The Men Who Wrought. Cullum Ridgwell
birth up. They were the friends of his whole life, and their possible latent treachery was unthinkable to him. He propped his face between his two hands and sank his elbows deep into the heather. Then, like some schoolboy, his feet were raised behind him, and crossed, while his eyes searched that mysterious horizon lost in the shadows of a perfect night.
It has been said that Ruxton Farlow was an idealist. But let there be no misapprehension about it. His idealism was practical and full of sanity. He was no visionary. His mind was ever groping for the material welfare of his country. The moral welfare, he felt, should be in hands far more capable in that direction than his life and learning had made his. It had been his habit of life to feed his mind upon hard and incontrovertible facts which bore upon the goal of his ideals. He accepted nothing which was merely backed by academic logic. He demanded the logic of practice. Theory was impossible to him, unless that theory was demonstrated in practice. Thus it was he kept his mind alert for facts—and again facts.
The facts which concerned him at the moment were many, and he found in them all, when arranged in due order, one stream like some rushing river which raced on its tempestuous way to the wide sea of disaster beyond.
The starting-point of his facts was the truth that no modern combination of force, however superlative its effort, could crush out of international existence the power of two peoples with aggregate populations of virile strength of some hundred and odd million souls. The war had proved that. And the only possible peace resulting from it had added the conviction that, from a peace point of view, the war had proved utterly useless and damaging. Besides the enormous expenditure of treasure and the vast sacrifices of human life, it had given the world a nominal peace backed by an aggravation of international hatred and spleen a thousand times greater than had ever been known in history since the days of bare-limbed savagery.
What then was the outlook? The man stirred with that nervous suggestion of a disturbed mind. War—war! On every hand war—again. Once again all the moral development of the human race towards those higher planes of light, learning, and religious ideals was shadowed by the spectre which during the last three years had flung men back to the shadows of an ancient savagery and barbarism.
The savage mind of the Teuton had broken out into a fierce conflagration of barbarism. Again it would smoulder, like some slumbering volcano, only to break out again when the arrogance of the German heart told it that the time was ripe to avenge the indignity of its earlier failure.
Ruxton Farlow accepted this as his basis of fact, and followed the river down its turbulent course towards that sea of disaster which he already saw looming ahead. It required no imagination. The course was a straight one, straight as the crow flies. For that passion of hatred which inspired the flood brooked no obstruction to its course. It clamored for its goal and swept all side issues out of its path. Great Britain lay in that sea beyond. Great Britain, who, in German eyes, owned the earth, and incidentally had snatched even those inadequate colonies from her bosom, which, through long years of diplomatic trickery, she had contrived to acquire. The Prussian passion for conquest had been changed through the late war to the passionate national hatred of the German people against Great Britain. This was clear. So clear that the light which shone upon it was painful to his mental vision.
What then was the resulting position of the country he loved? The lessons of the war were many—so many. Yet preëminently outstanding was one fact which smothered all others in its significance, and reduced them all almost to nothingness. His father had dwelt upon the lack of national spirit when war broke out. That had been remedied. The country had changed during those three years of suffering and sacrifice. No, his father had missed the great lesson. Yet it was so simple—so simple.
The man raised his head higher, and folded his arms under him as a support. He gazed down at the calm summer moonlit sea. So calm, so peaceful, so—seductive to the straining mind.
He began to realize the yearning of the suicide for the peace beyond life. How easy to solve all problems. How easy to rid oneself of the duties, the harassing, cruel duties imposed by the Creator of all life. The soft murmur of the breaking swell upon the beach below. One plunge beneath that shimmering surface and—nothing. In that instant there flashed through his mind a memory of just such another sea. The perfect summer sea. The great ship, one of the wonders of the age. A stealing trail of foam across the glass-like surface. An explosion. Then fifteen hundred souls solve the problem of that—nothing! Ah, that was it. That was the Danger. He knew. Every thinking human being knew that if Germany had begun war with a fleet of some three or four hundred submarines, three weeks would have terminated the war so far as Britain was concerned.
He moved over on to his side, and his movement was a further expression of nervous tension. He propped his head upon one hand with his eyes fixed on the vague horizon beyond which the Teutonic giant was peacefully slumbering, and his thought was spoken aloud.
"Is he slumbering?" he asked of the sea. "Is he? Will he ever sleep again? No, I think not. Not at least while there is a chance that his intelligence behind the machine can render an island home untenable."
"Night claims from the overburdened soul the truth which daylight is denied."
Ruxton Farlow sat up with a jolt. His dark, searching eyes were turned from the sea. They were turned in the direction whence the voice, which had answered him, had proceeded. In the brilliant moonlight he saw the outline of a figure standing upon the footpath which ran parallel to the coast-line. The figure was not quite distinct, but it was clearly a woman's, which corroborated the conviction he had received at the sound of the voice.
"But for once she has betrayed her—trust," he said, and a feeling of irritation swept over him that he had permitted himself to respond to the challenge of this stranger, who was probably something in the nature of one of life's vagrants, wandering homeless over the deserted ways of the countryside.
Then he discovered to his further annoyance that his response had brought forth its logical result. The figure was moving towards him, and as it drew near he became aware of that delightful feminine rustle which no man ever yet found unseductive.
The woman made no verbal reply until she was standing before him. Ruxton was still sitting on the heather, but his eyes were wide with astonished admiration, and his clean-shaven lips were parted, which added to his whole expression of incredulous amazement.
The woman standing before him was no vagrant, unless a vagrant could possess a queenly presence, and an attire which suggested the best efforts of London or Paris. He stared, stared as might some schoolboy budding into manhood at the sight of a perfect womanhood. Then, in a moment, questions raced through his head. Who was she, and where—where did she come from? What freak of fortune had set her wandering those cliffs alone—and at night?
She was beautifully tall and crowned with a royal wealth of hair which remained hatless. Its color was not certain in the moonlight, but Ruxton felt that it must be red-gold. He could think of no other color which could match such a presence. Her figure, sharply outlined in the moonlight, was superb. It suggested all he had ever seen in those ardent dreams of youth. Her face possessed something of the reflected glory of the moon lit by eyes whose color was hidden from him, but which shone like great dull jewels full of a living fire.
All these things he realized in one swift comprehensive glance. But in another moment his whole attention was absorbed by the rich voice, the tones of which were like the softest music of some foreign southern land.
"It is scarcely fair to blame the night," she said, in smiling protest.
All unprepared for the encounter Ruxton had nothing but a stupid monosyllable to offer.
"No," he said, and a sigh somehow escaped him.
Then, in a moment, the blood was set swiftly pulsating through his veins.
"May I sit down?" the woman enquired. "I have had a long walk, and am a little tired," she added in explanation.
But she waited for no permission. And somehow Ruxton felt that her expression of weariness was far below the mark. She appeared quite exhausted.
"You are more than a little