CHAPTER XI.

THE NEW AMAZONS.

On every side the continued rivalry between the sexes in their struggle for supremacy in national life was producing lamentable results. To this general evil now was added the new move inaugurated by the Vice-President of the Council in the matter of military training. The unfortunate illness of President Jardine had facilitated the schemes of that daring leader of the women, and it soon became apparent that preparations for enrolling large bodies of Amazons, though hitherto kept secret, in fact had been very far advanced before the memorable meeting at Queen's Hall.

Recruits flocked in from every quarter. The idea of military service or a military picnic for a few months in the Amazonian militia appealed to all sorts and conditions of girls and young women. Those who had reached the age when the resources or pleasures of home life had begun to pall, those who saw no chance of getting married, those who had met with disappointments in love and were stirred with the restless spirit of the times, those who rebelled against parental rule, domestic employments, or the monotony of days spent in warehouse or office, one and all caught eagerly at the idea of a course of military training in smart uniforms, with the possibility of encountering experiences and adventures from which parents and guardians had sought to withhold them.

Ready pens were at the service of the New Amazons. History and tradition were ransacked by industrious scribes in search of precedents and raw material for "copy." The _Epoch_, (the unofficial press organ of the Vice-President) boldly vaunted the capacity of women to bear arms. Who would dare to deny that women were as brave as men? In modern times the Dahomey Amazons had been a force in being. An eminent professor had made researches which went to show that the Amazons of old were real warriors. Humboldt refused to regard American Amazons as mythical, and other trustworthy authorities had confirmed his view. Then there were the Shield Maidens of the Vikings, to whose existence witness was borne by historical sagas. The ancient literature of Ireland set forth as a fact that "men and women went alike to battle in those days." Did not a certain abbot of Iona go to Ireland to organise a movement against the custom of summoning women to join the standard and fight the enemy? In Europe, not so very long ago, the Montenegrins and Albanians called their women to arms in the hour of national extremity.

The _Epoch_ presented the 1st Amazons of England with a silken banner, embroidered with a representation of Thalestris the Amazonian queen, and pointed out that, however fabulous might be the achievements of the women warriors of ancient times, modern warfare need make no similar demands on the physical strength of woman. War had become a feat of science, rather than of endurance. It was no longer necessary for contending champions to engage in a trial of muscular strength. Macbeth and Macduff were not called upon to "lay on" until one of them cried: "Hold! enough." Battles were fought and victories won at long range. Thin red lines and Balaclava charges belonged to ancient history. And if by any chance it should come to fighting at close quarters, had woman shown herself lacking in courage, or even in ferocity in such encounters? Why, in every memorable riot in which the civil population had been in conflict with the soldiery, the women, again and again, had proved themselves to be the foremost in attack and the most fertile of hostile resource. Thus argued the _Epoch_ and other press advocates of the New Amazons, at the same time citing many instances of the prowess exhibited by individual women on fields of battle.

Vast numbers of young persons, supremely ignorant of life in its uglier and more dangerous aspects, thus encited, discovered that they were not, and could not be, happy at home all the year round. They wanted variety; they pined for change and excitement; and all of them were firmly pursuaded that they knew much better than their elders what was good for them. In their eyes all things were not only lawful, but all things were expedient. They stood up with stolid looks, deaf to remonstrances and appeals, and expressed an obstinate wish to join the Amazons. Numbers of them, being more self-willed than their parents, got their own way, and were enrolled; while still larger numbers were put back as physically ineligible, but with liberty, in some cases, to renew their application at a future time.

That the movement had "caught on" nobody could deny. That it was full of dangerous possibilities became more and more apparent every day.

Zenobia, who came to London to attend the Queen's Hall meeting, had returned to Bath to nurse her father, whose illness showed increasingly alarming symptoms. Linton Herrick, meanwhile, was not wholly without occupation, for there were sundry private conferences between his uncle and General Hartwell at which his presence was required. These discussions and reports became of the more importance in view of certain news from the East and of the complications likely to arise at home in the event of the illness of the President proving fatal.

Nevertheless, there were times when Linton found himself mooning about his uncle's house and garden in a state both of mental and physical restlessness. He missed Zenobia, missed a glimpse of her on the river, or a flash of her as she sped away in the _Bladud_ to London. They had met often, and it seemed to him as if they had known each other all their lives. He would have given anything to hear the yelping of her dog Peter next door, because it would have betokened the presence of Peter's mistress.

Before Mr. Jardine's departure for Bath, the young Canadian had sat with him and talked on many topics and on several occasions. The enormous strides which Canada had made, and was making, in the way of prosperity greatly interested the President. Linton, however, was astonished to find how little the man whom fortune had pitch-forked into a foremost position in England really knew about Colonial affairs. He frequently fell into amazing geographical errors, mistakes quite comparable with that of a certain Duke of Newcastle who announced with surprise to George II. his discovery that Cape Breton was an island.

Linton liked the President, not wholly for the President's sake, but partly for the same reason that he had developed a friendly feeling towards Peter the dog. The President, on his part, certainly had taken a fancy to him, and in those bedside conversations talked with far less reserve than he was in the habit of employing in conversations with Englishmen, particularly young Englishmen. These conversations gradually impressed Linton with the belief that this hardheaded and successful mechanic, who found himself, thanks to the strength of a numerous and well-drilled party, at the head of the State, actually was discovering his own deficiencies--the educational deficiencies, the intellectual deficiencies for which doggedness and powers of oratory were no true substitute. In a word, it seemed as if, in that time of inactivity and reflection which a bed of sickness enforces, Nicholas Jardine had begun to realise his own shortcomings as a ruler of men--his unfitness to direct the destinies of a nation great in history, and still great in possibilities of recuperation if only well and wisely led.

"If you should be down West, come and see me at Bath," were the President's parting words. "Indeed I will," said the young man heartily, and there was something in his eyes as he turned to say good-bye to Zenobia that made her colour. Nothing seemed more probable to both of them at that moment than that Linton would find himself down West, and nothing more certain than that there would be only one reason for his going there.

The young man had fought his way into Queen's Hall on the night of the great meeting, solely and wholly because he had heard that Miss Jardine was likely to be present. But he had no idea what line she was likely to adopt in reference to the momentous question under discussion. Yet the one drawback that hitherto he had found in her was her attitude, or what he feared was her attitude, towards the question of woman's ascendency. In the crush of the hot and noisy meeting, he had failed to see Zenobia on the platform, and when she rose to speak his feelings were strangely blended--of admiration at her bearing, and of dread less she might say something than ran counter to his own convictions. But her actual utterance astonished and delighted him; and the hostile method of the "Cat" provoked in him such feelings of fierce resentment as he had never felt towards womanhood before. Yet there was one sentence that fell from the Vice-President which caused him to be sensible of emotion of another sort. That sneering suggestion that the younger speaker must be in love excited him strangely. He felt an intimate personal concern in that scornful imputation. In love with whom?

And now he had ample time in his uncle's riverside house, with the empty dwelling and silent garden on the other side of the hedge, to ponder the same question. The _Bladud_, however, proved a great boon. It had been left at his disposal, and Wilton, the Jardine's engineer and skipper, was always ready to accompany him in an air trip. Wilton was a hard-featured little man with a soft heart and a shrewish wife, who kept the domestic nest in so spick and span a condition that poor Wilton could never take his ease at home, and therefore appreciated any good and sufficient reason for getting out of it.

Wilton confessed to Linton Herrick a treacherous thought. It concerned the wife of his bosom and the new Amazons.

"Seems to me," said the little man, "as this here scheme may be a good thing in a manner of speaking. There's girls, and, maybe, there's wives too, that wants a bit of a change. Well, that's right enough. Why not?"

"What do you mean?" asked Linton, wondering and amused.

"Wot I mean, under pervisions, mind, under pervisions...." Linton laughed, but Wilton was quite serious, his thoughts engaged in a great domestic problem, his hands busy with the machinery of the _Bladud_, in which they were just about to go aloft.

"Well, it's like this, I wouldn't be for letting women jine a reg'lar army, but militia's different. They'd get a 'oliday at Government expense. When they come back they'd be more contented-like with their 'omes; and while they was away, well, there...." rubbing his head with a pair of pincers.

"And while they were away the men would have a quiet time, eh?" laughed Linton, who had heard of Wilton's family history.

"You've 'it it, sir, you've 'it it," said Wilton, without the vestige of a smile. "Not but what women has a lot to put up with, mind you; and there's times when they're as kind as kind. Still, wot I say is, a lot of 'em's never content unless they can have the upper 'and, and that's what's wrong with England."

* * * * *

Meanwhile, at Bath, the condition of Nicholas Jardine had given Zenobia cause for increasing anxiety.

In the hushed and tranquil days that sometimes come with October, the leaves fall of their own volition, and with scarcely perceptible sound. Their hour has come, and, with a faint whisper or rustle of farewell, one by one they flutter down to mother earth. Thus also, the leaves of human life are ever falling--the sighing souls of men, obedient to the immutable design, passing from out the bourn of time and space.

In those last days, when the certainty of the end came home to him, Jardine, for the first time, began to ponder on problems to which he had scarcely given a thought in the active years of his remarkable career. Perhaps in the silence of the days, and in the deeper silence of the nights, he asked himself unconsciously those same questions which, thousands of years ago, the Son of Sirach had framed for all time in language so expressive: "What is man, and whereto serveth he? What is his good, and what is his evil? As a drop of water unto the sea, and a gravel-stone in comparison of the sand, so are a thousand years to the days of eternity!"

"All flesh waxeth old as a garment; for the covenant from the beginning is: Thou shalt die the death. As the green leaves on a thick tree, some fall and some grow: so is the generation of flesh and blood, one cometh to an end, and another is born."

"Every work rotteth and consumeth away, and the worker thereof shall go withal!"

One day the President startled Zenobia by asking for a Bible. She brought it wonderingly. He signed to her to read. And as she read to him, the sick man and his daughter looked up into each other's eyes with something like bewilderment.

"Father," cried the girl passionately, as she closed the Book, "Why did you keep it from me? Why did you do it?" The dying man looked into her face with troubled gaze, and whispered something very faintly. Was it the word "Forgive?"

A yet stranger and more terrible ordeal was in store for Zenobia. To her lot it fell to hear from her father's lips a confession that seared her to the very soul. This confession presently was embodied in his will, which two days later he dictated to his daughter.

His mind was perfectly clear, though his hand could scarcely hold the pen. As a matter of precaution, he insisted that the doctor and the nurse should be the attesting witnesses. The will was sealed in an envelope, and placed under lock and key. When that was done, Zenobia, with set face, hurried to the nearest telegraph office and sent the following message to Linton Herrick:

"I implore you to come immediately. A matter of life and death."

Meanwhile, Jardine had settled his affairs, and finished with the business of life. Like the King of old, he turned his face to the wall. Yet startling things were occurring close at hand--strange occurrences within this very city of Bath. To others they were sufficiently alarming. Indeed, there had been something in the nature of a panic.

The first manifestation had taken place at the Grand Pump Room Hotel. The King of Bath, if he could have come to his realm again, would have encountered not a few surprises, and would have found the famous Hotel transformed beyond all recognition. The examples of London, Paris, and New York had been diligently followed. There was a stately Palm Court, with marble columns and gilded cornices. Oriental rugs and luxurious fauteuils had been lavishly provided. On a raised marble terrace, during the dinner hour, a stringed band furnished an undercurrent for the banal remarks of the diners. There were rooms in the Adams style, rooms in the Louis the Sixteenth style, a Charles II. Smaller dining Room, and a Smoking Room in the Elizabethan style--with ingle-nook and heavy ceiling beams in oak. But the people who dined and chattered and smoked amid these surroundings were not Elizabethan, Stuart, or Georgian in style. They were the product of the twentieth century, and were of no style at all; they lacked repose and dignity; they were self-conscious, self-assertive; believers, and encouraged to believe, in the powers of the almighty dollar, hustlers and bustlers, who rushed hither and thither, and did this or that without knowledge and without appreciation, and solely for the purpose of being able to say that they had done it. Everything inanimate in this twentieth-century Bath Hotel was very beautiful. There were skilful imitations of Adams, Sheraton, and Chippendale; there were coloured marbles, trophies, garlands, ornamentation of all sorts in gilt and bronze; decorative panels, with consoles and mirrors everywhere,--everything being in elaborate imitation of something else and something older.

But in one corner of the Grand Dining Hall was one thing real and old--a fountain of Sulis water, which had been brought into a decorative niche and enshrined amid elaborate allegorical figures which nobody understood.

It was typical of England. She had gained in some ways, she had lost in many more. She had acquired electric appliances, telephones, and air-ships, but lost in grace and picturesqueness. Frequenters of Bath no longer wore wigs, laced coats, and buckled shoes. They no longer settled their little difficulties with the rapier. The ladies had discarded powder in any appreciable quantities, and patches altogether; but people of quality had vanished from the once familiar scene. Quantity had taken the place of quality everywhere. Money had proved the great key and the great leveller. There was a dead level in style and tone and appearance. Society had to be taken in the mass, instead of in the class, and notabilities were far to seek.

Such were the people upon whom the panic seized, amid the clatter of knives and forks, the rattle of plates, and the popping of corks--inseparable accompaniments of the _table d'hôte_ dinner hour.

The visitors started to their feet with cries of dismay. An astonishing thing had occurred. The fountain of Sulis water in the grotto at the end of the great dining hall had suddenly burst its bounds! The pipes were forced from their position. Great volumes of orange-tinted, steaming water began to flood the room. The members of the string band, whose seats and music stands were placed among the ferns and palms, in immediate proximity to the fountain, grasped their instruments, and beat a precipitate retreat. Ladies, uttering shrill cries, jumped upon chairs. There was a scene of uncontrolled confusion. In a few moments, water, almost boiling, covered the floor to the depth of several inches, and male guests and waiters, carrying the ladies on chairs or in their arms, made all haste to escape into the vestibule.

At the same time the springs in the Roman baths displayed extraordinary activity. Everywhere the water rose in enormous and unprecedented volume. All the baths were hastily cleared of occupants and closed to the public, and the most astounding reports spread like wildfire through the city. The corporation officials speedily came upon the scene, and trenches were hastily cut for the purpose of carrying the overflow of water direct into the river. To the intense relief of everybody, in the course of a few hours the flood slackened.

Two days later, when people had begun to think there had been no sufficient reason for their fears, came other sounds and signs of abnormal activity in the earth itself. Faint tremors shook the surrounding hills, more especially Lansdown, and these signs were succeeded by sundry landslips, which sent many of the hillside residents flying in terror from their houses. A huge crack presently opened in the high plateau of the hill, and from this fissure arose at intervals strong puffs of curious, reddish-tinted vapour.