The Lost Road, etc.

R >> Richard Harding Davis >> The Lost Road, etc.

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The audience now was dispersing. The nurse-maids had collected
their charges, the musicians were taking apart their music-racks,
and from the steps of the vine-covered veranda Admiral Preble was
bidding the friends of his wife adieu. At his side his aide, young,
alert, confident, with ill-concealed impatience awaited their departure.
Swanson found that he resented the aide. He resented the manner in
which he speeded the parting guests. Even if there were matters of
importance he was anxious to communicate to his chief, he need not
make it plain to the women folk that they were in the way.

When, a month before, he had been adjutant, in a like situation he
would have shown more self-command. He disapproved of the aide
entirely. He resented the fact that he was as young as himself,
that he was in uniform, that he was an aide. Swanson certainly
hoped that when he was in uniform he had not looked so much the
conquering hero, so self-satisfied, so supercilious. With a smile
he wondered why, at such a moment, a man he had never seen
before, and never would see again, should so disturb him.

In his heart he knew. The aide was going forward just where he
was leaving off. The ribbons on the tunic of the aide, the straps
on his shoulders, told Swanson that they had served in the same
campaigns, that they were of the same relative rank, and that
when he himself, had he remained in the service, would have been
a brigadier-general the aide would command a battle-ship. The
possible future of the young sailor filled Swanson with honorable
envy and bitter regret. With all his soul he envied him the right
to look his fellow man in the eye, his right to die for his country,
to give his life, should it be required of him, for ninety million
people, for a flag. Swanson saw the two officers dimly, with eyes
of bitter self-pity. He was dying, but he was not dying gloriously
for a flag. He had lost the right to die for it, and he was dying
because he had lost that right.

The sun had sunk and the evening had grown chill. At the wharf
where the steamer lay on which he had arrived, but on which he
was not to depart, the electric cargo lights were already burning.
But for what Swanson had to do there still was light enough.
From his breast-pocket he took the card on which he had
written his message to his brother officers, read and reread it,
and replaced it.

Save for the admiral and his aide at the steps of the cottage,
and a bareheaded bluejacket who was reporting to them, and the
admiral's orderly, who was walking toward Swanson, no one was
in sight. Still seated upon the stringpiece of the wharf, Swanson
so moved that his back was toward the four men. The moment
seemed propitious, almost as though it had been prearranged. For
with such an audience, for his taking off no other person could be
blamed. There would be no question but that death had been
self-inflicted.

Approaching from behind him Swanson heard the brisk steps of the
orderly drawing rapidly nearer. He wondered if the wharf were
government property, if he were trespassing, and if for that reason
the man had been sent to order him away. He considered bitterly
that the government grudged him a place even in which to die.
Well, he would not for long be a trespasser. His hand slipped
into his pocket, with his thumb he lowered the safety-catch of
the pistol.

But the hand with the pistol in it did not leave his pocket. The
steps of the orderly had come to a sudden silence. Raising his
head heavily, Swanson saw the man, with his eyes fixed upon him,
standing at salute. They had first made his life unsupportable,
Swanson thought, now they would not let him leave it.

"Captain Swanson, sir?" asked the orderly.

Swanson did not speak or move.

"The admiral's compliments, sir," snapped the orderly, "and will
the captain please speak with him?"

Still Swanson did not move.

He felt that the breaking-point of his self-control had come.
This impertinent interruption, this thrusting into the last few
seconds of his life of a reminder of all that he had lost, this
futile postponement of his end, was cruel, unhuman, unthinkable.
The pistol was still in his hand. He had but to draw it and
press it close, and before the marine could leap upon him he
would have escaped.

From behind, approaching hurriedly, came the sound of
impatient footsteps.

The orderly stiffened to attention. "The admiral!" he warned.

Twelve years of discipline, twelve years of recognition of authority,
twelve years of deference to superior officers, dragged Swanson's
hand from his pistol and lifted him to his feet. As he turned,
Admiral Preble, the aide, and the bareheaded bluejacket were
close upon him. The admiral's face beamed, his eyes were young
with pleasurable excitement; with the eagerness of a boy he waved
aside formal greetings.

"My dear Swanson," he cried, "I assure you it's a most astonishing,
most curious coincidence! See this man?" He flung out his arm at
the bluejacket. "He's my wireless chief. He was wireless operator
on the transport that took you to Manila. When you came in here
this afternoon he recognized you. Half an hour later he picks up
a message--picks it up two thousand miles from here--from San
Francisco--Associated Press news--it concerns you; that is, not
really concerns you, but I thought, we thought"-as though
signalling for help, the admiral glanced unhappily at his aide-
"we thought you'd like to know. Of course, to us," he added
hastily, "it's quite superfluous--quite superfluous, but--"

The aide coughed apologetically. "You might read, sir," he
suggested.

"What? Exactly! Quite so!" cried the admiral.

In the fading light he held close to his eyes a piece of paper.

"San Francisco, April 20," he read. "Rueff, first sergeant, shot
himself here to-day, leaving written confession theft of regimental
funds for which Swanson, captain, lately court-martialled. Money
found intact in Rueff's mattress. Innocence of Swanson never
questioned, but dissatisfied with findings of court-martial has
left army. Brother officers making every effort to find him and
persuade return."

The admiral sighed happily. "And my wife," he added, with an
impressiveness that was intended to show he had at last arrived
at the important part of his message, "says you are to stay to
dinner."

Abruptly, rudely, Swanson swung upon his heel and turned his face
from the admiral. His head was thrown back, his arms held rigid
at his sides. In slow, deep breaths, like one who had been dragged
from drowning, he drank in the salt, chill air. After one glance the
four men also turned, and in the falling darkness stood staring at
nothing, and no one spoke.

The aide was the first to break the silence. In a polite tone, as
though he were continuing a conversation which had not been
interrupted, he addressed the admiral. "Of course, Rueff's written
confession was not needed," he said.

"His shooting himself proved that he was guilty."

Swanson started as though across his naked shoulders the aide had
drawn a whip.

In penitence and gratitude he raised his eyes to the stars. High
above his head the strands of the wireless, swinging from the
towering masts like the strings of a giant Aeolian harp, were
swept by the wind from the ocean. To Swanson the sighing and
whispering wires sang in praise and thanksgiving.

THE GOD OF COINCIDENCE

The God of Coincidence is fortunate in possessing innumerable
press agents. They have made the length of his arm a proverb. How
at exactly the right moment he extends it across continents and
drags two and two together, thus causing four to result where but
for him sixes and sevens would have obtained, they have made
known to the readers of all of our best magazines. For instance,
Holworthy is leaving for the Congo to find a cure for the sleeping
sickness, and for himself any sickness from which one is warranted
never to wake up. This is his condition because the beautiful
million-heiress who is wintering at the Alexander Young Hotel
in Honolulu has refused to answer his letters, cables, and appeals.

He is leaning upon the rail taking his last neck-breaking look at
the Woolworth Building. The going-ashore bugle has sounded,
pocket-handkerchiefs are waving; and Joe Hutton, the last visitor
to leave the ship, is at the gangway.

"Good-by, Holworthy!" he calls. "Where do you keep yourself?
Haven't seen you at the club in a year!"

"Haven't been there in a year--nor mean to!" is the ungracious
reply of our hero.

"Then, for Heaven's sake," exclaims Hutton, "send some one to
take your mail out of the H box! Every time I look for letters
I wade through yours."

"Tear them up!" calls Holworthy. "They're bills."

Hutton now is half-way down the gangplank.

"Then your creditors," he shouts back, "must all live at the
Alexander Young Hotel in Honolulu!"

That night an express train shrieking through the darkness
carried with it toward San Francisco--

In this how evident is the fine Italian hand of the God of
Coincidence!

Had Hutton's name begun with an M; had the H in Hutton been
silent; had he not carried to the Mauretania a steamer basket for
his rich aunt; had he not resented the fact that since Holworthy's
election to the Van Sturtevant Club he had ceased to visit the
Grill Club--a cure for sleeping sickness might have been discovered;
but two loving hearts never would have been reunited and that story
would not have been written.

Or, Mrs. Montclair, with a suit-case, is leaving her home forever
to join handsome Harry Bellairs, who is at the corner with a
racing-car and all the money of the bank of which he has been
cashier. As the guilty woman places the farewell letter against
the pin-cushion where her husband will be sure to find it, her
infant son turns in his sleep and jabs himself with a pin. His
howl of anguish resembles that of a puppy on a moonlight night.
The mother recognizes her master's voice. She believes her child
dying, flies to the bedside, tears up the letter, unpacks the suit-case.
The next morning at breakfast her husband, reading the newspaper,
exclaims aloud:

"Harry Bellairs," he cries, "has skipped with the bank's money! I
always told you he was not a man you ought to know."

"His manner to me," she says severely, "always was that of a
perfect gentleman."

Again coincidence gets the credit. Had not the child tossed--had
not at the critical moment the safety pin proved untrue to the man
who invented it--that happy family reunion would have been
impossible.

Or, it might be told this way:

Old Man McCurdy, the Pig-Iron King, forbids his daughter Gwendolyn
even to think of marrying poor but honest Beef Walters, the baseball
pitcher, and denies him his house. The lovers plan an elopement.
At midnight Beef is to stand at the tradesman's entrance and whistle
"Waiting at the Church"; and down the silent stairs Gwendolyn is to
steal into his arms. At the very same hour the butler has planned with
the policeman on fixed post to steal Mother McCurdy's diamonds
and pass them to a brother of the policeman, who is to wait at the
tradesman's entrance and whistle "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee."

This sounds improbable--especially that the policeman would
allow even his brother to get the diamonds before he did; but,
with the God of Coincidence on the job, you shall see that it
will all come out right. Beef is first at the door. He whistles.
The butler--an English butler--with no ear for music, shoves into
his hands tiaras and sunbursts. Honest Beef hands over the butler
to the policeman and the tiaras to Mother McCurdy.

"How can I reward you?" exclaims the grateful woman.

"Your daughter's hand!"

Again the God of Coincidence scores and Beef Walters is credited
with an assist. And for preventing the robbery McCurdy has the
peg-post cop made a captain; thus enabling him to wear diamonds
of his own and raising him above the need of taking them from
others.

These examples of what the god can do are mere fiction; the story
that comes now really happened. It also is a story of coincidence.
It shows how this time the long arm was stretched out to make two
young people happy; it again illustrates that, in the instruments he
chooses, the God of Coincidence works in a mysterious way his
wonders to perform. This time the tool he used was a hat of green felt.

The story really should be called "The Man in the Green Hat."

At St. James's Palace the plenipotentiaries of the Allies and of Turkey
were trying to bring peace to Europe; in Russell Square, Bloomsbury,
Sam Lowell was trying to arrange a peace with Mrs. Wroxton, his
landlady. The ultimatum of the Allies was: "Adrianople or fight!"
The last words of Mrs. Wroxton were: "Five pounds or move out!"

Sam did not have five pounds. He was a stranger in London; he had
lost his position in New York and that very morning had refused to
marry the girl he loved--Polly Seward, the young woman the Sunday
papers called "The Richest Girl in America."

For any man--for one day--that would seem to be trouble enough; but
to the Sultan of Turkey that day brought troubles far more serious.
And, as his losses were Sam's gain, we must follow the troubles of
the Sultan. Until, with the aid of a green felt hat, the God of
Coincidence turns the misfortunes of the Sultan into a fortune
for Sam, Sam must wait.

From the first days of the peace conference it was evident there
was a leak. The negotiations had been opened under a most solemn
oath of secrecy. As to the progress of the conference, only such
information or misinformation--if the diplomats considered it better-
as was mutually agreed upon by the plenipotentiaries was given to
a waiting world. But each morning, in addition to the official report
of the proceedings of the day previous, one newspaper, the Times,
published an account which differed from that in every other paper,
and which undoubtedly came from the inside. In details it was far
more generous than the official report; it gave names, speeches,
arguments; it described the wordy battles of the diplomats, the
concessions, bluffs, bargains.

After three days the matter became public scandal. At first, the
plenipotentiaries declared the events described in the Times were
invented each evening in the office of the Times; but the proceedings
of the day following showed the public this was not so.

Some one actually present at the conference was telling tales out
of school. These tales were cabled to Belgrade, Sofia, Athens,
Constantinople; and hourly from those capitals the plenipotentiaries
were assailed by advice, abuse, and threats. The whole world began
to take part in their negotiations; from every side they were attacked;
from home by the Young Turks, or the On to Constantinople Party;
and from abroad by peace societies, religious bodies, and chambers
of commerce. Even the armies in the field, instead of waiting for the
result of their deliberations, told them what to do, and that unless
they did it they would better remain in exile. To make matters worse,
in every stock exchange gambling on the news furnished by the Times
threatened the financial peace of Europe. To work under such
conditions of publicity was impossible. The delegates appealed to
their hosts of the British Foreign Office.

Unless the chiel amang them takin' notes was discovered and the
leak stopped, they declared the conference must end. Spurred on
by questions in Parliament, by appeals from the great banking world,
by criticisms not altogether unselfish from the other newspapers,
the Foreign Office surrounded St. James's Palace and the office
of the Times with an army of spies. Every secretary, stenographer,
and attendant at the conference was under surveillance, his past
record looked into, his present comings and goings noted. Even
the plenipotentiaries themselves were watched; and employees of
the Times were secretly urged to sell the government the man who
was selling secrets to them. But those who were willing to be "urged"
did not know the man; those who did know him refused to be bought.

By a process of elimination suspicion finally rested upon one
Adolf Hertz, a young Hungarian scholar who spoke and wrote all
the mongrel languages of the Balkans; who for years, as a copying
clerk and translator, had been employed by the Foreign Office,
and who now by it had been lent to the conference. For the reason
that when he lived in Budapest he was a correspondent of the
Times, the police, in seeking for the leak, centred their attention
upon Hertz. But, though every moment he was watched, and though
Hertz knew he was watched, no present link between him and the
Times had been established- and this in spite of the fact that the
hours during which it was necessary to keep him under closest
observation were few. Those were the hours between the closing
of the conference, and midnight, when the provincial edition of the
Times went to press. For the remainder of the day, so far as the
police cared, Hertz could go to the devil! But for those hours,
except when on his return from the conference he locked himself
in his lodgings in Jermyn Street, detectives were always at his elbow.

It was supposed that it was during this brief period when he was
locked in his room that he wrote his report; but how, later, he
conveyed it to the Times no one could discover. In his rooms there
was no telephone; his doors and windows were openly watched;
and after leaving his rooms his movements were--as they always
had been--methodical, following a routine open to observation.
His programme was invariably the same. Each night at seven from
his front door he walked west. At Regent Street he stopped to buy
an evening paper from the aged news-vender at the corner; he then
crossed Piccadilly Circus into Coventry Street, skirted Leicester
Square, and at the end of Green Street entered Pavoni's Italian
restaurant. There he took his seat always at the same table, hung
his hat always on the same brass peg, ordered the same Hungarian
wine, and read the same evening paper. He spoke to no one; no one
spoke to him.

When he had finished his coffee and his cigarette he returned to
his lodgings, and there he remained until he rang for breakfast.
From the time at which he left his home until his return to it he
spoke to only two persons--the news-vender to whom he handed
a halfpenny; the waiter who served him the regular table d'hote
dinner--between whom and Hertz nothing passed but three and six
for the dinner and sixpence for the waiter himself.

Each evening, the moment he moved into the street a plain-clothes
man fell into step beside him; another followed at his heels; and
from across the street more plain-clothes men kept their eyes on
every one approaching him in front or from the rear. When he
bought his evening paper six pairs of eyes watched him place a
halfpenny in the hand of the news-vender, and during the entire
time of his stay in Pavoni's every mouthful he ate was noted-
-
every direction he gave the waiter was overheard.

Of this surveillance Hertz was well aware. To have been ignorant
of it would have argued him blind and imbecile. But he showed no
resentment. With eyes grave and untroubled, he steadily regarded
his escort; but not by the hastening of a footstep or the acceleration
of a gesture did he admit that by his audience he was either distressed
or embarrassed. That was the situation on the morning when the
Treaty of London was to be signed and sealed.

In spite of the publicity given to the conference by the Times,
however, what the terms of the treaty might be no one knew. If
Adrianople were surrendered; if Salonika were given to Greece; if
Servia obtained a right-of-way to the Adriatic--peace was assured;
but, should the Young Turks refuse--should Austria prove obstinate-
not only would the war continue, but the Powers would be involved,
and that greater, more awful war--the war dreaded by all the Christian
world--might turn Europe into a slaughter-house.

Would Turkey and Austria consent and peace ensue? Would they
refuse and war follow? That morning those were the questions on
the lips of every man in London save one. He was Sam Lowell; and
he was asking himself another and more personal question: "How
can I find five pounds and pacify Mrs. Wroxton?"

He had friends in New York who would cable him money to pay his
passage home; but he did not want to go home. He preferred to
starve in London than be vulgarly rich anywhere else. That was
not because he loved London, but because above everything in life
he loved Polly Seward--and Polly Seward was in London. He had
begun to love her on class day of his senior year; and, after his
father died and left him with no one else to care for, every day
he had loved her more.

Until a month before he had been in the office of Wetmore &
Hastings, a smart brokers' firm in Wall Street. He had obtained
the position not because he was of any use to Wetmore & Hastings,
but because the firm was the one through which his father had
gambled the money that would otherwise have gone to Sam. In
giving Sam a job the firm thought it was making restitution. Sam
thought it was making the punishment fit the crime; for he knew
nothing of the ways of Wall Street, and having to learn them bored
him extremely. He wanted to write stories for the magazines. He
wanted to bind them in a book and dedicate them to Polly. And
in this wish editors humored him--but not so many editors or with
such enthusiasm as to warrant his turning his back on Wall Street.

That he did later when, after a tour of the world that had begun
from the San Francisco side, Polly Seward and her mother and
Senator Seward reached Naples. There Senator Seward bought
old Italian furniture for his office on the twenty-fifth floor of the
perfectly new Seward building. Mrs. Seward tried to buy for Polly
a prince nearly as old as the furniture, and Polly bought picture
post-cards which she sent to Sam.

Polly had been absent six months, and Sam's endurance had been so
timed as just to last out the half-year. It was not guaranteed to
withstand any change of schedule, and the two months' delay in
Italy broke his heart. It could not run overtime on a starvation
diet of post-cards; so when he received a cable reading, "Address
London, Claridge's," his heart told him it could no longer wait-
and he resigned his position and sailed.

On her trip round the world Polly had learned many things. She
was observant, alert, intent on asking questions, hungering for
facts. And a charming young woman who seeks facts rather than
attention will never lack either. But of all the facts Polly collected,
the one of surpassing interest, and which gave her the greatest
happiness, was that she could not live without Sam Lowell. She
had suspected this, and it was partly to make sure that she had
consented to the trip round the world. Now that she had made
sure, she could not too soon make up for the days lost. Sam had
spent his money, and he either must return to New York and earn
more or remain near Polly and starve. It was an embarrassing
choice. Polly herself made the choice even more difficult.

One morning when they walked in St. James's Park to feed the
ducks she said to him:

"Sam, when are we to be married?"

When for three years a man has been begging a girl to marry him,
and she consents at the exact moment when, without capitulation
to all that he holds honorable, he cannot marry anybody, his
position deserves sympathy.

"My dear one," exclaimed the unhappy youth, "you make me the
most miserable of men! I can't marry! I'm in an awful place! If I
married you now I'd be a crook! It isn't a question of love in a
cottage, with bread and cheese. If cottages were renting for a
dollar a year I couldn't rent one for ten minutes. I haven't cheese
enough to bait a mouse-trap. It's terrible! But we have got to wait."

"Wait!" cried Polly. "I thought you had been waiting! Have I been
away too long? Do you love some one else?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" said Sam crossly. "Look at me," he
commanded, "and tell me whom I love!"

Polly did not take time to look.

"But I," she protested, "have so much money!"

"It's not your money," explained Sam. "It's your mother's money
or your father's, and both of them dislike me. They even have told
me so. Your mother wants you to marry that Italian; and your
father, having half the money in America, naturally wants to
marry you to the other half. If I were selfish and married you
I'd be all the things they think I am."

"You are selfish!" cried Polly. "You're thinking of yourself and
of what people will say, instead of how to make me happy. What's
the use of money if you can't buy what you want?"

"Are you suggesting you can buy me?" demanded Sam.

"Surely," said Polly--"if I can't get you any other way. And you
may name your own price, too."

"When I am making enough to support myself without sponging on
you," explained Sam, "you can have as many millions as you like;
but I must first make enough to keep me alive. A man who can't do
that isn't fit to marry."

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