Part 35 (1/2)

A sharp pain shot through his head.

Stopping his walk, he leaned once more against the windows, and rested his hot face on the grateful coolness of the gla.s.s.

What, he questioned, had he accomplished, after all? He had gained the ears of millions, but the war was no nearer a close. America was neutral--that was true. _But why was America neutral_? Had he falsely idealised his own country? Was her aloofness from the world-war the result of a pa.s.sionate, overwhelming realisation of her G.o.d-deputed destiny, as he had imagined?

Hitherto he had paid no attention to the writings in the English press chronicling the pa.s.sing of the world's gold reserve from London to New York. He had ignored the evidence of nation-wide prosperity from the Atlantic coast to San Francisco. All such things he had dismissed as unavoidable, unsought material results of America's spiritual neutrality.

Yet, while the wheels of prosperity were turning at such a pitch, there was a boy lying dead--about eighteen.

He beat his fist into the palm of his hand. Who was this Schneider who had purchased the foreign rights of his articles? What sort of a man was this Benjamin who wanted him to lecture? Were they, as he had supposed, men of vision who wished to co-operate in achieving the great unison of Right? . . . Or were they . . . ?

The thought was hideous. Was it possible that those writings, born of his mental torture, robbing him of every friend he valued---was it thinkable that they had been used for gross purposes?

His fingers again played rapidly against the windows as he wrestled with the sudden ugly suspicion. At last, utterly exhausted, he sank into a chair.

'There is only one thing I can do,' he said decisively; 'return to America at once. If, as I have thought, her neutrality is in tune with the highest; if my fellow-countrymen are imbued with such a spirit of infinite mercifulness that from them will flow the healing streams to cure the wounds of bleeding Europe, then I have carried a lamp whose light reflects the face of G.o.d. . . . But if . . .'

II.

That night a glorious moonlight silvered the roof-tops of old London, touching its jumbled architecture with fantastic beauty.

Vagrant towers and angular church spires, uninspired statuary, and weary, smoke-darkened trees shed their garments of commonplaceness and s.h.i.+mmered like the mosques and turrets of an enchanted city.

It was one of those nights that are sent to remind us that Beauty still lives; a night to challenge our mad whirl of bargaining and barter, to urge us to raise our eyes from the grubbing crawling of avarice; a night to awaken old memories, and to stir the pent-up streams of poetry lying asleep in every breast.

It was a moonlight that descended on Old England's troubled heart as a benediction. Her rivers were glimmering paths winding about the country-side; her villages and her heavy-scented country lanes shared its caress with open meadows and murky cities. The sea, binding the little islands in its turbulent immensity, drew the night's beauty to its bosom, and the spray of foam rising from the surf was a shower of star-dust leaping towards the moon.

As a weary traveller drinks thirstily at a pool, Selwyn wandered about the streets trembling with emotion in the breathless ecstasy of the night. All day the conjured picture of the German boy, guilty of no crime save blind devotion to his Fatherland, had haunted him like the eyes of a murdered man. It had robbed him of the power of constructive thought, and stopped his writing with the decisiveness of a sword descending on his wrist; it had made the food on his table tasteless, and given him a dread of the solitude of his rooms.

With nerves that contracted at every untoward sound, he had gone out at dark, and gradually the peacefulness of the night had soothed and calmed him as the dew of dusk cools the earth after the heat of a summer's day. The familiar strains of Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata'

came to his mind, and as he walked he idly traced the different movements of the music in the moods of the evening's witchery.

His steps, like his thoughts, pursued a tangled course, and led him into the prosaic brick-and-mortar monotony of Bayswater, but the moon was lavish in her generosity, and strewed his path with glinting strands of light. He paused in a quiet square to get his bearings.

There was the heavy smell of fallen leaves from the gardens on the other side of the railing.

His mind was still playing the slow minor theme of the sonata's opening movement.

Suddenly the air was shattered with the noise of warning guns. As if released by a single switch, a dozen searchlights sprang into the sky, crossing and blending in a swerving glare. There was the piercing warning of bugles and the heavy booming of maroons.

Dazed by the swiftness of it all, Selwyn leaned against the low iron fence. A Boy Scout whirled past on a bicycle, his bugle hoa.r.s.e and discordant; an old woman went whimpering by, hatless, with a protesting child in her arms; an ambulance, clanging its gong, rounded the corner with reckless speed; a mightier searchlight than any of the rest swept the sky in great circles.

It seemed only a matter of seconds, though in reality much longer, when the American heard a faint crunching sound in the distance, followed by a deep, sullen thud. In rapid succession came three more, and the defence guns of London burst into action, changing the night into Bedlam.

Still motionless, he listened, awe-struck, to the din of the weird battle with an unseen foe, when the cough of exploding sh.e.l.ls in the air grew appreciably louder. Raising a whirlwind of dust, a motor-car swerved dangerously into the square, and with a roar sped up the road, carrying to their aerodrome three British airmen. As if driven by a gale, the battle of the clouds drew nearer and nearer, the whine and barking of the sh.e.l.ls like a pack of dogs trying to repel some monster of the jungle.

There was a deafening crash.