CHAPTER XVI.

SIGNS AND WONDERS.

That important person, Miss Flossie Wardlaw, was extremely angry! Events were interfering with her plan of life, and upsetting all her theories of fitness. The preoccupation, the infatuation, shown by the only other member of her family for something outside domestic life was too exasperating. That tiresome fort at Dover was absorbing all her father's thoughts. He grew paler and more haggard day by day, bestowing less and less attention on the far more important interests that concerned his little daughter and the familiar programme of her daily life.

Flossie told herself that she was not unreasonable. She had been quite ready to make allowances. Alarming things, she knew, had happened close at hand. Impudent foreigners had seized Fort Warden by stealth. The ceaseless boom of the big guns disturbed the current of existence in the bungalow. Things were tiresome; indeed, quite worrying when they kept on like that! It was dreadful, that Englishmen, her father's soldier-friends, should be killed by foreigners--killed in England too, only ten miles away; usually they were only killed a long way off, and that seemed different. But, of course, it could only end in one way; the offenders would be turned out and most severely punished. Meanwhile, the repeated and prolonged absence of her father at Dover, and his preoccupied behaviour when he was at home, filled Flossie with mixed feelings of annoyance and sympathy, in which the former ingredient became more and more predominant. Her queenly power seemed to be undermined. Her faithful subject had deserted her. Oh! that horrid Fort!

Miss Flossie nursed the personal sense of injury, and husbanded her growing grievance, to the exclusion of thoughts concerning the national questions that arose. So much depends upon the point of view; and that, in turn, so much depends upon one's age.

Nevertheless, the issues of the struggle at Fort Warden were vitally important. They riveted the attention of many millions of the population of the world. Here in England itself the seizure of the fort had assumed a colossal significance, shaking the nation out of the ever-narrowing grooves of Parliamentary and municipal party conflict, compelling men to look back to a great history and forward to an era of littleness that gave pause even to the most selfish and complacent.

Cost what it might, the enemy must be driven out. Our Flag must wave above that fort again.

A spreading feeling of fury and resentment arose against the Government. To this complexion had we come! Pushing politicians, self-seeking wire-pullers of both sexes, had dragged England in the dust. So much for Petticoat Government! So much for the Amazonian craze, this make-believe of women-soldiers and girl-gunners. Woman had largely ousted man from place and power, and this was the result! A handful of foreigners had been emboldened to assail us on our own sacred soil. Popular anger expressed itself afresh by breaking out viciously into the old doggerel:--

"Old Nick and the Cat, With Johnnie and Jan, Have brought poor England Under a ban!"

Truly, Man was needed at the helm to which at this crisis woman clung so obstinately. Man was wanted in his old authority, and, behold! in every department of control woman was clinging to his coat-tails, hindering his action, dividing his counsels, prating of peace when there could be no peace, and exhibiting a rudimentary unfitness to grapple with an unprecedented and desperate situation.

The outcry came not from the men alone, but with increasing vehemence from the very sex that had struggled for supremacy. Women out of office--necessarily the vast majority--now began to discover that those aggressive or more fortunate representatives of their sex who had obtained salaried posts or prominence of some sort in public life, were in many cases frauds and failures. This rule of woman that had come to pass was not what the great mass of her sex had contemplated or intended. They confessed it to husbands and brothers; and husbands and brothers nodded in wise and ready acquiescence. Their faces plainly said: "I told you so."

Thousands of women ruefully admitted the impeachment. Successful rivalry--mostly vicarious--had brought them no real joy. They had gained power and lost love; and in their inmost hearts they knew that love was worth the world. Always it had been part of woman's character to strive for her own way, and always she had ended by despising the man who permitted her to gain it. Yes! woman's collective triumph in this new age, as she now sadly realised, had cost her dear. With the gradual abandonment of man's protective affection had gone the true ingredients of her happiness; much that made up the grace and joy of life, tenderness and chivalry, caressing mastery, the rightful dominance of the stronger sex. Yes! love was worth the world.

The heel of woman disclosed her weakness--and revealed her strength. Fool and blind! grasping at the sceptre she had lost the kingdom; the kingdom of the heart, encircled and protected by the strong arms of a lover as the guardian-sea encircles England's shores. Like an electric spark this spirit of regret and discontent flew through the land. A little more, and it would mean a revolution. Away with the unnatural dominion of Woman! Back to the reign of Man!

It would have been idle to expect unanimity where pride and personal interest were so closely involved. The pushing leaders of social democracy and the Vice-President and her following were not likely to submit without a struggle to the restoration of hereditary authority. Woman in office and power throughout the State would be sure to cling desperately to her foothold, and no one could yet foresee the outcome of the swiftly dawning struggle.

The hands of a little band of energetic men, however, were busy throwing wide the floodgates, and no two men were more active than those veterans, one of the army, and the other of the law--General Hartwell and Sir Robert Herrick. To them it seemed that the signs of the times were full of deep significance, and pregnant with the highest hopes. They knew that there were still some men with grit in England, men who saw with bitter wrath the pass to which the nation had been brought. In their eyes the governance of this once glorious land had become a byword and a mockery. And it was because of this that the present humiliating spectacle was to be seen at Dover.

Nor was that all. In the midst of these alarms, there was something else that shook and terrified the people, filling the minds of thousands with forebodings and distress.

Strange symptoms of seismic disturbance had been reported not only from Bath, but also from other parts of England. Such awe-inspiring tremblings of the solid earth must ever produce a sense of apprehension which at any moment may grow into a universal panic. It was noticed that, so far, these disquieting indications were confined to the neighbourhood of thermal waters. At Matlock, Harrogate, Leamington, and Woodhall Spa, there had been a marked increase in the volume of the rising waters, with other signs of an abnormal earth activity.

What did these things betoken? Signs of the times, they were variously interpreted. As in the days of Noah! The great multitude of men and women laughed at the shipbuilder and went about the business of their daily lives, so now hosts of dull and unimaginative persons remained unmoved in their obtuse philosophy. Others there were who believed a providential influence was at work--conveying an admonition and a warning by some such solemn signs as those predicted to occur before the last great change of all. Were there not to be signs in the heavens, and signs in the quaking earth, the sea and the waves roaring, nation rising against nation, creation, animate and inanimate, preparing for the awful Armageddon foreshadowed in the page of Holy Writ?

Events were moving fast. A fanatic named Richards, stalking wild-eyed through the land, broke out into fierce prophetic utterance, mocked and jeered at by many, but followed by rapidly increasing numbers. This strange man entered on a pilgrimage from one to the other of the inland watering places, where symptoms of earthquake had been felt, everywhere inspiring awe and wonder in breasts of thousands. In South London, which he first visited, he was followed by enormous crowds, consisting to a great extent of women. Here, on the Surrey side, there had been a corresponding departure from the normal, for the old forgotten Spa of Bermondsey had developed a new and disturbing energy. While this ancient spring rose in unexampled quantities, and at high temperature, the once famous Spa at Epsom, only some twenty miles away, exhibited a like activity. The argument was irresistible that such far-spread manifestations of the same character must necessarily spring from a common cause.

If so, then these mysterious subterranean workings also pointed to the pending evolution of some common result; it might take the shape of some terrific upheaval and convulsion that would reduce the British Isles to their primeval form, submerge them in the sea, or even change the face of Western Europe.

Still these were but dark shadows and dread potentialities. Time alone could show whether events would verify such grim forebodings. But, meanwhile, there was one concrete and absorbing fact--the presence in England of the invading foreigner. This, at least, was a stern reality, pressing and predominant. The terrible Three Hundred still held the Fort; the great guns still roared and boomed, the pom-poms worked incessantly. Stiffened forms in increasing numbers strewed Castle Hill; the numbers of the dead and dying mounted daily.

The highest military authorities now were constantly engaged in vehement and anxious conference with Major Wardlaw. The discussions, renewed again and again, early and late, had dealt with all aspects of the existing problem, had touched on and passed by many suggested expedients. One project, in particular, had excited much difference of opinion. Urgent advice had been given officially and through the newspapers to call the air-ships into play. Fort Warden, turtle-roofed, was supposed to be entirely bomb-proof, but it was argued that if all the air-ships in England--some 200--were to concentrate above the Fort and pour down bombs and explosives in great quantities, the result could hardly fail to terrify, if not to annihilate, the obstinate defenders. But Edgar Wardlaw shook his head. He alone knew the enormous resisting power that he had built up against this very contingency of warfare.

Moreover, there were the obligations of treaties to be remembered. Air-ships were not to be used in warfare. International compacts on the subject of aerial navigation must be respected. To set a dishonourable example by disregarding them for our own immediate purpose might lead to disastrous international results. Two, and more than two, could play at such a game as that!

And even, while the idea was being mooted, its immediate adoption became impossible. In a single night every English air-ship, the whereabouts of which was known, sustained mysterious, and, in most cases, irreparable damage. Such a discovery could not be concealed from the public. It was clear that some great and elaborate conspiracy was afoot, that the agents of the enemy were numerous, active, and daring, here in the very heart of England. It was clear, too, that the Government had been caught napping, and only too probable that worse surprises might yet befall the country. The police, it is true, made several arrests of suspected persons, but prevention, not cure, was the national desideratum. While the grass grew the steed might starve. Of what avail the slow formalities of legal, investigation, the jog-trot of red-tape routine, when the enemy was already at the gate, aye, in the heart of the citadel?

In this crisis it transpired that the _Bladud_ was the only air-ship unaccounted for. There were conflicting statements about her recent movements; but presently it became known that she had been lent by the late President to a young Canadian friend named Linton Herrick. Mr. Herrick had been seen to go up with Wilton, the Engineer, and it was believed that subsequently the _Bladud_ had been identified with an air-ship that had been seen travelling rapidly, and at a considerable altitude, over the English Channel.