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GABRIELLE SILVESTER WRITES A LETTER

I

Gabrielle returned from the Town Hall where the meeting was held, just after ten o'clock, and was glad to see the fire burning brightly in her room. She remembered that she would never have thought of such a luxury as a fire in her bedroom prior to her visit to New York.

All agreed that it had been a very successful meeting, and that real, convincing work had been done. She herself could say, in the privacy of her own room, that the excitements of such gatherings had become a necessity to her since the strenuous days in America, and perhaps to her father also.

How changed her life since she first set foot on the deck of the Oceanic and began to know a wider world! England had seemed but a garden upon her return and its people but half awake. She had a vivid memory of the rush and roar of distant cities, of strange faces and new races, but chiefly of a discovery of self which at once frightened and perplexed her.

Would it be possible to accept without complaint the even tenor of that obscure life in Hampstead which she had suffered willingly but seven months ago? She knew that it would not, and could answer for her father also. A call had come to him and to her. She had been sure of it at the meeting, but of its nature she had yet to be wholly convinced.

Gordon Silvester, the most eloquent preacher among the Congregationalists, had gone to America at the bidding of a famous millionaire, there to bear witness to the brotherhood of man and the bond between the peoples. The achievement of the great treaty between America and the Motherland had drawn together the leading intellects of the two countries, and had culminated in that mighty assemblage in New York which had stood before the altar of the Eternal Peace and closed, as it believed for ever, the Temple of the twin-headed Janus. With the minister had gone Gabrielle, his only child, and thus for the first time during her three and twenty years had she seen any world but that of the suburban parish in which Gordon Silvester laboured.

II

It was a bitter cold night of the memorable winter with which this story is chiefly concerned.

Gabrielle wore furs, which had been purchased in Quebec, and a hat which some upon the steamer had thought a little outré for a parson's daughter. These furs she had just laid upon her bed, and was busy unpinning her hat when her father knocked at the door and asked if he might come in. She thought that he was more excited than he was wont to be in the old days, and there were blotches of crimson upon his usually sallow cheeks.

"I am just going to bed," he said in a quiet tone; "if you want anything to eat, let Jane know. The room was very hot, I think—my head is aching."

She turned with her hand still among the curls of her auburn hair, a wonderfully graceful figure for such a scene.

"You must be very tired, dear," she said very gently. "I have never heard anything more beautiful than your speech."

He took a step into the room, his hand upon the door.

"Then you think it was a success, Gabrielle?"

"I don't think at all about it; it was what Mr. Faber would have called 'electrical.'"

He let go the door, and then shut it behind him.

"Ah!" he said, as though thinking upon it, "if we could have had Faber with us."

She laughed, showing the superb whiteness of her teeth.

"The lion and the lamb. Why do you attach any importance to him?"

He crossed the room to an arm-chair and sat there, poking the fire.

"He is one of the men who can make peace or war," he said. "Sir Jules Achon agrees with me. Popular sentiment goes for much, but the men who control the destinies are the financiers."

"But, father, how could Mr. Faber control this particular situation?"

"He could set a great example of forbearance. Is he not rich enough?"

She came and sat by him near the fire. It was yet early in the most memorable winter that England has ever known, but the cold had become intense.

"I saw so little of Mr. Faber on the ship," she said reflectively; "he appeared to me to be a man who could move mountains … with somebody else's arms, to say nothing of somebody's else's spades."

"Was that your only impression of him?"

"Oh! force—hardly of character, perhaps—that and his restlessness. Why did everyone talk of him? Was it because he is worth eleven millions of money? Was that all that could be said of him?"

"A very good reason nowadays. They say he has a contract with the French Government for five millions of the new rifles. Permissible exaggeration makes him the arbiter of peace or war. Did he not give you that impression?"

"I hardly think so; he was mostly concerned about his boarhound's dinner. As far as I remember, he considers our party just harmless lunatics. I made him confess as much one day."

Silvester passed by the admission.

"He goes on a fearful journey," he said, falling unconsciously to the pulpit manner. "Of course such men know a great deal. He believes that there will be war in Europe in six months' time, and that our country will be concerned. Did he not tell you that?"

"I think not, father. He was too busy asking me to arrange the roses in his cabin."

"Ah! I remember them, pink roses everywhere in early December. What a feminine display!"

"But not a feminine subject. I have never met a man whose character impressed me so clearly. He has only begun in the world—those were his own words."

"Well, then, why should he not begin with us? Sir Jules believes that nothing would make a greater stir than his joining our Committee."

"Then why don't you ask him yourself? He's in London until the end of the week."

Silvester did not speak for some minutes. He seemed to have become a little shy of this outspoken wide-eyed daughter of his, who evaded the issue so cleverly.

"I wish you'd write, Gabrielle."

"To Mr. Faber?"

"Yes; you seemed very good friends on the ship. I believe he'd join if you asked him."

She shook her head.

"I don't believe it would make any difference who asked him. I'll write, if you wish it."

"Yes," he said, rising abruptly, "write now before you go to bed. You're sure you are not hungry?"

Gabrielle laughed lightly.

"I have left all my vices in America," she rejoined, "being hungry in the witching hours is one of them."

III

Her boudoir overlooked the great well wherein London lies. Though the moon was in the first quarter, the night was wonderful in stars, and the air quivered with the virility of frost. She could see St. Paul's and the City spires; the Carlton Hotel lay more to the west, and was hidden behind the slopes of Haverstock Hill. There was no snow, for this frost was black as iron.

Just below, were the winding walks to which the pilgrims came in search of Keats. She had read the sonnets and tried to understand them, but candour compelled her to say that she preferred Tennyson. Sometimes she thought her whole interest in literature to be an affectation; but undoubtedly she was addicted to erotic poetry and the fire of Swinburne would burn in her veins. All this, too, was hidden from her father, who occupied himself but little with her affairs, and believed that her interests were entirely his own.

Girls of twenty-three are usually fervent letter-writers and Gabrielle was no exception. She had furnished folios of gossip that very day for her friend, Eva Achon, who had been her intimate upon the ship. But when it came to writing "John Sebastian Faber, Esq.," her pen trembled upon the paper. How impossible it seemed to say anything to which such a man would listen. She depicted him as she had last seen him upon the deck of the Oceanic, stretched on a sofa-chair, and smiling at her philosophy. "Letters answered themselves," he had said. He got through life on cables and confidence. There was not a private letter in fifty which said anything worth saying. He had proposed a league for the suppression of private correspondence, and begged her to be one of the vice-presidents. She remembered her own disappointment that he had not asked her to write to him.

So it was no easy thing at all to begin, chiefly because she feared his irony and was quite sure that her letter would achieve nothing. Half-a-dozen sheets of good "cream laid" note were destroyed before she could get her craft launched and she was still in harbour so to speak when she heard her name cried out in the street below, and opening the window immediately, discerned Harry Lassett with skates upon his arm.

"Is that you, Gabrielle?"

The cold was intense and filled the room with icy vapour. She shivered where she stood, and drew her dressing-gown close about her white throat.

"Whatever are you doing, Harry? It's nearly eleven o'clock."

"I know that. We've been skating on the Vale. There'll be grand ice to-morrow. Won't you come? You must!"

"I haven't got any skates!"

"Oh, send into town for some. I'll go myself if you'll throw me out an old boot. You don't mean to say you're going to miss it?"

She shook her head and tried to shield herself behind the heavy curtains.

"I fear I'll have to go visiting to-morrow."

"What, those American dollars again! No! They're spoiling you; I thought you had done with that nonsense."

"I did not say they were American. I am going to Richmond to see Eva Achon."

"Oh, hang Eva Achon. We shall have bandy, if it holds. Throw me out that boot, and I'll go away. Your people go to bed in the middle of the day, don't they? It's all locked up like a prison down here."

"I am not in bed, Harry. I am writing a letter."

"American, of course?"

"Of course," and she laughed at him. Then the boot was found, and tossed out.

"How's that?" he asked—a man who had played for Middlesex and the 'Varsities could not have asked any other question.

"Let me know just how much they are, and I will send it round in the afternoon. Father promised me a pair to-night. I'm glad you can get them for me."

"Right oh! We shall skate on the Vale directly I return. Dr. Houghton of Grindelwald wants me to have a pair of his blades. You'd better have the same. They're grand!"

"Anything you like, my dear Harry, if they'll keep me warm. I shall be a pillar of ice if I stand here."

"Like Lot's wife! Was it ice, by the way? Well, good-night, then; or shall I post the letter?"

"That's splendid of you. I'll just finish it. But I'll have to shut the window."

"Imagine me a sentry doing the goose step. Will you be long?"

"Just two minutes, really."

He kissed his hand to her when she shut the window and began to stamp about to warm himself. They had been lovers since children, and were still free. Harry Lassett's three hundred a year "in the funds" just permitted him to play cricket for the county and to spend the best part of the winter at St. Moritz. He had not thought much about marriage.

Gabrielle's two minutes "really" proved to be an exact prophecy. Haste bade her throw both preface and conclusion to the winds. She just wrote:

"Dear Mr. Faber,

"My father would be very pleased if you would become one of the Vice-Presidents of the International Arbitration League. Will you let me say 'yes' for you?"

And that was the letter Harry carried to the post for her.

Vanity promised her an answer. It would come over the telegraph wires, she thought.