THE
UDGM&NT
I HOUSE
GILBERT PARKER
THE
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
IN MEMORY OF
EDWIN CORLE
PRESENTED BY
JEAN CORLE
THE JUDGMENT HOUSE
BOOKS BY
GILBERT PARKER
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS
THE WORLD FOR SALE. Illustrated. Post 8vo
THE MONEY MASTER. Illustrated. Post 8vo
THE JUDGMENT HOUSE. Illustrated. Post 8vo
CUMNER'S SON. Post 8vo
NORTHERN LIGHTS. Illustrated. Post 8vo
THE WEAVERS. Illustrated. Post 8vo
THE RIGHT OF WAY. Illustrated. Post 8vo
A LADDER OF SWORDS. Illustrated. Post Svo
THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING. Post Svo
THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG. Post 8vo
AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH. 16mo
A LOVER'S DIARY. (Poems). IGrao
PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE. IGmo
A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS. 16mo
WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC. lOmo
(PUBLISHED ELSEWHERE)
MRS. FALCHION
THE TRESPASSER
THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE
THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD
THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY
THE POMP OF THE LAVILETTES
DONOVAN PASHA
YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK
EMBERS. (Poems)
OLD QUEBEC. (History In collaboration with C. G. Bryan)
ROUND THE COMPASS IN AUSTRALIA (Travel)
THE WORLD IN THE CRUCIBLE(Study of the War)
p. 278
RUDYARD LIFTED HER IN HIS ARMS AND CARRIED HER UP-STAIRS
THE
JUDGMENT
HOUSE
A NOVEL
BY
GILBERT PARKER
ILLUSTRATED BY
W. HATHERELL, R.I.
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
TO
BAL
ADMIRED BY HIS COUNTRY'S FRIENO*
AND
BELOVED BY HIS OWN
CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAP. PAG*
I. THE JASMINE FLOWER 3
II. THE UNDERGROUND WORLD 14
III. A DAUGHTER OF TYRE 22
IV. THE PARTNERS MEET 39
V. A WOMAN TELLS HER STORY 52
VI. WITHIN THE POWER-HOUSE 64
BOOK II
VII. THREE YEARS LATER 77
VIII. "HE SHALL NOT TREAT ME So" 92
IX. THE APPIAN WAY . . . ,. ^ 99
X. AN ARROW FINDS A BREAST 117
XI. IN WALES, WHERE JIGGER PLAYS His PART ... 131
XII. THE KEY IN THE LOCK 144
XIII. "I WILL NOT SING" 153
XIV. THE BAAS 163
BOOK III
XV. THE WORLD WELL LOST 179
XVI. THE COMING OF THE BAAS 188
XVII. Is THERE No HELP FOR THESE THINGS? .... 197
XVIII. LANDRASSY'S LAST STROKE 213
vii
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGB
XIX. " TO-MORROW . . . PREPARE!" 223
XX. THE FURNACE DOOR 227
XXI. THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE 241
XXII. IN WHICH FELLOWES GOES A JOURNEY ... 257
XXIII. "MORE WAS LOST AT MOHACKSFIELD" . . . 266
XXIV. ONE WHO CAME SEARCHING 279
XXV. WHEREIN THE LOST Is FOUND 289
XXVI. JASMINE'S LETTER 299
XXVII. KROOL 304
XXVIII. "THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM" 325
BOOK IV
XXIX. THE MENACE OF THE MOUNTAIN 349
XXX. "AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET!" . . 364
XXXI. THE GREY HORSE AND ITS RIDER 374
XXXII. THE WORLD'S FOUNDLING 386
XXXIII. "ALAMACHTIG!" 395
XXXIV. "THE ALPINE FELLOW" 407
XXXV. AT BRINKWORT'S FARM 420
XXXVI. SPRINGS OF HEALING 431
XXXVII. UNDER THE GUN 449
XXXVIII. " PHEIDIPPIUES " 462
XXXIX. "THE ROAD Is CLEAR" 464
GLOSSARY 470
NOTE
J
Except where references to characters well-known to all
the world occur in these pages, this book does not present
a picture of public or private individuals living or dead.
It is not in any sense a historical novel. It is in conception
and portraiture a work of the imagination.
" Strangers come to the outer wall
(Why do the sleepers stir?}
Strangers enter the Judgment House
(Why do the sleepers sigh?)
Slow they rise in their judgment seats,
Sieve and measure the naked souls,
Then with a blessing return to sleep.
(Quiet the Judgment House.)
Lone and sick are the vagrant souls
(When shall the world come home?)"
"Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far,
God must judge the couple: leave them as they are
Whichever one's the guiltless, to his glory,'
And whichever one the guilt's with, to my story!
"Once more. Will the wronger, at this last of all,
Dare to say, 'I did wrong,' rising in his fall?
No? Let go, then! Both the fighters to their places!
While I count three, step you back as many paces!"
"And the Sibyl, you know. I saw her with my own eyes at
Cumae, hanging in a jar; and, when the boys asked her, 'What
would you, Sibyl?' she answered, 'I would die.'"
"So is Pheidippides happy for ever, the noble strong man
Who would race like a God, bear the face of a God, whom a
God loved so well:
He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered
to tell
Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began
So to end gloriously once to shout, thereafter be mute:
'Athens is saved!' Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed."
"Oh, never star
Was lost here, but it rose afar."
THE JUDGMENT HOUSE
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
THE JASMINE FLOWER
THE music throbbed in a voice of singular and deli-
cate power; the air was resonant with melody, love
and pain. The meanest Italian in the gallery far up be-
neath the ceiling, the most exalted of the land in the boxes
and the stalls, leaned indulgently forward, to be swept by
this sweet storm of song. They yielded themselves ut-
terly to the power of the triumphant debutante who was
making "Manassa" the musical feast of the year, renew-
ing to Covent Garden a reputation which recent lack of
enterprise had somewhat forfeited.
Yet, apparently, not all the vast audience were hypno-
tized by the unknown and unheralded singer, whose stage
name was Al'mah. At the moment of the opera's supreme
appeal the eyes of three people at least were not in the
thraldom of the singer. Seated at the end of the first row
of the stalls was a fair, slim, graciously attired man of
about thirty, who, turning in his seat so that nearly the
whole house was in his circle of vision, stroked his golden
moustache, and ran his eyes over the thousands of faces
with a smile of pride and satisfaction which in a less hand-
some man would have been almost a leer. His name was
Adrian Fellowes,
3
THE JUDGMENT HOUSE
Either the opera and the singer had no charms for
Adrian Fellowes, or else he had heard both so often that,
without doing violence to his musical sense, he could
afford to study the effect of this wonderful effort upon
the mob of London, mastered by the radiant being on the
stage. Very sleek, handsome, and material he looked;
of happy colour, and, apparently, with a mind and soul in
which no conflicts ever raged to the advantage of his
attractive exterior. Only at the summit of the applause
did he turn to the stage again. Then it was with the gloat-
ing look of the gambler who swings from the roulette-table
with the winnings of a great coup, cynical joy in his eyes
that he has beaten the Bank, conquered the dark spirit
which has tricked him so often. Now the cold-blue eyes
caught, for a second, the dark-brown eyes of the Celtic
singer, which laughed at him gaily, victoriously, eagerly,
and then again drank in the light and the joy of the myriad
faces before her.
In a box opposite the royal box were two people, a man
and a very young woman, who also in the crise of the
opera were not looking at the stage. The eyes of the man,
sitting well back purposely, so that he might see her
without marked observation were fixed upon the rose-
tinted, delicate features of the girl in a joyous blue silk
gown, which was so perfect a contrast to the golden hair
and wonderful colour of her face. Her eyes were fixed
upon her lap, the lids half closed, as though in reverie, yet
with that perspicuous and reflective look which showed
her conscious of all that was passing round her even the
effect of her own pose. Her name was Jasmine Grenfel.
She was not oblivious of the music. Her heart beat
faster because of it; and a temperament adjustable to
every mood and turn of human feeling was answering to
the poignancy of the opera; yet her youth, child-likeness,
and natural spontaneity were controlled by an elate con-
sciousness. She was responsive to the passionate har-
mony; but she was also acutely sensitive to the bold yet
4
THE JASMINE FLOWER
deferential appeal to her emotions of the dark, distin-
guished, bearded man at her side, with the brown eyes
and the Grecian profile, whose years spent in the Foreign
Office and at embassies on the Continent had given him
a tact and an insinuating address peculiarly alluring to
her sex. She was well aware of Ian Stafford's ambitions,
and had come to the point where she delighted in them,
and had thought of sharing in them, "for weal or for
woe"; but she would probably have resented the sug-
gestion that his comparative poverty was weighed against
her natural inclinations and his real and honest passion.
For she had her ambitions, too; and when she had
scanned the royal box that night, she had felt that some-
thing only little less than a diadem would really sat-
isfy her.
Then it was that she had turned meditatively towards
another occupant of her box, who sat beside her pretty
stepmother a big, bronzed, clean-shaven, strong-faced
man of about the same age as Ian Stafford of the Foreign
Office, who had brought him that night at her request.
Ian had called him, "my South African nabob," in tribute
to the millions he had made with Cecil Rhodes and others
at Kimberley and on the Rand. At first sight of the
forceful and rather ungainly form she had inwardly con-
trasted it with the figure of Ian Stafford and that other
spring-time figure of a man at the end of the first row in
the stalls, towards which the prima donna had flashed
one trusting, happy glance, and with which she herself
had been familiar since her childhood. The contrast had
not been wholly to the advantage of the nabob; though,
to be sure, he was simply arrayed as if, indeed, he were
not worth a thousand a year. Certainly he had about
him a sense of power, but his occasional laugh was too
vigorous for one whose own great sense of humour was con-
veyed by an infectious, rippling murmur delightful to
hear.
Rudyard Byng was worth three millions of pounds, and
5
THE JUDGMENT HOUSE
that she interested him was evident by the sudden arrest
of his look and his movements when introduced to her.
Ian Stafford had noted this look; but he had seen many
another man look at Jasmine Grenfel with just as much
natural and unbidden interest, and he shrugged the
shoulders of his mind; for the millions alone would not
influence her, that was sure. Had she not a comfortable
fortune of her own? Besides, Byng was not the kind of
man to capture Jasmine's fastidious sense and nature. So
much had happened between Jasmine and himself, so
deep an understanding had grown up between them, that
it only remained to bring her to the last court of inquiry
and get reply to a vital question already put in a thou-
sand ways and answered to his perfect satisfaction. In-
deed, there was between Jasmine and himself the equiva-
lent of a bethrothal. He had asked her to marry him,
and she had not said no; but she had bargained for time
to " prepare" ; that she should have another year in which
to be gay in a gay world and, in her own words, "walk
the primrose path of pleasure untrammelled and alone,
save for my dear friend Mrs. Grundy."
Since that moment he had been quite sure that all was
well. And now the year was nearly up, and she had not
changed; had, indeed, grown more confiding and deli-
cately dependent in manner towards him, though seeing
him but seldom alone.
As Ian Stafford looked at her now, he kept saying to
himself, "So exquisite and so clever, what will she not be
at thirty! So well poised, and yet so sweetly child-like
dear dresden-china Jasmine."
That was what she looked like a lovely thing of the
time of Boucher in dresden-china.
At last, as though conscious of what was going on in
his mind, she slowly turned her drooping eyes towards
him, and, over her shoulder, as he quickly leaned forward,
she said in a low voice which the others could not hear:
"I am too young, and not clever enough to under-
6
THE JASMINE FLOWER
stand all the music means is that what you are think-
ing?"
He shook his head in negation, and his dark-brown eyes
commanded hers, but still deferentially, as he said: "You
know of what I was thinking. You will be forever young,
but yours was always will always be the wisdom of
the wise. I'd like to have been as clever at twenty-two."
"How trying that you should know my age so exactly
it darkens the future," she rejoined with a soft little
laugh; then, suddenly, a cloud passed over her face. It
weighed down her eyelids, and she gazed before her into
space with a strange, perplexed, and timorous anxiety.
What did she see? Nothing that was light and joyous,
for her small sensuous lips drew closer, and the fan she
held in her lap slipped from her fingers to the floor.
This aroused her, and Stafford, as he returned the fan
to her, said into a face again alive to the present: "You
look as though you were trying to summon the sable
spirits of a sombre future."
Her fine pink-white shoulders lifted a little and, once
more quite self-possessed, she rejoined, lightly, "I have a
chameleon mind; it chimes with every mood and circum-
stance."
Suddenly her eyes rested on Rudyard Byng, and some-
thing in the rough power of the head arrested her atten-
tion, and the thought flashed through her mind: "How
wonderful to have got so much at thirty- three ! Three
millions at thirty- three and millions beget millions!"
. . . Power millions meant power; millions made ready
the stage for the display and use of every gift, gave the
opportunity for the full occupation of all personal quali-
ties, made a setting for the jewel of life and beauty, which
reflected, intensified every ray of merit. Power that
was it. Her own grandfather had had power. He had
made his fortune, a great one too, by patents which ex-
ploited the vanity of mankind, and, as though to prove
his cynical contempt for his fellow-creatures, had then
2 7
THE JUDGMENT HOUSE
invented a quick-firing gun which nearly every nation in
the world adopted. First, he had got power by a fortune
which represented the shallowness and gullibility of hu-
man nature, then had exploited the serious gift which had
always been his, the native genius which had devised the
gun when he was yet a boy. He had died at last with
the smile on his lips which had followed his remark,
quoted in every great newspaper of two continents, that:
"The world wants to be fooled, so I fooled it; it wants to
be stunned, so I stunned it. My fooling will last as long
as my gun; and both have paid me well. But they all
love being fooled best."
Old Draygon Grenfel's fortune had been divided among
his three sons and herself, for she had been her grand-
father's favourite, and she was the only grandchild to
whom he had left more than a small reminder of his
existence. As a child her intelligence was so keen, her
perception so acute, she realized him so well, that he had
said she was the only one of his blood who had anything
of himself in character or personality, and he predicted
too often in her presence that she "would give the world
a start or two when she had the chance." His intellect-
ual contempt for his eldest son, her father, was repro-
duced in her with no prompting on his part; and, with-
out her own mother from the age of three, Jasmine had
grown up self-willed and imperious, yet with too much
intelligence to carry her will and power too far. Infinite
adaptability had been the result of a desire to please and
charm; behind which lay an unlimited determination to
get her own way and bend other wills to hers.
The two wills she had not yet bent as she pleased were
those of her stepmother and of Ian Stafford one, because
she was jealous and obstinate, and the other because he
had an adequate self-respect and an ambition of his own
to have his way in a world which would not give save at
the point of the sword. Come of as good family as there
was in England, and the grandson of a duke, he still was
THE JASMINE FLOWER
eager for power, determined to get on, ingenious in search-
ing for that opportunity which even the most distinguished
talent must have, if it is to soar high above the capable
average. That chance, the predestined alluring opening,
had not yet come; but his eyes were wide open, and he
was ready for the spring nerved the more to do so by
the thought that Jasmine would appreciate his success
above all others, even from the standpoint of intellectual
appreciation, all emotions excluded. How did it come
that Jasmine was so worldly wise, and yet so marvellously
the insouciant child?
He followed her slow, reflective glance at Byng, and the
impression of force and natural power of the millionaire
struck him now, as it had often done. As though sum-
moned by them both, Byng turned his face and, catching
Jasmine's eyes, smiled and leaned forward.
" I haven't got over that great outburst of singing yet,"
he said, with a little jerk of the head towards the stage,
where, for the moment, minor characters were in posses-
sion, preparing the path for the last rush of song by which
Al'mah, the new prima donna, would bring her first night
to a complete triumph.
With face turned full towards her, something of the
power of his head seemed to evaporate swiftly. It was
honest, alert, and almost brutally simple the face of a
pioneer. The forehead was broad and strong, and the
chin was square and determined; but the full, dark-blue
eyes had in them shadows of rashness and recklessness,
the mouth was somewhat self-indulgent and indolent;
though the hands clasping both knees were combined of
strength, activity, and also a little of grace.
" I never had much chance to hear great singers before
I went to South Africa," he added, reflectively, "and this
swallows me like a storm on the high veld all light-
ning and thunder and flood. I've missed a lot in my
time."
With a look which made his pulses gallop, Jasmine
9
THE JUDGMENT HOUSE
leaned over and whispered for the prima donna was
beginning to sing again:
"There's nothing you have missed in your race that
you cannot ride back and collect. It is those who haven't
run a race who cannot ride back. You have won; and it
is all waiting for you."
Again her eyes beamed upon him, and a new sensation
came to him the kind of thing he felt once when he was
sixteen, and the vicar's daughter had suddenly held him
up for quite a week, while all his natural occupations were
neglected, and the spirit of sport was humiliated and
abashed. Also he had caroused in his time who was
there in those first days at Kimberley and on the Rand
who did not carouse, when life was so hard, luck so un-
certain, and food so bad; when men got so dead beat,
with no homes anywhere only shake-downs and the
Tents of Shem? Once he had had a native woman sum-
moned to be his slave, to keep his home; but that was a
business which had revolted him, and he had never re-
peated the experiment. Then, there had been an ad-
venturess, a wandering, foreign princess who had fooled
him and half a dozen of his friends to the top of their
bent; but a thousand times he had preferred other sorts
of pleasures cards, horses, and the bright outlook which
came with the clinking glass after the strenuous day.
Jasmine seemed to divine it all as she looked at him
his primitive, almost Edenic sincerity; his natural in-
dolence and native force: a nature that would not stir
until greatly roused, but then, with an unyielding per-
sistence and concentrated force, would range on to its
goal, making up for a slow-moving intellect by sheer will,
vision and a gallant heart.
Al'mah was singing again, and Byng leaned forward
eagerly. There was a rustle in the audience, a movement
to a listening position, then a tense waiting and attention.
As Jasmine composed herself she said in a low voice to
Ian Stafford, whose well-proportioned character, per-
THE JASMINE FLOWER
sonality, and refinement of culture were in such marked
contrast to the personality of the other: "They live hard
lives in those new lands. He has wasted much of him-
self."
"Three millions at thirty-three means spending a deal
of one thing to get another," Ian answered a little
grimly.
"Hush! Oh, Ian, listen!" she added in a whisper.
Once more Al'mah rose to mastery over the audience.
The bold and generous orchestration, the exceptional
chorus, the fine and brilliant tenor, had made a broad
path for her last and supreme effort. The audience had
long since given up their critical sense, they were ready
to be carried into captivity again, and the surrender was
instant and complete. Now, not an eye was turned away
from the singer. Even the Corinthian gallant at the end
of the first row of stalls gave himself up to feasting on
her and her success, and the characters in the opera were
as electrified as the audience.
For a whole seven minutes this voice seemed to be the
only thing in the world, transposing all thoughts, emotions,
all elements of life into terms of melody. Then, at last,
with a crash of sweetness, the voice broke over them all
in crystals of sound and floated away into a world of
bright dreams.
An instant's silence which followed was broken by a
tempest of applause. Again, again, and again it was re-
newed. The subordinate singers were quickly disposed
of before the curtain, then Al'mah received her memo-
rable tribute. How many times she came and went she
never knew; but at last the curtain, rising, showed her
well up the stage beside a table where two huge candles
flared. The storm of applause breaking forth once more,
the grateful singer raised her arms and spread them out
impulsively in gratitude and dramatic abandon.
As she did so, the loose, flowing sleeve of her robe caught
the flame of a candle, and in an instant she was in a cloud
THE JUDGMENT HOUSE
of fire. The wild applause turned suddenly to notes of
terror as, with a sharp cry, she stumbled forward to the
middle of the stage.
For one stark moment no one stirred, then suddenly
a man with an opera-cloak on his arm was seen to spring
across a space of many feet between a box on the level of
the stage and the stage itself. He crashed into the foot-
lights, but recovered himself and ran forward. In an
instant he had enveloped the agonized figure of the singer
and had crushed out the flames with swift, strong move-
ments.
Then lifting the now unconscious artist in his great
arms, he strode off with her behind the scenes.
"Well done, Byng! Well done, Ruddy Byng!" cried
a strong voice from the audience; and a cheer went up.
In a moment Byng returned and came down the stage.
"She is not seriously hurt," he said simply to the au-
dience. "We were just in time."
Presently, as he entered the Grenfel box again, deafen-
ing applause broke forth.
"We were just in time," said Ian Stafford, with an ad-
miring, teasing laugh, as he gripped Byng's arm.
"'We' well, it was a royal business," said Jasmine,
standing close to him and looking up into his eyes with
that ingratiating softness which had deluded many an-
other man; "but do you realize that it was my cloak you
took?" she added, whimsically.
"Well, I'm glad it was," Byng answered, boyishly.
"You'll have to wear my overcoat home."
"I certainly will," she answered. "Come the giant's
robe."
People were crowding upon their box.
"Let's get out of this," Byng said, as he took his coat
from the hook on the wall.
As they left the box the girl's white-haired, prema-
turely aged father whispered in the pretty stepmoth-
er's ear;
THE JASMINE FLOWER
"Jasmine '11 marry that nabob you'll see."
The stepmother shrugged a shoulder. "Jasmine is in
love with Ian Stafford," she said, decisively.
"But she'll many Rudyard Byng," was the stubborn
reply.
CHAPTER II
THE UNDERGROUND WORLD
" \ A 7 HAT ' S that y u say Jameson! what?"
V V Rudyard Byng paused with the lighted match at
the end of his cigar, and stared at a man who was reading
from a tape-machine, which gave the club the world's
news from minute to minute.
"Dr. Jameson's riding on Johannesburg with eight
hundred men. He started from Pitsani two days ago.
And Cronje with his burghers are out after him."
The flaming match burned Byng's ringers. He threw
it into the fireplace, and stood transfixed for a moment,
his face hot with feeling, then he burst out:
"But God! they're not ready at Johannesburg. The
burghers '11 catch him at Doornkop or somewhere, and
He paused, overcome. His eyes .suffused. His hands
went out in a gesture of despair.
"Jameson's jumped too soon," he muttered. "He's
lost the game for them."
The other eyed him quizzically. "Perhaps he'll get
in yet. He surely planned the thing with due regard for