MIRIAM’S VISITOR
THE twenty-second of June, of the year 2001, was Miriam Mayne’s
birthday—her twenty-first. She and her father, Terence Mayne, the
billionaire contractor, had arranged to meet at the Long Island house for
dinner. After an early breakfast, she kissed him good-by; he went
down-town to business, and she to her room, to put on her traveling dress.
A glorious day it was! When the tall girl stepped from the window of her
room on to the balcony, the sun embraced her graceful figure as if it
loved her; the perfume of flowers rose up like incense; two humming-birds,
busy with the morning-glories, buzzed a welcome; the air was warm but
exhilarating. She mounted to the wide parapet of the balcony and stood
poised for a moment before starting on her journey.
She was clad in a dove-colored suit of a tunic and trousers to the knee,
fitting snugly, but allowing freedom of movement. On her feet she wore a
pair of sandals, with appendages on the heel resembling the talaria of
Greek myth, ascribed to Iris and Mercury; but for the wings were
substituted triangular projections of a pliable metal with a silvery
sheen. Over her head was drawn a close-fitting cap, fastened securely
under the chin, and bearing wing-like excrescences similar to the
foot-gear. A wide belt or girdle encircled her waist; it was formed of
narrow vertical pieces connected together, and four buttons or small knobs
appeared on the front of it, where they could be readily reached by either
hand. In her right hand she carried a light staff.
The art of personal flight was still a novelty at this period, though the
principle of it had been known for several years. Only persons of sound
physical and mental coordinations were apt to attempt it. Miriam had not
only passed the government tests, but was considered an expert.
With an upward swing of the arms, she leaped into the air; the drop to the
pavement of the court below was some fifty feet; but she rose upward as if
she had no weight, and continued her ascent until she hovered at a height
of a couple of thousand feet above the far-extending city of New York.
There she paused, gazing hither and thither at the magnificent prospect.
From the Battery to Harlem, the surface of Manhattan Island was covered
with handsome villas and mansions, of white or tinted marble, standing
each in an ample enclosure of green turf studded with trees and
flower-beds. Several miles to the south rose the superb turreted pile of
the new Madison Square Garden, like a fairy palace, of white marble set
off with pinnacles and trimmings of gold. It was Terence Mayne’s crowning
achievement, and was still unfinished. The East and North Rivers were
spanned by between three and four hundred bridges, lofty and wide, made of
a metallic substance that glittered and shone in the sun. The beds of the
rivers themselves were laid with white concrete, over which the water
flowed blue and transparent. Northward, beyond the island, the city proper
stretched for forty miles, following the course of the Hudson, but
extending westward over a breadth of five miles into New Jersey; the home
of nearly fifteen millions of people. From side to side, and from end to
end, no smoke fouled the clear air, and no sign of factories or of
business traffic was visible. But the entire area had been excavated to a
depth of a thousand feet, and here, layer beneath layer, were housed the
business activities of the metropolis.
Miriam was not unfamiliar with these subterranean regions. Illuminated by
the electron light, and ventilated by the carbon process, and kept at an
even temperature of seventy degrees Fahrenheit, they were wholesome and
pleasant, and many thousands of the inhabitants never troubled themselves
to appear above-ground from year’s end to year’s end. Except for the
absence of sun, moon and stars, life in this artificial world was as
agreeable and convenient as on the surface. But sun, moon and stars, and
the fathomless depths of space, were indispensable to Miriam’s happiness.
She now pointed her staff eastward, and began to move gently in that
direction. She was using the ten-mile-an-hour stop in her belt; she had no
present need for haste. She flew, leaning forward on the air, at an
inclination of about twenty degrees from the vertical, without movement of
her limbs. Few individual fliers were abroad, and they passed at a
distance. But three of the great Atlantic liners were setting their course
east and southeast; and high overhead, flocks of buses carrying business
men were sliding swiftly toward the lower part of the city. In spite of
its external transformation, New York, in some human respects, had not
changed much in the last hundred years.
In crossing the Sound, a sea-gull flew past Miriam, and she, by a sudden
turn, swept so close by it that she was almost able to touch its wing. It
dodged and dived with a scream. Smiling to herself, she gave a supple
impulse to her body, which caused her to slant slightly downward across
the Sound toward the Long Island shore. Five hundred feet above the ground
she resumed a horizontal course, moving slowly across the green lawns and
parklike enclosures that surrounded the sumptuous county-seats of this
district. It was a fair sight; but the sun, now forty-five degrees above
the sea-line, dazzled her eyes; she turned her body with a leisurely and
luxurious motion until she lay with her face toward the western sky, where
a snowy flock of gossamer fine-weather clouds was strung across the blue.
She was now carried along as if reclining on a couch, and did not change
her posture until she heard the rhythm of the surf on the great eastern
beaches. Fetching herself upright again, she touched the
gravitation-control in her belt, and sank slowly, guiding herself with her
staff toward the left. In a few minutes she alighted buoyantly on the soft
turf of the great Mayne estate.
Fifty yards before her rose a grassy mound, with a sort of summer-house on
its summit; the place was protected by a grove of tall pines, disposed in
a wide semicircle between the dwelling-house and the ocean. Entering the
pavilion, she quickly threw off her flying-suit, and running down the
steps to the beach, she plunged into the surf. So was Artemis, in the
seclusion of her temple precincts, wont to bathe on the Lydian shore of
the Ægean. Heading out beyond the breakers, Miriam swam and dived and
splashed up diamond spray in the thrilling coolness. At length she came
ashore, borne on the crest of a white-maned steed of the sea, and ran
back, a virgin shaft of glistening whiteness, to the pavilion. Thence,
after an interval, she reissued, robed in a flowing gown of purple wool,
lined with orange silk. She seated herself on a curved bench of marble
that stood on the seaward crest of the knoll, and spread out her black
hair, thick and long, to dry in the sun. Seated thus at ease, and secure
from all disturbance, Miriam fell into a reverie, which gradually became
profound. The intense but restricted sphere of personal consciousness
closed itself in the broad, steady luminousness of perception which
comprises and permeates the individual as does the ocean its waves. The
beautiful capacities of nature became transparent.
A voice of agreeable quality was speaking to her “Miriam!” The call had
been repeated several times before she recognized her own name. No one was
within sight or hearing. She knew the methods by which, in late times,
science had overcome space for both ear and eye; but this voice was using
a method unknown to her.
“Hold yourself still,” it now said, “and you will see me.”
She imposed quiescence upon mind and body. A shadow flickered for a moment
before her, and vanished. It came again, less vague. Upon the empty air
between herself and the sea it gradually defined itself. A tall, grave
figure in a dark robe with a black silk cap on its head. The face was
pale, with large, black eyes under level brows, it expressed tranquility
and power. As she gazed, a blue star surrounded by a ring glimmered forth
over the figure’s left breast. The lips moved, and the quiet voice spoke
again.
“I have observed you for a year. We are companions of the star. We can
help each other. Will you meet me?”
“What star?” asked Miriam, though she did not speak aloud.
“Saturn! The desire of your heart may be accomplished. I have found the
way, but can go no further without you. Will you meet me?”
The eyes of the apparition, meeting hers gravely and almost sternly,
communicated confidence. The speaker was a woman.
“I am willing!” said Miriam after a long look.
The expression of the face softened.
“You will receive a letter to-morrow. I have taken this method that you
might act freely. Without sympathy there could be no—” The voice died
away; the figure dimmed and a quivering passed through the air-drawn
scene. The next moment, nothing was visible but the sun-steeped sea and
shore.
Miriam stayed where she was for a long time. The influence had not been
hypnotic, but had conveyed a strong sense of spiritual harmony and of
enlightenment. She recognized the value of spontaneity. Knowledge was not
acquisition, but revelation. Her visitor had understood her need.
Miriam was a woman of her time. After acquiring political equality with
man, the other sex had soon turned from political activities to science.
Her more finely organized and fresher brain and her spiritual intuition
opened to her realms of conquest over nature and methods of achieving it
hitherto unimagined. The revolutionary investigations and discoveries of
later years had been woman’s work. Etheric heat, planetary motive-power,
electron light were gifts from woman’s hand. She had divined the
parallelism between material fact and spiritual truth. A lever so powerful
began to make the rock of human ignorance stir in its bed. The birthday of
the universal man seemed near.
To Miriam, keeping abreast of progress, had come some time since the dream
of actual interplanetary communication, not by interchange of signals
merely, but by bodily transference from the earth to other worlds of our
system. She had never confided this ambition to any person, and her fantom
visitor had been the first to divine it—for such had seemed to be her
intimation. Her father, a man of a past age, never suspected it. All the
girl’s studies had had this ambition for their end, but hitherto her
progress had seemed small. But to-day for the first time she could feel,
with a tremulous joy, that her labor and self-discipline had fitted her
for what was to come. A powerful hand had grasped hers and a profound and
fearless intelligence would direct her course. It was an added joy to know
that her cooperation was needed even for her guide’s masterful
intelligence.
The personal equation had begun to be recognized as the most important
agency of man’s rule over nature. It found its analogy in the inter-atomic
force. By solving the true nature of the isolation which the personal
equation implies, the way to its mastery was found to lie in the
compensating attraction of innate sympathies. Proper use of this vital
truth could result in achievements otherwise unattainable and seemingly
miraculous.
Miriam’s mother, a lovely and intelligent woman, had died when the girl
was fifteen; her father, though a man of the old fashion, was in his way a
genius, of immense energy and ability; and the whole tide of his ardent
Celtic nature flowed into love for his daughter. He had the insight to
perceive that she must allowed great freedom of choice and action in order
to secure her best development; he let her make her own rules of conduct
and education, and merely supplied whatever means and facilities she
required; there was complete mutual love and confidence between them. She
came and went, studied and played, as she pleased, without supervision or
question; and as she grew up the visible results were fully satisfactory.
Her bodily strength and symmetry were united with supple grace; she was
trained in the great gymnasiums which the influence of the king had made
fashionable; she was expert in fencing, swimming, running and wrestling;
and, besides her aptness in flying, was a consummate horsewoman. Terence
Mayne never learned personal flight, and hardly liked to have his girl
“mix herself up with a lot of ducks and geese,” as he put it; but he was
always eager and proud to act as her cavalier on a ride, and they were
often seen cantering down the Long Drive side by side, he with his bushy
gray hair uncovered to the breeze, thumping up and down on his big hunter;
she undulating easily beside him on her fine-limbed Arab. The vision of
her beauty haunted the dreams of many an impassioned youth. But Miriam,
though always kind and frank, drew back from male intimacies. She was
wedded to science and desired no human husband. Her father forbore to urge
her.
“A pretty gal is a good thing; let ’em stay so long as they will. The
woman in ’em will have her say in the long run; don’t let us be meddling!”
This was his rejoinder to the suggestions of sympathetic friends.
On her side, she recognized his cordial and sociable temperament, and
never refused her cooperation in his great dinners and receptions—a
queenlike presence, with her black hair and sea-gray eyes, moving through
the glowing vistas of the great rooms. Side by side with her intellectual
proclivities, there was in her a deep emotional quality, which found
expression in forms of art, and which she used to give distinction to the
plans and details of her father’s social enterprises.
But the greater part of her time was devoted to thoughts and effort far
removed from such matters; these had for her a sort of sanctity, due to
their exalted character. Science, in that age, had a spiritual soul which
lifted it toward the religious level. The solution of her problems was
connected with the future of mankind; it required courage to face even the
prevision of them. Transcendent moments visited her, mingled with a
sentiment of profound personal humility. She was conscious at times of an
appalling loneliness, chilling her to the finger-tips with delicious
terrors. But anon the warm blood flowed back to her heart, and she would
rise and pace her chamber, crowned with the hope of being forever known
and blessed as the giver to her race of unimagined benefits.
Her spectral interview on the Long Island estate brought a new influence
to her. The next morning at breakfast she found the most
commonplace-looking letter imaginable beside her plate. The contents were
as follows:
DEAR MIRIAM:
My laboratory is at Seven Hundred and Ninety-Sixth Street, near the
river. Come at three o’clock any day. Pardon the abrupt way I presented
myself yesterday. It was made possible by our saturnian affiliations. I
am still a little awkward about it—the interruption was caused by an
accident to the coordination. I hope to fulfil your expectations. I am
myself more than ever convinced that we shall achieve together something
that will modify the course of human history.
Sincerely yours, MARY FAUST.
Miriam looked across at her father, who was immersed in his business mail.
How near and dear to her he was, and yet how far removed! Distance is but
the relation of one mind to another; we may be closer to the Pleiades than
to the companion whose arm is linked in our own. But diameters of sidereal
systems cannot sever us from those we love.
She said nothing to her father; but that afternoon she privately visited
Mme. Faust’s laboratory; and thus began a secret connection destined to
have important issues.