On every side the continued rivalry between the sexes in their struggle for supremacy in national life was producing lamentable results. To this general evil now was added the new move inaugurated by the Vice-President of the Council in the matter of military training. The unfortunate illness of President Jardine had facilitated the schemes of that daring leader of the women, and it soon became apparent that preparations for enrolling large bodies of Amazons, though hitherto kept secret, in fact had been very far advanced before the memorable meeting at Queen's Hall. Recruits flocked in from every quarter. The idea of military service or a military picnic for a few months in the Amazonian militia appealed to all sorts and conditions of girls and young women. Those who had reached the age when the resources or pleasures of home life had begun to pall, those who saw no chance of getting married, those who had met with disappointments in love and were stirred with the restless spirit of the times, those who rebelled against parental rule, domestic employments, or the monotony of days spent in warehouse or office, one and all caught eagerly at the idea of a course of military training in smart uniforms, with the possibility of encountering experiences and adventures from which parents and guardians had sought to withhold them.
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Ready pens were at the service of the New Amazons. History and tradition were ransacked by industrious scribes in search of precedents and raw material for "copy." The Epoch, (the unofficial press organ of the Vice-President) boldly vaunted the capacity of women to bear arms. Who would dare to deny that women were as brave as men? In modern times the Dahomey Amazons had been a force in being. An eminent professor had made researches which went to show that the Amazons of old were real warriors. Humboldt refused to regard American Amazons as mythical, and other trustworthy authorities had confirmed his view. Then there were the Shield Maidens of the Vikings, to whose existence witness was borne by historical sagas. The ancient literature of Ireland set forth as a fact that "men and women went alike to battle in those days." Did not a certain abbot of Iona go to Ireland to organise a movement against the custom of summoning women to join the standard and fight the enemy? In Europe, not so very long ago, the Montenegrins and Albanians called their women to arms in the hour of national extremity.
The Epoch presented the 1st Amazons of England with a silken banner, embroidered with a representation of Thalestris the Amazonian queen, and pointed out that, however fabulous might be the achievements of the women warriors of ancient times, modern warfare need make no similar demands on the physical strength of woman. War had become a feat of science, rather than of endurance. It was no longer necessary for contending champions to engage in a trial of muscular strength. Macbeth and Macduff were not called upon to "lay on" until one of them cried: "Hold! enough." Battles were fought and victories won at long range. Thin[Pg 84] red lines and Balaclava charges belonged to ancient history. And if by any chance it should come to fighting at close quarters, had woman shown herself lacking in courage, or even in ferocity in such encounters? Why, in every memorable riot in which the civil population had been in conflict with the soldiery, the women, again and again, had proved themselves to be the foremost in attack and the most fertile of hostile resource. Thus argued the Epoch and other press advocates of the New Amazons, at the same time citing many instances of the prowess exhibited by individual women on fields of battle.
Vast numbers of young persons, supremely ignorant of life in its uglier and more dangerous aspects, thus encited, discovered that they were not, and could not be, happy at home all the year round. They wanted variety; they pined for change and excitement; and all of them were firmly pursuaded that they knew much better than their elders what was good for them. In their eyes all things were not only lawful, but all things were expedient. They stood up with stolid looks, deaf to remonstrances and appeals, and expressed an obstinate wish to join the Amazons. Numbers of them, being more self-willed than their parents, got their own way, and were enrolled; while still larger numbers were put back as physically ineligible, but with liberty, in some cases, to renew their application at a future time.
That the movement had "caught on" nobody could deny. That it was full of dangerous possibilities became more and more apparent every day.
Zenobia, who came to London to attend the Queen's Hall meeting, had returned to Bath to nurse her father, whose illness showed increasingly alarming symptoms. Linton Herrick, meanwhile, was not[Pg 85] wholly without occupation, for there were sundry private conferences between his uncle and General Hartwell at which his presence was required. These discussions and reports became of the more importance in view of certain news from the East and of the complications likely to arise at home in the event of the illness of the President proving fatal.
Nevertheless, there were times when Linton found himself mooning about his uncle's house and garden in a state both of mental and physical restlessness. He missed Zenobia, missed a glimpse of her on the river, or a flash of her as she sped away in the Bladud to London. They had met often, and it seemed to him as if they had known each other all their lives. He would have given anything to hear the yelping of her dog Peter next door, because it would have betokened the presence of Peter's mistress.
Before Mr. Jardine's departure for Bath, the young Canadian had sat with him and talked on many topics and on several occasions. The enormous strides which Canada had made, and was making, in the way of prosperity greatly interested the President. Linton, however, was astonished to find how little the man whom fortune had pitch-forked into a foremost position in England really knew about Colonial affairs. He frequently fell into amazing geographical errors, mistakes quite comparable with that of a certain Duke of Newcastle who announced with surprise to George II. his discovery that Cape Breton was an island.
Linton liked the President, not wholly for the President's sake, but partly for the same reason that he had developed a friendly feeling towards Peter the dog. The President, on his part, certainly had taken a fancy to him, and in those bedside conver[Pg 86]sations talked with far less reserve than he was in the habit of employing in conversations with Englishmen, particularly young Englishmen. These conversations gradually impressed Linton with the belief that this hardheaded and successful mechanic, who found himself, thanks to the strength of a numerous and well-drilled party, at the head of the State, actually was discovering his own deficiencies—the educational deficiencies, the intellectual deficiencies for which doggedness and powers of oratory were no true substitute. In a word, it seemed as if, in that time of inactivity and reflection which a bed of sickness enforces, Nicholas Jardine had begun to realise his own shortcomings as a ruler of men—his unfitness to direct the destinies of a nation great in history, and still great in possibilities of recuperation if only well and wisely led.
"If you should be down West, come and see me at Bath," were the President's parting words. "Indeed I will," said the young man heartily, and there was something in his eyes as he turned to say good-bye to Zenobia that made her colour. Nothing seemed more probable to both of them at that moment than that Linton would find himself down West, and nothing more certain than that there would be only one reason for his going there.
The young man had fought his way into Queen's Hall on the night of the great meeting, solely and wholly because he had heard that Miss Jardine was likely to be present. But he had no idea what line she was likely to adopt in reference to the momentous question under discussion. Yet the one drawback that hitherto he had found in her was her attitude, or what he feared was her attitude, towards the question of woman's ascendency. In the crush of the hot and noisy meeting, he had failed to see[Pg 87] Zenobia on the platform, and when she rose to speak his feelings were strangely blended—of admiration at her bearing, and of dread less she might say something than ran counter to his own convictions. But her actual utterance astonished and delighted him; and the hostile method of the "Cat" provoked in him such feelings of fierce resentment as he had never felt towards womanhood before. Yet there was one sentence that fell from the Vice-President which caused him to be sensible of emotion of another sort. That sneering suggestion that the younger speaker must be in love excited him strangely. He felt an intimate personal concern in that scornful imputation. In love with whom?
And now he had ample time in his uncle's riverside house, with the empty dwelling and silent garden on the other side of the hedge, to ponder the same question. The Bladud, however, proved a great boon. It had been left at his disposal, and Wilton, the Jardine's engineer and skipper, was always ready to accompany him in an air trip. Wilton was a hard-featured little man with a soft heart and a shrewish wife, who kept the domestic nest in so s............