 INTRODUCTION TO THE RATE OF DOVER, A ROMANCE OF RAIN OF WOMEN, A.D. 1940 This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kirk Ziegler, Lake Placid, FL. THE RATE OF DOVER, A ROMANCE OF THE RAIN OF WOMEN, A.D. 1940 by Douglas Morey Ford. INTRODUCTION. THE LOST LEADER. Wilson Renshaw, the most brilliant member of the House of Commons, was on the verge of a complete breakdown at the end of the memorable session of 1930, a session in which the marshaled forces of socialism allied with the insurgent women of England, had almost but not quite, swept the board. The vacation of that year brought a truce in the fiercest parliamentary campaign known to modern times, and Renshaw, under the preemptory advice of medical specialists, left England for a prolonged holiday. He went to Egypt, recruited his health at Cairo, and then, in pursuance of a long cherished wish, set out by a circuitous route for a cartoon. With the exception of Jerusalem, the nobium capital was regarded by the young English statesmen as the most sacred spot on earth, sanctified, as it was, by the blood of General Gordon, a Christian soldier, who, to the indelible disgrace of the political clique then in power, had been left unsupported in the midst of his bloody thirsty enemies, until it was too late to rescue him. That for which Gordon had paved the way, that which Kitchener and MacDonald had gallantly achieved, in these latter days political sentimentalists, Englishmen of parochial mind had gradually undone. Egypt, brought to a pitch of high prosperity under the civil administration of Lord Cromer, had been gradually allowed to lapse back into native hands. There had been no absolute evacuation at the date of Renshaw's arrival in the country, but the British garrison had been reduced to insignificant proportions. But Renshaw did not come back. He had vanished from the can of civilization, swallowed up as effectively in the nobium desert as when the earth had opened and swallowed up Dothan and covered the congregation of Haberim. The history of Egypt and the Sedan, written in blood at the period in question, only accorded with that written in ink, in advance of the event. By those in the first decade of the twentieth century foresaw the outcome of little Englandism all the world over. The native movement, the strength of which the dominant party and parliament had chosen to ignore, manifested itself in seams of sudden and overwhelming violence, while at the same time the Holy War, preached by Mahdi in whose existence great numbers of people had refused to believe, claimed as sacrificial victims nearly every white-skinned man throughout the length and breadth of the Sedan. The caravan with which Renshaw was travelling fell into the hands of the Mahdi's adherents, betrayed by a treacherous guide, who then spread the news, anticipating what he had every reason to believe would really happen, the death of the white kafir, as a consequence of the resistance he had offered to a band of true believers. The news was received in England with grief and lamentation by those who esteemed Renshaw, appreciated his talents, and knew how essential were his services, if the aims of the socialist labour leader, Nicholas Jardine, and his party were to be defeated. But the public in general saw in the disappearance of the rising statesmen the almost inevitable result of a rash enterprise. It came to be regarded only as an incidental episode in the wholesale upheaval of which India, Egypt, and other lands once dominated by the British scepter soon became the scene. All this had happened ten years and more before the critical events of 1940. From time to time during that period little credited reports reached England concerning a certain white prisoner in the hands of the Mahdi, who was believed by some to be none other than Renshaw, the missing man. But, except with a few, these rumours carried little weight. It was not the first time that tales of that sort had reached home after the disappearance of well-known men in remote regions of the dark continent. Many, recalling the explorations of Dr. Livingston, and Stanley's expedition for the rescue of Emman Pasha, said that when Renshaw was found and brought home they would believe that he was alive and not before. Meanwhile in England Nicholas Jardine carried everything before him. The constitutional party, leaderless and disorganized, seemed to sink into helpless apathy, and right and left the rapid shrinkage of the British Empire bore witness to the ruinous success of new and revolutionary parties in the state. Sometimes in the House of Commons, old followers of the Labour leader's missing rival asked questions, which, for the moment, attracted marked attention and in some minds roused most sinister suspicions. Had the President received any information that tended to confirm the rumour that Mr. Renshaw was still living and undergoing the tortures of a barbarous imprisonment, was it a fact that, after a specified date, the government, or any members of it, had been notified, not only that Mr. Renshaw was alive, but that on payment of a ransom he might be restored to his country? Had any confidential information been received from certain Oriental visitors who, from time to time, had come to this country? Was it or was it not a fact that certain periodical payments of a large amount had been made out of secret service funds in relation to Mr. Renshaw and his alleged imprisonment? These searching questions were evaded in the usual parliamentary manner, and it was observed that never was President Jardine. Such was his official title as the Chief of the New Council of State, so black and taciturn as when this suggestive topic was from time to time revived in Parliament. A Prisoner of the Mahdi Through all those dreadful years Wilson Renshaw lived, lived day and night the tortured life of a white man at the mercy of the black. Year after year the iron entered his soul, even as the Mahdis fedders ate into his swollen and bleeding limbs. There were others who suffered with him in the barbaric prison-house. What he endured was no less, no more, than they were made to bear. Happy indeed were those whom death-release from misery and anguish that tongue could never tell nor pen describe. Hell itself, as pictured by Mahdis' brain of the most finished fanatic, could not have shown greater resources in the way of physical and mental torture. The black hole of Calcutta lacked many of the special hordes of the inner den in which the Prophet's prisoners were herded all during the awful hours of night. The blood-stained walls of the Tower of London, if walls could speak, whispering the rack, the thumb-screw, and the boot, might tell indeed of sharper anguish sooner over. The secret history of the Spanish Inquisition, if published, would reveal not less ingenuity, perhaps greater, in the refined subtleties of cruelty. But the prisoner at Cartoum excelled them all at least in one respect, the prolongation of the agony inflicted. Not for weeks or months, but for years, if life endured, the prisoner had to suffer. Wearing three sets of shackles, with an iron ring round his neck, to which was attached a heavy chain. Rencha, the white caffer, the man of culture and social ease in London. But here the reviled unbeliever, when night came, was thrust into a stone-walled room measuring some thirty feet each way. A large pillar, supporting the roof, reduced the available space. Two prisoners in chains were dying of smallpox in a corner. Some thirty others, suffering from various diseases, lay about the floor, which reeked with filth and swarmed with vermin. A compound stench, sickening and overpowering, assailed the nostrils, and every moment this increased as more prisoners, and yet more, were driven in for the night. The groans of the sick, the screams of the mad, the curses of others as they fought fearlessly for places against one or another of the walls, blended in awful tumult as the door was closed upon the darkness within. Yet again and again that door was opened, and more prisoners were crowded in, until at last they fought and bid and raved even for standing-room. Night after night, for nearly four years, Rencha, the man of delicate fiber and refined training, the son of Western civilization, lived through such scenes as these, amid incidental horrors of bestiality that cannot be set down. When the uproar in the prison attained exceptional violence, the guards threw back the doors, and lashed with their hide-whips at the heads and faces of the nearest prisoners, and every time that this occurred some of them struggling to move back, fell to the ground, and were trampled underfoot. Rencha was the only white prisoner among the Sudanese and Egyptians who thus endured the tender mercies of the Prophet. The Prophet for whom it was said, the angels had fought and would fight again, until every follower of the cross accepted the Koran of Muhammad. For, like many of the greatest crimes that strained the annals of mankind, this prison discipline, in theory, was designed to benefit the souls of the captives. The white caffer, as an unbeliever, a dog and an outcast, was a special object of the Mahdi's solicitation. Only let him believe and his fetters would be struck off, or at least some of them. He had but to cry aloud in fervent faith. There is but one God, and Muhammad is his Prophet. But it was a cry that never passed the lips of Wilson Rencha. The lash was tried again and again. Fifteen to twenty lashes at first, then a hundred, then a hundred and fifty. But still the bleeding lips in which the white man's teeth were biting in his anguish would not blaspheme. "'Will you not cry out?' the jailer asked. "'Dog of a Christian, are thy head and heart of stone?' No answer, and again and yet again the lash descended. If only death would come, kind death to end this pain of mutilated flesh, this still sharper pain of degradation and humiliation. But death came not. Courage, indomitable pride of race, a God-like quality of patience, armed the white caffer to endure the slings and arrows of his dreadful fate. Death he would welcome with a sigh of gladness, but these barbarians should never, never break his spirit. At last the rigor of his sufferings was abated. Out of the miss of what seemed an interminable period of delirium he awoke to a change of his treatment that caused him much surprise. No longer was he to be half starved. At night he was allowed to sleep alone in a rough, dark hut in a corner of the prison compound. Each day he was permitted, though still fettered, to go down to the river, on the banks of which the prison was placed, and splash in the waters of the Nile. From all these changes it became apparent that his life, and not his death, was now desired. The motive for the change he had yet to realize. A whisper here and there, a chance word from his jailers, with sundry indications, fugitive and various, at length convinced him that this amelioration of his fate could have but one sinister explanation, and one inspiring motive. If not the Maudi himself, then some of the more covetous of his leading followers must be drawing payment from some mysterious source, a subsidy for holding him secure, here under the burning African sun, remote and cut off from all chance of rescue or escape. Yet escapes were planned. For even among these barbarous people there were few who felt compassion for the hapless condition of the White Caffer, and when it began to be rumored that he was a man of high consideration in his native country, others moved by cupidity, and the prospect of a great reward, found means of letting Renshaw know that, on conditions, they were willing to secure him at least a chance of freedom. But every plan fell through. The Maudi's spies were everywhere, and those who fell under the suspicion of seeking to aid Renshaw to break free from his captivity received a punishment so terrible that he shrank from listening to any further offer of assistance. Presently his condition underwent yet further betterment. He became a prisoner at large, though still fettered and still closely watched. Employment he had none, save for the performance of a few menial offices. Books he had none, save Al-Quran, the volume containing the religious, social, commercial, military, and legal code of Islam. But here, in the heart of this dreadful land, among the dark people of the dark continent, he now learned to look upon the Book of Life itself from a new and startling standpoint. Before him was unfolded a new and terrible chapter of history in the making, a chapter which revealed the slow maritaline of millions of the dark-skinned races, eager to rest dominion and supremacy from the white-skinned masters of the world. End of introduction. CHAPTER I OF THE RATE OF DOVER A ROMANCE OF THE RAIN OF WOMEN AD 1940 by Douglas Maury Ford. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. HOW NICHOLAS JARDINE ROWS The fall of England synchronized with the rise of Nicholas Jardine, first Labour Prime Minister of this ancient realm. When he married it was considered by his wife's relations that she had married beneath her. It fell out thus. In the neighbourhood of Walsall, an accomplished young governess had found employment in the family of a wealthy solicitor, who was largely interested in the ironworks of the district. Her employer was conservative in his profession and radical in his politics. He took the chair from time to time at public meetings and liked his family to be present on those occasions as a sort of domestic entourage to bear witness to the eloquence of his orations. On one of these occasions a swore the young engineer made a speech which quite eclipsed that of the chairman. He carried the meeting with him, raising enthusiasm and admiration to a remarkable height, and storming, among other things, the heart of the clever young governess. The young orator was not unconscious of the interest he excited. Bright eyes told their tale, and the whole hearted applause that greeted his rhetorical flourishes could not escape attention at close quarters. Fair and refined in face, with fine, wavy light hair, the girl afforded a striking contrast to this forceful, dark-skinned man of the people. But they were drawn to each other by those magnetic sympathies which carry wireless messages from heart to heart. It would be too much to say that he fell in love with her at first sight. Had they never met again, mutual first impressions might have worn off, but they did meet again, and yet again. Coming to her employer's house on some political business, young Jardine encountered the girl in the hall, and she frankly gave him her hand, blushingly and with a word or two of thanks for the speech which had seemed to her so eloquent. After that, in the grimy streets of Walsall, and in various public places, the acquaintance ripened. Until one winter day outside the town, she startled him with an unusually earnest good-bye. The children she had taught were going away to school. She too was going away, whether she knew it or not. Don't go, he said, slowly. Don't go. Stay and marry me. She was almost alone in the world, and shuddering at the great prospect of her life. Besides, she loved him, or at least believed she did. Within a month they were married at the registrar's office. Nicholas Jardine did not hold with any church or chapel observances. After the banal ceremony of the civil law, he took his bride to London for a week. Then they returned to Walsall. His means were of the scantiest. They lived in a little five-roomed house, with endless tenements of the same mean type, and miserable materials stretching right and left. The conditions of life, after the first glamour faded, were dreary and soul-subduing. All the women in Warwick Road knew, or wanted to know, their neighbor's business. All resented up his heirs on the part of any particular resident. They were of the ordinary type, those neighbors, kindly, slatternly, given to gossip. Mrs. Jardine was not, and did not look like one of them. She was sincerely desirous of doing her duty in that drab state of life in which she found herself, but she wholly failed to please her neighbors, whose quarrels she had heard through the miserable plaster walls, or witness from over the road. Worse than that, she found with this may, as time went on, that she did not wholly please her husband. She was conscious of a gloomy sense of disappointment on his part, and she, though bravely resisting the groin feeling, knew in her heart that disillusionment had fallen upon herself. The recurrent coarseness of the man's ideas and expressions jarred upon her nerves. His way of eating, sleeping, and carrying himself in their cramped domestic circle constantly offended her fastidious tastes. When their child was born life went better, and all the time Jardine himself, though rather grudgingly, had been improving under refining but unobtrusive influence of his cultured wife. One thing at least they had in common, a love of reading. Most of the money that could be spared in those days went in book-buying. It was a time of education for the husband, and a time of disenchantment for the wife. She drooped amid their gray surroundings. Summers were sad, for the black country is no paradise even in the time of flowers. Everywhere the somber industries of the place asserted themselves, and in the gloomy winters, short dark days, seemed to be always giving place to long dreary nights, hideously illuminated by the lurid furnaces that glowed on every side. Jardine himself was as strong as the steel with which he had so much to do in the local works in which he found employment. But his wife found herself less and less able to stand up against the adverse influences of their environment. It came upon him with the shock that she had grown strangely fragile. Great God in heaven! Men call upon the name of God even when they profess to be agnostics. Could she be going to die? Her great fear was for the future of the child, and her chief hope that the passionate devotion of Jardine to the little girl would be a redeeming influence in his own life and character. Both of them, from the first, took what care they could that their daughter should not grow up quite like the other children of the Walsall Backstreet. Their precautions helped to make them unpopular, and that little obi Jardine, as the warwick road ladies called Synobia, was consequently compelled to hear many caustic remarks concerning the heirs and graces that some people were supposed to give themselves. Good fortune and advancement came to Nicholas Jardine too late for his wife to share in them. The once bright eyes were closed forever before the trade union of which he was secretary put him forward as a parliamentary candidate. The swing of the labour pendulum carried him in, and Jardine, MP, and his little daughter moved to London. They found lodging at the Guilford Place, opposite the founding hospital. The child was happier now, and the memory of the mother faded year by year. Life grew more cheerful and interesting for both of them as time went on. Members of parliament and wire-pollers of the labour party came to the lodgings and filled the sitting-room with smoke and noisy conversation. Synobia listened, and inwardly digested what she heard. Sundays were the dullest days. She often felt that she would like to go to service in the Foundling Chapel, but that was tacitly forbidden. Religion was ignored by Mr. Jardine, and among the books he had brought up from Walsall, and those he had since bought, neither Bible nor prayer-book found a place. Jardine had other things to think of. He was going forward rapidly, and busy, in the world of politics, fighting Mr. Wrenshaw in the House of Commons. When the old labour leader in the House of Commons had a paralytic seizure, the member for Walsall was chosen, though not without opposition, to fill the vacant place. There were millions of voters behind him now. Nicholas Jardine had become a power. At last the popular wave carried him into the foremost position in the state. The resolute republican mechanic of Mary Walsall actually became the foremost man in what for centuries had been the greatest empire in the world. Before that great step in promotion was obtained, Jardine had removed from London to the Riverside House, in which he still resided, when a certain young Lit and Harry came from Canada, and stayed with his uncle, Jardine's next-door neighbour. According to the new constitution, the government held office for five years. The end of that term was now approaching, and every adult man and woman in the land would shortly have the opportunity of voting for his retention in office, or for replacing him with a successor, man or woman. He talked much with his daughter of the struggle that was coming, as it had been his custom to do for years. She was his only companion, the only subject of his affections, the one domestic interest in his life. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of The Rate of Dover, A Romance of the Reign of Women, AD 1940, by Douglas Maury Ford. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. How England Fell So much for the man, what of the empire? Nicholas Jardine had witnessed, and assisted in, its collapse. He had witnessed the result of a corner in foodstuffs, and discovered that Uncle Sam was not the man to miss his chance of making millions merely in the theory blood is thicker than water. He had witnessed also, some of the effects of the great international confidence trick. The feature of the common swindle, so described, is that the trickster makes ingenious professions. The dupe, not to be outdone in generous sentiments, places his watch or his banknotes in the trickster's hands, just to show confidence. The trickster goes outside and does not come back again. So in the matter of national armaments, Germany had avowed the friendliest disposition towards Great Britain. England, fatuously eager to believe in another Intente Cordial, obligingly sapped her own resources. Germany, with her tongue in her cheek, went ahead, determined that England should not catch up to her. Thus had the way been paved for certain disastrous events. The cutting of the lion's claws, the clipping of his venerable tail, and the annexation of vast outlying domains in which the once unchallenged beast a foretime had held its own, monarch of all he surveyed. When Germany conceived that the fatal moment had arrived, Germany pounced. France was friendly but not active. Russia active and not friendly. Italy was busily occupied in Abyssinia, and nominally allied with Germany. Austria had her hands full in Macedonia, and was actually allied with Germany. Spain and Portugal did not count. Holland disappeared from the map, following the example of Denmark. The German Cormorant swallowed them up, and the German squadrons appropriated the harbors on the North Sea, as previously those on the Baltic. While these European changes were being affected with bewildering rapidity, our former allies, the Japanese, who had learned naval warfare in the English school, played their own hand with notable promptitude and success. Japan had long had her eye on Australia. She wanted elbow room. She wanted to develop Asiatic power. Now was the time, when British warships were engaged in a stupendous struggle thousands of miles away. The little navy that the Australians had got together for purposes of self-defense crumpled up like paper-bolts under the big guns of the Yellow Fleet. Australia was lost. It made the heart ache to think of the changes wrought by the cruel hand of time, wrought only in a quarter of a century, in the pride of Britannia, in her power and her possessions. India, that once bright and splendid jewel in the British crown, the great possession that gave the title of Empress to Queen Victoria of illustrious memory, India, as a British possession, had been sliced to less than half its size by those same Japanese, allied with pampered Hindu millions, and it was problematical whether what was left could be held much longer. The memorable alliance with Japan, running its course for several years, had worn sharp and thin towards the end. It had not been renewed. Japan never had really contemplated pulling chestnuts out of the fire for the sole benefit of Great Britain. They saved us from Russia, only to help themselves, and now that Great Britain was derisively spoken of as beggar Britain, the astute Jap, self-seeking, with limited ideas of gratitude, was England's enemy. In South Africa, alas, England had lost not only a slice, but all. The men of words had overruled the men of deeds. What had been won in many a hard-fought battle was surrendered in the House of Commons. Patriotism had been superseded by a policy of expediency. The Great Borough War had furnished a hecatomb of twenty thousand British lives. A hundred thousand mourners bowed their heads in resignation for those who died or fought in blood for England. Millions had grown under the burden of the war tax, and then, after years, we had enabled Brother Bohr to secure, by means of a ballot box, what he had lost for the world's good in the stricken field. They had talked of a union of races, a fond thing vainly invented. Oil and water never mix. Socialists, in alliance with sentimentalists in the swarming ranks of enfranchised women, had reduced the British lion to the condition of a zoo-logical specimen, a tame and clawless creature. The millennium was to be expedited so that the poor old lion might learn to eat straw like the ox. If he could not get straw, let him eat dirt, dirt, in any form of humble pie, that other nations thought fit to set before the one-time king of beasts. In another part of the world, the link between England and Canada, another great dominion, as Lyndon Herrick well knew, had worn to the tenuity of the thinnest thread. Canada, as yet, had not formally thrown off allegiance to the old country, but the thread might be snapped at any moment. Lyndon, who had lived all his life in the dominion, knew very well how things were tending. The English were no longer the dominant race in those vast tracks. They might have been if a wise system of colonization had been organized by the British governments. But the rough material of the race had been allowed to stagnate and rot here in the crowded cities of England. Lofors, hooligans, and alien riffraff had reached incredible numbers in the course of the last five and twenty years. Workhouses, hospitals, lunatic asylums, and prisons could not be built fast enough to accommodate the unfit and the criminal. Meanwhile, the vast tracks of grain-growing Canada, where a reinvigorated race of Englishmen might have found unlimited elbow-room, had been largely annexed by astute speculators from the United States. The Canadians, unsupported, had found it impossible to hold their own. The State was too big for them. As far back as 1906 the remnant of the British government garrison had said good-bye to Halifax, and the power and the glory had gone too, with the once familiar uniform of Tommy Atkins. At Quebec and Montreal all the talk was of deals and dollars. The whole country had been steadily Americanized, and Sir Wilford Laurier, when he went the ultimate way of all premiers, was succeeded by office-holders who cared nothing for imperial ties. For a time they were not keen about being absorbed by the United States, for that would mean loss of highly-paid posts and political prestige. The march of events was too strong for them, and between the American and British stools they were falling to the ground. It was bound to come, that final tumble. The force of things and the whirly gig of time would bring the assured revenges. The big fish swallows the little fish all the world over. It was the program of socialism that had weakened the foundations of the British Empire, and paved the way for the troubled times that followed. Cajoled by noisy agitators and shallow arguments of labor leaders and socialists, the working man lost sight of the fact that his living depended on working up raw material into manufactured goods, and thus earning a wage that enabled him to pay for food and shelter. The middle class had proved not less a pine. So long as Britannia ruled the waves, and the butcher and baker were in a position to supply the Britain's daily needs, all went well. But when a family could get only one loaf instead of four, and two pounds of meat when it wanted five, it necessarily followed that a good many people grew hungry. Hungry people are apt to lose their tempers, their moral sense of right and wrong, and all those nice distinctions between mayo me tuum, on which the foundations of society so largely depend. Moral chaos becomes painfully accentuated when, as the result of a navel defeat and an insipant panic, the price of bread bounds up to 18 pence per quarter loaf, with a near prospect of being unprocurable even for its weight in gold. All this had happened in these once favored aisles, because the masses, encouraged by self-seeking and parochialing-minded leaders, had been more intent on making war upon the classes than on securing their subsistence through the agency of British shipping, protected by the British navy, at a height of power that could keep all their navies at a distance. In olden time, when the earth was corrupt and filled with violence, the word came from on high. Make thee an ark of gopher wood. And Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house. But while the ark was a-preparing, the people went about their business, marrying and giving in marriage, making small account of the shipbuilder and his craze. It had been pretty much the same in the 20th century, when the British people were warned that another sort of flood was coming, and that they, too, would need an ark of material considerably stronger than gopher wood. They refused to believe in the flood, but it came. It was bound to come. We fought, yes, when it came to the critical hour we fought for dear life and liberty, fought hard, not desperately, but under conditions that made comparative defeat inevitable. And the fight was for unequal stakes. To us it was an issue of life or death. To our foes it was an affair of wounds that would heal. The law of nations, the law of humanity, itself counted for nothing in that deadly and colossal struggle. Our merchant ships were sent to the bottom, cruise and all. No advantage of strength or numbers served to inspire magnanimity. It was a fight, bloody, desperate, and remorseless for the sovereignty of the seas, a fight to the bitter end. And it was over, for all practical purposes, in a week. The British government did not dare to maintain the struggle any longer. The navy would have fought on till victory had been attained or every British warship had been sunk or disabled. The spirit of the service did credit to both officers and men, for much had been feared from disaffection. Socialism had crept into the fleet. Political cheapjacks with their leaflets and promises had sown discord between officers and men, and here and there had been clear indications of a mutinous spirit. But when it came to the pinch, England and all, officers, seamen, and stokers, had manfully done their duty. Where they were victorious they were humane. When they were beaten they faced the fortune of war, and death itself with firmness and discipline. But all in vain as regards the general result. England's rulers for the time being, alarmed at the accumulating signs of a crumbling empire, daunted by the popular disturbances that broke out in London and the provinces, made all haste to negotiate such terms of peace, and agreed to such indemnity that the dust of Nelson and of Pitt may well have shivered in their graves. Peace, peace at any price, was the cry. Peace now lest a worse thing happen through continuance of the struggle. Germany, however, would not have stayed her hand, and England would have become a conscript province, but for the daring feat of a little band of Englishmen. Six of them, in the best equipped airship that money could buy, by means of bombs almost entirely destroyed the enormous works of Mr. Krupp and Essen. By this means Germany's resources were so gravely prejudiced that it suited her to stay her hand for the time being. Out of this act of retaliation sprang the famous airship convention, of which the outcome will appear presently. During these dire events the women had votes, and many of them had seats in Parliament, their sex was dominant. They heard the cry of the children, the men heard the lamentations of the women and were unmanned. Thus was Great Britain reduced to the level of a third-rate power, a downfall not without precedent in the history of the world's great empires. But sadder, even than the accomplished downfall, was the fact that vast numbers of Britons had grown used to the situation, had so lost the patriotic spirit and fiber of their forefathers that the loss of race dominance and the mighty influence of good which empire had sustained seemed to them of little moment compared with their immediate individual advantage and petty personal interests. CHAPTER III. OF THE RATE OF DOVER. A ROMANCE OF THE RAIN OF WOMEN. AD 1940. by Douglas Mory Ford. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. ABORT THE AIR SHIP. "'So you've made the young lady's acquaintance on the river?' remarked the judge, looking amusedly at his nephew. "'Yes,' said Linton, and the Presidents, in the garden. "'Youth, youth, how buoyant are thy hopes!' quoted Sir Robert chuckling. "'And,' added the young man, with a slightly heightened color, which the gathering dusk failed to conceal, they've promised me a trip in their air-boat. Sir Robert groaned, air-boats, which they'd never been invented. He flicked away the ash of his cigar, and gazed at the first stars faintly twinkling in the evening sky. They were sitting on the terrace, and the September air was as balmy as the breath of June. "'Look!' exclaimed Herrick, springing to his feet. Don't you see one over yonder?' His uncle gazed and nodded. "'And just imagine,' he said. "'What it will mean when the present law expires, and all restrictions are removed. Everyone will want to be at liberty to aviate, and as a consequence we shall want an enormous staff of air-police to control the upper traffic and check outrage and robbery. I tell you, sir, the world's going too fast. The thing won't work. Everything will settle into shape in time,' argued Linton, soothingly, his eyes still following the evolutions of the air-boat with his twinkling lights. "'Well, you're young, and may live to see it. But it won't be in my day,' cites Sir Robert. And I don't want it to be. Who wants an airship calling for his parlor made at the attic window? Who wants thieves sailing up to his balcony? And as two collapses and collisions overhead, we've had some of them already, and it don't add to the gaiety of nations or the comfort and security of the peaceful citizens down below. "'It'll come right, sir,' said Herrick cheerfully. "'Perhaps it will, and perhaps it won't,' was his uncle's comment. "'It's not so much a question of individuals as of nations. How are we going to regulate international commerce?' The fiscal question, like the Eastern question, will assume a wholly different character. You may sail a ship, but you can't build custom houses in the air. What about imports and exports? What about a hundred things that have been governed hitherto by the broad fact that man and merchandise have only been able to move about either on sea or land?' "'She's coming this way,' exclaimed the inattentive Herrick. The little ship, wonderfully swift and graceful in her motions, was crossing high above the river, then circling gradually lower and lower, nearing them like a bat at every sweep. "'There's a lady in her,' said the judge. "'Perhaps it's Miss Jardine.' The two men, with the electric lights from the dining room throwing their figures into relief, must have been clearly outlined to the people in the boat.' "'Yes,' declared Linton. "'I'll hail her. Bo de hoi. Is that the blot-ud?' "'I, I,' answered a man's voice, and then they thought they heard a low laugh from the lady in the stern. The boat circles lower and lower. "'Gently,' said the judge under his breath, is the president, is Jardine himself, with his daughter. "'Would anyone like a sail?' came the question from above. "'Yes, of all things,' was Linton's eager reply. "'She's not built for more than three, or we could offer to take you, too, Sir Robert.' The judge had risen to his feet. Heaven forbid, much obliged you all the same, Mr. President.' The fans were at work now, assisting in the delicate process of letting down the boat by slow degrees in the center of the lawn. She reached the ground gently and lightly, and Linton and the judge went forward and greeted her occupants. Then Linton Herrick stepped aboard, and his uncle moved clear of the wings. The blouted rose to a height of about two hundred feet. Then the elevating apparatus was switched off, and the boat having circled in a few ever-widening sweeps, sped away in the direction of London. Until now the president, who was in charge of the machinery in the four part of the boat, had scarcely spoken. Linton sat in the stern besides a nobia Jardine, who, so far, was also silent, her attention being required for the steering gear, in which, however, she seemed perfectly familiar. Jardine now explained that the blouted needed only one-third of her power for keeping afloat, and two-thirds for propelling her. After that he became unreservedly communicative. Whether it was due to the fact of being in the air, instead of upon earth, or to a ready fancy for the young Canadian, the president showed himself in a character which seemed to cause his daughter pleased surprise. There was nothing pompous or self-important in his manner. He talked like a man who was delighted to get upon his favourite hobby in company with a sympathetic listener. It's the birds we had to study, the birds in the air, he said. When I was about your age I was an engineer, and I used to study birds, because they gave us the best pattern for an airship. It's nature's own pattern, and you can't beat nature. There's the breastbone, for instance, provided with a sort of keel to serve as a point of attachment for the muscles that set the wings in motion. There's the small head, with a pointed beak, like a ship's bow. Then you've got the light-expanding wings that press like a fan on the elastic airwaves. Those are nature's airplanes, Mr. Herrick, and that's the model we've had to follow. Then there's the tail, tapering off, that's nature's rudder. We get everything except the feathers, ventured Linton. Feathers are not essential, was the answer. There are wings of other sorts. The bat has no feathers. It is fitted with a sort of umbrella frame from top to toe, so to say, that can be expended when required for flying. But for an airship we get the best model in the frigate bird, or the albatross. That's what we've aimed at in our newest aeroplanes. And the best motive power? queried Linton. The air itself, compressed as we've got it here, said Mr. Jardine, with decision. Air can do everything. Nearly a century ago, puffing Billy the primitive locomotive proved that the adhesion of the wheels to the rails was sufficient to give drawing power. Everybody had doubted it. Then everybody doubted whether anything heavier than air could be sustained and move in air. That's why we wasted money and lives in ballooning. The fallacy was disproved. We are disproving it at this very moment. Then came another problem. What was the right sort of motor? They tried everything. There were endless difficulties as regards to the steam engine. The internal combustion motor was a remarkable source of power. They used it largely in submarines. It gave the necessary electrical energy when the vessel was propelled under the sea. But petrol was not the last word in locomotion. The first and last power, when you know how to harness it, is the air itself. That's what we've come to after many false starts and failures. You see, you get extreme lightness combined with great power. The bursting pressure and the reduced pressure are all calculated to a nicety per pound to the square inch. You can have power that will serve for a toy ship, say three-quarters of a minute, for a flight of two hundred yards, or you can build upon the same basis for any size, weight, or distance that can be required. Isn't it wonderful, exclaimed his daughter with enthusiasm? And Linton nodded. Wonderful indeed, yet here it is. Her father went on stolidly. It was proven many years ago that a flying machine weighing nearly eight thousand pounds carrying its own engine, fuel, and passengers can lift itself into the air. An aeroplane will always lift a great deal more than a balloon of the same weight. I know, agreed Linton, and it can travel at a high rate of velocity with less expenditure of power. Exactly. A well-made screw propeller obtained sufficient grip on the air to propel an airboat at almost any speed. The greater the speed, the greater the efficiency of the screw. We are going slowly at this moment, but I could put her along at seventy miles an hour if one wanted to. Suiting the action to the word, he did increase the speed very considerably for a short distance, and the conversation had to be suspended. It was the quickest traveling Linton had yet experienced in the upper air, and he turned with some anxiety to Zenobia Jardine, thinking the pace might tax her nerves. She was perfectly calm, however, and her father set all fears at rest by saying as he slackened the pace again. The steering with the new gyroscope is almost automatic, just as if she were a torpedo. Even in a stiff wind she reverts to a horizontal keel. It is simply like the balancing of a bird. The blood-oot is splendid, cried Linton with conviction. She's hard to beat, was the President's comment. But after all, she's the only natural outcome of the air-gun, which has been known for generations. An air-gun is shaped like a rifle with a hollow boiler or reservoir of power. You force into the reservoir by means of a condensing syringe, as much air power as it will hold, by opening a valve a portion of the air escapes into the barrel of the gun. That's what takes place when you pull the trigger. The released air presses against the ball just as gun powder would. Off goes your bullet without a sound or sign to show that it has been discharged. Air condense to one-forty-sixths of its bulk gives about half the velocity of gun powder. It's precisely the same principle that's firing us through the air at the present moment. It's a wonderful discovery, was Linton's comment. Yes, mused Mr. Jardine, and yet the thing was always there to be discovered. Just as the airways were always ready for wireless telegraphy, but unused till Marconi came along at the beginning of the present century. The President looked around him at the star-spangled heavens and drew in a deep breath. Yes, he said slowly, and there are more secrets waiting to be revealed. There's a professor of chemistry in one of the American universities who thinks we shall be able to live on air some day, laughed the young man. The President did not laugh. Why not, he asked. We know well enough we can't live without it. It's quite conceivable that the atmosphere contains undetected sources of nourishment. They may be generated by vaporization or by electricity and chemical action within the air itself. No one knew anything about Ozone a hundred and fifty years ago, and he would be a rash man who said that Ozone is the last word in atmospheric discovery. It may end in air-cakes, suggested Linton rather flippantly, or begin with air-cakes and end in air tabloids, said Zenobia. What a glorious idea! Only think how it would simplify housekeeping. Meat, vegetables, fish, and all the rest might be superseded, and the Butcher's Bill would cease to be a terror. And a spepsia would be abolished with the weekly bills. Nature, the only universal provider, complete independence of foreign imports, no starvation, and no overfeeding. We should no longer go in for a big square meal, but for a small round tabloid. Cooks, with all their greasy pots and pans, would not be wanted. You could carry your meals in your waistcoat and eat them when you pleased. Yes, agreed Miss Jardine with mocked seriousness. Instead of sitting down to a food function, soup, fish, joint, entree, pastry, and dessert, as if it were a sort of religious ceremony, the possibilities are endless. And the prospect glorious chimed in the Canadian. Then the two young people, having kept the ball of frivolity rolling to their own satisfaction, laughed merely, and even the grim, dark face of the president relaxed into something like a smile. But there would be rather a sameness in the diet, added Zenobia thoughtfully. We could vary it occasionally by harking back to the old flesh-pots. Besides, discovery would lead to discovery. The constituents of the atmosphere defied the microscope at present, but by and by they may be seized upon and served up in different forms and combinations for the nourishment of man. And woman. The greater includes the less. They oh, I beg your pardon, I was forgetting. The old order is changed. We live in the reign of woman. Rather to Linton's surprise, instead of herring a quick retort, he thought he heard a law and rather plaintive sigh. Ozone, at any rate, has a special flavor, remarked Mr. Jardine. It resembles lobster, and like lobster you can have too much of it. But the plants have always lived on air. Man consumes the flesh of beasts, but the beasts have built up their flesh by eating grass or plants. Thus indirectly we ourselves live on air already and draw our vitality from the atmosphere. Presently we may get it by a shorter cut, that's all. So your air cakes and tabloids may really come to pass, and Mr. Jardine nodded. This time there was no laughter, partly because the idea did not seem so wild, and partly because they were now close to London, and the wonder of the lighted capitals spreading down below was a strange and solemn thing to look upon. CHAPTER IV THE STAR OF LIFE The blah dude passed swiftly over Paddington Station and followed the line of the Edgeware Road to the Marble Arch. The incessant roar of the traffic below reached their ears, and it was a relief to get over the great, far-spreading park, silent and only fatally lighted by the scattered lamps. To the left, Park Lane had a gloomy look. The famous residences of the wealthy, like hundreds of great mansions in the neighboring squares, were untenanted. People could not afford to live in such places nowadays. The governing bodies of the capital had done their best to ruin it by socialistic experiments and overrating. At Hyde Park Corner, which was soon reached, once more the tumult of the traffic rose into the air, and the long lines of electric lamps stretching eastwards along Piccadilly gave the impression of an enormous glittering serpent down below. They followed the route to Piccadilly Circus, where the blaze of lights and the swiftly changing units in the thoroughfares produced an effect that, seen for the first time by Linton Herrick, held him in a sort of fascination. Trafalgar Square and the Strand produced the same bewildering characteristics, and to the right the effect conveyed by the illuminated bridges was marvelously beautiful. The blighted circled widely so that Linton might take his fill of the spectacle. Then Mr. Jardine headed her eastward again, and for a while the streets below lay gloomy and silent until they had crossed the city. Soon the lights of the commercial road and Whitechapel outlined the great thoroughfares of the East End, while in every direction branched streams of flaring, smoky lights showed where hoxters and hoxters played their evening trade. They had sailed over the Isle of Dogs and Greenwich Reach before the President put the boat about. Then in the distance, like a lighthouse, the great clock towering over the house of Parliament came into view, the dial shining like a huge dull moon. In these days it was always illuminated, whether the house were sitting or in recess. Look! exclaimed Zinopia suddenly. Away in the heart of the south work huge flames were shooting into the air, and monstrous clouds of woolly-looking smoke rolled slowly from above the conflagration. A fire, said Mr. Jardine, and a big one, too. We'll have a look at it. Not too close, Father, said his daughter, for the first time showing nervousness. Keeper to windward, said Mr. Jardine, slowing down a little, and the girl obeyed. Vast showers of sparks rose into the air. They heard the hiss and splash of water, and the pant-pant of half a dozen fire engines as they played upon the burning buildings. The lights shone on the helmets of the firemen, clambering here and there on the roofs of towering warehouses, and dense masses of people seemed to be packed into the streets, on whose pallid upturned faces the lights produced a strangely weird effect. The sight below seemed full of awe and terror. Suddenly a sudden gust of wind changed the direction of the smoke column and brought a volley of sparks over the bladude. Harder to port, cried Mr. Jardine, we'll get out of this. In a moment they had veered away from the scene of the conflagration, and were crossing first the river, then Cannon Street, almost at full speed. The fans were set to work, and they rose to a greater altitude to avoid all risk of colliding with church towers and steeples. A dark, domed mass took shape a hundred feet away, and over it the great cross of St. Paul's loom for an instant interview. A train with faces showing against the lighted windows crawled across the railway bridge at the foot of Ludgate Hill, and far away in the west the gleam of another fire lighted up the sky with a sudden threatening glare. From below there now arose the piteous bellowing of cattle. They were passing over the huge markets in Smithfield, and the shouts of the drovers blended with the noise made by the doomed and harried beasts, whose flesh was to feed London on the morrow. Soon another long row of lights revealed Southampton Row, running straight, as it seemed, from Kingsway to Euston. The station clock showed that it was nearly ten. They swept over the quiet west-central squares, over the Euston Road and Regent's Park, and so onward and away, until the huddled dwellings of the capital gave place to suburbs, dark roads, and silent fields. Linton, through the later sights and sounds of the night, was conscious of being in a sort of dream, and in the dream the girl by his side was the principal, nay, the only figure save his own. The end of a light scarf that was around her neck blew across his face. The sway of the bladded brought her arm against his own, and each slight contact seemed to thrill him. Once or twice he glanced at her face, almost inquiringly, for now he had the oddest feeling that she was no stranger. That in reality they knew each other, and had only met again. That in the past somehow, somewhere, he knew not when, there had been a kinship or a tie between them. From the first moment of their meeting she had interested and attracted him. Of that he was well aware. But not until they sat side by side in this aerial journey had the impression of which he was now conscious crept into his mind or memory. What could it mean? That strange exhilaration of the upper air, the quickening of imagination, wrought by their rapid traveling light above the solid earth and all its limitations, perhaps mine account in some degree for the puzzling feeling that possessed him. He glanced at her again, their eyes met, and in hers he read, or fancy that he read, a telepathic answer to his thoughts. Suddenly he found himself repeating, as if with better understanding, lines that always lingered in his memory. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. The soul that rises with us, our life star, hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar. How odd, murmured the girl in a wondering voice, the varied lines that I was thinking of, and in low tone she finished the quotation. O joy that in our embers is something that doth live, that nature yet remembers, what was so fugitive! CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. OF THE RATE OF DOVER. A ROMANCE OF THE RAIN OF WOMEN, A.D. 1940, by Douglas Mory Ford. A threefold pledge. All through the following day the deep impressions of the previous evening held Linton as one is held by the memory of some haunting and impressive dream. Everything down below seemed insignificant and relevant. They were dining out that evening, and he could not shake off the feeling that in everything connected with that ordinary function he was playing the part of a small automaton on a puppet stage. He and his fellow puppet, Sir Robert, got into a little motor car and rushed over five miles of little roads, between two little hedges, to General Hartwell's little bungalow. Presently they were sitting around a little white-covered table, cutting up food with little implements, and taking little sips out of little glasses. How wise and important they thought themselves in the midst of all these little things! How self-satisfied everyone appeared! There were four of them at the dinner table, the third guest being Major Edgar Wardlaw, of the Sappers, a man to whom their host showed great deference and affection. Wardlaw talked but little, the look in his eyes and the lines on his broad, fair forehead suggested concentration of thought on some problem removed from those which the others were discussing. The general himself did most of the talking. He was a woman-hater, that is to say, a hater of women in the abstract. To the individual woman he was gentleness and kindness itself, but rumors of a new and daring forward movement by the vice-president of the council and her party had roused the veteran to a pitch of extraordinary resentment. It was said that Lady Catherine contemplated forming a regimen of Amazons in the twentieth century. It was monstrous. The general boiled over with disgust and indignation. His language at times became absolutely lurid. A devilish nice pass we've come to at last, he growled. Then he seemed to be vainly ransacking his vocabulary for strong language and gulp down his wine in default of finding an adequate objugation. The judge laughed with gentle amusement at his fiery old friend. It is all very well to laugh, Herrick, but damn, sir, it is the last straw. It's the last straw, roared the general. Just what we've been wanting, said Sir Robert calmly. Eh, what do you mean? General Hartwell stared. When people get the last straw laid on they can't stand any more, so now's the time for the worm to turn. You're right, by Gad you're right. But how's the worm going to manage it? cried the old officer leaning back. The judge fingered the stem of his wine-glass and gazed thoughtfully at the table cloth. Major Wardlaw turned his gaze on him as if suddenly recalled from the regions of mental speculation. Linton, also self-absorbed as yet, began to listen and to wonder. You have strong views about women. You don't exactly love the sex, said the judge. How can a man love them when he sees the mischief they've done by their ambitions and pernicity? demanded the general. My dear fellow, you are too sweeping. They're not all alike. There are plenty of good women left in the world. Show me where they are then. I don't say they all set out to break the Ten Commandments, but it's their love of power, their restless ambitions, their confounded unreasonable-ness, that have played the deuce with us. They want to rule the world, Sir, and they weren't meant for it. It's not good for them, and they know it. They all laughed at the general's remnants and extending a wrinkled forefinger he went on, with unabated powers of declamation. Men ought to have nipped it in the bud. That's what they ought to have done. Instead of which we gave place to their insidious aggressions. We gave them an inch and they took an owl. We gave them the whip-hand, and they weren't content with it in little things. By heaven they're chastising us with scorpions, and there'll be the devil to pay before we can put them back in their proper place. But, Mark you, it'll have to be done. If we want to call our souls our own, it'll have to be done. Why, my blood boils when I think of the misery shrewish, self-willed women have inflicted on some of the best fellows in the world. I know cases. I've seen it done among my old friends. I knew a man. He was a retired colonel with a splendid record. What do you think? His scold of a wife used to send him out to buy cream for the apple-tart. It's not always the wife. Sometimes it's the mother-in-law. Sometimes it's a sister. Now and then it's a daughter. I know an old school fellow, a parson. The poor beggar has three plain sisters courted on him. Great, gaunt women who talk about, dear Robert, and Badger, dear Robert, out of his life. His only happy moment is when they're all gone to bed. He'd like to marry, but he's too soft-hearted to send him about their business. I tell you the man's afraid. I know another fellow, too. But there, what's the good of talking? Major Ward Law was raising from his seat. Excuse me for two minutes, General. Yes, yes, to be sure, ascended his host, and when the Major had closed the door behind him, he dropped his voice and leaned across the table. Now there's a man, the best engineer the British Army has produced for thirty years. That man, sir, designed the great fort they built at Dover to guard the Channel Tunnel. He's got a big brain and a great heart, but in one way he's shown himself a fool. What does he do but go and marry a garrison flirt, sir? A little thing with the pretty face and fluffy hair, and the tongue of a viper. The poison of Asps was under her lips. I can tell you she led Ward Law alive. Now she's dead and gone, and I do believe he's sorry. He worships the child she left him, little Miss Flossie. She's upstairs at the present moment. Ward Law's gone to say good night to her. He worships the ground she walks on, and that child takes it all for granted. By Heaven she orders him about. She's got her mother's blue eyes and fluffy hair, and I'll wager she's got a temper, too. By and by she'll lead her father a pretty dance. He wouldn't come here to stay with me, and mind you, I'm his oldest friend. No, he wouldn't come without Miss Flossie. Oh, these women! By Heaven they raise my gorge. My dear Hartwell, said the Judge calmly. You go too far. You're prejudiced. Prejudiced, exclaimed the General. Were Thackeray and Dickens prejudiced? Look at Becky Sharp and the way she treated that big affectionate booby—rout and crowly. Look at that girl-blanche armory, the little plotter who ran after Pendennis. And if you come up to Dickens, what about Rosa Dardle, a woman as feminist as a serpent? Types, my dear fellow, types, but not a universal type. There's lots more like them, not at the General. And many more unlike them. You see, we old fogies. Fogies, by Gad, speak for yourself, Herrick. I do, said the Judge. It isn't that I feel like a fogie any more than you do. It's the label that the world insists on fascinating on men of our age, and it is apt to make us feel bitter. We're supposed to have had our time and finished it. It's not what we feel, Hartwell. It's what we look at that settles it. And I'm afraid, my dear fellow, sometimes when our hair turns gray, our tempers turn bitter. It's the way of the world. It's the way of the women, I grant you. Come, come, let's leave the women alone for a bit. They've brought things to a crisis. That's the last straw. Well and good. Doesn't that suggest an opportunity? Now you know. You've got something in your lawyer's head. Come, man, what the deuce are you driving at? We haven't drunk Renshaw's health yet, said the Judge, with apparent irrevelence. They rose and raised their glasses. Linton, who had taken no part in the recent discussion, now watched his uncle expectantly. Renshaw, God bless him, and bring him back to England. By the way, said Sir Robert casually, as they resumed their seats, is Wardlaw with us? The General, who had taken his old friend's lecture in good part, nodded. Of course he is. Isn't nearly every man in both services? Do you suppose we want an army of Amazons armed with lethal weapons to keep in order? What about the Corps of Commissionaries? Being their commander, I ought to know. Twenty percent of them, at least, are dead against Petticoat government. They're good chaps, and they've seen good service. They don't like the way the country is being run any more than you or I do. You take my word for that. The Judge mused for a moment, tipping the ash from his cigar. What about the old household troops, he asked? Same story, but what can we do without a leader in Parliament? And suppose, after all, poor Wrenchaus dead! Sir Robert Herrick suddenly abandoned his careless bearing, threw away his cigar, and took from his pocket a letter written on foreign note paper. "'Listen,' he said, both of you, and lowering his voice he read the letter, slowly and distinctly, so that every word was understood. Then he twisted into a spill and burnt it bit by bit. They sat for a few moments in silence. Then from the general, whose fierce little eyes seemed starting from his head under the bristling white eyebrows, there came a sort of gasping explanation. "'God bless my soul! Why not?' Then, after a pause, dropping into the familiar style of their early days, "'You know, Bob, there's risk in it. I'm with you to the last. I'm with you, but there's risk in it. We must remember that.' "'Yes, there's risk in it,' answered Sir Robert gravely. "'We must count the cost, but the risk and the cost are not half what they were in other days, when men were ready to die for their country and their cause. If Tower Hill could talk it would tell many a tale of men who were faithful unto death. If the block could unfold its secrets, if the red axe could speak, there'd be some stern lessons for modern men to ponder on. "'Did you ever read how Balmarino faced the headsman after Coloden? Come what may, we shouldn't have to face the axe, heartwell. Hanging would be no improvement,' growled the general. "'Still, mind this. I'm with you, heart and soul, if we can work it out.' "'I don't think we should have to face the hangman, either,' said the judge quietly. "'We might, perhaps, have to spend the evening of our days behind prison bars. Even that is doubtful. Nothing succeeds like success. What's treason under one rule becomes loyalty under another. History has illustrated that over and over again. What age would Renshaw be by this time? Why, not forty, even after ten years of captivity. He is the only man who can bring back the ancient glory and prestige of the kingdom. Once in our midst the people will rally round him with enthusiastic loyalty. If well organized, it will be a bloodless revolution, heartwell, a glorious and thankful revision to the old system of man's government for man and woman. It is best suited to the British nation. We've tried something else, and it's proved a failure.' "'A-da-da,' failure,' agreed the general, heartily. "'We've given way to cranks and noisy, shrill-voiced women to vaporing politicians, to socialism and all the other isms. We had a notion that we could antidate the millennium and work the scheme of national life according to ideas of equality and uniformity. It can't be done. Experience proves that anomalies work well when logical systems fail. It's a conceited age, a puffed-up generation. We are not really wiser than our fathers, though we think we are. Let us try to revert to first principles.' "'I'm your man, heart and soul,' said General Hartwell, and the two old friends grasped hands across the table. I knew you would be. There was a shine as of tears in the judge's eyes. But you and I can't work this thing alone. We must have colleagues, not many but some, or at least one,' and he looked at Linton-Harrick. "'I'm with you too, sir,' said the young man simply. Show me the way, that's all.' "'We three alone at present, with loyal hearts and silent tongues,' said Sir Robert Gravely. The three musketeers ventured Linton. "'By Jove, yes,' agreed the old officer. "'And we undertake everything that serves the State,' added Sir Robert solemnly. They rose by mutual understanding and clinked their glasses. All for one, and one for all, they cried with one accord. And major word-law, opening the door at that moment, stared amazed. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of The Rate of Dover, A Romance of the Rain of Woman, A.D. 1940, by Douglas Mory Ford This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. THE REVOLT OF WOMAN England was agitated by two items of the latest intelligence. The same journal which announced the sudden and serious illness of President Jardine, also recorded a bold move in the campaign of the Lady Catherine Kellick, Vice President of the Council of State. Enormous interest was roused, not so much by the advertised notice of a public meeting on affairs of State, as by the rumors of its real object. Ostensibly the people of London were invited, so far as the accommodation of the Queen's Hall would permit, to hear a statement as to the position of public affairs and to consider questions of national importance. But it was well understood that the real aim of the convener of the meeting was to strengthen her grip on the helm of State by means of her rumored forward policy, in the interests of the sex which she claimed to represent. Long before the hour fixed for the meeting, multitudes of people of both sexes approached Langham Place by every converging avenue. The doors of the hall were besieged by an enormous concourse, and the police on duty soon found themselves entirely powerless to preserve order. As evening approached the crowd became more and more dense, extending southward far into Regent Street and northward into Portland Place. Every window in the Langham Hotel was crowded with wondering visitors, looking down on the immense assembly, from which rose angry shouts as mounted constables forced their horses through the outskirts of the crowd, in the vain effort to keep the people on the move. When darkness rendered the situation still more dangerous, urgent representations were made to the managers of the hall, and the doors were suddenly thrown open. A wild yell of relief or eagerness rose from thousands of throats, and a scene of indescribable violence and confusion followed, as men and women pushed, struggled, and fought their way towards the entrances. In a few moments every seat had been seized, every inch of standing-room occupied. The attempts of the attendants to attend to the angry demands of those who held tickets for reserved seats were absolutely futile. Every gangway was blocked by pushing and struggling humanity, and those, alarmed by such a condition of things, sought to force their way out, were prevented from doing so by the swarms of people who were already wedged in the corridors. A babel of voices arose on every side, but at length the audience was weeded out to some extent, and the great numbers that remained settled down in patient expectation, soulless after a time, by the music of the grand organ and the singing of the songs and choruses. Tier after tier at the back of the platform, usually occupied by musicians, had been reserved for members of parliament and officials of state. Not one seat was vacant saved the chair of the vice-president. When the hour appointed for the meeting struck on the clocks of the neighboring churches, there was a great clapping of hands, and an excited waving of hats and handkerchiefs. A tall thin figure, wearing a flowing robe of scarlet, now advanced from the right-hand side of the platform, and unemerging from behind the rows of palms and ferns, came into full view of the audience. Although she had become so great a power in England, the vice-president was only known by means of pictures and photographs to a great number of those who were present. They gazed at her with wonder and interest. There was character in every line of her face. Her gray hair, swept back from the broad low brow, made her look older than her actual years. Her eyes were rather prominent and staring. The upper lip was so long as to be token a marked degree of obstinacy, and her chin square and firm, with the flesh bagging a little on either side, entuated the general indication of hardness. When she spoke her greatest charm was made known. Her voice was excellent. It had that kind of purring intonation which reminded some of the older people of the celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt. Her friend said that it was partly because of the purr that she had acquired the popular nickname of Lady Cat. There were no formal preliminaries. Raising her hand for silence she began to speak, and her first sentence was well chosen and resting. The Amazon is the greatest river in the world. Puzzle glances were exchanged, and here and there was heard a wondering titter. Were they in for a lecture on geography? The speaker went on without a pause, and swiftly un-deceived them. The Amazon flows from the Andes with such stupendous force, in such enormous volume, that its waters are carried unmixed to the Atlantic ocean. They now had a dim idea of what was coming, and the impression was speedily confirmed. There are other mighty forces in the world besides that river, and I for one, speaking for the sex to which I belong, would glory in the name of Amazon. Call us Amazons, if you will. Let those laugh who win. Women are winning all along the line. Shrill applause went up from hundreds of women in the audience. The men, in a minority, were silent and uneasy. The time has come for facing facts, for examining claims and titles. Man's title to be Lord of Creation is full of flaws, and we dispute it. Frantic cheers and handkerchief waving came from the women, a few deep groans from the men. It is no use trusting to recent history. The men by force and fraud got into possession of all the good things, all the power that life has to offer, and thousands of us have meekly acquiesced. If you are content to be regarded as the weaker vessel, if it satisfies you to be compared with men as waters compared with wine, or moonlight unto sunlight, be it so. We who are wiser must leave you to your fate. But some of us have already advanced to a stage or two towards the position we claim rightfully as our own. Yet you women of England, mark this, the stages already covered are nothing to what we can and will achieve. Excited applause for a few minutes prevented the speaker from proceeding. A fierce disturbance broke out at the back of the hall, but was promptly quelled. One thing all men and women here tonight must realize. There cannot be two kings in Brentford. No, nor a king and queen. Of the two sexes one alone can reign, which shall it be. Shrill cries of ours, ours, broke from the speaker's supporters. Yes, she cried triumphantly, our turn has come at last, it shall be ours, if women only stand to their guns. But there can be no halting half way, forward or retreat. Forward, forward, came from the now enthusiastic audience, with eager cheers and shouts, and again the cry went up, forward, one and all. Forward, let it be. But remember, the race will be to the swift and the battle to the strong. Tonight I call you to arms. Tonight I remind you that among the ancient races of the world there are women who set us the example that we need. The story of the Amazons of old is no fable. They lived, they fought for supremacy. They won it and they held it. So can we. Tumultuous cries blended now with angry hisses from the men, disturbed the meeting. But so great was the ascendancy which the vice-president already had acquired over most of her hearers, that a wave of her hand stilled the uproar, and she was enabled to proceed. At the same moment, on a screen at the back of the platform, was thrown a startling life-sized picture of an Amazonian warrior. Behold! cried the orator, grasping the dramatic moment and extending her arm. Behold, Thelestris! Queen of the Amazons! For an instant the vast audience paused, surprised, staring, almost bewildered. You are asking yourselves who was Thelestris, the speaker continued. The Amazons founded a state in Asia Minor on the coast of the Black Sea. Herodotus will tell you how they fought with the Greeks, how they hunted in the field, and marched with the Scythians to battle. While Thelestris became their queen, they styled her the daughter of Mars. She set the men to spin wool and do the work of the The women went to the wards, the men stayed at home and employed themselves in those main offices which in this country have been forced upon our sex. The Amazons went from strength to strength. They built cities, erected palaces, and created an empire. And there were other Amazonian nations. All of them acted on the same principle. The women kept the public offices and the magistracy in their own hands. Husbands submitted to the authority of their wives. They were not encouraged or allowed to throw off the yoke. The women, in order to maintain their authority, cultivated every art of war. For this is certain, all history proves it. Force is the ultimate remedy in all things. This was why the Amazons of old learned how to draw the bow and throw the javelin. For shame, for shame, roared a man's voice from the balcony. There is plenty of cause for shame, was the speaker's swift retort, but the shame is on the men, the swaggering, bully, self-sufficient men, who in past times held women in subjection. Why, there were men in England not so very long ago who had put a halter round a wife's neck and bring her into open market, for sale to the highest bidder. It used to be the law of England that men might chastise their wives with a rod of specified dimensions. We don't do it now, shouted the same voice. No, because you cannot and you dare not. It used to be said that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor, but it was always a much more glaring truth that there was one law for men and another law for women. It was so in the divorce court until we women altered it. It was also in respect of the results of what was called a lapse from virtue, and we are going to alter that. It was also in regard to vaults and representation, and you know we have changed all that. Loud and feminine applause from the majority of the audience greeted this illusion to the suffrage. More than half the nation is no longer disenfranchised. But we must not risk content. Like Alexander we seek more worlds to conquer, and conquest will be ours. While women have grown, men have shriveled. Athletic exercise and a freer and more varied life have given our women theues and sinews. But the men are decadent, degenerates who have led indolent, self-indulgent lives. They have given up the battle of life. Thousands of them are as enfeebled in body as in intellect. We see around us an undeveloped, puny, stunted race. What? Call these creatures men? I tell you they are not men. They are only mannequins. A men's uproar broke out again in every part of the heated, crowded building. When it was subdued the speaker resumed in scornful tones. Better masculine women than effeminate men. Better the Amazon than the mannequin. Read the story of Bodicea, Joan of Arc, and of Joan of Montfort. Read what history will tell you about Margaret of Anjou. Were the successors were they of the Amazons of the Caucasus, and the Amazons of America? The noble women who gave their name to the greatest river in the world. Like the women of old, let the Amazons of the present century, the Amazons of England, learn to farm and learn to fight. There was a moment's pause. Then the vice president, in tones now piercing and tremulous, cried out, Who will join the first regiment of the Amazons of England? The electrified audience saw the speaker raise her hand, and at the signal twenty girls in smart military uniform marched on to the platform, saluted, and stood at attention. Each Amazon's hair was cut short, but not too short to be frizzed. On each small head was worn a helmet like that of the Lestris. The braided tunic was buttoned from shoulder to shoulder in the Napoleonic style, and the two rows of gilt buttons narrowed down to the bright leather belt that encircled the waist. Bloomers completed the costume, and a light cutlass and a revolver furnished each Amazon's warlike equipment. Laughter, applause, and shouted comments greeted the entrance of the girl's soldiers. It became a scene of indescribable confusion. Then once more the vice president vehemently appealed to the audience. Who will join the Amazons of England? Shouts of, I will, I will, came, first from the body of the hall, then from every part of the building. Until at last the women seemed to answer in a perfect scream of bitterness. Many minutes passed before silence was restored. Then it was announced that all recruits could give their names as they left the hall, and the vice president went on to move in formal terms a resolution declaring that this meeting was firmly persuaded, that the cause of the nation and of women required that the women of England should take up arms, and pledged itself, first to support the establishment of a new body of militia to be recruited from the ranks of the young women of England, and secondly, to claim from the state the same rate of pay that hitherto had been paid to men alone. A thin young woman with hectic cheeks and excited manner sprang to her feet on the right side of the platform and seconded the motion. She only made one point, but it went home. I'll ask you one question, she exclaimed, in tone so shrill that here and there a laugh broke out. Are we inferior to poor Tommy Atkins? The aggregate answer was so ready and so violent and negative that the opposing element was momentarily subdued. Storms of applause broke out as she resumed her seat. But with equal readiness another speaker was on her feet on the other side of the platform. In clear high tones her voice rang out over the noisy assembly. I oppose it. Another storm, a storm of remonstrance now arose. Cries of shame, shame, were hurled towards the platform. Then, as some of the audience recognized the new speaker, they exclaimed to the people near them, that's the President's daughter, it's a nobia jardine. Order, order, roared a minority of the audience, now somewhat encouraged, and in a few minutes, while Zenobia waited, her eyes bright, her lips firmly set, order was secured. The vice-president had sat down. She looked at her young opponent with no friendly eye, taking no trouble to secure her a quiet hearing. But there was a section of the audience that had only waited for a champion and meant to see fair play. I oppose it, repeated Zenobia, because I believe that to arm women and train them to fight will be a mad and wicked act. It would mean return to barbarism. It would be adding a monstrous climax to the progress of a great cause. Instead of being the final exaltation of our sex, it would lead to our political extinction and our ruin. Let us have none of it. The vice-president's face wore a wicked look, and her thin lips tightened as this appeal drew a loud cheer from the men and from a certain number of the women in the excited audience. It has been said that the empire of women is an empire of softness, of address. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears. No, no, came from the throats of the vice-president's supporters. The vice-president herself arose. Will the speaker favour us with the authority for her quotations? She asked in loud and cutting tones. Through so began Zenobia nervously. An effeminate authority indeed exclaimed the vice-president. We are not all in love, she added sneeringly. She seemed for a moment to have won the audience back to her cause, but Zenobia was not beaten. Very well, she cried, I will give you an English author. Dr. Johnson, at least, was not effeminate. What did he say? The character of the ancient Amazons was terrible, rather than lovely. The hand could not be, very delicate, that was only employed in directing the bow and brandishing the battle-axe. Their power was maintained by cruelty, their courage was deformed by ferocity. Besides, the whole thing's impossible. Conflicting cries broke out in every quarter, and the rest of the sentence became wholly inaudible. There was a slight lull when the vice-president rose and raised her hand. Is it your pleasure that this lady be heard further? she demanded. The hint received a ready response, and shrieks of no, no, drowned the protests of the minority. In a moment the vice-president put a resolution and called for a show of hands. In another moment she had declared the motion carried by an overwhelming majority. At a sign the organ gave forth a trumpet-note, and then burst into a rushing volume of sound, which drowned all cries and counter-cries, and ended the meeting in a sense of an example tumult and excitement. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of The Rate of Dover, A Romance of the Rain of Woman, A.D. 1940, by Douglas Morrie Ford. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. THE PRICE OF POWER After the great and epic-making meeting in Queens Hall, the disturbed state of public feeling was accentuated. It was generally felt that the sex conflict which the revolt of women had brought about now was shaping towards some new and startling climax. A crisis was at hand. Moreover, at the same time, the appearance and rapid development of a serious and unfamiliar epidemic created widespread alarm. At first people had laughed at the new disease, but the laughter was short lived, like great numbers of those whom the epidemic attacked. Harley Street described it professionally as a recruescence of pleica poloneca, and just as at an earlier period people had contracted influenza into the flu, they now went about asking each other how about the plick. It was a malady which at one time had prevailed extensively in Poland, and but little doubt could be felt that it had now been introduced into England by the Polish Jews, whose alien colony in Whitechapel and other parts of the East End had attained enormous proportions. The peculiar feature of the plick was that it attacked the hair of the head, matting it together and twisting it in hard knots, to touch which caused the most exquisite pain. This symptom was often accompanied with manifestations of acute nervous disorder. The patient's bodily became feverish, and in most instances showed signs of derangement in the functions of the brain. As the malady developed sleep was banished, or when obtained, would be disturbed by dreadful dreams. Profound depression weighed upon the spirits, and the bare sight of food and drink excited strong repulsion. Gouty pains in arms and legs caused acute agony to some of the sufferers, and in many cases there were fits of giddiness and an affection of the optic nerve that produced temporary blindness. The disease more often than not proved fatal. Physicians were at a loss for radical cures, and a course of thermal baths was found to be the most officious palliative that the faculty could recommend. Under the advice of Harley Street, great numbers of patients in the early stages of the disease flocked to bath for the water cure. Not since the days of Georgia's had the famous city of the West harbored so many afflicted visitors. Every hotel was crowded from basement to attic. The lodging housekeepers exacted monstrous prices for the most indifferent accommodation. Local doctors drove a roaring trade, and every other woman in the street seemed to wear the familiar garb of the hospital nurse. Among the distinguished persons who had been advised to have recourse to the healing properties of the famous baths was the foremost man, officially speaking, in the country. Nicholas Jardine was declared to be suffering from a severe attack of the prevailing epidemic, and the papers announced that the president would, at the earliest possible moment, leave London for bath. This intelligence caused far more anxiety throughout the country than might have been anticipated. It was not that the president was particularly beloved, but that among large sections of the community the vice-president was distinctly unpopular. Her ambitions and the determination of her character were well known. Hence the prevailing apprehensions. What might not Lady Cat accomplish in the temporary absence of the president? And worse still, what might not she dare and do, as the champion and insider of woman, if the head of the government should die? The instrument of government provided that supreme executive authority should be vested in one person, the president, or his deputy for the time being, in conjunction with the commons in parliament assembled. The functions of the lords had long since been abrogated. The president or his deputy, in the circumstances stated, with the assistance of the members of the committee or council of state, had the fullest powers as the executive, and in effect, presided over the destinies of the nation. From the president the judiciaries and magistrates derived their honors and emoluments. In him was vested civil command of the national forces, both by sea and land. With the sanction of the council he could maintain peace or declare war. These powers were to some extent checked by the enactment that no law of the realm could be repealed, suspended, or amended, without the consent of parliament, but in parliament the vice-president had powerful support. In the event of the death of the president, other members of the council could immediately nominate his successor. It was well known that the cat had striven to ally herself in marriage with Nicholas Jardine, with the object, as most people believed, of indirectly grasping the reins of government. It was known also that, foiled in that design, she treasured feelings of animosity against the president and his daughter. What then would be likely to limit her revenge or curb her ambition, if an opportunity like the present could be made to serve her purpose? It was widely felt that a crisis impended, that events of dark and threatening character were shaping for some great struggle or convulsion, the issue of which no one could foresee. The men of England, though in the course of years had yielded inch by inch before the persistent aggression of the other sex, were not wholly forgetful of their past, nor blind to the possibilities of the future. The more virile among them remained rebels against women's dominion, struggling like strong but despairing swimmers, against the rushing tide that was sweeping them away. But such men were in a notable minority. Vast numbers seemed to have lapsed without resistance, if not without reluctance, into the position of underlings. Relieved of various responsibilities, they acquiesced in the position which the other sex had gradually assumed. They had grown lazy and half-hearted. With the shrug of the shoulders they accepted the widely held dictum that their own sex was decadent. In a point of numbers that was beyond denial. The entire birth rate of the country had fallen, year after year, but more notable than that was the emphasis given to the dominant note of the age by a steady diminution in the percentage of newborn males. The more vital question arose. What view would the women themselves take of any new departure on the part of their leading representative in the councils of the state? But such a question could not readily be answered. It might be hazarded that most of those who had displaced the male competitor, or who were already in the way of promotion, would be foreholding the ground and making any further bid for supremacy that occasion should suggest. But still there were known to be great numbers, patient, and so far in articulate women, who viewed the existing state of things with deep regret, and anticipated the future with positive alarm. If the men and the women were in opposite camps, the sex undoubtedly was divided in sentiment. For the change of the old order of things had brought many developments that told against the grace and charm of women's life. She had gained something, but she had lost more. The protective character which in former times man had felt bound in honor to assume for the benefit of the weaker vessel had been largely discarded. Chivalrous feelings were blundered by the competition in which women had engaged with man. If the grey mare was bound on being the better horse, she must accept the conditions of the competition. However reasonable and welcome this might seem to the mature or hardened woman, it was far from agreeable to the young and charming girl. For still there were charming girls in England, girls who wanted to be wooed and won, girls whose hearts fluttered at the sound of a certain footstep, girls who did not want to rule their lovers, but to lean on them, girls to whom romance was the spice of life. Such girls as these, and it was whispered that they grew in numbers, shrank from the harsh conflict of the battle of life in which it seemed to be expected that each and all would readily engage. They found in the open doors of professional business or political life inadequate compensation for the deference, tenderness, and delicate consideration which had been accorded by men to earlier generations of women. The forward fraction with their facts and figures could count on great numbers of adherents. But certainly there were others, and perhaps the best and sweetest in the world of women, who looked with growing distaste and resentment upon the leaders who had brought the business and the pleasures of life to such a pass. There was one English girl who, in the trouble that had come upon her by reason of her father's illness, discovered and pondered on these momentous questions. What would it profit a woman to force herself out of her ordained place in the plan of creation? And what should she give in exchange for that submissive, tender love of wife for husband, which was the sacred book declared to be the law of God? Zenobia Jardine, turning for the first time to the Bible, pondered over the mysterious passages of early scriptures, which came to her with all the greater force because they had not been weakened by parrot-like familiarity. It was a revelation, historical or allegorical, regarded either way. The story of the Garden of Eden and the first parents of the human race was imperishable in its power and significance. Therein lay the true lesson of life. The waves of the centuries had vainly surged round it. Like pygmies biting on the rock, the newest of the new theologists, and the latest of scientific discoverers, had left the rock still standing, impregnable with its eternal strength. The voice that spake to the woman in the Garden seemed to be speaking still. What is this that thou hast done? And the woman's answer was, the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. The enmity that had sprung from that far off and typical wrongdoing was bearing bitter fruit. The bruising of the heel had been renewed through all the history of man and woman. The woman now was bruised in her affections. In the Homeric story Thetis took her son Achilles by the heel and dipped him in the river Styx to make the boy invulnerable. The water covered him save where the heel was covered by his mother's hand. And it was though the heel, that one vulnerable spot, that ultimately death assailed the hero. So, also, it seemed to the reflective girl, the heel typified her heart. All the amor of life that she had taken to herself under the auspices of her father, would not avail against the enemy who assailed her in that one weak spot. There were other times when she felt that she had discredited her training and fallen below her appointed level. There were other times when she felt instinctively convinced that in woman's weakness lay her truest strength, her greatest victory in her ordained defeat.