A GODDESS WHO IS SUFFERING FROM OBESITY AND
A BRAVE MAN WHO IS AFRAID OF THE LAW OF AVERAGES
~1~
It was not till we had reached Marguerite's apartment that Zimmern
spoke. Then he and Marguerite both embraced me and cried with joy.
"Ah, Armstadt," said the old doctor, "you have done a wonderful thing, a
wonderful thing, but why did you not warn us?"
"Yes," I stammered, "I know. You mean the books. It worried me, but, you
see, I did not plan this thing. I did not know what I should do. It came
to me like a flash as the Emperor was conferring the honours upon me. I
had hoped to use my power to make him do my bidding, and yet we had
contrived no way to use that power in furtherance of our great plans to
free a race; but I could at least use it to free a woman. Let us hope
that it augurs progress to the ultimate goal."
"It was very noble, but it was dangerous," replied Zimmern. "It was only
through a coincidence that we were saved. Herr von Uhl told me that same
day what you had demanded. I saw Hellar immediately and he declared a
raid on Marguerite's apartment. But he came himself with only one
assistant who is in his confidence, and they boxed the books and carted
them off. They will be turned in as contraband volumes, but the report
will be falsified; no one will ever know from whence they came."
"Then the books are lost to you," I said; "of that I am sorry, and I
worried greatly while I was imprisoned."
"Yes," said Zimmern, "we have lost the books, but you have saved
Marguerite. That will more than compensate. For that I can never thank
you enough."
"And you were called into the matter, not," I said, "as Marguerite's
friend, but as the physician to her mother?"
"They must have looked up the record," replied Zimmern, "but nothing was
said to me. I received only a communication from His Majesty commanding
me as the physician to Marguerite's mother at the time of Marguerite's
birth, to make statement as to her fatherhood."
"But why," I asked, "did you not make this confession before, since it
enabled Marguerite to be restored to her rights?"
The old doctor looked pained at the question. "But you forget," he said,
"that it is the power of your secret and not my confession that has
restored Marguerite. The confession is only a matter of form, to satisfy
the wagging tongues of Royal Society."
"Do you mean," I asked, "that she will not be well received there
because she was born out of wedlock?"
"Not at all," replied Zimmern; "it was the failure to confess the
father, not the fact of her unwedded motherhood, that brought the
punishment. There are many love-children born on the Royal Level and
they suffer only a failure of inheritance of wealth from the father. But
if they be girls of charm and beauty, and if, as Marguerite now stands
credited, they be of rich Royal blood, they are very popular and much
sought after. But without the record of the father they cannot be
admitted into Royal Society, for the record of the blood lines would be
lost, and that, you see, is essential. Social precedent, the value in
the matrimonial market, all rest upon it. Marguerite is indeed
fortunate; with His Majesty's signature attesting my confession, she has
nothing more to fear. But I daresay they shall try their best to win her
from you for some shallow-minded prince."
"But when," I asked, "is she to go? His Majesty seemed very gracious,
but do you realize that I still possess my secret of the protium
formulas?"
"And do you still hesitate to give them up?" asked Marguerite.
"For your freedom, dear, I shall reveal them gladly."
"But," cried Marguerite, "you must not give them up just for me,--if
there is any way you can use them for our great plan."
"Nothing," spoke up Zimmern, "could be gained now by further secrecy but
trouble for us all; and by acceding, both you and Marguerite win your
places on the Royal Level, where you can better serve our cause. That
is, if you are still with us. It may be harder for you, now that you
have won the richest privileges that Germany has to offer, to remember
those who struggle in the darkness."
"But I shall remember," I said, giving him my hand.
"I believe you will," said Zimmern feelingly, "and I know I can count on
Marguerite. You will both have opportunities to see much of the officers
of the Submarine Service. The German race may yet be freed from this
sunless prison, if you can find one among them who can be won to
our cause."
~2~
I reported the next morning to the Chemical Staff, by whom I was treated
with deferential respect. I was immediately installed in my new office,
as Director of the Protium Works. While I set about supervising the
manufacture of apparatus for the new process, other members of the
staff, now furnished with the correct formulas repeated the
demonstration without my assistance.
When the report of this had been made to His Majesty, I received my
insignia of the social privilege of the Royal Level and a copy of the
Royal Society Bulletin announcing Marguerite's restoration to her place
in the House of Hohenzollern, with the title of Princess Marguerite,
Daughter of Princess Fedora and Count Rudolf. The next day a social
secretary from the Royal Level came for Marguerite and conducted her to
the Apartments of the Countess Luise, under whose chaperonage she was to
make her début into Royal Society.
I, also, was furnished with a social secretary, an obsequious but very
wise little man, who took charge of all my affairs outside my chemical
work. Under his guidance I was removed to more commodious quarters and
my wardrobe was supplied with numerous changes all in the uniform of the
Chemical Staff. There was little time to spare from my duties in the
Protium Works, but my secretary, ever alert, snatched upon the odd
moments to coach me in matters of social etiquette and so prepared me to
make my first appearance in Royal Society at the grand ball given by the
Countess Luise in honour of Marguerite's début.
Despite the assiduous coaching of my secretary, my ignorance must have
been delightfully amusing to the royal idlers who had little other
thought or purpose in life than this very round of complicated
nothingness. But if I was a blundering amateur in all this, they were
not so much discourteous as envious. They knew that I had won my
position by my achievements as a chemist and in a vague way they
understood that I had saved the empire from impending ruin, and for this
achievement I was lionized.
The women rustled about me in their gorgeous gowns and plied me with
foolish questions which I had better sense than to try to answer with
the slightest degree of truth. But their power of sustained interest in
such weighty matters was not great and soon the conversation would drift
away, especially if Marguerite was about, when the talk would turn to
the romance of her restoration.
One group of vivacious ladies discussed quite frankly with Marguerite
the relative advantages of a husband of intellectual genius as compared
with one of a high degree of royal blood. Some contended that the added
prospect of superior intelligence in the children would offset the
lowering of their degree of Hohenzollern blood. The others argued quite
as persistently that the "blood" was the better investment.
Through such conversation I learned of the two clans within the Royal
House. The one prided themselves wholly in the high degree of their
Hohenzollern blood; the other, styling themselves "Royal Intellectuals"
because of a greater proportion of outside blood lines, were quite as
proud of the fact that, while possessed of sufficient royal blood to be
in "the divinity," they inherited supposedly greater intelligence from
their mundane ancestors. This latter group, to make good their claims,
made a great show of intellectuality, and cultivated most persistently a
dilletante dabbling into all sorts of scientific and artistic matters.
Because of Marguerite's high credit in Royal blood she was courted by
"purists" by whom I was only tolerated on her account. On the other
hand, the "intellectuals" considered me as a great asset for their cause
and glorified particularly in the prospects of marriage of an outside
scientist to an eighty-degree Hohenzollern princess. This rivalry of the
clans of Royal Society made us much sought after and I was flooded with
invitations.
It did not take me long to discover, however, that the reason for my
popularity was not altogether a matter of respect for my intellectual
genius. I had at first been inclined to accept all invitations,
innocently supposing that I was being fêted as an honorary guest. But my
social secretary advised against this; and, when he began bringing me
checks to sign, I realized that the social privileges of Royal Society
included the honour of paying the bills for one's own entertainment.
I had already arranged with my banker that a fourth of my income be
turned over to Marguerite until her marriage, for she was without income
of her own, and it was upon my petition that she had been restored to
the Royal Level. At my banker's suggestion I had also made over ten
thousand marks a month to the Countess, under whose motherly wing
Marguerite was being sheltered. I therefore soon discovered that my
income of a million marks a year would be absorbed quite easily by Royal
Society. The entire system appeared to me rather sordid, but such
matters were arranged by bankers and secretaries and the principals were
supposed to be quite innocent of any knowledge of, or concern for,
the details.
The Countess Luise, who was permitted to entertain so lavishly at my
expense, was playing for the favour of both of the opposing social
clans. Possessing a high degree of Hohenzollern blood she stood well
with the purists. But her income was not all that could be desired, so
she had adroitly discovered in her only son a touch of intellectual
genius, and the young man quite dutifully had become a maker of picture
plots, hoping by this distinction to win as a wife one of the daughters
of some wealthy intellectual interloper. At first I had feared the
Countess had designs upon Marguerite as a wife for her son, but as
Marguerite had no income of her own I saw that in this I was mistaken,
and I developed a feeling of genuine friendliness for the plump and
cordial Countess.
"Do you know what I was reading last night?" I remarked one evening, as
I chatted with Marguerite and her chaperone.
"Some work on obesity, I hope," sparkled the Countess. Like many of the
House of Hohenzollern, among whom there was no weight control, she
carried a surplus of adipose tissue not altogether consistent
with beauty.
"No, indeed," I said gravely. "Nothing about your material being, but a
treatise upon your spiritual nature. I was reading an old school book
that I found among my forgotten relics--a book about the Divinity of the
House of Hohenzollern."
"Oh, how jolly!" chuckled the Countess. "How very funny that I never
thought before that you, Herr von Armstadt, were once taught all those
delightful fables."
"And once believed them too," I lied.
"Oh, dear me," replied the Countess, with a ponderous sigh, "so I
suppose you did. And what a shock I must have been to you with an eighty
centimetre waist."
"You are not quite Junoesque," I admitted.
"The more reason you should use your science, Herr Chemist, to aid me to
recover my goddess form."
"What are you folks talking about?" interrupted Marguerite.
"About our divinity, my dear," replied Luise archly.
"But do you feel that it is really necessary," I asked, "that such
fables should be put into the helpless minds of children?"
"It surely must be. Suppose your own heredity had proven tricky--it does
sometimes, you know--and you had been found incapable of scientific
thought. You would have been deranked and perhaps made a record
clerk--no personal reflections, but such things do happen--and if you
now were filing cards all day you would surely be much happier if you
could believe in our divinity. Why else would you submit to a loveless
life and the dull routine of toil? Did not all the ancients, and do not
all the inferior races now, have objects of religious worship?"
"But the other races," I said, "do not worship living people but
spiritual divinities and the sainted dead.
"Quite so," replied the over-plump goddess, "but that is why their
_kulturs_ are so inefficient. Surely the worship was useless to the
spirits and the dead, whereas we find it quite profitable to be
worshipped. But for this wonderful doctrine of the divinity of the blood
of William the Great we should be put to all sorts of inconveniences."
"You might even have to work," I ventured.
The Countess bestowed on me one of her most bewitching smiles. "My dear
Herr Chemist," she said in sugary tones, "you with your intellectual
genius can twit us on our psychic lacks and we must fall back on the
divine blood of our Great Ancestor--but would you really wish the slaves
of dull toil to think it as human as their own?"
"But to me it seems a little gross," I said.
"Not at all; on the contrary, it is a master stroke of science and
efficiency--inferior creatures must worship; they always have and always
will--then why waste the worship?"
~3~
My position as director of the protium works soon brought me into
conference with Admiral von Kufner who was Chief of the Submarine Staff.
Von Kufner was in his forties and his manner indicated greater talent
for pomp and ceremony than for administrative work. His grandfather had
been the engineer to whose genius Berlin owed her salvation through the
construction of the submarine tunnel. By this service the engineer had
won the coveted "von," a princely fortune and a wife of the Royal Level.
The Admiral therefore carried Hohenzollern blood in his veins, which,
together with his ample fortune and a distinguished position, made him a
man of both social and official consequence.
It did not take me long to decide that von Kufner was hopeless as a
prospective convert to revolutionary doctrines. Nor did he possess any
great knowledge of the protium mines, for he had never visited them.
Inheriting his position as an honour to his grandfather's genius, he
commanded the undersea vessels from the security of an office on the
Royal Level, for journeys in ice-filled waters were entirely too
dangerous to appeal to one who loved so well the pleasures and
vanities of life.
I had explained to von Kufner the distinctions I had discovered in the
various samples of the ore brought from the mines and the necessity of
having new surveys of the deposits made on the basis of these
discoveries. After he had had time to digest this information, I
suggested that I should myself go to make this survey. But this idea the
Admiral at once opposed, insisting that the trip through the Arctic ice
fields was entirely too dangerous.
"Very well," I replied. "I feel that I could best serve Germany by going
to the Arctic mines in person, but if you think that is unwise, will you
not arrange for me to consult at once with men who have been in the
mines and are familiar with conditions there?"
To this very reasonable request, which was in line with my obvious
duties, no objection could be made and a conference was at once called
of submarine captains and furloughed engineers who had been in the
Arctic ore fields.
I was impressed by the youthfulness of these men, which was readily
explained by the fact that one vessel out of every five sent out was
lost beneath the Arctic ice floes. With an almost mathematical certainty
the men in the undersea service could reckon the years of their lives on
the fingers of one hand.
Although the official business of the conference related to ore deposits
and not to the dangers of the traffic, the men were so obsessed with the
latter fact, that it crept out in their talk in spite of the Admiral's
obvious displeasure at such confession of fear. I particularly marked
the outspoken frankness of one, Captain Grauble, whose vessel was the
next one scheduled to depart to the mines.
I therefore asked Grauble to call in person at my office for the
instructions concerning the ore investigations which were to be
forwarded to the Director of the Mines. Free from the restraining
influence of the Admiral, I was able to lead the Captain to talk freely
of the dangers of his work, and was overjoyed to find him frankly
rebellious.
That I might still further cultivate his acquaintance I withheld some of
the necessary documents; and, using this as a pretext, I later sought
him out at his quarters, which were in a remote and somewhat obscure
part of the Royal Level.
The official nature of my call disposed of, I led the conversation into
social matters, and found no difficulty in persuading the Captain to
talk of his own life. He was a man well under thirty and like most of
his fellows in the service was one of the sons of a branch of the
Hohenzollern family whose declining fortune denied him all hope of
marriage or social life. In the heroic years of his youth he had
volunteered for the submarine service. But now he confessed that he
regretted the act, for he realized that his death could not be long
postponed. He had made his three trips as commander of an
ore-bringing vessel.
"I have two more trips," declared Captain Grauble. "Such is the prophecy
of statistical facts: five trips is the allotted life of a Captain; it
is the law of averages. It is possible that I may extend that number a
little, but if so it will be an exception. Trusting to exceptions is a
poor philosophy. I do not like it. Sometimes I think I shall refuse to
go. Disgrace, of course,--banishment to the mines. Report my treasonable
utterances if you like. I am prepared for that; suicide is easy
and certain."
"But is it not rather cowardly, Captain?" I asked, looking him steadily
in the eye.
Grauble flung out his hand with a gesture of disdain. "That is an easy
word for you to pronounce," he sneered. "You have hope to live by, you
are on the upward climb, you aspire to marry into the Royal House and
sire children to inherit your wealth. But I was born of the Royal House,
my father squandered his wealth. My sisters were beautiful and they have
married well. My brother was servile; he has attached himself to the
retinue of a wealthy Baroness. But I was made of better stuff than that.
I would play the hero. I would face danger and gladly die to give Berlin
more life and uphold the House of Hohenzollern in its fat and idle
existence; and for me they have taken hope away!
"Oh, yes, I was proclaimed a hero. The young ladies of this house of
idleness dance with me, but they dare not take me seriously; what one of
them would court the certainty of widowhood without a fortune? So why
should I not tire of their shallow trifling? I find among the girls of
the Free Level more honest love, for they, as I, have no hope. They love
but for the passing hour, and pass on as I pass on, I to death, they to
decaying beauty and an old age of servile slavery."
Surely, I exulted, here is the rebellious and daring soul that Zimmern
and Hellar have sought in vain. Even as they had hoped, I seemed to have
discovered a man of the submarine service who was amenable to
revolutionary ideas. Could I not get him to consider the myriad life of
Berlin in all its barren futility, to grasp at the hope of succour from
a free and merciful world, and then, with his aid, find a way out of
Berlin, a way to carry the message of Germany's need of help to the
Great God of Humanity that dwelt without in the warmth and joy of
the sun?
The tide of hope surged high within me. I was tempted to divulge at once
my long cherished plan of escape from Berlin. "Why," I asked, thinking
to further sound his sincerity, "if you feel like this, have you never
considered running your craft to the surface during the sea passage and
beaching her on a foreign shore? There at least is life and hope and
experience."
"By the Statue of God!" cried Grauble, his body shaking and his voice
quavering, "why do you, in all your hope and comfort here, speak of that
to me? Do you think I have never been tempted to do that very thing? And
yet you call me a coward. Have I not breathed foul air for days, fearful
to poke up our air tube in deserted waters lest by the millionth chance
it might lead to a capture? And yet you speak of deliberate surrender!
Even though I destroyed my charts, the capture of a German submarine in
those seas would set the forces of the outer world searching for the
passage. If they found and blocked the passage I should be guilty of the
destruction of three hundred million lives--Great God! God of
Hohenzollern! God of the World! could this thing be?"
"Captain," I said, placing my hand on the shoulder of the palsied man,
"you and I have great secrets and the burden of great sorrows in common.
It is well that we have found each other. It is well that we have spoken
of these things that shake our souls. You have confessed much to me and
I have much that I shall confess to you. I must see you again before
you leave."
Grauble gave me his hand. "You are a strange man," he said. "I have met
none before like you. I do not know at what aims you are driving. If you
plotted my disgrace by leading me into these confessions, you have found
me easy prey. But do not credit yourself too much. I have often vowed I
would go to Admiral von Kufner, and say these things to him. But the
formal exterior of that petty pompous man I cannot penetrate. If I have
confessed to you, it is merely because you are a man without that
protecting shield of bristling authority and cold formality. You seemed
merely a man of flesh and blood, despite your decorations, and so I have
talked. What is to be made of it by you or by me I do not know, but I am
not afraid of you."
"I shall leave you now," I said, "for I have pressing duties, but I
shall see you soon again. So calm yourself and get hold of your reason.
I shall want you to think clearly when I talk with you again. Perhaps I
can yet show you a gleam of hope beyond this mathematical law of
averages that rattles the dice of death."