Mary joined them, and went straight to Miss Ensor's bag and opened it.
She shook her head at the contents, which consisted of a small, flabby-
looking meat pie in a tin dish, and two pale, flat mince tarts.

"It doesn't nourish you, dearie," complained Mary.  "You could have
bought yourself a nice bit of meat with the same money."

"And you would have had all the trouble of cooking it," answered the
girl.  "That only wants warming up."

"But I like cooking, you know, dearie," grumbled Mary.  "There's no
interest in warming things up."

The girl laughed.  "You don't have to go far for your fun," she said.
"I'll bring a sole next time; and you shall do it _au gratin_."

Mary put the indigestible-looking pasties into the oven, and almost
banged the door.  Miss Ensor proceeded to lay the table.  "How many, do
you think?" she asked.  Mary was doubtful.  She hoped that, it being
Christmas Day, they would have somewhere better to go.

"I passed old 'Bubble and Squeak,' just now, spouting away to three men
and a dog outside the World's End.  I expect he'll turn up," thought Miss
Ensor.  She laid for four, leaving space for more if need be.  "I call it
the 'Cadger's Arms,'" she explained, turning to Joan.  "We bring our own
victuals, and Mary cooks them for us and waits on us; and the more of us
the merrier.  You look forward to your Sunday evening parties, don't
you?" she asked of Mary.

Mary laughed.  She was busy in a corner with basins and a saucepan.  "Of
course I do, dearie," she answered.  "I've always been fond of company."

There came another opening of the door.  A little hairy man entered.  He
wore spectacles and was dressed in black.  He carried a paper parcel
which he laid upon the table.  He looked a little doubtful at Joan.  Mary
introduced them.  His name was Julius Simson.  He shook hands as if under
protest.

"As friends of Mary Stopperton," he said, "we meet on neutral ground.  But
in all matters of moment I expect we are as far asunder as the poles.  I
stand for the People."

"We ought to be comrades," answered Joan, with a smile.  "I, too, am
trying to help the People."

"You and your class," said Mr. Simson, "are friends enough to the People,
so long as they remember that they are the People, and keep their proper
place--at the bottom.  I am for putting the People at the top."

"Then they will be the Upper Classes," suggested Joan.  "And I may still
have to go on fighting for the rights of the lower orders."

"In this world," explained Mr. Simson, "someone has got to be Master.  The
only question is who."

Mary had unwrapped the paper parcel.  It contained half a sheep's head.
"How would you like it done?" she whispered.

Mr. Simson considered.  There came a softer look into his eyes.  "How did
you do it last time?" he asked.  "It came up brown, I remember, with
thick gravy."

"Braised," suggested Mary.

"That's the word," agreed Mr. Simson.  "Braised."  He watched while Mary
took things needful from the cupboard, and commenced to peel an onion.

"That's the sort that makes me despair of the People," said Mr. Simson.
Joan could not be sure whether he was addressing her individually or
imaginary thousands.  "Likes working for nothing.  Thinks she was born to
be everybody's servant."  He seated himself beside Miss Ensor on the
antiquated sofa.  It gave a complaining groan but held out.

"Did you have a good house?" the girl asked him.  "Saw you from the
distance, waving your arms about.  Hadn't time to stop."

"Not many," admitted Mr. Simson.  "A Christmassy lot.  You know.  Sort of
crowd that interrupts you and tries to be funny.  Dead to their own
interests.  It's slow work."

"Why do you do it?" asked Miss Ensor.

"Damned if I know," answered Mr. Simson, with a burst of candour.  "Can't
help it, I suppose.  Lost me job again."

"The old story?" suggested Miss Ensor.

"The old story," sighed Mr. Simson.  "One of the customers happened to be
passing last Wednesday when I was speaking on the Embankment.  Heard my
opinion of the middle classes?"

"Well, you can't expect 'em to like it, can you?" submitted Miss Ensor.

"No," admitted Mr. Simson with generosity.  "It's only natural.  It's a
fight to the finish between me and the Bourgeois.  I cover them with
ridicule and contempt and they hit back at me in the only way they know."

"Take care they don't get the best of you," Miss Ensor advised him.

"Oh, I'm not afraid," he answered.  "I'll get another place all right:
give me time.  The only thing I'm worried about is my young woman."

"Doesn't agree with you?" inquired Miss Ensor.

"Oh, it isn't that," he answered.  "But she's frightened.  You know.  Says
life with me is going to be a bit too uncertain for her.  Perhaps she's
right."

"Oh, why don't you chuck it," advised Miss Ensor, "give the Bourgeois a
rest."

Mr. Simson shook his head.  "Somebody's got to tackle them," he said.
"Tell them the truth about themselves, to their faces."

"Yes, but it needn't be you," suggested Miss Ensor.

Mary was leaning over the table.  Miss Ensor's four-penny veal and ham
pie was ready.  Mary arranged it in front of her.  "Eat it while it's
hot, dearie," she counselled.  "It won't be so indigestible."

Miss Ensor turned to her.  "Oh, you talk to him," she urged.  "Here, he's
lost his job again, and is losing his girl: all because of his silly
politics.  Tell him he's got to have sense and stop it."

Mary seemed troubled.  Evidently, as Miss Ensor had stated, advice was
not her line.  "Perhaps he's got to do it, dearie," she suggested.

"What do you mean by got to do it?" exclaimed Miss Ensor.  "Who's making
him do it, except himself?"

Mary flushed.  She seemed to want to get back to her cooking.  "It's
something inside us, dearie," she thought: "that nobody hears but
ourselves."

"That tells him to talk all that twaddle?" demanded Miss Ensor.  "Have
you heard him?"

"No, dearie," Mary admitted.  "But I expect it's got its purpose.  Or he
wouldn't have to do it."

Miss Ensor gave a gesture of despair and applied herself to her pie.  The
hirsute face of Mr. Simson had lost the foolish aggressiveness that had
irritated Joan.  He seemed to be pondering matters.

Mary hoped that Joan was hungry.  Joan laughed and admitted that she was.
"It's the smell of all the nice things," she explained.  Mary promised it
should soon be ready, and went back to her corner.

A short, dark, thick-set man entered and stood looking round the room.
The frame must once have been powerful, but now it was shrunken and
emaciated.  The shabby, threadbare clothes hung loosely from the stooping
shoulders.  Only the head seemed to have retained its vigour.  The face,
from which the long black hair was brushed straight back, was ghastly
white.  Out of it, deep set beneath great shaggy, overhanging brows,
blazed the fierce, restless eyes of a fanatic.  The huge, thin-lipped
mouth seemed to have petrified itself into a savage snarl.  He gave Joan
the idea, as he stood there glaring round him, of a hunted beast at bay.

Miss Ensor, whose bump of reverence was undeveloped, greeted him
cheerfully as Boanerges.  Mr. Simson, more respectful, rose and offered
his small, grimy hand.  Mary took his hat and cloak away from him and
closed the door behind him.  She felt his hands, and put him into a chair
close to the fire.  And then she introduced him to Joan.

Joan started on hearing his name.  It was one well known.

"The Cyril Baptiste?" she asked.  She had often wondered what he might be
like.

"The Cyril Baptiste," he answered, in a low, even, passionate voice, that
he flung at her almost like a blow.  "The atheist, the gaol bird, the
pariah, the blasphemer, the anti-Christ.  I've hoofs instead of feet.
Shall I take off my boots and show them to you?  I tuck my tail inside my
coat.  You can't see my horns.  I've cut them off close to my head.
That's why I wear my hair long: to hide the stumps."

Mary had been searching in the pockets of his cloak.  She had found a
paper bag.  "You mustn't get excited," she said, laying her little work-
worn hand upon his shoulder; "or you'll bring on the bleeding."

"Aye," he answered, "I must be careful I don't die on Christmas Day.  It
would make a fine text, that, for their sermons."

He lapsed into silence: his almost transparent hands stretched out
towards the fire.

Mr. Simson fidgeted.  The quiet of the room, broken only by Mary's
ministering activities, evidently oppressed him.

"Paper going well, sir?" he asked.  "I often read it myself."

"It still sells," answered the proprietor, and editor and publisher, and
entire staff of _The Rationalist_.

"I like the articles you are writing on the History of Superstition.
Quite illuminating," remarked Mr. Simson.

"It's many a year, I am afraid, to the final chapter," thought their
author.

"They afford much food for reflection," thought Mr. Simson, "though I
cannot myself go as far as you do in including Christianity under that
heading."

Mary frowned at him; but Mr. Simson, eager for argument or not noticing,
blundered on:--

"Whether we accept the miraculous explanation of Christ's birth,"
continued Mr. Simson, in his best street-corner voice, "or whether, with
the great French writer whose name for the moment escapes me, we regard
Him merely as a man inspired, we must, I think, admit that His teaching
has been of help: especially to the poor."

The fanatic turned upon him so fiercely that Mr. Simson's arm
involuntarily assumed the posture of defence.

"To the poor?" the old man almost shrieked.  "To the poor that he has
robbed of all power of resistance to oppression by his vile, submissive
creed! that he has drugged into passive acceptance of every evil done to
them by his false promises that their sufferings here shall win for them
some wonderful reward when they are dead.  What has been his teaching to
the poor?  Bow your backs to the lash, kiss the rod that scars your
flesh.  Be ye humble, oh, my people.  Be ye poor in spirit.  Let Wrong
rule triumphant through the world.  Raise no hand against it, lest ye
suffer my eternal punishments.  Learn from me to be meek and lowly.  Learn
to be good slaves and give no trouble to your taskmasters.  Let them turn
the world into a hell for you.  The grave--the grave shall be your gate
to happiness.

"Helpful to the poor?  Helpful to their rulers, to their owners.  They
take good care that Christ shall be well taught.  Their fat priests shall
bear his message to the poor.  The rod may be broken, the prison door be
forced.  It is Christ that shall bind the people in eternal fetters.
Christ, the lackey, the jackal of the rich."

Mr. Simson was visibly shocked.  Evidently he was less familiar with the
opinions of _The Rationalist_ than he had thought.

"I really must protest," exclaimed Mr. Simson.  "To whatever wrong uses
His words may have been twisted, Christ Himself I regard as divine, and
entitled to be spoken of with reverence.  His whole life, His
sufferings--"

But the old fanatic's vigour had not yet exhausted itself.

"His sufferings!" he interrupted.  "Does suffering entitle a man to be
regarded as divine?  If so, so also am I a God.  Look at me!"  He
stretched out his long, thin arms with their claw-like hands, thrusting
forward his great savage head that the bony, wizened throat seemed hardly
strong enough to bear.  "Wealth, honour, happiness: I had them once.  I
had wife, children and a home.  Now I creep an outcast, keeping to the
shadows, and the children in the street throw stones at me.  Thirty years
I have starved that I might preach.  They shut me in their prisons, they
hound me into garrets.  They jibe at me and mock me, but they cannot
silence me.  What of my life?  Am I divine?"

Miss Ensor, having finished her supper, sat smoking.

"Why must you preach?" she asked.  "It doesn't seem to pay you."  There
was a curious smile about the girl's lips as she caught Joan's eye.

He turned to her with his last flicker of passion.

"Because to this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth," he answered.

He sank back a huddled heap upon the chair.  There was foam about his
mouth, great beads of sweat upon his forehead.  Mary wiped them away with
a corner of her apron, and felt again his trembling hands.  "Oh, please
don't talk to him any more," she pleaded, "not till he's had his supper."
She fetched her fine shawl, and pinned it round him.  His eyes followed
her as she hovered about him.  For the first time, since he had entered
the room, they looked human.

They gathered round the table.  Mr. Baptiste was still pinned up in
Mary's bright shawl.  It lent him a curious dignity.  He might have been
some ancient prophet stepped from the pages of the Talmud.  Miss Ensor
completed her supper with a cup of tea and some little cakes: "just to
keep us all company," as Mary had insisted.

The old fanatic's eyes passed from face to face.  There was almost the
suggestion of a smile about the savage mouth.

"A strange supper-party," he said.  "Cyril the Apostate; and Julius who
strove against the High Priests and the Pharisees; and Inez a dancer
before the people; and Joanna a daughter of the rulers, gathered together
in the house of one Mary a servant of the Lord."

"Are you, too, a Christian?" he asked of Joan.

"Not yet," answered Joan.  "But I hope to be, one day."  She spoke
without thinking, not quite knowing what she meant.  But it came back to
her in after years.

The talk grew lighter under the influence of Mary's cooking.  Mr.
Baptiste could be interesting when he got away from his fanaticism; and
even the apostolic Mr. Simson had sometimes noticed humour when it had
chanced his way.

A message came for Mary about ten o'clock, brought by a scared little
girl, who whispered it to her at the door.  Mary apologized.  She had to
go out.  The party broke up.  Mary disappeared into the next room and
returned in a shawl and bonnet, carrying a small brown paper parcel.  Joan
walked with her as far as the King's Road.

"A little child is coming," she confided to Joan.  She was quite excited
about it.

Joan thought.  "It's curious," she said, "one so seldom hears of anybody
being born on Christmas Day."

They were passing a lamp.  Joan had never seen a face look quite so happy
as Mary's looked, just then.

"It always seems to me Christ's birthday," she said, "whenever a child is
born."

They had reached the corner.  Joan could see her bus in the distance.

She stooped and kissed the little withered face.

"Don't stop," she whispered.

Mary gave her a hug, and almost ran away.  Joan watched the little child-
like figure growing smaller.  It glided in and out among the people.




CHAPTER XI


In the spring, Joan, at Mrs. Denton's request, undertook a mission.  It
was to go to Paris.  Mrs. Denton had meant to go herself, but was laid up
with sciatica; and the matter, she considered, would not brook of any
delay.

"It's rather a delicate business," she told Joan.  She was lying on a
couch in her great library, and Joan was seated by her side.  "I want
someone who can go into private houses and mix with educated people on
their own level; and especially I want you to see one or two women: they
count in France.  You know French pretty well, don't you?"

"Oh, sufficiently," Joan answered.  The one thing her mother had done for
her had been to talk French with her when she was a child; and at Girton
she had chummed on with a French girl, and made herself tolerably
perfect.

"You will not go as a journalist," continued Mrs. Denton; "but as a
personal friend of mine, whose discretion I shall vouch for.  I want you
to find out what the people I am sending you among are thinking
themselves, and what they consider ought to be done.  If we are not very
careful on both sides we shall have the newspapers whipping us into war."

The perpetual Egyptian trouble had cropped up again and the Carleton
papers, in particular, were already sounding the tocsin.  Carleton's
argument was that we ought to fall upon France and crush her, before she
could develop her supposed submarine menace.  His flaming posters were at
every corner.  Every obscure French newspaper was being ransacked for
"Insults and Pinpricks."

"A section of the Paris Press is doing all it can to help him, of
course," explained Mrs. Denton.  "It doesn't seem to matter to them that
Germany is only waiting her opportunity, and that, if Russia comes in, it
is bound to bring Austria.  Europe will pay dearly one day for the luxury
of a free Press."

"But you're surely not suggesting any other kind of Press, at this period
of the world's history?" exclaimed Joan.

"Oh, but I am," answered the old lady with a grim tightening of the lips.
"Not even Carleton would be allowed to incite to murder or arson.  I
would have him prosecuted for inciting a nation to war."

"Why is the Press always so eager for war?" mused Joan.  "According to
their own account, war doesn't pay them."

"I don't suppose it does: not directly," answered Mrs. Denton.  "But it
helps them to establish their position and get a tighter hold upon the
public.  War does pay the newspaper in the long run.  The daily newspaper
lives on commotion, crime, lawlessness in general.  If people no longer
enjoyed reading about violence and bloodshed half their occupation, and
that the most profitable half would be gone.  It is the interest of the
newspaper to keep alive the savage in human nature; and war affords the
readiest means of doing this.  You can't do much to increase the number
of gruesome murders and loathsome assaults, beyond giving all possible
advertisement to them when they do occur.  But you can preach war, and
cover yourself with glory, as a patriot, at the same time."

"I wonder how many of my ideals will be left to me," sighed Joan.  "I
always used to regard the Press as the modern pulpit."

"The old pulpit became an evil, the moment it obtained unlimited power,"
answered Mrs. Denton.  "It originated persecution and inflamed men's
passions against one another.  It, too, preached war for its own ends,
taught superstition, and punished thought as a crime.  The Press of to-
day is stepping into the shoes of the medieval priest.  It aims at
establishing the worst kind of tyranny: the tyranny over men's minds.
They pretend to fight among themselves, but it's rapidly becoming a close
corporation.  The Institute of Journalists will soon be followed by the
Union of Newspaper Proprietors and the few independent journals will be
squeezed out.  Already we have German shareholders on English papers; and
English capital is interested in the St. Petersburg Press.  It will one
day have its International Pope and its school of cosmopolitan
cardinals."

Joan laughed.  "I can see Carleton rather fancying himself in a tiara,"
she said.  "I must tell Phillips what you say.  He's out for a fight with
him.  Government by Parliament or Government by Press is going to be his
war cry."

"Good man," said Mrs. Denton.  "I'm quite serious.  You tell him from me
that the next revolution has got to be against the Press.  And it will be
the stiffest fight Democracy has ever had."

The old lady had tired herself.  Joan undertook the mission.  She thought
she would rather enjoy it, and Mrs. Denton promised to let her have full
instructions.  She would write to her friends in Paris and prepare them
for Joan's coming.

Joan remembered Folk, the artist she had met at Flossie's party, who had
promised to walk with her on the terrace at St. Germain, and tell her
more about her mother.  She looked up his address on her return home, and
wrote to him, giving him the name of the hotel in the Rue de Grenelle
where Mrs. Denton had arranged that she should stay.  She found a note
from him awaiting her when she arrived there.  He thought she would like
to be quiet after her journey.  He would call round in the morning.  He
had presumed on the privilege of age to send her some lilies.  They had
been her mother's favourite flower.  "Monsieur Folk, the great artist,"
had brought them himself, and placed them in her dressing-room, so Madame
informed her.

It was one of the half-dozen old hotels still left in Paris, and was
built round a garden famous for its mighty mulberry tree.  She
breakfasted underneath it, and was reading there when Folk appeared
before her, smiling and with his hat in his hand.  He excused himself for
intruding upon her so soon, thinking from what she had written him that
her first morning might be his only chance.  He evidently considered her
remembrance of him a feather in his cap.

"We old fellows feel a little sadly, at times, how unimportant we are,"
he explained.  "We are grateful when Youth throws us a smile."

"You told me my coming would take you back thirty-three years," Joan
reminded him.  "It makes us about the same age.  I shall treat you as
just a young man."

He laughed.  "Don't be surprised," he said, "if I make a mistake
occasionally and call you Lena."

Joan had no appointment till the afternoon.  They drove out to St.
Germain, and had _dejeuner_ at a small restaurant opposite the Chateau;
and afterwards they strolled on to the terrace.

"What was my mother doing in Paris?" asked Joan,

"She was studying for the stage," he answered.  "Paris was the only
school in those days.  I was at Julien's studio.  We acted together for
some charity.  I had always been fond of it.  An American manager who was
present offered us both an engagement, and I thought it would be a change
and that I could combine the two arts."

"And it was here that you proposed to her," said Joan.

"Just by that tree that leans forward," he answered, pointing with his
cane a little way ahead.  "I thought that in America I'd get another
chance.  I might have if your father hadn't come along.  I wonder if he
remembers me."

"Did you ever see her again, after her marriage?" asked Joan.

"No," he answered.  "We used to write to one another until she gave it
up.  She had got into the habit of looking upon me as a harmless sort of
thing to confide in and ask advice of--which she never took."

"Forgive me," he said.  "You must remember that I am still her lover."
They had reached the tree that leant a little forward beyond its fellows,
and he had halted and turned so that he was facing her.  "Did she and
your father get on together.  Was she happy?"

"I don't think she was happy," answered Joan.  "She was at first.  As a
child, I can remember her singing and laughing about the house, and she
liked always to have people about her.  Until her illness came.  It
changed her very much.  But my father was gentleness itself, to the end."

They had resumed their stroll.  It seemed to her that he looked at her
once or twice a little oddly without speaking.  "What caused your
mother's illness?" he asked, abruptly.

The question troubled her.  It struck her with a pang of self-reproach
that she had always been indifferent to her mother's illness, regarding
it as more or less imaginary.  "It was mental rather than physical, I
think," she answered.  "I never knew what brought it about."

Again he looked at her with that odd, inquisitive expression.  "She never
got over it?" he asked.

"Oh, there were times," answered Joan, "when she was more like her old
self again.  But I don't think she ever quite got over it.  Unless it was
towards the end," she added.  "They told me she seemed much better for a
little while before she died.  I was away at Cambridge at the time."

"Poor dear lady," he said, "all those years!  And poor Jack Allway."  He
seemed to be talking to himself.  Suddenly he turned to her.  "How is the
dear fellow?" he asked.

Again the question troubled her.  She had not seen her father since that
week-end, nearly six months ago, when she had ran down to see him because
she wanted something from him.  "He felt my mother's death very deeply,"
she answered.  "But he's well enough in health."

"Remember me to him," he said.  "And tell him I thank him for all those
years of love and gentleness.  I don't think he will be offended."

He drove her back to Paris, and she promised to come and see him in his
studio and let him introduce her to his artist friends.

"I shall try to win you over, I warn you," he said.  "Politics will never
reform the world.  They appeal only to men's passions and hatreds.  They
divide us.  It is Art that is going to civilize mankind; broaden his
sympathies.  Art speaks to him the common language of his loves, his
dreams, reveals to him the universal kinship."

Mrs. Denton's friends called upon her, and most of them invited her to
their houses.  A few were politicians, senators or ministers.  Others
were bankers, heads of business houses, literary men and women.  There
were also a few quiet folk with names that were historical.  They all
thought that war between France and England would be a world disaster,
but were not very hopeful of averting it.  She learnt that Carleton was
in Berlin trying to secure possession of a well-known German daily that
happened at the moment to be in low water.  He was working for an
alliance between Germany and England.  In France, the Royalists had come
to an understanding with the Clericals, and both were evidently making
ready to throw in their lot with the war-mongers, hoping that out of the
troubled waters the fish would come their way.  Of course everything
depended on the people.  If the people only knew it!  But they didn't.
They stood about in puzzled flocks, like sheep, wondering which way the
newspaper dog was going to hound them.  They took her to the great music
halls.  Every allusion to war was greeted with rapturous applause.  The
Marseillaise was demanded and encored till the orchestra rebelled from
sheer exhaustion.  Joan's patience was sorely tested.  She had to listen
with impassive face to coarse jests and brutal gibes directed against
England and everything English; to sit unmoved while the vast audience
rocked with laughter at senseless caricatures of supposed English
soldiers whose knees always gave way at the sight of a French uniform.
Even in the eyes of her courteous hosts, Joan's quick glance would
occasionally detect a curious glint.  The fools!  Had they never heard of
Waterloo and Trafalgar?  Even if their memories might be excused for
forgetting Crecy and Poictiers and the campaigns of Marlborough.  One
evening--it had been a particularly trying one for Joan--there stepped
upon the stage a wooden-looking man in a kilt with bagpipes under his
arm.  How he had got himself into the programme Joan could not
understand.  Managerial watchfulness must have gone to sleep for once.  He
played Scotch melodies, and the Parisians liked them, and when he had
finished they called him back.  Joan and her friends occupied a box close
to the stage.  The wooden-looking Scot glanced up at her, and their eyes
met.  And as the applause died down there rose the first low warning
strains of the Pibroch.  Joan sat up in her chair and her lips parted.
The savage music quickened.  It shrilled and skrealed.  The blood came
surging through her veins.

And suddenly something lying hidden there leaped to life within her
brain.  A mad desire surged hold of her to rise and shout defiance at
those three thousand pairs of hostile eyes confronting her.  She clutched
at the arms of her chair and so kept her seat.  The pibroch ended with
its wild sad notes of wailing, and slowly the mist cleared from her eyes,
and the stage was empty.  A strange hush had fallen on the house.

She was not aware that her hostess had been watching her.  She was a
sweet-faced, white-haired lady.  She touched Joan lightly on the hand.
"That's the trouble," she whispered.  "It's in our blood."

Could we ever hope to eradicate it?  Was not the survival of this
fighting instinct proof that war was still needful to us?  In the
sculpture-room of an exhibition she came upon a painted statue of
Bellona.  Its grotesqueness shocked her at first sight, the red streaming
hair, the wild eyes filled with fury, the wide open mouth--one could
almost hear it screaming--the white uplifted arms with outstretched
hands!  Appalling!  Terrible!  And yet, as she gazed at it, gradually the
thing grew curiously real to her.  She seemed to hear the gathering of
the chariots, the neighing of the horses, the hurrying of many feet, the
sound of an armouring multitude, the shouting, and the braying of the
trumpets.

These cold, thin-lipped calculators, arguing that "War doesn't pay";
those lank-haired cosmopolitans, preaching their "International," as if
the only business of mankind were wages!  War still was the stern school
where men learnt virtue, duty, forgetfulness of self, faithfulness unto
death.

This particular war, of course, must be stopped: if it were not already
too late.  It would be a war for markets; for spheres of commercial
influence; a sordid war that would degrade the people.  War, the supreme
test of a nation's worth, must be reserved for great ideals.  Besides,
she wanted to down Carleton.

One of the women on her list, and the one to whom Mrs. Denton appeared to
attach chief importance, a Madame de Barante, disappointed Joan.  She
seemed to have so few opinions of her own.  She had buried her young
husband during the Franco-Prussian war.  He had been a soldier.  And she
had remained unmarried.  She was still beautiful.

"I do not think we women have the right to discuss war," she confided to
Joan in her gentle, high-bred voice.  "I suppose you think that out of
date.  I should have thought so myself forty years ago.  We talk of
'giving' our sons and lovers, as if they were ours to give.  It makes me
a little angry when I hear pampered women speak like that.  It is the men
who have to suffer and die.  It is for them to decide."

"But perhaps I can arrange a meeting for you with a friend," she added,
"who will be better able to help you, if he is in Paris.  I will let you
know."

She told Joan what she remembered herself of 1870.  She had turned her
country house into a hospital and had seen a good deal of the fighting.

"It would not do to tell the truth, or we should have our children
growing up to hate war," she concluded.

She was as good as her word, and sent Joan round a message the next
morning to come and see her in the afternoon.  Joan was introduced to a
Monsieur de Chaumont.  He was a soldierly-looking gentleman, with a grey
moustache, and a deep scar across his face.

"Hanged if I can see how we are going to get out of it," he answered Joan
cheerfully.  "The moment there is any threat of war, it becomes a point
of honour with every nation to do nothing to avoid it.  I remember my old
duelling days.  The quarrel may have been about the silliest trifle
imaginable.  A single word would have explained the whole thing away.  But
to utter it would have stamped one as a coward.  This Egyptian Tra-la-la!
It isn't worth the bones of a single grenadier, as our friends across the
Rhine would say.  But I expect, before it's settled, there will be men's
bones sufficient, bleaching on the desert, to build another Pyramid.  It's
so easily started: that's the devil of it.  A mischievous boy can throw a
lighted match into a powder magazine, and then it becomes every patriot's
business to see that it isn't put out.  I hate war.  It accomplishes
nothing, and leaves everything in a greater muddle than it was before.
But if the idea ever catches fire, I shall have to do all I can to fan
the conflagration.  Unless I am prepared to be branded as a poltroon.
Every professional soldier is supposed to welcome war.  Most of us do:
it's our opportunity.  There's some excuse for us.  But these
men--Carleton and their lot: I regard them as nothing better than the
Menades of the Commune.  They care nothing if the whole of Europe blazes.
They cannot personally get harmed whatever happens.  It's fun to them."

"But the people who can get harmed," argued Joan.  "The men who will be
dragged away from their work, from their business, used as 'cannon
fodder.'"

He shrugged his shoulders.  "Oh, they are always eager enough for it, at
first," he answered.  "There is the excitement.  The curiosity.  You must
remember that life is a monotonous affair to the great mass of the
people.  There's the natural craving to escape from it; to court
adventure.  They are not so enthusiastic about it after they have tasted
it.  Modern warfare, they soon find, is about as dull a business as
science ever invented."