sisters. This " — he in- dicated the room — " this is moonshine, Kaspar. War is entirely distant from these women and men, they are stage players, and you and I watch the play. War has not made the gutters red, and left dead men on the steps and in the alleys of Berlin. War has not made Frau Schmidt and her daughters wear black, nor do any of those people understand why they are yelling. But you and I, we know that the joy of war is away in the distance, in the rush and the encounter under an open sky. You in your stink shop and I in my Bureau will not see it, nor have the great satisfaction of letting the soul out of our 253 The Light above the Cross Roads enemy at close quarters." He put his fingers round Kaspar's throat. " Mein Gott, Kaspar, I could prac- tise on your fat neck." " Habe Geduld! " gasped Kaspar. "You are so impulsive, Janover." " I feel the might of my vision," said Marcus. *' I am in a lover's mood of lavish exultation tonight, and the barbarian who lives close to my best civiliza- tion would allow me to choke you, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, friend Kaspar." " Enough, enough." Kaspar smoothed his ruffled hair. " You are a wild dog, Mark." " And yet " — Marcus looked down at the throng — " there are plenty of my fellows among our gathering tonight. Nietzsche would call them * swine and en- thusiasts.' Look at them waving their handkerchiefs, and all because Kurt Ingolstadt and his friends have come in, three parts drunk, to make up the rest." Ingolstadt glanced upwards and, recognizing Mar- cus, shouted to him to come down. " Himmel! Janover, come and drink with the Heroes." " Go, go," said Sachs, rocking with emotion. " It is indeed wonderful. Down with the English." Marcus slid off the window-ledge and crossed the crowded room with difficulty. " Von der Schultz and his Reiterei are well on the road," said Ingolstadt, clasping his hand with vigor- ous friendship. " Soon Flanders will blaze by night, and I join the Armeekorps in Brussels, in time to bring reinforcements for the advance on Paris." " I wish I was going too." Marcus sat down among the Heroes as he spoke; they were flushed and elated. 254 The Light above the Cross Roads " It's a bad thing to be Cinderella at a ball of the Kaiser's making." " But Von der Schultz can get you out. Once Liege falls, he will be able to do anything." Marcus considered carefully. " I believe I should be more useful out of Berlin," he said slowly. " I am full of curiosity, Kurt, and I want to get into Paris with the first line men. Mind, I'm not complaining, I'm making the best of existing conditions." " Your friend Eitel von Verlhof was in Ireland when he got his recall." "In Ireland?" Janover's eyes lifted in quick in- terrogation. " He was only buying horses. Eitel is not a diplomatist, but I heard he was with your people. In a week's time Ireland will be at war. You know that the English troops fired on the Dublin crowd?" Marcus nodded. " I have heard it all, but I warn you not to build on Irish talk nor on what you read in the papers." " We build on the ruins of the British Empire," said Ingolstadt, " and if Ireland is wise she comes in with us." "But when was Ireland wise?" asked Marcus. " Tell me any occasion that occurs to you, and I'll admit I know nothing about my country." " Hoch, Hoch!" shouted a young lieutenant on his right. " Deutschland iiber Alles." " Ingolstadt for a speech." Janover rapped the table with his glass. " Let there be nothing missing, Kurt. Give them it hot and strong. Let every damned thing go in. Blood and slaughter for the 255 The Light above the Cross Roads crowd to roar at." His eyes danced with excitement. " The moment is with you, blaze out at them for the sake of wild redemption, and tell them it's roses all the way to London for the finest army in the world." Janover was wearied to death when he reached the Mittelstrasse after daybreak; excitement had eaten Berlin like the locust, and a jaded humour was abroad. Even Kaspar Sachs had lost a little of his elation, and brooded on the thought that his nephew might be already among those killed in Belgium. He spoke of it in the evening when he joined Marcus after his day's work. " But, hang it all, Kaspar, some one or two will have to die in this war." " Yes, but it is better in the abstract," said Sachs, lighting his meerschaum. " I have always felt a dis- like of the prospect when it becomes personal." " And yet think of your own inventions," sug- gested Marcus. *' Brighten up, Kaspar. Last night you were a blood drinker like the rest." " My nephew is like a son to me," said Sachs sorrowfully, " and if the English kill him " " You can think of some other way of making their ends peculiarly nasty," said Marcus cheerfully. " Can't you do anything with plague germs? Come, Kaspar, this is unworthy of you and of the Father- land." Sachs wrung his hand fervently. " You are right, Janover, you have made me brave. It is the price of conquest." "Just so," said Marcus drily. "And conquest re- quires a butcher's bill that shakes one a bit to con- 256 The Light above the Cross Roads sider." He patted Sachs on the shoulder and his eyes grew full of sleepy malice. " It's going to be a new earth after the Kaiser has done with it, Sachs. A world full of widows and orphans, and the lame and the halt and the blind ; the demented, the violated, and the distracted; but what matter? And the lists will come in with the names of our friends in every page. And little houses will be just a few broken smouldering beams, and gardens will be laid waste, and cornfields shell-ploughed and bare, and the chil- dren — Kaspar Sachs, do you hear them crying yet? They will cry. But what matter?" His voice sounded suddenly defiant. " The weak things must go, but the sword will pierce other hearts than those of the enemy. It is well to know, when the reckon- ing is to be made, so that we do not shrink from our national destiny. What are a few tears and a few corpses? Out and up with the adventurer in you, Kaspar." Kaspar Sachs mopped his face with his handker- chief. " It will not be our homes or our women and children," he said, recovering himself. " But do not mention it, Janover. Your voice makes a cold sweat cover me." " You have a gentle soul," said Janover, with a twist of his mouth. " And gentle souls are always sympathetic." " The Belgian women are she-devils." Sachs spoke with solemn conviction. " It will be a good deed to exterminate that race; and as for the English " " Exactly, I quite agree. There was an English- man, I believe, called Darwin, who had a theory of the survival of the fittest, and the destruction of the 257 The Light above the Cross Roads less well-fitted individuals. Think of a great Teu- tonic Europe — everything in it made in Germany — think of that, and what is your nephew ? " " He is still as a son," Kaspar replied unwillingly. " And though all is as you say, my good friend, I am not easy in my mind." " You sicken me, Kaspar." Marcus got up impa- tiently. " You and your whimsies. This is a time for great earthquakes and wild commotion. Are you ready to bear your burden, and watch through the long night? Are you steadfast in the face of woe, for woes there will be? If you are, call yourself a patriot, but not otherwise." " I am again a man," said Sachs. " But, indeed, Mark Janover, who would ever have dreamed that you could speak as you have spoken? You are in- deed a Deutscher, and I thought you only a fool." Marcus broke into a laugh. " So I am and so are you. We're all of us that. I've had a fit of some kind, I think — war fever probably. I am indeed a fool, because I see, some- how, even yet, a sane democracy that will rise out of the tears and the agony and the ashes " He took down his hat from a peg behind the door. " A fool indeed, Kaspar, you never spoke a truer word." 258 CHAPTER XXIII THE tempestuous west wind beat unceasingly against the walls of Ardshane all through the long winter and on into the cold days of a slow, re- luctant spring ; it crashed in the towering fir trees with the noise of a heavy sea, and its wildness drove the gulls far inland, white winged against the grey sky. The brooding sorrow of the world was in its wail, and many listened to it at night with strange appre- hension; for changes came quickly, and even the tele- graph boy ploughing along the muddy roads on his red-wheeled bicycle was no longer a boy, but a visitant of dread significance. Day after day the epic story of the months un- folded its great record, and day after day the shadows deepened around hundreds of altered lives. Ireland, ever under the spell of tragic suggestion, was changed beyond recognition. The hunting men, the stable lads, and the boys from the villages had gone; the horses had gone with their masters, noth- ing was left of the old order, and everywhere there were gaps that could never again be filled. Life had changed fundamentally; Destiny, giving adventurous excitement to those who went, and lift- ing their hearts with a bugle call and the sound of drums and fifes, dealt less generously with those who could not go, bidding them endure in passive silence, or break their hearts with decent pretence at resigna- 259 The Light above the Cross Roads tion, when the news came that there was no more need to lie awake at night and think and wonder and play. For the many, the world was a place of lonely exile, and the raw material of tragedy was piled high through the winter. Always the stream of marching men filed on and on, going from the known things to things unknown and beyond all dreams. With the dirge-like crashing of the wind there mingled the per- sistent sound of marching feet tramping the frozen roads before the dawn was clear. No one who has memory to recall the Avinter of 1914 and 191 5 will forget the level steady tramp of troops and the mys- terious sense of illusion which that sound carried with it. Out of the dark it came, distant at first, then near, and again dying into silence. Sometimes the invisible army whistled and laughed, but no sound could cover the undernote. the regular rhythmic beat that rang out, " War, War. War." Hesper, thrust with all the rest into the realization that the agony of a generation was being forced into a few months of life, felt herself set in the centre of a land of incredible things. She hoped against hope that Marcus would write to her, and she longed sometimes with a blaze of her imperious temper, and sometimes with heart-broken despair, for any sign or token coming to break the stillness that surrounded her like an endless sea of ice. Outside and within, her world was full of leagues of mist and driving storm, and the restlessness of the stir that called the men to play their part in the struggle passed her by as she strained her eyes watching a road that stretched empty and bare to the very ends of the earth. 260 The Light above the Cross Roads It was impossible for Hesper to sit still, listening to the wind and watching the dead leaves of last au- tumn whirling over the sodden tussocky grass of the neglected lawns beyond the windows. It was impos- sible to read and stay her heart upon books, for they were now remote and unfriendly, dead things in the new world, incapable of ministering consolation. The long room was a place where one waited for something to happen, and nothing happened, and the meagre hours crawled by, dragging the weary day to its close. Of all useless things, the most useless was to listen for the postman's whistle in the dark. Again and again Hesper flung her thoughts into the silence and cried to Marcus to tell her where he was and what power held him silent, knowing that his silence lay like lead upon her heart. She believed that he must have answered the universal call with immediate response, and she marvelled that his love for Ireland had not drawn him back to join his fortunes with those of the South Irish Horse. To think of Marcus as anything but a fighting man once the chance was with him was incredible, and she pictured his return, as women will, painting it in with glad colours. He was only waiting until some point was gained, and then he would come back with victory in the air and all the flags flying. Against these thoughts there were others that she could not always drive away, and the agony of fear that he might be dead flooded her heart and called up vivid terrors for him. So long as he walked the common earth he made all things good for her, but if he was lying in a trench in Flanders, or out on the marshy flats, then nothing 261 The Light above the Cross Roads that remained for life to offer could ever make it "whole for Hesper Sheridan, So long as he lived she believed faithfully that he would hold her hands and look into her eyes again, but death altered all these things and set the horizon very far, to where the mirage of hope stood nebulously distant, promising intangible gifts and pointing away to the dim Ultima Thule, where life ended. When January came, Hesper took out the young horses in turn and hunted with the ever-waning hand- ful of those who still remained behind. But the old cheerful, happy atmosphere was lacking, and the hunt- ing season was a travesty of other times. No one talked of the sport and the chances of sport, and un- reality reigned by the covert side as elsewhere, for the Hunt mourned for its best, and last year's records of daring and pluck were outbidden and forgotten against the fresh record flung behind in pnrting by those who would never ride over the country- again. Whatever Hesper felt and suffered inwardly, out- wardly she carried herself gallantly and well. It was no part of her philosophy to bind her burdens on the backs of others, and she clung to her sense of humour, forcing herself to see that the just pro- portion of all things resolves itself into a necessity to grasp the fact that life is in no way bettered by sitting down and casting ashes on the head. Her sane, strong youthfulness helped her, and she grew unconsciously in the school of pain, fighting down her weariness and despair. There was only one way to think of war. and that was to look towards the great heroic standard set by quite ordinary men, and 262 The Light above the Cross Roads in the light that fell from those deeds to learn to reflect even a little of its glory in the everyday of her own life. So Hesper lifted up her heart; for Sursum cor da is the greatest commandment of all. Hardress Sheridan viewed the altered conditions of life with mingled puzzle and distress of mind. He had desired peace for his last years, and Providence had acted with great lack of consideration when it hustled a world war upon him, combined with a steadily rising income tax. He went out less and less, and sat by the fire in the hall talking perpetually of the economic aspects of the war, and correcting the strategy of the Generals in command. The inci- dent at Sarajevo filled him with a sense of aggrava- tion, and he recurred to it perpetually ; assassination made the text of countless sermons which he preached from his chair, and he was convinced that the entire Radical representation in the Cabinet had been bought by Germany. Everywhere he detected indications of Teutonic acquisitiveness, and his belief in the fore- sight and wisdom of the Central Powers was immense. He also believed, in the light of events, that Von Verlhof had probably bought most of the village and a greater number of the tenants before he returned to his regiment ; and had marked sites for heavy guns imder his host's unsuspecting nose. He had proph- esied evil for years, and had told every one that the country was going to the dogs, and at last, as he began to believe that his prognostications were true, he was filled with bitter pessimism and heavy depres- sion of mind. Against his mood Hesper could do nothing, try as she might, and Hardress added to the weight of the days by lamenting the son never born 263 The Light above the Cross Roads to him, who might have gone and done battle and come home covered with glory and fame. He frequently asked where Marcus was and why he hadn't come to join the army. It was as though he placed some faith in his nephew^ and looked anx- iously for his return so that the house might also send its representative for the honour of the old hap- less traditions that hung about it yet. One evening, when the sun was setting over the water-locked country, turning heaven and earth into a great glory of orange light, Hesper came back after a day on a troublesome young thoroughbred. She had had a stand-up battle with the mare and had conquered, and her face was flushed by the heady wind and the exercise. She looked more like her- self than she had done for some months, and her belief that things could not always be dreadful rose up and told her to hope. Life must have its glad moments in any long-drawn sorrow, or human nature could not continue to endure it. One of those in- explicable waves of gladness had come to Hesper, and she ran up the steps talking and playing with the dogs, who greeted her joyously. The hall was veny' dark in contrast to the splendour outside, and the red fire made a bay of warm colour in the twilight within doors. Hardress was sitting in his chair talking to Dr. Larry, who stood miser- ably looking upwards at the carved oak mantelpiece with every appearance of distress on his round, cheer- ful face. Plesper paused as she shut the door that led from 264 The Light above the Cross Roads the portico behind her. and wondered with a catch at her heart what fresh name was written on the Roll of Honour. Dr. Larry knew everj-thing that happened to every- body in the country, and she felt that his anxious face foreboded fresh disaster to an Irish regiment. He did not notice her. he was so wrapped about with his present trouble of mind. " It was Jack who told," he said slowly. " He is one of the poor bits of broken jetsam the Germans have returned home. Not another day"s work in him, that's certain. The boy recognized him, driving with a Prussian General." Hesper crossed the hall ; this story appeared to have new features of interest. " Is Jack back ? " she asked, and then she turned and met her father's frozen stare. Hardress was leaning forward and he pushed her away as she bent over him. Dr. Larry laid his hand on Hesper's shoulder, speaking as he did when very much moved. " Hesper. my lad, I thought it best that your father should hear from me what will be known every- where in a short while." She nodded. Something was coming and it was best to be silent. " It is Marcus," broke in her father, an intemper- ate rage sounding in his voice. " He has joined with those blasted swine of Germans. Jack Beresford is back and he saw him in Berlin, when the prisoners were being marched through the streets for the mob to jeer at. God in Heaven ! To think that I should live to be so disgraced." 265 The Light above the Cross Roads " Marcus ! " she said in a hushed voice, and then she drew herself up and stood with her chin Hfted, much as Marcus himself often stood. " It is not true." " Ask him." Hardress pointed to the doctor, who looked at her sorrowfully. " Jack saw him," he repeated. " It appears that they halted the Red Cross motor where he and an- other couple of lads were lying, and the Prussian fellow, a General, Jack said, stood up in his car with his hand on your cousin's shoulder." " How can he be sure? " Hesper's voice was cold as ice. " He was badly wounded and he may easily have been mistaken." Dr. Larry cleared his throat and blew his nose several times ; he was dreadfully disturbed in mind, for he loved Hesper truly. > " Jack says that Marcus recognized him, though he hardly so much as looked across at the boy. The thought of it all " He broke off helplessly. " A traitor," said Hardress, rising out of his chair. " Blast his soul." " Don't, father," said Hesper. " We don't know anything yet; don't judge him." She appealed to the doctor with her eyes. " We've been honourable men in all our history " — Hardress spoke violently and stood staring at a portrait of the first Hardress, dressed in his King's uniform; his deeds had been done in the Stuart wars, through which he had fought with great gallantry and no success of any temporal nature — " and today one of us has pulled down his country's flag." His voice broke on the words — " To be a coward in bat- 266 The Light above the Cross Roads tie Is bad, but to sell your honour to the enemy — my God ! the Judas." The intolerable fact swept over him with its ugly reality, and Hardress made a sound that w'as like a long-drawn sob. He stood as a man stands who sees his honour slain ; something that was his pride cast down and trodden by the beasts. Hesper put her hands out to him, but he pushed her away ; no one could comfort him. " Don't take it so hard," said the doctor, pouring him out a stiff drink from the decanter that stood on the table. " As Hesper says, we don't know any- thing except that Jack saw him in Berlin. Perhaps the boy has convictions " "Convictions be damned!" Hardress spoke with red fury in his eyes. " He was in with the National- ists, that's certain, and he brought his German friend to this very house. The whole dirty game from first to last was in his mind. I'd shoot him as I would a rabid hound in the kennels or exterminate vermin. Thank God he doesn't bear my name, there's shame enough w^ithout that." " Dad, there must be an explanation." " Oh. keep still." He turned roughly to her. " Don't trouble me with your talk. There's nothing he hasn't sold, even to the hearthstone of the only home he knew. This is what we have come to in the end, and we were always Kings' men." " Don't judge him rashly," said Dr. Larry. " There's many a thing may come to light that might clear him if we only knew all the facts." " I know enough, Larry, out of your own mouth. Why did he leave the Embassy before war broke out? 267 The Light above the Cross Roads Why has he hidden hke a fox safe and deep in his earth, never writing a word, never giving a hint ? Per- haps he had some trace of shame left with him. I need no explanation, Marcus himself is hanging evi- dence." " Easy, man, easy." Dr. Larry moved to the door. " God help me for the trouble I've brought you.'' Hardress made no answer, but sat down slowly in his chair. He only wanted to be left alone. Hesper followed Dr. Larry out through the portico and down the steps. The night was clear and the moon hung like a silver lantern in the dark blue sky. Somewhere down the road a dog was howling, and the sound went up to the pale stars, charged with the panic of a thousand nameless fears. " Hesper, my lad." The doctor looked at her sad white face with innate respect for the sacredness of suffering. "Is it true? " she asked. A frenzy rose in him against the cruelty of life. " What I told your father is true — but no isolated fact is ever true, thank God, or we'd all of us stand a poor chance of mercy. There is an explanation. Marcus was always different to others, and if he had convictions he'd stand to them whatever the world howled at him ; and I swear that Marcus never trod on his self-respect, even if he chose a road that led straight away from everything he cared most about." Hesper was silent. She was not feeling grief or shame or anger, but only that she had made a rude entrance into the life of facts, and that all her dreams were moonshine. She was like a leaf in the wind, 268 The Light above the Cross Roads and the world of ever}'day had no part or lot in this new storm-driven place where she stood. " I wish I could help " — Dr. Larr}' turned his eyes from her face — " but I know it's alone we must all be when it comes to facing the big waves." Hesper stirred as though his voice had awakened her from a dream. " Thank you," she said quietly. " I was thinking of the story of the Irish rebel who asked the Deputy to hang him in a withy and not in a felon's halter, because rebels were hung in withies." She put her hand on his arm and the scent of the violets she wore drifted towards him. " When the people about here all know — and talk — will you try to make them give Marcus a withy? " The wind stirred among the bare branches of the trees, and Dr. Larry heard her light footstep go away up the drive ; he wondered, as most people have won- dered, at the perplexity of life. So much of it was like a play, and yet on the stage things were regulated so that in the end tliey were exactly what tliey seemed ; in life you began with a boy and a girl in a spring meadow and you ended — he wiped his face with his handkerchief — there was no saying where you ended. But the County thought otherwise. The end that Marcus might expect was stated explicitly, and though Dr. Larry was faithful to his word, not one of all those who condemned him to the felon's end found him worthy to be granted a withy, for the sake of a tradition sacred to rebels who die outlawed. 269 CHAPTER XXIV HESPER endured the days and the months until at last she reached a place in her pilgrimage when sHe felt that she must change the endless monot- ony or face a condition of mental strain that would be entirely beyond her power to sustain indefinitely. She had given up looking to outward help from Fate or chance, and it came as a surprise to her when Hardress burst out of his dull gloom and told her that he should have to go away from Ardshane and gravitate to Dublin, where he could seek some com- panionship in the Kildare Street Club. " I can't go on here," he said. " I can't do it, Hesper. Couldn't w^e close the place for a bit?'' A light came into her eyes, and she looked out of the long windows of the dining-room and watched the swaying daffodil border dancing in the pale sun- shine. " Would you mind. Dad, if I went to the Red Cross Hospital and then " " Oh, my God, I suppose you'll be asking me to let you go out to France," said her father, " nursing." He threw a world of antagonism into the word. He could not bear to think of a woman training for any- thing. Women were meant to do nothing, or if they did do things, these were things which should be done w hen their mankind were absent. Hesper might have scrubbed the floors of Ardshane provided that her fa- ther could ignore the fact, but to train for a definite occupation shocked all his sense of fitness, and he ob- 270 The Light above the Cross Roads jected immediately with vehement dislike of any such notions. Hesper braced herself for the usual weary struggle that must be got through before she gained her point. The habit of objection had grown upon Hardress steadily, and though he wished to leave Ardshane and follow his own inclination towards a brighter and less isolated existence, he fought steadily and doggedly for his theory that women should '* glide " through life. It was impossible for any woman to glide through a hospital training and it offended his sense of decency. In the end Hesper conquered, partly because Hard- ress wanted to feel that it was she who drove him to do exactly as he wished; and partly because he always did give in when Hesper was determined to carry her point. So Ardshane slept behind closed shutters, and the banisters grew dim and marked with strange stains, and the cobwebs tliickened in the high ceilings and draped themselves from the ornamental cornices, and the dim glasses had nothing to reflect but shadows of furniture covered in sheets. Ardshane was empty at last, the first time for uncounted years, and no one visited it e.xcept the agent who went there from time to time. Yet, such is the strange mystery of life, the old house stood circled round with many thoughts. You cannot meet those you love in strange places where you have never been together, when absence intervenes ; it is in the old places that the old words are repeated and the old looks recalled. All the new things may be twice as fair and far more splendid, but they lack the little touch of magic that turned the garden and the room where love was into a mental 271 The Light above the Cross Roads trysting-place that calls thought back and back to it across the world and across the years. Ardshane — the very name came to Hesper like the low sound of flowing water, and though she had suffered a suffering untold in the long months before she had shaken free, and come into a new life that gave her definite work to do, only Ardshane could fill in the background that held her memories of happiness and joy. The two were one ; T^Iarcus and the old house. And now both were distant, and the thoughts that called her back to walk where they had walked together came with wistful persistency as old dreams come, to be dreamed again and again into a hopeless dawn. So even in its sleep Ardshane was potent, and the child born under its roof carried with her the eternal memory of every turn in the winding avenue, every phase of the changing garden, and the picture of the rooms where she had known the depth and the glory of love, as every living soul carries a memorj' that is bound irrevocably to one place and one house, always returning there ; for the ghosts of the living walk the paths they knew, and we who sit in their chairs and move about in the rooms do not know these things, or do not care, or are too busy getting back in our own ghost fashion to the place we visit when the twilight comes, or when we sit alone. Once Hardress was definitely removed from Ard- shane he entered into a new life that was far more congenial, and the second point that Hesper desired to gain was accomplished without any great effort. All her thoughts were centred on her one longing to go to France, and to find there what she had not found 272 I The Light above the Cross Roads in her training, a way towards peace. From the si- lence of the former days she found herself plunged headlong into action; the change was a relief to her pent-up energies, and as she stood on the Folkestone boat and looked back at the crowded pier, where the heavy shadow of parting lay like an intangible mist, she told herself that it was well with the woman whose heart was already dead, and it was well to be of the company of those who have nothing to lose, for they are the vagrants of the world and go carelessly out, because it does not much matter whether they return or not. ^71> CHAPTER XXV APRIL stirring among the trees and the gardens of Berh'n brought back Nature's gay youth to the world. The lindens fluttered and trembled against a soft sky. and the birds sang shrill and sweet ; every- thing was full of restlessness, for the call of spring is the call of love, not of peace, and there was neither love nor peace for the many, for those who had love knew no peace, and those who had peace bought it at the price of broken hearts. To ]\Iarcus Janover the light and shadow of the days and the air}' beauty was little short of intol- erable: a hundred memories came with the scent of the spring flowers to every living soul, and the out- ward gladness contrasted ill with the times. In the languor of the first warm days he felt the weight of his task more than before. At times its value out- weighed everything; the results justified the means in- disputably, and again at times everything seemed vain and worse than vain, and his faith in himself waned and flagged. The long tension was telling upon his nerves, and the strain was making itself felt. So far his memory played no tricks with him, and outwardly Marcus Janover had not altered in the least, except for a few lines round his eyes and mouth; in any case the weariness of the individual had no place in the game he played. His role demanded that he should always foresee the unforeseen direction, and discover joints in the harness. He reckoned the num- 274 The Light above the Cross Roads bers of the dead in battle, which never appeared in any official h'st, and he gathered the great mass of information that came naturally to his ears, and sifted it, making his own deductions through the vague im- palpable medium of his psychological sense. With that he had to lounge idly through his days, do the work that the Bureau demanded of him, and Hve a gay careless existence : an existence as transparent as glass. He attained his object at a price that only he himself could assess, and his power of deception per- fected itself: for Berlin believed that Marcus was a light-hearted devil without a care or a scruple, yet possessing a clear head and a mathematical gift for exactitude in his department. He strolled into a Bicrhallc one sunny afternoon, and sat down at a table near the open window to make a few notes. Writing in his own rooms in the Mittelstrasse was a relaxation he never permitted him- self. It was generally known that Marcus owned neither pens nor ink, and people who have no pens and ink are innocent folk, who do not communicate with the outside world. Felsted was expecting a let- ter telling him something definite about the movements of Kaspar Sachs and X 15, and Marcus chose the sunny table in the corner to write a simple letter to his friend. A few superannuated musicians played on a dais at the far end, recalled into a recrudescence of musi- cal activity by reason of red war. Quite near him two wounded officers sat drinking, their faces stamped with the unmistakable mark of fatigue and pain, and their voices touched with the weariness of a long campaign. 275 The Light above the Cross Roads " It is a long war, mcin Hcrr'' said one of them, recognizing Marcus, " when is it to end? " " Troy town fell," he said, looking up from his writing with a smile, " but then Helen was a very definite object to fight for." " They say England is full of men who don't want to fight. If she makes them go. what happens? " " They used to hide up chimneys in the days of the Press Gang," said Marcus cheerfully, " but they fought quite comparatively decently once cleared of soot and faced by the enemy. They may do the same still." " The swine," said the lieutenant, who sat on the farther side of the table. " I can't sleep at night." Marcus returned to his letter, which he finished, and began to think steadily, reviewing his own situa- tion with attention and care, as he did from time to time. Occasionally he was aware that he was under close supervision, and that the Intelligence Department had moments when they were curious about him. Much information had got through, too much to escape detection, but so far not the smallest hint of who it was who was responsible had been discovered. He felt safe where the secret agents were concerned, and safe where his own circle was concerned. There was no intrinsic reason why he .should ever be de- tected, if he played his own part through. Only^ one person that he could think of had disquieting suspicions, and that was Ursule. Marcus thought of her and frowned slightly. She had subtlety and imagination, and she could find a 276 The Light above the Cross Roads clue with nothing at all to go upon. As far as was humanly possible he had taken all measure against her, including the simple one of avoiding her alto- gether when Von der Schultz was away with the Second Army. Ursule was a danger point, and he realized that he pitted himself against her, know- ing nothing of the reason for her continual gropings in obscurity. She was a paid spy, bought from the French service, and he had no intention of allowing Ursule to nuUify his efforts, or catch him out at his game. Yet he was sure that she suspected him, and he attributed her undeniable interest in him to a se- cret watchfulness that he was aware of, and that acted upon him unpleasantly. Ursule with her suspicions aroused was formidable, and it became necessary to be wary where she was concerned. Almost as though his thought had called her, he looked down the room and saw the swing-door open to let her in. It came as a shock to see her so sud- denly, and he met her long steadfast look as she crossed the room, answering it with a careless smile. He knew she was coming to his table, and also that she would not do so at once; she was sure to ma- noeuvre, and he watched the process with half-idle interest. " Ach, mein Lichen," she said, pausing to lean over the wounded officer who had greeted Marcus, and tossing a rose to the sleepless lieutenant. " You are a brave man. All the women will love you more be- cause you have only one arm." " It is easy to slip away from such a clasp," said the lieutenant. " I have two, Fraulein, even if I 277 The Light above the Cross Roads can't sleep at night. Sleepless nights ask for com- pany, nicht wahrf The clocks are not my friends. Twelve, one, two, and on until dawn." Ursule laughed. " Is it your conscience that trou- bles you, little brother? Go to the Herr Pastor and confess your Belgian sins, and the clocks will not make you jump as if you saw ghosts." Still with a laugh on her lips she drifted out of his reach by some art purely her own, and sat in the chair opposite Mar- cus, where the flickering sunlight fell on her white dress like dancing golden leaves. She was very beau- tiful in her feline way, and the eyes of both the men she had left followed her with lingering admiration. " You write here, Kamcrad? " she said, propping her chin on her hands. " What a drole place to choose. But then all you do is so unexpected." " It is a sonnet," said Marcus. " I have a poetic mood upon me, and, as I live with Kaspar Sachs, I must find a place where there are musicians and heroes and " — he bowed half mockingly to her — " heroines to write of love." " I do not understand you," she said petulantly. "What are you, Mark?" " I am a naturalized German who once was Irish. And you, Ursule? French, Czech, Russian, Hun- garian, Austrian, Levantine?" " I am Ursule," she said, bending nearer to him, " only Ursule, but I have eyes." " I know you have : the eyes of Hans Breitmann's tutelary saint. Don't look .so ve.xed." Marcus turned away to order her a vermouth. " Eyes are not al- ways to \yt trusted. ' The eye sees what the mind brings with it,' Gnddige, and your mind is what you 278 The Light above the Cross Roads should consider first," he continued, turning back to her. Ursula looked down at her hands, which she laid flat on the table. ** And yet if the mind is peculiarly and remarkably absent in some respects, it does not always read what the other eyes have to tell," she said softly. " That utterance is altogether too cryptic for my simple comprehension. I drink to you, Ursule, ' a vos beaux yeux,' as our enemies the French have it." " Mark," she said, her face full of animation, " will you do something to please me ? " "Anything you wish. What do you want? A rose from an ogre's garden, a cup of water from Cocytus? " " Come to supper with me in the Liitzowplatz to- night." Marcus leaned back and shook his head. " Come now, Ursule, that is too easy. It can't be done. You raised my hopes and my love of adven- ture, only to snuff all out with an invitation to a meal." " Yet I do wish it," she said persistently. " I want you to come. You would not regret it." Marcus looked at her and thought rapidly. It was intensely repugnant to him to accept, and yet if Ursule was likely to be a danger, it would be as well to be thoroughly acquainted with her meth- ods. Women were a curse, and he hated the softening of her voice and the shadow in her clever deep-set eyes. " I should bore you to yawns," he objected. " I shall be as dull as a lay brother or a Suffragan Bishop. 2/9 The Light above the Cross Roads I go to bed early, and drink barley water." He shifted his position slightly. " And besides, if I did go, and you sat and looked at me like Circe in a muslin frock, how do I know that I might not talk sonnets, things that should only be written? No, Ursule, the candle is too expensive, and I must decline." " Come," she said imperiously. " I cannot bear you to refuse." He thought again for a moment, and glanced to- wards the table where the two officers still sat, both silent, and both evidently awaiting the end of his conversation, with stolid resolution not to stir until Ursule passed down once more. " The man with one arm and his friend with two would appreciate the gifts of the gods," he said, ris- ing. " and I accept because I am an altruist. Oh, Ursule, you are a violent woman. I almost think you a suffragette. Why do you force me to come and eat?" She smiled, and a light of contentment dawned in her eyes, " I do not care for anything — not anything, so that you come." Marcus turned at the door and saw her go to the table, where the young lieutenant greeted her with much gallantry, and he put on his hat wondering at the ways of women. The street outside was bright in the sunset; peo- ple were hurrying as the evening drew on. all busy with their own thoughts and aspirations, and each' intent upon some personal desire, some walking slowly to the emptiness that awaited them upon retum, their footsteps keeping time to the " No more, no more " 280 The Light above the Cross Roads of their altered lives. IMarcus, too, walked slowly, wondering whether Ursule was setting her craft against his own. A fierce stillness of heart came over him at the thought. If Ursule proposed to play a game, the denouement of which declared him as an English spy in Berlin, she would find that she had chal- lenged an adversary who had no more scruple than she had herself. The stage was set as she had chosen in the little pink satin bo.K in the Liitzowplatz for which Von der Schultz paid an exorbitant rent, but the cards were still to deal. Janover returned to the Mittelstrasse and changed with leisurely indifference to time. The rooms reeked of tobacco, and the familiar grubby furniture appealed to him suddenly like a homely constant face which is neither beautiful nor clean, but which is comforting. He was almost ready to pull on his overcoat, when Kaspar Sachs came grumbling through the door and sat down on a low chair, puffing a cloud of smoke from his meerschaum. "Another night of it, Mark, heinf" he said. " Wine, brandy, women. Ach, it is absurd, and I go at any hour. You might have stayed tonight within." Marcus tied his tie carefully. " On my word of honour as a liar, Kaspar, I would far rather stop at home. I go to sup with a she- devil, I strongly suspect." "" Ach, Gott! the way that you pursue these women ! " " In this case " — Marcus straightened his tie — " there is not even the charm of pursuit, Uncle Kas- par; it is I who am the hunted." 281 The Light above the Cross Roads 'to "Then what do you go to do? It is all great folly." " I may kiss her hand, and if I must I shall do it gracefully. That is the secret of tactful address, Kaspar. Always appear to want more than you ask for, but never pennit yourself to accept it if it is offered to you. Say, if you can't think of anything better, * If only I dared,' and then run as fast as you can, mcin Sachs, and you will be successful in the game of heart." "Humph!" said Sachs. "It is all great folly. But it is part of your indifference. I go to Belgium at midnight, and after that with X 15 to England, and yet you will not stay with me." Marcus looked at his reflection in the small glass on the wall, and adjusted his tie again ; he found it profoundly difficult to say anything just then. " If I do not return," continued Sachs in the same grumbling tones, " I wish you to keep and wear this ring. It was my mother's wedding ring " — emotion shook his words. " It is a strange world, Mark, and I have not loved many, nor have I hunted women as you do, yet I would wish to leave this in your keeping, for it will remind you of me should any- thing happen. We may not sit here more, there are spies everywhere, and the risk is great." " Don't give it to me." Marcus walked away to the far side of the room. " I can't take it. I might lose it — give it to a woman — oh — anything. I can't take it, I tell you, Sachs." He reached the door. " For God's sake don't ask me to." Sachs' spectacles gleamed through the smoky at- 282 The Light above the Cross Roads mosphere, he looked sad and forlorn; desperately pa- thetic in the eyes of Marcus. " Good-bye, Uncle," he said, with an effort at gaiety. " You'll come back, and we will make a night of it when you do." Saclis drooped his head forward. " It is not aiif Wiedersehen, Mark, I am not brave, I am serious. It is good-bye." Marcus went down the stairs at a run and stood breathing deeply on the doorstep. Kaspar had brought a sudden sick feeling in upon him, and he thought of him high in space raining horror on a sleeping world of innocent women and children, and yet surrounded by his vision and justifying the un- justifiable, because the vision clearly commanded Kas- par Sachs to take his life in his tremblmg hands and commit hideous murder. The whole riddle of the war perplexed and drove him. It was all a muddle of hopeless complexity, •where old guiding lights were no longer clear. His heart sank as he tried to grapple with the awful as- cendancy of the madness of the world, and his own part in the endless chain of causes hung with a leaden weight around him. He could not rid himself of the memory of Kaspar sitting bowed in the broken-down chair, holding out his mother's ring on his shaking hand, and it came with him into the pink satin boudoir that was all a gala of lights and flowers and mirrors and soft cush- ions; Ursule standing in the centre of her stage dressed in filmy black, with a gold band in her hair. It was a heartless little room, suggesting heartless 283 The Light above the Cross Roads passionate episodes, that no one troubled to recall once they were spent. Marcus was distrait and he hardly listened to Ursule, only talking at random as he sat at her table under a hanging lamp like a pink moon, that threw a tender light over the silver basket of white lilies that stood in the centre. He did not notice that Ursule ate nothing, and that she, too, was talking away from her thoughts. At last Marcus threw off the painful dominion that Kaspar Sachs exercised over his mind, and focussed his mental eyes upon Ursule. " How is the Conqueror? " he said abruptly. " He is safe. It is healthy ten miles behind the line of trenches! " She laughed as she rose. "Come into the boudoir, Mark. I don't like this room. Ever since you sat down you have had company that I do not see.'' Marcus followed her and lighted a cigarette. The chair he chose was some distance from any other, but Ursule took a cushion and seated herself at his feet. ** No, don't be restless," she said as he moved. " I sit where I like. Now tell me who was with you just now." " Only a fat little man. No rival to you in out- line. Does that satisfy you? " Ursule moved and sat looking up at his face. "And you?" went on Marcus. "Have you a memory, Ursule, and if so, is there nothing in this rosy room of yours that makes you think? We are comrades in misfortune if that is so, for I was damnably obliged to recall my fat little man, and you also may be recalling some one equally damnably, 284 The Light above the Cross Roads only I brought my companion with me, and yours may Hve here." " I never think of " She shrugged her white shoulders. " As well think of the war. It is to climb a perpetual mountain of misery, I sacre it every time I am obliged to remember it." She put her arms on his knees. " Mark, did you ever love a woman? " " My friend Kaspar says I am always in love, and I told you I wrote sonnets. That is proof sufficient." " Suppose any one you loved to be in danger, what would you do ? " " Danger is such a vague term. If it was danger of measles one could only go and find a doctor? " " But if it was danger that you might avert? " Marcus looked away from Ursule across a distance that he could not measure by any known method, it represented the ends of the earth, it was so far away. Only a long room in the twilight and Hesper sitting by a piano singing. " Ah, that is known among men as the gift of God," he said in a low voice. " Not given to the likes of me." Ursule watched him with a fixed look, and then she leaned back again in her old position. " I have a great love," he said, taking the hand she placed in his between his own. " Oddly enough, it is for a man, a very brave soldier, Eitel von Verlhof." She touched his hands with her face. " Tell me about him. Why do you love him» Mark ? " " Why ? " Marcus thought for a moment. " Well, he was at my school at Hildesheim, and he gave me his pens and his pencils, and — it's hard to ex- 285 The Light above the Cross Roads plain, except that there is something unspeakably blessed about Eitel. He is like sleep or peace or something one turns to when one is very weary." " Then he is like Death," Ursule's voice was low. " Perhaps, but a happy one. I go back to the by- gones when I think or speak of him. Ursule, you do me no kindness to draw these things out of the locked box." Ursule moved violently from where she sat and knelt before him, her hands on his shoulders. " Tell me, Mark, only tell me," she said vehemently. *' You can trust me. It is not safe to be so alone. Suppose anything went wrong, in all Berlin there is not one soul who could help you, not one unless you let me in, and I know all the ways. I could play any game you wanted, and remember that Von der Schultz is here often. There is very little I could not learn from him." Marcus raised her to her feet and stood up. " Ursule," he said quietly, " do you know how inde- scribably damnable your suggestion is? Just think what it sounds like, for it is not pretty." She stood with her arms out and her eyes appealing desperately. " You are thinking of Hans? What does he mat- ter? Can you not understand that I love you, and have forgotten everything else? I love you, Mark, and love is life and death and all things to me." She looked superb as she faced him. " You are with the English, then I also am with the English, and I will be of more use to you and your country than you could ever dream of. I would sell not only Hans but my 286 The Light above the Cross Roads own soul if you raised your finger. Am I not more real than your dream woman ? " Marcus looked at her steadily. She dung to him passionately. " Mark, I could make you forget." " No one could do that for me. Look at me, Ur- sule. I have lost my name, honour, freedom, and happiness. I have nothing left to me but one thing, and that is my belief that what I do is done for an end that makes even my part in the tragedy worth the price." She put her hands on his shoulders, and tears filled her eyes. " I had nothing to lose, Mark. I was thrown from one to the other ; honour means so little when one has first to live — and I like fine things. Once I got the secret out of Hyppolite and came into touch with the Bureau, life was less uncertain, for they paid me well. But you, oh, Mark, I guessed it long ago." He took her hands from his shoulders and closed his own over them. " Your hands are small," he said, smiling, " but they hold my safety. I don't value it as an abstract condi- tion, but there must be no false pretences, no error of thought between us. I do not love you, and I have nothing to give." " Nothing to give ! " she echoed. There was silence between them, and she sat down on a gilded sofa near the stove. " No place for me," she went on in a suppressed voice. " Nothing." " God knows I have not." 287 The Light above the Cross Roads She laid her hands palm upwards on her knees, and sat looking down at them. " So I hold you here," she said at last. " Yes," replied Marcus. " You do, Gnddige, and you can choose just what you like to do with me." " I could sell you." " Yes," he agreed, " you could. I wonder if I should come to thank you if you did. I almost think so. The hope of a completed undertaking is only per- sonal vanity; England will conquer without my re- ports." " Think of it " — she caught her breath quickly and folded her hands into a cup — "your life inside that little space." "My life!" Janover laughed with bitter self- contempt. " A splendid afifair; the stainless record of a gallant gentleman." In a moment she changed, like flame breathing out through a close covering. " Mark, do not speak like that. Your life is safe if any act of mine can keep it so. I know the dark way that you have come, and do you think that I would sell your work and you because you do not love me, "vvhen the whole world is too small for my love of you?" " I understand you perfectly," he said, and leaned his elbows on the mantelpiece, and hid his face in his hands. " One always hopes for things," he went on in a weary voice, " and I only hope for one thing : that I may yet die on the other side of the trench line. Not heroically, you see I could hardly indulge in dreams of ' bhit'gen Lorheern,' but just with common decency. 288 The Light above the Cross Roads That is the reason why I must be glad that you have chosen as you have." He turned towards her and held her hands for a moment. " Thank you, Ursule," he said quietly. *' Not only for leaving me a chance, but also for the rest." 289 CHAPTER XXVI IN May, General von der Schultz returned from Flanders, and when the first flush of his enthusi- astic reception was over he sought out Marcus Jan- over at his table in the dull office, where he was en- gaged in tracing a code used by prisoners in detention camps. Battering down all excuses, he took him back with him to his house, though Marcus was not anxious for his boisterous hospitality, but Von der Schultz was of value to him, both as a man who knew much that he wished to learn, and also as a means of escape from the grip of Berlin. Every attribute of this successful soldier was accen- tuated and deepened by war; his face had become more brutal, and a look in his eyes suggested the shambles. His old habit of vaunting his conquests was exagger- ated with all else. There was something unspeakably soiled and dirty in the mental condition of Von der Schultz. Marcus sat late with him in the room on the garden side of the house, contrasting the peace outside and around with the hell of realism that the Hans Breit- mann of other days now let loose in his lightest narra- tive. There was no escape from the perpetual descrip- tion of forced conquest, and Marcus listened with a grim and studied calm. Von der Schultz, like all vain men, was most vulnerable through his vanity, and his inflammatory humour blazed under the stress of 290 The Light above the Cross Roads bloody war into a prairie fire, blown hither and thither by the vagrant winds of passing fancy. Against the background of darkness, noise, and death, he stood out, copiously self-indulgent and drenched to the soul with the murder-pitch of vice. " For God's sake, let the darkness cover it," said Marcus. " It is not ambrosial talk, Hans. Even if men are mad when they bum and loot, is there no decent form of madness possible? " " Wait till you get there, mein Lieher," Von der Schultz laughed. " Wait until you see Tophet, and are warmed out of your prudery by the blaze. Gott in Himmel, it is great! Wait until you stand among the corpses and watch the fever frenzy catch light. The French shouting, ' Vive la Patric! Allans vain- cre! ' — and then the Prussians driving* them back under the long range concentration lights. You will laugh also when you have been through these experi- ences." "Laugh?" Marcus knocked off the ash of his cigarette. " I can laugh at anything God ever created, except at the thought of violated women and wretched, homeless children. You tell damnable stories, Hans; let the darkness cover it, for God's sake." Von der Schultz leaned his arms on the table and pushed out his full under lip scornfully. " There is much of the soft-hearted Britisher in you, Mark. When you play at War, all alike have to pay the butcher's bill. It is necessary to be merciless, any- thing that means a step forward is necessary. Our enemies must fear us." He struck the table. ** Two hundred civilians shot in a churchyard 1 London is hysterical at the idea. The thing itself was 291 The Light above the Cross Roads only a game that was played in hot blood, and our soldiers laughed as the prisoners sank down. Not one found mercy. The sons of the Fatherland are indeed great. A male nation, Marcus, not a whining woman country like France or England. They will suffer the fate of women taken in war." He lighted a cigar and puffed out a volume of thick blue smoke. " Ach, mein Mark, you shall slough your Jiingfrau fancies. I am a true Deutscher, a man of honour. I represent an Army Corps, and my dogs can bite." Von der Schultz brushed up his stiff moustache with a flat palm. "Ask my soldiers, ask my Staff, they can tell you; and if I relax when the ground is gained, it is pleasant as a theatre show. If death gets a few priests and women, what does that matter? And I do not kill women, Mark, I spare them, for women are delightful as an interlude." Marcus moved impatiently. " I wish to God you'd get me up soon, and let me have my day with your rabid dogs." " You owe the Britishers a shot." Von der Schultz drank deeply from the glass at his elbow. " We shall storm through France, and then, Kamcrad, we shall settle an old score with England. It is a bloody peace that England will have to sign." " Peace ? " Marcus looked away into the dreaming garden. " Shall you and I see it? I do not think so. More likely we shall be left somewhere on the Western road with the rest of the Patriots." Von der Schultz nodded comprehensively. " Who can tell, hcinf Such thoughts may come here in Berlin, but out there " — he waved his hand towards a vague direction westward — " one does not 292 The Light above the Cross Roads think, one lives. No, one does not think, and we stave in the wine butts and give the cellars to the troops to drive out such thoughts." He rubbed his hands to- gether and laughed loud. " Gott! Gott! the fun begins. Mirrors and beds and precious furniture thrown through the windows, and the bodies of men and dogs, and the soldiers shout and sing and run the fugitives to death in the alleys, and search for the women — there is not time to think." Marcus looked away from the moonlit garden and turned his eyes toward Von der Schultz, He was hid- eous to hear, hideous to think of, as he sat there well content and moderately drunk. He had battened upon agony and sights of anguish, and grown gross upon the curses of women; there seemed no end to him and the system he represented. The exultation of the true barbarian rioted in his flesh, and he caught greedily at a petticoat or a champagne bottle, and called it kolossal to trample and destroy. And yet Janover realized that Von der Schultz was as he said, the presentment of an Army Corps. He could keep his firm grasp of main facts and think in battalions, he could gaze unmoved on any sight that the whole red revel of war might unroll before his eyes, and he never sickened or shuddered or allowed his decision to be weakened by the fate of sections. He was an organizing force who directed troops to victory, and knew when to open and when to close his heavy fist in matters of discipline. Janover looked at him again and thought of his talk and the nightmare of corpses and kisses that had mingled with the story of human brutality and human woe. " War makes us all philosophers," said Von der 293 The Light above the Cross Roads Schultz, loosening his collar. " Philosophers have no bad dreams. They are the strong men of the age." Alarcus threw away his finished cigarette and lighted another. " Perhaps I am one," he suggested. " Not of your breed exactly, but according to my own faith. Philosophy is merely the power to retain a due sense of proportion." " But I have my faults," Von der Schultz admitted. "If man or woman betrays me in the smallest instance, I strike hard." Marcus followed the soaring smoke of his cigarette with interested fascination. " Part of your psychology," he said. " You do not entirely resemble a machine, Hans." Von der Schultz got up from his chair and went to the window; only a practised eye could have noticed that he walked a little unsteadily. " What a night! I miss the noise of the musketry, and I must do something to pass the time. Ursule," he said. " Hxmmcl, I had almost forgotten her. I j will go to the Liitzowplatz. The key is somewhere in my room." " Ursule." Marcus got up and yawned. " Isn't it rather late? She won't be expecting you and will be asleep with her hair in curling pins. It wouldn't be fair, I'm damned if it would." " She will be overjoyed," said Von der Schultz from the corner by his writing-table. " Here, I have found the key." " I am going to bed." '' Was? Mark, you grow old and dull." " And I shall dream of your guns, Hans ; you have deafened me with your talk." 294 The Light above the Cross Roads " Well." — Von der Schultz fastened his belt and put on his cap — " I will give you a picture to look at." He took a flat packet from his inside pocket. *' This is the Zukunft map and shows exactly where our at- tack will be when I return. The dispositions are satis- factory and the redistribution of troops will be com- pleted." He spread the map over the table. " It is interesting if you can follow it." Marcus bent over it, leaning on his hands, the veins in his forehead standing out and his mouth set. The map showed the scarred district between Loos and Lille in close detail, the salient points, the redoubts, and the massed numbers of Prussian, Bavarian, and Saxon troops who held the trench line. " It is to be an advance," he said, and his voice sounded strange in his own ears. " Let me keep this to dream on, Hans. It represents the heading of a new chapter of chances." " A new chapter of retreat for the British." Von der Schultz slapped his shoulder. Janover fingered the map with an odd restless move- ment. " By George, it is a strange piece of symbolism. A little paint and some red ink, and it means ' Kriegs Mobil/ Guns, ammunition, field telegraphs, and thousands of men. And here," he put his finger on the name of a village, " this is a heap of ruins, smashed in the last bombardment. It looks infernally neat and tidy when it all comes out of your pocket, a nice bit of glazed linen " " For which a British General would sell his soul and his wife," added Von der Schultz. Marcus stifled another yawn. 295 The Light above the Cross Roads " I like the French names, they are so incongruous, and contrast is the soul of artistic effect. You bayo- net a man at Notre Dame de Consolation, and you blow up a mine and send bits of the enemy into the sky at Les Folies, and gas a whole brigade at Les Puits d'Amour." " Keep it in safety," said Von der Schultz. " It is of the greatest importance and I never leave it away from me." He looked at Janover with sudden emo- tion. ** Not with any other would I trust it, Mark, only you in all the world, outside my Staff." Marcus folded up the map and held it between his hands as though his thoughts had swept him to some remote place. " I see that Von Verlhof's regiment is in your Army Corps," he said slowly. " Yes, lately come from the Lorraine. He will be glad when he sees you." Von der Schultz walked out by the long window. " Do not lock this." he said. " And have you any message for me to tell to Ursule ? " " Good-night." Marcus did not turn his head but stood where he had been, holding the map in his hands. 296 CHAPTER XXVII IT was soon evident that all was not well with Von der Schuitz after his return from the rose-pink flat in the Liitzowplatz. A rage was upon him, the rage of a man who has met with a rebutT that had hit both His intellect and his vanity, and he could not conceal his sense of provocation. Stirred to his muddiest depths his desire to strike and wound drove him as anger drives a spoilt child, and Ursule, having dealt him a blow, had awakened the fox that lurked in the nature of the General of the Second Army. Filled with his own thoughts, and busy with his own affairs, it was some time before Marcus Janover awak- ened to the full realization that Ursule was nearing, if not actually face to face with, grave personal danger. Only when Von der Schuitz hinted openly at the prob- ability of her changing her quarters for some place unknown, Marcus suddenly began to think. He knew that his host had gone to the Liitzowplatz several nights in succession, and that his mood had darkened after each repeated visit there; therefore it came as a surprise to him when Von der Schuitz reappeared one rainy uninteresting afternoon, having regained his good humour towards life. There was an air of achieved result in his whole manner, and his heartiness and bull-like gaiety returned in double measure. " I have news for you, Mark, my Friend of Free- dom," he said boisterously. " This is our last night 297 The Light above the Cross Roads in Berlin for some time to come. We start tomorrow at dawn." Marcus threw back his head with the gesture of a man who has suddenly seen light in a long heavy night of darkness. " Tomorrow at dawn," he repeated. " I feel as if you had given me a present of the whole earth." " Tonight I have a little supper." Von der Schultz smiled as though his thoughts pleased him. " It is the first time Ursule comes to my house, for I am particu- lar in these matters as my aged mother lives upstairs in her apartment." " Ursule ? " Marcus looked at him with some sur- prise. " So you have recovered your old admiration for her?" " You shall see our great reconciliation." Von der Schultz half closed an eye. " Tomorrow we get as far as Brussels, where our victorious army is in garrison, and then we move on to my Headquarters, a chateau fine enough for ' der grossc Schweiger' himself to sit in and play chess. You are on my personal staff, Mark, and that red head of yours will be safe from English bullets. Neither shall you live on Erbszviirst." " So that I get there I don't care if I go in charge of a mule team," he replied restlessly. His impatience became unbearable as the day wore on, and he had collected his fighting gear. Marcus had waited long for a door to open, and every hour ap- peared like eternity. To think of Ursule and the pas- sionate episode she recalled was impossibles Ursule was nothing to him, she belonged to the hours that barred the way to reality, and for the first time for many months Marcus felt the boy in him awake and 298 The Light above the Cross Roads yearn for the call of adventure and the chance of his one hope. When life has taken all hope save one, the near approach of realization becomes akin to pain. As the afternoon turned grey and the light dwindled he went out and walked about the streets. Never again was he going to look at the solid heavy build- ings, and never again would he listen to the bells of the Dom swinging out their chime through the gather- ing twilight. He felt like a ghost as he wandered past the house in the Mittelstrasse, Already the war had made a new earth, and unknown soldiers and un- known officers walked in the place of those he had been used to recognize. After the war, to come back any\vhere was futile at best, for it meant a return to a generation who knew nothing and held no memories in common with the past. Marcus continued to think as he turned home again. It was the same for every one. Battalions would be filled by intruders who were ignorant of the very meaning of the old traditions, everything would be changed, and the best having gone, this generation that knew them not would arise and take their place. For a moment he stopped and listened to the bells. A whole hour had slipped by as he followed his thoughts, and the sound came to him like the throb of the pulse of time, through which life passes, and passes on into silence. A passion of longing swept him and he prayed suddenly that he might not leave this last thing he had to do unfinished. Marcus seldom prayed, but at that moment he supplicated Heaven that he might not die too soon. There was a hint of drama in the lavish arrange- 299 The Lisht above the Cross Roads 'to ments made for the reception of Ursule, and the sup- per-table was laid out in the large dining-room oak- lined and adorned with trophies of Von der Schultz' shooting-trips. Marcus noticed the alteration from the usual rule and the change to the larger room. He wondered at the success with which Ursule had played her hand, and he pictured the old condition of things renewed once more, as he stayed to talk for a little with Von der Schultz, whose bull heart and bull head were obviously in contented conjunction, and went on to his room to prepare for the unbridled mirth of the later hours. As he dressed he marvelled at Von der Schultz* abnormal vanity; and he guessed at the line of action Ursule had adopted. Women remained mysterious and sphinx-like in their methods, and though he knew well the necessity that was ever upon him to play his own part and act convincingly, he thought of Ursule and a pity for her welled up in his heart. The farewell mood was with him, for all things are different when it comes to taking a last look. Marcus was prepared to make the best of the evening, since, like all earthly things, it had to end some time. Everything ended some time, that was all that really mattered, and soon there would be other things to think of and other sounds to hear. Already the wind of adventure touched his forehead and eyes, lie sat down and thought of what he once had wished for with all his ambitious heart: of his old passion of vision, the wide domain with Fame and Love waiting for him, perfect beyond all thought. Everything had slipped away, dissolved into thin wraiths of past memory, and nothing remained of it all. He felt at a slender packet that lay safe in an 300 The Light above the Cross Roads inside pocket and smiled in his old fashion. " Some one has to do the dirty work, Mother, and I am a Saturday's child.'' He got up and turned off the lights, and as he stood in the darkness a sudden premonition touched him, of the kind that is familiar to all who are intensely per- ceptive. He knew that he was nearing developments, and his whole body thrilled as though he had been touched by an unseen hand. " This won't do," he thought quickly, and pulling himself together he walked into the empty Empfangs- zimmcr and on into the dining-room, where he heard the sound of voices. The room was warm and the scent of roses almost oppressive, the table stood in a circle of soft light out- side which the servants came and went like shadows, their steps making no sound on the carpet. It was impossible, looking at tlie picture it presented, to real- ize that war was raging on a frontier only a few hours' journey from the carnival and glamour within the four walls. Von der Schultz was standing, and Ursule, clad in a dress of vivid purple, had already taken her place at the table. Marcus knew as he came into the room that Ursule was looking to her guns, but Von der Schultz radiated gross content. He had taken some pams to appear more than usually imposing, and he struck the desired note forcefully; he was every inch a successful General. His supper-party manner of other times was present in his voice as he welcomed Janover, and they sat down at the table. " Look well at her, Mark," he said, indicating Ur- sula with a wave of his hand, much as if he was talk- 301 The Light above the Cross Roads ing of a new charger lately acquired. " She is worth looking at, is she not ? " Marcus met her eyes and smiled. " My compliments, Ursule. You look like a purple miracle. What does one say about clothes? Your dress is as tremendous as the star-spangled banner and as light and frivolous as Yankee Doodle Do." Once again the flooding sweep of the tumult beneath the surface caught his nerves, and he talked on, hardly knowing what he said. " Are you just going to fly up to Heaven, or vanish under the table? Upon my soul, I don't know if you are an angel or a devil." " Oh, an angel." Von der Schultz spoke with fer- vour and held up his glass. " My adored, you do not eat. I .shall come and kiss vou if you look at me like that." Ursule lowered her eyes and made a pretence to finish the food she played with. " It is because I go." he explained, drawing his chair nearer to his guest. " Her poor little heart, so loving a little heart, is cold with fear. Ursule, tell Mark Jan- over how you love me." Her face flushed deeply. " Do not tease me, Hans." " Yet today you told me once, twice, and three times that you loved me." Marcus turned quickly and upset his glass. " I am confoundedly clumsy." he apologized. " It is no matter," said his host in the same tri- umphant manner. " There is an English proverb about spilt milk and tears. You have spilled the Champagncr, but no one will weep, mein Lieber. To- 302 The Light above the Cross Roads night we all are going to laugh and be gay because good Hans Breitmann has given a party as you used to sing: Hans Breitmann gave a party. Vere is dot party now ? " All through the supper the curious rioting mood of Von der Schultz governed and dominated his guests, and long before it was through Marcus knew that his attitude of exaggerated gallantry towards Ursule held in it something more than an offensive desire to parade his ownership. The eyes of General von der Schultz gave him away, and he regarded her, not with love, or its equivalent in his scale of emotions, but with a deadly, persistent cruelty that evoked in him a sensa- tion of joy. When the servants withdrew silence fell upon the small party, and the thoughts of all three were visibly seated in their eyes for the fraction of a second. Von der Schultz got up and stood behind Ursule's chair, his hands on her shoulders, and then, with a sudden movement, he bent forward and caught her wrists. " Checkmate," he said, and Marcus knew that the psychological moment that had made its coming felt was upon them. In one moment the tumult beneath the surface rose like a travelling tide. Ursule stood up and wrenched her hands away. Only Marcus remained seated, catching desperately at a normal attitude. " A fine piece of play-acting, Hans. I didn't realize that I was invited to a theatrical entertainment. 303 ,The Light above the Cross Roads Ursula's Avrists look as if you had been over-realistic. Sit down and let us be sane." Von der Schultz sat down, but before he did so he kicked over the chair in which Ursule had been seated, and spreading out his legs he leaned back, watching her. " So you thought you had deceived me?" he said. " You thought me a fool? " " How dare you ? " She turned on him. " This woman," continued Von der Schultz. speak- ing to Marcus, " is a spy in Franco-British pay." " I am not in British or in French pay. My record is known to the authorities, who will clear me." " She has tampered with my official papers, and it is certain now that it is through her that much informa- tion has got through to the enemy. I have convincing proof of her last attempt " Marcus looked at Ursule and stood up. She was fiddling with a long diamond chain, and she only glanced at him and shook her head almost impercep- tibly. " Hans, this is all sheer madness." He spoke with vehemence. " It is lunacy. You might as well ac- cuse me — why, it would be infinitely saner of you if you did." Von der Schultz laughed. " I promise you, Mark, your name has been in ques- tion more than once. It is not you who have betrayed us, and I have proof that it is the woman known as Ursule Seguin, of French nationality." He pulled his chair to the table and swept a space clear with his arm ; feeling in his pocket, he took out the " future " map and laid it on the polished surface. 304 ,The Light above the Cross Roads " You remember this, zvasf I had better have left it in your keeping, but I went to the Liitzowplatz and — I will not trouble you with details, but look at it. That map has been tampered with." He pointed to a small ink mark in the heart of a gridiron of fine lines. " This, my friend, has been under the microscope, and it is a stranger to me. that mark. The pen was sharp and the tracing paper thin, hcinf There is another here," he splayed out his hand, " and even another. Madame was not as careful as she should have been, and she leaned a little too hard because she was in a hurry. Time was short for such a piece of work." Marcus laid his hand on Von der Schultz' arm. " Hans, if this is Prussian * vigour,' for God's sake, drop it. We aren't in Belgium. Look at Ursule and think of what you are doing. As for the map having been traced, it doesn't appear to me to have been touched." He looked closely at it and held it to the light with a perfectly steady hand. ** In Berlin there isn't any need to keep up a reputation for killing your fellow-creatures. Anyhow there is such a thing as fair play." " The map has been traced," said Von der Schultz stubbornly, " and as for your crotchets, Mark, you are blinded by your ridiculous English training." " But, good God, Ursule is a human being. Is there no common charity in you? " " Next you will offer to take her place against the wall," said Von der Schultz impatiently. " I tell you I am entirely satisfied with the proofs before me." Marcus stood with his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the floor, and then quite idly he strolled across to Ursule as if he had suddenly awakened to 305 The Light above the Cross Roads find himself at a dance, and in his bored easy manner desired to invite her to be his partner. " Go and sit down, Ursule," he said quietly. " I have a little explanation to make to General von der Schultz." Ursule leaned on the back of a chair and laughed the low wicked laugh that had first attracted the attention of Marcus long ago in the Paris Cafe. " So you can now learn, mon General," she said, speaking insolently in French, " how Irishmen, even when naturalized, treat women. You asked me if I thought I had deceived you, fooled you ? I have done both." " She is mad," said Marcus, his face white and his voice changed and hoarse. Von der Schultz threw a vile name at her. " So you admit it." She shrugged her shoulders. " I only regret pro- foundly that the tracing I made was destroyed. I felt this coming, for you are too childish, 7non General, to be a good diplomatist. However, much else has suc- ceeded; and I fooled you and fooled you until you wearied me too much to continue the game. Bah! you never checkmated me ; I let you take me." She stood staring Von der Schultz in the eyes, the very embodiment of insolent contempt. Under her look all trace of self-control vanished from his face and voice, and he poured a torrent of coarse abuse upon her until at last he was spent, and rising from his chair he left the room, closing the door behind him with a resounding clang. When he was gone she turned to Marcus and caught his arm with both her hands. 306 The Light above the Cross Roads " One is enough, Mark, and you see it is too late. If you speak now it only makes two of us and that is folly." " It is damnable," he said, holding her in his arms. " Ursule, why did you do this, and why did I use ink instead of a pencil? " " Ah, why? " She rested her head on his shoulder. " Perhaps I dreamed of this minute. It is a happy one and worth the payment." " But you are free from all blame." " That does not count. The French could have shot me over the old affair ; as it was, Hyppolite shot him- self. There is no need that I should go on; there is a need for you." She raised her head and listened to a distant sound of a bell whirring continuously. " Hans is telephoning the police. Keep your nerve steady when they come, and help me by silence. Do not turn this last little hour into despair. Let me end as a martyr, Mark, not as a tragic fool." Marcus thought painfully. He saw the prison courtyard, the grey surrounding walls, the firing party lined up with their rifles pointing steadily; he thought of the moment before the neat sharp volley rang out, the moment when time grew remote and the gay glad dawn lighted the world; all the nightmare agony of life lifted at last. It appealed as the strongest temp- tation that had ever presented itself to his mind; the way out, swift, simple, and alluring as the river of rest to a weary soul. Yet the easy way was barred, there were no short cuts in his life; in the midst of change that law held him inexorably. " Ursule, you love life and I do not," he said, look- ing at her earnestly. Z07 The Light above the Cross Roads She drew his face down to her and kissed him. *' Death is always behind the door, Mark, and I have a great curiosity about it." As she spoke she drew away from him and took up her old position leaning over the back of the chair. There were footsteps outside and Von der Schultz threw the door open and came in, followed by two men in police uniform. " Seguin has admitted that the accusation is true," he said with grim brevity. " Certainly, Messieurs." Ursule held out her wrists and smiled. " I am perfectly ready." Marcus turned away and stood with his back to the room, and once again he heard her speak as she passed out at the door. " Vhfe la Patrie, Vive I'Angleterre!" her voice rang like a challenge, and then the footsteps died away. " So" said Von der Schultz, brushing up his mous- tache, " you are learning, Mark, and that is finished with. " Nun to bed, for you and I start early." An hour later Marcus sat by his open window ; his face looked strained and old in the grey morning light, and his eyes were bereft of their courage and valiancy. There was nothing of comfort or illusion anywhere. Love gone, honour gone, hope dead ; there only remained the fulfilment of his task, to be carried through at all cost. He wondered if there was any- thing else he could be called upon to lay on the altar of sacrifice; anything further to be done that hurled him more hopelessly below the very traditions that made the country he served worth his soul's damna- tion. '308 The Light above the Cross Roads Other men bled for her, starved for her, died for her, but he feasted and drank and laughed and was a cherished friend in the house of her foes. Other men finished the game under the sun or the stars; his agony was enacted under shaded lights amid the scent of many flowers. The horror of it was unbearable, but it had to be endured. 309 CHAPTER XXVIII SUMMER brooded and shimmered over France, and Nature with her eternal reconstructive pa- tience called leaf and blossom into life along the trenches, and the flying shadows of high white clouds drifting on a wide blue sky floated like phantom legions over the living armies that crowded either side of the trench lines. In spite of the sorrow of war, France was beautiful, and patches of colour showed in blending harmony where different crops were planted. The dark green of the beetroot, the yellow green of the growing com ; but for the most part the fields were sown with seed that is raised incorruptible. All day and night the noise of war rolled and echoed, and the detonation of big guns and the chorus of the field guns and the crack of rifle fire went on persistently. Lyddite and high explosives rained from the sky, and the scream of shells tore the air like rend- ing worlds descending into space. To Marcus Jan- over the sounds were as welcome as the " watch-dog's honest bark " to a wanderer, and he settled into the new conditions of life with ease and rapidity. The headquarters of General von der Schultz' Staff were situated in a chateau at the end of the little vil- lage of Les Berneuilles. The chateau stood behind a high rough cast wall, and was not a dignified stone building, but only a long, narrow, yellow-plastered house with a pigeon-cote on the basse cour, and a few 310 The Light above the Cross Roads trampled flower-beds in front. The trees, that had formerly protected it from the road and given it a greater privacy in the days when the simple happy owners had lived under the lichen-grown roof, had been felled, and except for the garden at the back where a bosquet still made a little nest of green shade by the inevitable French lac and nymph-supported fountain, there was a starkness of outline about the chateau that intensified its appearance of having fallen upon evil times, which it was too flimsy to support with even a draggled effect of dignity. The space in front of the house Vv^as perpetually crowded, and men in every grade of uniform came and went in a never-ceasing stream of life. Cars and motor bicycles sped in and out day and night, and the gaunt windows watched all that went on, like hollow eyes full of disenchanted patience. The day after his arrival at Les Berneuilles Marcus went out to take a reconnaissance of a special comer of the British position, and he accepted his orders gladly, for they coincided with a plan which had ma- tured itself in his mind for some time. He started at daybreak, and was absent all day, and when he re- turned his horse and he were dog-tired. A gust of fine rain blew out of a sunlit cloud and fell in rosy vapour over the nearer woods, passing on to leave the sky one great burning glory. The whole country reflected the light, and the chateau, startled out of its cowering chill, flashed back the colour bravely; but before Marcus had reached the gates the sky had fallen dull and the tints had faded. Happiness comes to even the most irresponsible of mortals when a diflicult task is accomplished, and 311 The Light above the Cross Roads Marcus felt a sensation of profound relief. He might now go on along the path that lay ahead without the driving knowledge that somehoiv the " Future " map must be got through to the British lines. Even the heavy chance of an entire change of plan, consequent upon the discovery of the tracing of the map, had not followed as Marcus expected it might. Von der Schultz saw nothing to fear from that quarter, and his main object was to hasten the concentrated attack. The map had been bought at a price, and its safe con- duct had cost Ursule's life — her life against his few easy lies; he felt he owed it to Ursule to make her sacrifice worth its gallant impulse, and he had in- tended to pay as fully as she had done, if it were neces- sary. His mouth twisted into an ironical smile as he rode in at the gate and along the path to the stables. He had pictured something fine or adroit in the achieve- ment of passing across the map. and instead the luck that was with him in little incidents remained some- thing to marvel at. He had got without difficulty to a British listening post, and chanced upon an officer's patrol, without any long tension of waiting; the officer in charge was Hartley, Auriol Hartley, sometime scholar of All Souls, whom Marcus had last met in the High at Oxford as he stood looking up at St. Mary's spire. Hartley had expressed a certain well-bred surprise at seeing him, but the Oxford manner remained stead- fast even under what must have been a rude shock. Janover's eyes lighted with amusement as he rode slowly on and recalled it. Nothing less remarkable than the blare of the last trumpet, if even that, could 312 The Light above the Cross Roads arouse anything more violent than a polite expres- sion of bored astonishment. Hartley had been so much surprised to find himself a subaltern in Kitchen- er's army that he had exhausted his powers of amaze- ment, and nothing was left that could weigh against that one great wonder. He had been quite intelligent, and had listened carefully to anything that Marcus could tell him in addition to the notes on the margin of the map itself, and so the dramatic moment became reduced to something that partook of the nature of an abstract idea. It was hard to believe that the thing was actually done, Hartley with his manner as smooth as sealing wax, and quite as polished, could have robbed even melodrama of its violence, and his conventions ab- sorbed the daring of Ursule's dying gift and covered it with the folds of his own mantle of good form. For Marcus the impression was both acute and unreal. He had expected fire and whirlwind to come and mark the moment when he gave the keys into the hands of the British, and there was neither whirlwind nor fire. He felt almost as if nothing had happened, and he ex- perienced no heaviness of the nearing sense of closing forces. Remoteness fell upon him as he walked, without haste or excitement, up the dim alley of chest- nuts still standing along the avenue from the stables, and came by the spong}' gravel path to the crowded sweep before the entrance. Some of the windows were already bright with lamps, and in the largest of the rooms on the right of the hall he could see half a dozen men of the Staf¥ studying a large-scale map. Marcus watched their engrossed faces, and the ex- 313 The Light above the Cross Roads aggerated shadows they threw on the wall behind, and he could tell that Ingolstadt was talking of what had happened on the Marne, as he always did. The Stab were quite well satisfied, and were making jokes ; no unrest, no fear, no anxiety, no tension to hide; all was going as smoothly as the orderlies who came in and out with budgets of papers, for the general ad- vance had begun, and the Stab were discussing a Cabaret they knew in Bethune where they hoped the headquarters would be installed by the following eve- ning. Through the room where the Staff officers were busy with the map, and where the noise of voices was intermittent, a closed door shut off another room which had once been a Frenchwoman's boudoir, where Gen- eral von der Schultz could admire himself in half a dozen mirrors beautifully framed, but disfigured by cracks and damaged corners. One or two gilded chairs stood about the room, and a sofa covered with painted satin was piled with official documents. Von der Schultz' revolver lay in the centre of a rose-pink basket that stood on ribbon-bound legs, and still held a powder puff and a bottle of " Millefleurs." On the walls where the pictures were such as appealed to the General, they had been left, and where they were merely religious they had been torn down to make place for charts and maps and orders, stuck on nails and files. Von der Schultz had two strong electric lamps on his table; the self-conscious air that formed a striking part of his personality had vanished. He was real at that moment with a compelling reality. Opposite to him Eitel von Verlhof sat on a Rose 314 The Light above the Cross Roads du Barri chair, his face and eyes full of elation. Pride was with him, the highest pride a man can feel, for he was chosen to lead the advance, and his was the assaulting battalion. A wave of emotion swept over Eitel, and his imagination raced on, picturing the whole glorious advance, and the wonderful vic- torious moment when the men poured out of the trenches and swept pitilessly down on the battered British lines. As he rose to go, a knock came to the door, and Eitel turned to find himself face to face with Marcus Janover. " You advance at a point where the position is abso- lutely assured. Ingolstadt has the details," said Von der Schultz in conclusion. " Gliicklichc Reise." Eitel saluted, throwing something infinitely greater and in- finitely more than mere form into his act. It was as though the young Oberst Lieutenant saluted his coun- try's destiny and his own, and saw them stand united. Marcus watched both men from his place at the door. There was something electric in the air of the room that touched them; one realistically uncompromising, the other with eyes as full of inspiration as the eyes of Galahad when the Holy Grail descended towards him on a ray from the parted heavens. Von Verlhof linked his arm into Janover's, and they went out together and stood in the centre of the vociferously cheerful Staff, who shook Eitel by the hand and clapped him on the shoulder. Every one loved Eitel von Verlhof, and every one wished him well. They knew that his chance had come, and they hoped to a man that he would return with honour and distinction. The Light above the Cross Roads " That is the damnable part of Staff work," said Ingolstadt, slipping his hand under Janover's shoulder- strap, " our Mark isn't even a decent Staff officer. He •went off today — after some woman or other." ** I'm not into a job yet," said Marcus. " I'm hop- ing to get rid of my tabs . . . presently, and to get into action." Disengaging himself from his friends, Eitel walked out into the garden with Marcus. A stone seat stood under a dark cedar tree, and in a pond below a moss-grown nymph held up her arms under the thin trickle of the fountain. The gleam of water was clear in the twilight, and the sweet Avild scent of apple blossoms filled the air. Here and there a star shone out in the pink light of the evening sky, and the garden looked as it must have looked on many such evenings to other eyes, before the world became a changed place, a cemetery of many memories. " It is my great chance," said Eitel von Verlhof, sitting down on the seat. Marcus picked up a hand- ful of pebbles and threw them slowly into the water. The peace of the still surface troubled him, and he desired to break it. Peace and beauty at such a mo- ment were unendurable ; the stars hung low in the summer mist and showed clear and holy like the faces of saints, and he felt an overwhelming mutiny possess him. There was nothing to strike him dumb, no power that deprived him of a voice with which he could shout to Eitel till the echoes rang, that if he went with the assaulting battalion he went straight to his death. He remembered how he had looked out of the window in the room in Berlin and heard Lord 316 The Light above the Cross Roads Shaw ford's pen travelling over a page of paper, and he knew that, even then, he had foreseen this mo- ment, and, as one sees things at a far distance almost unconsciously, this hour had been revealed to him, while he struggled hopelessly against the invisible force that changed his destiny. All the innumerable incidents that a thousand accidents had brought about had led him to this exact spot under the darkness of the cedars, where his agony was waiting for him. The whole plan was decided, God alone knew where, and he was helpless against it. A terrible certitude fell upon him, and he dropped the little pebbles list- lessly through his fingers. " Congratulate me, mein Freund." " I can't," he answered with difficulty, " there's too ]t)ig an ' if ' involved." Von Verlhof laughed his wide breezy laugh. " W'hy, you were always like fire. What has turned you cold? " " I wish to God you were not going." Eitel touched his arm sympathetically. " But Von der Schultz said — you heard him — that the position is assured. Our Generals do not hide the truth as the British do, or send us out on a forlorn hope with a bucketful of eyewash and a spoonful of syrup, and no high explosives and no re- inforcements. Hans is perfectly honest with his offi- cers. No one has that up against him. It's man to man with Hans when there's fighting to be done." "I know," Marcus said thoughtfully. "Don't let us talk of it, Eitel." He looked up at the sky. " Do you see that star ? You know what it makes me think of?" 317 The Light above the Cross Roads " Plesper, Fraulein Hesper." Janover nodded. " It shines out there over the darkness and the brok- enness of life, and it is over and above it all. Some- times I think when one has suffered up to a certain point that there are hours when one climbs up to the stars." " The road to the stars," Eitel said in a low voice, the soft German words sounding like melody. " After the war," he went on, pausing perceptibly, "—well, Marcus?" "After the war? God in Heaven, who wants any * after '? " Janover spoke roughly. " Yet when one loves one goes on loving Love may know shame or grief or mad anger, Mark, but it cannot cease. Fraulein Hesper is not made of the stufT that breaks." Marcus interrupted him with a stifled sound of pain. " Can't you see me through her eyes ? A cheap, common, second-rate edition of Iscariot. The Prod- igal had his welcome because he was a decent sort of devil who paid for what he bought and behaved like any young fool who is still a gentleman. But a mean slinking traitor " " She loves you, Mark." " I believed I had paid my account a few nights back." Janover laughed mirthlessly. " It is not so. I have yet more to pay, and this last settlement leaves me beggared of everything." Eitel was deeply grieved, and he found nothing to say, he felt his friend's pain of mind as truly as if it was his own. " Death that makes heroes of us all can't save me. 31S The Light above the Cross Roads My Hie Jacet may not be splashed in with a white- wash brush," he went on dully, and then, as though some latent force stirred within him, he rallied him- self and laughed again. " What a cheery egotist I am. Croaking like a frog over my own bitter cates which I cooked for myself. You are for the fireworks, Eitel; you'll be out in an hour or two with maddeningly exciting searchlights and star-shells, and the hum of the bul- lets, and the race forward when the barbed wire is down. A close assault ; God ! that's worth having, even if it means coming in on a stretcher at the end." " Yes, it's all worth it." Eitel got up and stood facing Marcus. " If I fail, and you find her again, will you tell her that though I was on the other side I carried the thought of her with me. Some women make men weak when they think of them, others make them brave." " I shall never find her again, not in this world or the next." Eitel put his hands on Janover's shoulders. " Good- bye, Mark, good-bye, my best of friends." " And Judas went out and hanged himself," said Marcus in a dry whisper as the ring of Eitel's foot- steps d'ed away. 319 CHAPTER XXIX IT was late the following afternoon, and the flat marshes of Flanders were holding the last of the evening light, when Marcus Janover, a rifle across his shoulder and a torn khaki coat on his back, came along the road that led to the Red Cross Clearing Station behind the British lines. His cap was on the back of his head and he walked along limping a little, but in every respect looking like any other weary in- fantry soldier of the brigade. Behind him stretched the desired hours of action, beginning from the moment when he had slipped into a barn behind a blazing haystack and exchanged clothes with a dead man. Then he had plunged again into the rending crash of noise and voices shouting, and for a little, thought let him go free and live wildly and dangerously with the rest. It was only when the weary troops were strengthening their fortifications against the possibility of a counter-attack or recapture of the advanced line that he came back to the icy grip of his great dread, and slipped away from the platoons that lined the roads. Confusion reigned behind the ad- vance and he was neither noticed nor missed. He took his bearings carefully, for the battalions which had rushed the position were waiting, holding on to their gains and preparing for a renewed assault at dawn. The British guns had got the range of the village of Les Berneuilles, the main objective, towards which the 320 The Light above the Cross Roads advance would be carried; and until the order for the charge was given, something that stood for a rest was accorded to the troops. He knew that the brigade in which Eitel von Verlhof's regiment had been chosen as assaulting battalion had been ambushed. There was talk of it everywhere, and he heard that they had advanced without a shot being fired on them, confident that they had surprised the position, and then the maxims had opened at short range. " A fine old bloody mess " was the terse description of the action. Marcus went on past the line of poplars that marked the way up to " Hell Corner," and the glittering sun- set gates opened wide and let out their last glory as he trudged on like a man in a dream. Every one he passed seemed no more real than any of the shad- ows, and he thought of nothing but Eitel von Verlhof. Marching men passed up, and dispatch riders, staff officers, heavy transport lorries, carts, and Red Cross motor-cars, but neither the sight nor the sound of them reached Janover. " And yet, what could I have done? " he asked him- self over and over again. He wondered where Von Verlhof was by this. Was he alive or dead, broken and defeated, or still triumphant? He wondered if it was possible to feel anything but numb, and he looked back to the flats behind. Perhaps Eitel was lying there. The leaves of the poplars rustled as if they were whispering of things they knew, and a force darker than the evening darkness came up with the grey clouds that gathered after sunset. There was an affinity between earth and sky, and to the eyes of Marcus the pale after-light was thick with ghosts. Once when he had walked 321 The Light above the Cross Roads anywhere visions had accompanied him, but visions had given place to ghosts and his eyes were full of dull steady misery. If Eitel was dead — well, death comes to all of us, and it was the best friend any one could ever hope to meet. But he himself was bound to the law that decrees that no one and nothing can take one away from oneself. He had left the fluttering of the poplar leaves behind him, and it was a comfort, for their rustling touched him horribly, as at times of crisis some little thing often may. Always the same pic- ture haunted him ; the darkness of the night and the German troops advancing to the assault, a dense dark body of men charging behind Eitel; the eerie whistle of the waiting observing officer, the training of the guns and the smothered rattle of shifting rifles, and then the glare of a searchlight and the awful slaughter at no uncertain range. A shambles lighted up like Piccadilly Circus — he could think no more of it. Every man had to die some day, but death showed bet- ter sport than that to most honest soldiers. A waft of wood smoke came to him as he neared the cinder path leading up to the Clearing Hospital, and with it brought back, as nothing but scents can, a different memory that for one second drove away the hell-torment of his thoughts. For in Ireland at evening the villages are covered by a blue haze of wood smoke ; and as Marcus Janover stood for a moment to let a nurse in a grey dress pass him at the door, he realized that his heart held more than one raw place. He had never felt before what he was feeling at that moment, for no man yet has ever dared to comprehend 322 The Light above the Cross Roads all his joy or all his sorrow, nor do individuals see and understand the exact extent of their loneliness. Marcus pulled himself up stiffly and walked on up the path. 323 CHAPTER XXX FATE had caught Eitel von Verlhof in the cruel way that men cannot understand, and he lay amid the " wastage " of a few hours of war. There were sounds of pain everywhere around him, the mutinous, harsh sounds, and dull low moaning broken by the persistent cheerfulness of those who were only slightly wounded, and the grim stoicism of others who hardly permitted themselves to groan as the doctors worked rapidly. It was a clearing station, and all the patients would proceed from there to the Base Hospital, but Eitel knew that he was not to be moved. His time was too strictly limited for any rule to be adhered to in his special case, and the young doctor who attended him said that he was to die in peace. " He will be gone before the next batch are due," he explained to the Sister in charge. The tide ebbed slowly and painfully, and his weary eyes stared patiently out at the vastness ahead, full of wonder and knowledge. Eitel had lost none of his dignity in his bitter moment of defeat, but the sad- ness of his face was poignant. The Sister in charge looked at him regretfully and told him in an equable, matter-of-fact, and entirely competent voice that she was leaving him to the care of another Sister who was due to take her place. So this was part of the road to the stars, he thought, 324 The Light above the Cross Roads and he tried to realize that he would soon be free of his numb heavy body that lay already nearly dead^ yet still holding him prisoner. He would not be low- ered into any hole in the kindly earth, he was not the bandaged thing that had been carried down on a stretcher. His real essence was about to be dissolved into the future, leaving only his memory as something that belonged to the past. It was all inconceivable and he turned away from the thought. Whatever the future might bring, he could do noth- ing towards realizing it until it came, and he returned again to the memory of the night and the disaster that had befallen his regiment. It was so much nearer to him than the graveyard outside or the other thought of eternity. He beat his tired brain, wondering how it had hap- pened and going over the details, struggling to think clearly. While he was still thinking, the new Sister in charge came in and hung her grey coat on the peg at the back of the door. Eitel looked at her, and as he looked he told him- self that he must be in a dream. " For it is certainly Hesper," he said aloud, a light touching his face. " And Hesper is in Ireland." She turned at the sound of his voice and came quickly towards him. Their eyes met with the look that recognizes and accepts the eternal parting, and comment was useless, but all their common memories surged upwards and stormed against the barriers of the flesh. Words were meaningless, and to comfort one another was fully as hopeless in the face of the fatal severing force. 325 The Light above the Cross Roads The sadness blotted out even'thing else as she knelt beside Eitel and hid her face on his pillow. " It is not a sideways ending," he said cheerfully, but his voice made her heart ache. He was dying, and an hour or two ago his fine soul radiant with hope and confidence of victory had touched the high moment when life reaches fulfilment. She could not look at him and the stained bandages that bound him now, and feel that he belonged to the habitation that he was so soon to leave. It was easier far to think of him already as a spirit, pacing up and down the lines behind the inner wire entanglement and watching unseen over his men. " It is strange," she heard him say, " for only yes- terday I talked of you to Marcus." "Is he with the German troops?" Hesper shiv- ered and leaned a little closer to Eitel, as though she felt chill, and her eyes asked why these things were so. " Yes," he replied, gathering his thoughts ag:ain. " He has been with us all the time — our side." And then as though instinctively he felt the shock of his words: " Mark is so furiously alive. Hesper, and he followed his conviction at a fearful cost. It is best to be like me and the rest who accept the conventions/' He lay back and closed his eyes, for he was strug- gling with renewed agony. Her face was so dear, so tender, and her voice was like music. Ever since he had first seen her he had loved her faithfully and well, loved her as few men have loved any woman, and yet he could not hope to find her in any of the worlds. He felt lonely, and the candles flickered to- wards the coming darkness; then he sank into a merci- 326 The Light above the Cross Roads ful moment of rest, and lost all sense of everything. After a time he returned again to full conscious- ness, and Hesper's mournful eyes met his as she raised him on his pillow and made him drink. Something had happened in the interval, her face was so wan and white, and the mark of tears was plainly visible. A quiver ran through her and she kneeled at his side, speaking very earnestly. " Marcus is here. He wants to see you." She looked distrustfully at the door. " Remember " " Mark? Mein Gott, Hesper, what does it mean? " Eitel was alive and a soldier again, and had driven his pain from him. " Have the British taken the Headquarters Staff? Where is Von der Schultz and the others? " " He is here alone," she said, as though she was telling both Eitel and herself something she did not wish to hear. " You and I and he." Eitel gave a sigh of con- tentment. " One dreams that these things might be, and I have had many dreams since I lay here, but they vanish. This one will not vanish?" he finished anx- iously. Hesper rose to her feet and passed out, and a moment later she returned, bringing Marcus back with her. His face was set and determined, and his bright hair caught the light; he appeared just as he always did, the same adaptable, daring, vital Marcus, and the fateful attraction he radiated was intensified rather than lessened by his evident anxiety to betray no sign of what he felt. " Mark, this is colossal." Eitel's eyes welcomed him, and a smile touched his face pathetically. ** I 327 The Light above the Cross Roads failed. I cannot tell how. I must have led out at the wrong place — but the rest ? Is all well with the Army?" Janover stood at the end of his bed. He was com- prehending the real meaning of his relations with the man he loved whole-heartedly. His eyes filled with defiant misery, and he knew the hour had come when he was to add to the agony of this living crucifixion that was being enacted before his gaze. His hand was to take the spear and plunge it into the heart of Eitel von Verlhof. " You did not lead out at the wrong place," he said. " It was I who sold you." Hesper bent forward quickly and put her arm round Von Verlhof's shoulder as though to protect him from a blow, but though he was silent and heavy drops stood out on his forehead, he made no sign of flinch- ing. " Why did you do it? " he asked simply. His question called the old flare into Janover's eyes, and he stood very erect. " For a Nation's destiny." There was a silence ; then Eitel spoke in a low whis- pering voice : " Still comrades then, Mark. We both worship the same ideal." Marcus spoke violently and his face quivered. " But my way — my God, Eitel, it's as muddy as the streets of Nish." He laughed bitterly. " I gave a woman first, and then my best friend, but my own skunk existence is whole in me. I have a sound skin." Von Verlhof lay back, his strength was failing him fast, and the darkness closed more quickly. 328 The Light above the Cross Roads " I can remember you — years back, Mark " — he said, speaking with difficulty — " the old school class- room — and your voice : That their dust may rebuild her a Nation, That their souls may relight her a Star." He felt the touch of Hesper's lips on his forehead, and he spoke to her pleadingly. " I only gave my body, Hest '" — his bandaged hands fumbled on the sheet until she held them gently — " but Mark — gave his soul." He looked up at her with his boyish half -shy smile of perfect understanding and perfect peace, and al- most at once he fell asleep. " He is dead." Hesper's voice reached Marcus out of the swaying mists that surrounded him. All the real things, the still body on the bed, the ticking of his own wrist- watch, and the very presence of Hesper were remote. " He was so chivalrous," he heard her say, " so brave." 329 CHAPTER XXXI OUTSIDE the Hospital the sky was clear and full of stars. The intermittent booming of the gims rullecJ grandly in the distance like a far-off storm, hut the world that actually enclosed Marcus Janover and Hesper was a still world, peaceful and enchanted un- der the low moonlight that filled the flats with soft bright mist. " You know now, Hest," he said, speaking sud- denly, " and I don't want you to believe that I felt as I do all the time. The life had a haunting fascination — I found that in it.'' She made a gesture he could not interpret. " Yes, I found that in it," he repeated. " Can you understand that loving you as I did I had to put you away utterly? I had to hold to the main I)urpose of my work? When one does a thing it's no use wanting to get back; it's as useless as being in revolt against God." Still Hesper said nothing, but she moved out of the shadow of the house, and the moonlight fell on her white face and slender figure. " I have longed for you." he went on. as though he spoke from the far side of a great gulf. " There is a longing that gets beyond any known words to express, because everything bound and tied my soul to yours, and I never got anything. Some people get part, at least, of all they start out to win, but you see I was one of those who just goes without." " Marcus," his name broke from her, and she held 330 The Light above the Cross Roads out her hands. ** I never changed, I never, never changed." He took her icy hands in his and smiled at her with his old mocking, tender smile. " Life is an ironic business," he said, pressing her hands against his face, and even then she could feel the desperate vitality in him touch her and revive her own deathly chill. " It is not easy to see things coming, and just wait and let them happen. So long as we can even pre- tend we're putting up a fight it makes it better, Schone Secle, but you and I haven't any more fighting to do, because hope is dead." " Can it not live again? " she asked desperately. " The world has shrunk too much." He put his hands under her chin and raised her face, looking into her eyes. " I have seen you — nothing — nothing matters be- side that. I thought I was to go without." She swayed a little, and then fresh strength came to her, and she spoke to him low and earnestly. AH the time he only looked at her face and hardly listened, he lived in his eyes. " Hest ... if I come through . . ." He crushed her to him as though he crushed sorrow and mortality into nothingness and looked into her brave steady eyes. " When you come back," she said, and they stood folded close in each other's arms. " Schone Secle." Marcus loosed his clasp of her and then he walked away quickly without touching her again. THE END THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. Series 9482 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A A 001 431 078 3