As they passed through one of the swing-gates on the seawall, Brenda turned her head, and in a moment the characteristic beauty of the sunset caught her attention.
“Look!” she exclaimed in little more than a whisper.
He obeyed, closing the gate, and resting his arms upon it. Thus they stood, side by side, without speaking. She in her pure upright maidenhood, with the sunset glow warming her refined face with a hue of great beauty, for her eyes were deep and pensive as woman’s eyes rarely are, while her sweet lips were parted with a simple faithful wonderment which was almost childlike. He rested his arms upon the gray, moss-grown oak of the gate, and looked upon the hopeless scene with meekly contemplative eyes. His square chin was thrust forward, and the indescribable incongruity of his face was absurdly prominent. There was a great strength and a wondrous softness, a mighty courage and a meek resignation, an indefatigable energy and a philosophic calm. All these were suggested at once in this strange Napoleonic face. So may the great Bonaparte have leant his arms upon yon low wall at Saint Helena, and wondered over the utter incomprehensibility of human existence.
It was Brenda who at last broke the silence, without moving limb or muscle.
“So you are going on Monday?”
“Yes … I must.”
Something in his voice caused her breath to come quickly.
“But you will come back?” she whispered almost pleadingly.
He moved, and laid his strong bare hand over the small gloved fingers resting on the gate.
“Yes, Brenda. I will come back!”
Then they turned and walked home in silence.
That was their farewell. They never spoke together again in confidence before he left on the Monday morning. There was, indeed, a pressure of the hand and a cheery word of parting on the little platform of Wyvenwich Station; but their two souls went out unto each other, and stood face to face in one long agonized ecstasy of parting by that old oaken gate upon the seawall.
XII
At Work
I have often wondered why blasphemy is excusable when it is spoken from a throne. It seems to me that many crimes have been deliberately set forth upon paper under the exculpating heading of, “In the name of God—Amen. We,” etc., etc. This thought cannot well escape suggestion while perusing a declaration of war. It is a subterfuge—a mean attempt to assign the responsibility to One who is mightier than princes or potentates. God does not declare war—it is man.
On the twenty-fourth day of April, eighteen hundred and seventy-seven, the Czar of all the Russias gave forth to his people that, bowing his head to the evident desire of the Almighty, he reluctantly declared war against the Ottoman Empire. There was much rhetoric about Christian nations suffering beneath the lash of Mohammedan hatred; stories were told of shocking cruelties practised upon an oppressed people, coldly worded statements were made of misgovernment, misappropriation, theft. And the remedy to all these was, if it may please you, war! From the formal declaration, with its pharisaical self-laudation, its rolling periods and mock reluctance, fourteen letters might have been selected, and set in order so as to spell a single word in which lay the explanation of it all. That word was—“Constantinople.”
Before the official opening of hostilities, Russia was prepared, and Turkey (despite a long warning) but half ready, as usual. The Russian troops entered Romania and Turkish Armenia at once, the inhabitants of both countries, with Oriental readiness, receiving them as deliverers. The day following the declaration of war saw the occupation of the town of Galatz.
Theodore Trist had, as he told Brenda he intended, taken up his quarters in this small town upon the Danube, and actually passed through its streets in the midst of the Northern troops unsuspected. When the conquerors had shaken down into their new quarters, and military discipline was beginning to make itself felt throughout the city, he discreetly vanished, and, crossing the Danube in a small boat, made his way South. At this time England began to receive the benefit of a brilliantly conceived and steadily executed plan of transmitting news. Trist and his two lieutenants appeared to haunt the entirety of the Ottoman Empire. One of them appeared to find himself invariably within reach of any spot where events of interest might be occurring. And from this time until the end of the great war this ceaseless flow of carefully-sifted information continued to set eastward to Paris and London. The first official notice taken was an imperial decree, forbidding the admittance into Russia of the French and English journals to which Trist was attached as war-correspondent. This heavy punishment in no way affected the equanimity of these mistaken organs, of which the circulation in the Northern empire had never attained a height worth consideration or even mention. A sackful of copies under private addresses had been the utmost limit, and out of these the majority were usually lost in transmission with that patient, bland persistency by means of which the Russian Government usually succeeds in quelling any private and individual attempt to learn what the world is saying. It is remarkable how little is known in England of the method of procedure in a country so near at hand as Russia. I verily believe that Hong Kong is better known than Moscow, Valparaiso than Tver. It is, for instance, a matter of surprise to many intelligent English men and women to learn that our newspapers are, with one or two exceptions, forbidden entrance into the Czar’s dominions. And in the case of those exceptions there is no circulation—each copy comes under a private cover, with the probability of being opened several times on
