"Promising to marry Von Salzinger? If I had been in your place I shouldn't have promised. I'd have married him right off if it were to save me from being murdered." Then his laugh died out abruptly. "Don't think of it, my beautiful Vita. Don't ever let the thought of it enter your dear, dear head again. If ever a poor defenceless woman went through an earthly h.e.l.l, you did. Sweetheart, it's my sole purpose in life now to endeavor to place you in an earthly heaven."

He drew her to him in a pa.s.sionate embrace. And so their lips met and lingered.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

AFTER TWELVE MONTHS

The shock which electrified London was reminiscent of the shocks to which it was submitted in the early days of the war, when the "Yellow"

press ran riot, and journalists dipped deeply into their reservoirs of superlatives to generate the current of sensation which should sell their papers.

It was a misty afternoon, with an almost intangible yet saturating drizzle; a setting admirably fitting an evening newspaper thrill.

Spirits were at a sufficiently low ebb for something of a screaming nature. Fleet Street did its best; a best at no time to be despised.

It came as the homeward rush began from the offices of the great metropolis. It stared out from street corners and the fronting of bookstalls. It looked up from the greasy pavements. It served to hide a portion of the rags which hung about the nether limbs of small street urchins. It came in strident, raucous tones upon the moisture-laden atmosphere. There was no escaping it. That which escaped the eyes thrust itself upon defenceless ear. And its urgent note created the necessary excitement in minds set upon the task of making the homeward journey with the least possible delay.

Then, at once, the careless eye was caught and held. "Under Water: The World Defied," cried one contents bill. "The New Submersible Merchantman," announced one of the more sedate journals. "The Great Problem Solved," cryptically suggested a buff-tinted sheet. "From Downing Street to the Deeps," smiled the more flippant pink announcement. And so on through the whole jargon of the press poster.

There was no escape from it. The word "submersible" seemed to fill the whole of the wretched winter atmosphere. And, as was intended, it caught the London fancy, and deflected purpose into the channel it desired.

London was startled; and when London is startled by its press it is no n.i.g.g.ard. Therefore the rain of coppers which set in became perilously near a deluge. The small boys s.n.a.t.c.hed, and the old sinners with grey whiskers and weather-stained faces swept in their harvest. The bookstall attendants dealt out their papers in a steady, accurate stream, and, within an hour, the whole of London's democracy had formulated its definite opinion upon the new adventure, in the dogmatic manner of the British ratepayer.

Strange and mixed were many of the opinions which flew from lip to lip in the overcrowded homeward bound trains and 'buses. True, there were many who read the well-told story of the skilful journalist as they might read a sensational tale in a sixpenny magazine. They enjoyed it.

They devoured it hungrily. Then they pa.s.sed on to the sports page, and considered the doings of their favorites in the sporting world. But the suburban ratepayer, the householder whose responsibilities left him no alternative but to take himself seriously, was of a different calibre.

He possesses to the full the stolid, fault-finding mind of the British race. He is as full of prejudice as the egg is supposed to be full of meat. He is ready at all times to hurl blame and anathema at the heads of those who conspire to extract from his pocket the necessary funds to contrive that he shall live in security and comfort in his home. He is the victim of a splendid pessimism for all things except his summer holiday. His opinions come like a shot from a gun.

He read with incredulity until he arrived at the point where he felt righteously he could open afresh the rut of his ever-ready disapproval.

Then the full force of what he read percolated heavily through his fog of prejudiced incredulity, and virtuous indignation supervened.

"What was this absurd nonsense? Who ever heard of submersible merchantmen? What fresh folly of the Government was coming now? The Prime Minister on the trial trip. Why the devil didn't he stick to his job in Downing Street? The moment these fellows got their five thousand a year they didn't care a hang for the country. Playing about with these toys of some crazy inventor. It made one sick. Anyway, if the Government were concerned in the scheme, why was it kept secret? Why wasn't the taxpayer told of it? Who was making the money out of it?

Somebody. There was always graft in these secret things. There was too much of this hole-in-the-corner business--entirely too much. Altogether too much disregard for the liberty of the subject," etc., etc.

But the Fleet Street chorus of "epochs" and "masterly moves" and "strokes of statesmanship" found an abiding echo amongst the optimists.

They saw, with eyes wide open, that which they read. There was no grumble in them. Why should there be? That which they read told them clearly of success. It told them that never again would Britain's overseas commerce be placed in jeopardy from enemy attack in time of war; that is, if British enterprise would only rise to the opportunity afforded. That was simple enough. Of course the ship-owners would see their advantage. Germany--pah!

The men who personally felt aggrieved, however, were the professional politicians and the private Member. These men were seriously perturbed.

Here was real limelight, and they were not in it! Horrible thought!

Their course lay clearly before them. An attack upon inoffensive paper, by a pen, erroneously believed to be mightier than the sword, was their only hope of making up leeway. So those who had sufficient influence hurled broadcast the next morning, in their favorite daily papers, a wealth of ill-considered and valueless criticism and opinion of something which they were splendidly incompetent to judge.

And the cause of all the sensation? It was so small an incident, and yet so tremendous in its omen for the future. Just the story of a number of eminent men, Cabinet Ministers, naval and army men, and one or two great ship-builders, running a blockade of warships, and successfully shipping a cargo of pretended contraband of war from Dundee to Gravesend. The game had been played in deadly earnest. It was a test trip for a new type of submersible cargo and pa.s.senger vessel, pitting its powers against the concentrated might of a large squadron of the British Navy. It was a test of efficiency. The details were simple in the extreme. The laden vessel, carrying a thousand tons of merchandise and its burden of pa.s.sengers, was lying at Dundee. Outside, watching and waiting for its appearance on the high seas, lay a powerful squadron of the British Navy. The rules laid down were that the submersible should make its way to Gravesend, and the naval squadron, under war conditions, was to capture it, or place it in such a position as to be sinkable, by any means in its power, at any point upon its journey.

The result. With all the skill and power at its command the great surface squadron had proved its helplessness. The submersible had slipped out of port under cover of darkness, and from that moment, until its arrival at Gravesend, the seas had been scoured vainly for so much as a sight of it.

It was a tremendous thought. It was a splendid victory for the pacifist hope. The dead Polish inventor had been justified beyond all question.

Never had the word "epoch," such as Fleet Street loves, been better used. It was such a moment that those who made the secret journey, and witnessed the capabilities of the vessel which had been built at the Dorby yards, were flung back from all preconceived convictions of maritime affairs, established during the war, to imaginative speculation upon the vista of progress now opened up.

Not a man of them, from the Prime Minister of England down to the junior lieutenant upon the vainly striving fleet of war-vessels, but realized a picture of the doom of the magnificent and costly super-Dreadnought as the pillar of might upon which naval power must rest. Its proud office gone, it appeared to them as little greater than a means of defence against the landing of hostile man power upon Britain's vulnerable sh.o.r.es. The proud queens of the sea must pa.s.s from their exalted thrones to a lesser degree in naval armaments.

Nor was the realization without pity and regret. How could it be otherwise in the human heart which ever worships the actual display of might? It almost seemed as if the world had been suddenly given over to topsy-turveydom.

The facts, however, were irrefutable. As in the dim past the troublous surface of the seas had been conquered by the intrepid and skilful mariner, now at last the devious submarine channels had been turned into an almost equally secure highway of traffic by the inventor. The march of progress was continuing. It was invention triumphant. The world's sea-borne commerce was secured. It was held safe from enemy war-craft in the future. Therefore the doom of the proud battleship had been sounded.

Some day, perhaps, a new weapon would be achieved. Some day, perhaps, even the channels of the dark waters would be rendered insecure by the hand that had now made them safe. For the present, however, and probably for years to come, the sea-borne food supplies of Britain stood in no position of jeopardy.

It was well past midnight. The house in Smith Square quite suddenly displayed renewed signs of life. A closed motor had driven up, paused, and then pa.s.sed on. Then appeared many lights behind the small-paned Georgian windows.

Ruxton Farlow had returned home with his wife after a strenuous and exciting day; and with them was their devoted Yorkshire father, burning with the sense of a great triumph for his beloved son, and his almost equally beloved daughter.

Their journey from Gravesend earlier in the evening had been broken that they might attend an informal dinner-party at Downing Street. It was a function entirely in honor of the masters of Dorby; and it had been arranged that Ruxton's colleagues in the country's Cabinet might tender their sincere congratulations and thanks for the work which he, and his father, and his wife had achieved privately in their country's cause.

It was over; and all three were relieved and thankful. But the note of triumph surging through their hearts was still dominant. Scarcely a word had pa.s.sed between them in the brief run from Downing Street to Smith Square. Their hearts were as yet too full, and the memory of the words addressed to them by Sir Meeston and his colleagues was still too poignant to permit of normal conditions. Vita had leant back in the car, with her husband's arm linked through hers, and one of his powerful hands clasped in hers. She sat thus with thought teeming, and a heart thrilling with an unspeakable joy, and happiness, and triumph, all for the man at her side. Her own share in the events through which they had pa.s.sed was entirely forgotten by her. This man at her side filled her whole focus. He was all in all to her, as she felt he was all in all to the cause in which they had worked.

It was perhaps the profoundest and proudest moment of her life. It was a moment of perfect happiness. All she had ever dreamed of was hers; and the hand of the man she worshipped was even now, warm and strong, clasped tightly in her own. Hers to keep; hers to lean on; hers never to yield so long as their lives should last.

In the house they pa.s.sed up into the small drawing-room, and, for a few moments, they sat there before retiring. Slowly the spell of the day's events fell from them. It was finally Sir Andrew who released them from it.

He gazed across at Vita with twinkling eyes. His smile was full of kindly tenderness.

"Now, perhaps, I shall have time to appreciate the fact that at last I am the happy possessor of a beautiful daughter as well as a headstrong son," he said. Then, after the briefest hesitation: "Vita, my dear," he went on, in his old-fashioned manner, while his gaze took in the radiant beauty turned abruptly towards him, "it seems to me that the most wonderful thing in the world has happened to me. The long, lonely life seems to have entirely pa.s.sed. I mean the loneliness which only a man can feel who is deprived for all time of the a.s.sociation of his own womankind. Now at last I can draw deep comfort from the reflection of Ruxton's happiness. Now, however slight my claim, I can nevertheless _claim_ something of a woman's filial regard. The grey of life has been tinted for me since you have chosen to make my boy happy, and as time goes on I can see that tint develop into the roseate hue of a happiness I somehow never thought to feel again. Bless you, my dear, for coming into an old man's life; and you, too, my boy," he went on, turning to the smiling Ruxton, "for having given me such a daughter. I feel this is the moment for saying this. The work is done now in workmanlike fashion, and the little triumph of it all makes me want to tell you of this thing that I feel."

Vita impulsively left her husband's side. She rose from the settee and crossed over to her second father and held out both her hands.

"You have made it difficult for me to say a word----" she began, smiling down upon him with her glorious eyes. Then she seemed to become speechless.

The oriflamme of her red-gold hair shone with a delicious burnish under the shaded electric light. Her flushed oval cheek glowed with a suggestion of thrilling happiness. The old man caught and held her hands, and, the next moment, she had bent her slimly graceful body and impressed upon his rugged cheek a kiss of deep affection.

Still she remained speechless, and she turned and glanced with dewy eyes in appeal to the great husband looking on.

"Won't you help me?" she demanded wistfully.

Ruxton laughed happily.

"Help?" he said quickly. Then he shook his head. "No, no. You don't need any help. Just tell him what you once told me. You remember." His eyes became serious. "You said 'I love him almost as if he were really my own father.' He won't need more."

And Vita obeyed him, reciting the words almost like some child. But she meant them, and felt them, and at the last word her glance was full of a whimsical light as she added of her own initiative--

"And aren't you two dears going to smoke?"

Half an hour later the two men were sitting alone in Ruxton's study.

The smoke of their cigars hung heavily upon the air of the room. There had come a moment of profound silence between them. They had talked of the happenings of that day: of the test of their new submersible: its simple triumph, and all it meant in the cause of humanity, of that progress towards a lasting peace among nations which mankind was yearning to achieve.

Each man had offered his own view-point for discussion, and it seemed as if the last word had at length been spoken. But they sat on in silence, and Sir Andrew watched the reflective eyes of his idealist son. He was speculating as to what deep thought still lay unvoiced behind them, and he urged him.

"Well, boy? It has been a long day. Is it bed? Or are you going to put into words that dream I see moving behind your eyes?"