Max Pemberton
Swords Reluctant
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066218522
Table of Contents
BOOK I
THE CHALLENGE
SWORDS RELUCTANT
CHAPTER I
GABRIELLE SILVESTER WRITES A LETTER
I
Gabrielle returned from the Town Hall where the meeting was held, just after ten o'clock, and was glad to see the fire burning brightly in her room. She remembered that she would never have thought of such a luxury as a fire in her bedroom prior to her visit to New York.
All agreed that it had been a very successful meeting, and that real, convincing work had been done. She herself could say, in the privacy of her own room, that the excitements of such gatherings had become a necessity to her since the strenuous days in America, and perhaps to her father also.
How changed her life since she first set foot on the deck of the Oceanic and began to know a wider world! England had seemed but a garden upon her return and its people but half awake. She had a vivid memory of the rush and roar of distant cities, of strange faces and new races, but chiefly of a discovery of self which at once frightened and perplexed her.
Would it be possible to accept without complaint the even tenor of that obscure life in Hampstead which she had suffered willingly but seven months ago? She knew that it would not, and could answer for her father also. A call had come to him and to her. She had been sure of it at the meeting, but of its nature she had yet to be wholly convinced.
Gordon Silvester, the most eloquent preacher among the Congregationalists, had gone to America at the bidding of a famous millionaire, there to bear witness to the brotherhood of man and the bond between the peoples. The achievement of the great treaty between America and the Motherland had drawn together the leading intellects of the two countries, and had culminated in that mighty assemblage in New York which had stood before the altar of the Eternal Peace and closed, as it believed for ever, the Temple of the twin-headed Janus. With the minister had gone Gabrielle, his only child, and thus for the first time during her three and twenty years had she seen any world but that of the suburban parish in which Gordon Silvester laboured.
II
It was a bitter cold night of the memorable winter with which this story is chiefly concerned.
Gabrielle wore furs, which had been purchased in Quebec, and a hat which some upon the steamer had thought a little outré for a parson's daughter. These furs she had just laid upon her bed, and was busy unpinning her hat when her father knocked at the door and asked if he might come in. She thought that he was more excited than he was wont to be in the old days, and there were blotches of crimson upon his usually sallow cheeks.
"I am just going to bed," he said in a quiet tone; "if you want anything to eat, let Jane know. The room was very hot, I think—my head is aching."
She turned with her hand still among the curls of her auburn hair, a wonderfully graceful figure for such a scene.
"You must be very tired, dear," she said very gently. "I have never heard anything more beautiful than your speech."
He took a step into the room, his hand upon the door.
"Then you think it was a success, Gabrielle?"
"I don't think at all about it; it was what Mr. Faber would have called 'electrical.'"
He let go the door, and then shut it behind him.
"Ah!" he said, as though thinking upon it, "if we could have had Faber with us."
She laughed, showing the superb whiteness of her teeth.
"The lion and the lamb. Why do you attach any importance to him?"
He crossed the room to an arm-chair and sat there, poking the fire.
"He is one of the men who can make peace or war," he said. "Sir Jules Achon agrees with me. Popular sentiment goes for much, but the men who control the destinies are the financiers."
"But, father, how could Mr. Faber control this particular situation?"
"He could set a great example of forbearance. Is he not rich enough?"
She came and sat by him near the fire. It was yet early in the most memorable winter that England has ever known, but the cold had become intense.
"I saw so little of Mr. Faber on the ship," she said reflectively; "he appeared to me to be a man who