"There shall be no more wars!--there CAN be none!"
Roger Seaton said these words aloud with defiant emphasis, addressing
the dumb sky. It was early morning, but an intense heat had so scorched
the earth that not the smallest drop of dew glittered on any leaf or
blade of grass; it was all arid, brown and burned into a dryness as of
fever. But Seaton was far too much engrossed with himself and his own
business to note the landscape, or to be troubled by the suffocating
closeness of the atmosphere,--he stood gazing with the idolatry of a
passionate lover at a small, plain metal case, containing a dozen or
more small plain metal cylinders, as small as women's thimbles, all
neatly ranged side by side, divided from contact with one another by
folded strips of cotton.
"There it is!" he went on, apostrophising the still
air--"Complete,--perfected! If I sold that to any nation under the sun,
that nation could rule the world!--could wipe out everything save
itself and its own people! I have wrested the secret from the very womb
of Nature!--it is mine--all mine! I would have given it to Britain--or
to the United States--but neither will accept my terms--so therefore I
hold it--I, only!--which is just as well! I--just I--am master of
destiny!--the Power we call God, has put this tiling into my hands!
What a marvel and shall I not use it? I will! Let Germany but stir an
inch towards aggression, and Germany shall exist no longer!--The same
with any other nation that starts a quarrel--I--I alone will settle it!"
His eyes blazed with the light of fanaticism--he was obsessed by the
force of his own ideas and schemes, and the metal case on the table
before him was, to his mind, time, life, present and future. He had
arrived at that questionable point of intellectual attainment when man
forgets that there is any existing force capable of opposing him, and
imagines that he has but to go on in his own way to grasp all worlds
and the secrets of their being. At this juncture, so often arrived at
by many, a kind of super-sureness sets in, persuading the finite nature
that it has reached the infinite. The whole mental organisation of the
man thrilled with an awful consciousness of power. He said within
himself "I hold the lives of millions at my mercy!"
Other thoughts--other dreams had passed away for the moment--he had
forgotten life as it presents itself to the ordinary human being. Now
and again a flitting vision of Morgana vaguely troubled him,--her
intellectual capacity annoyed him, and yet he would have been glad to
discuss with her the scientific unfolding of his great secret--she
would understand it in all its bearings,--she might
advise--Advice!--no!--he did not need the advice of a woman! As for
Manella, he had not seen her since her last violent outburst of what he
called "temper"--and he had no wish for her presence. For now he had a
thing to do which was of paramount importance,--and this was, to
deposit the treasured discovery of his life in a secret hiding-place he
had found for it, till he should be ready to remove it to safer
quarters--or--TILL HE RESOLVED TO USE IT. Had he been a religious man,
of such humility as should accompany true religion, he would have
prayed that its use should never be called upon,--but he had trained
himself into an attitude of such complete indifferentism towards life
and the things of life, that to him it seemed useless to pray for what
did not matter. Sometimes the thought, appalling in its truth, flashed
across his brain that the force he had discovered and condensed within
small compass might as easily destroy half the world as a nation! The
fabled thunderbolts of Jove were child's play compared with those
plain-looking, thimble-like cylinders which contained such terrific
power! A touch of hesitation--of pure human dread affected his nerves
for the moment,--he shivered in the sultry air as with cold, and looked
about him right and left as though suspecting some hidden witness of
his actions. There was not so much as a bird or a butterfly in sight,
and he drew a long deep breath of relief. The day was treading in the
steps of dawn with the full blazonry of burning Californian sunlight,
and away in the distance the ridges and peaks of distant mountains
stood out sharply clear against the intense blue of the sky. There was
great stillness everywhere,--a pause, as it seemed, in the mechanism of
the universe. The twitter of a bird or the cry of some wild animal
would have been a relief,--so Seaton felt, though accustomed to deep
silence.
"Better get through with this at once"--he said, aloud--"Now that a
safe place is prepared." Here he looked at his watch. "In a couple of
hours they will be sending up from the Plaza to know if I want
anything--Irish Jake or Manilla will be coming on some trivial
matter--I'd better take the opportunity of complete secrecy while I
can."
For the next few minutes or so he hesitated. With the sudden fancy that
he had forgotten something, he turned out his pockets, looking for he
scarcely knew what. The contents were mixed and various, and among them
was a crumpled letter which he had received some days since from Sam
Gwent. He smoothed it out carefully and re-read it, especially one
passage--
"I think the States will never get involved in another war, but I am
fairly sure Germany will. If she joins up with Russia look out for
squalls. In your old country, which appears to be peopled by madmen,
there's a writing chap who spent a fortnight in Russia, not long enough
to know the ins and outs of a village, yet assuming to know everything
about the biggest territory in Europe, and the press is puffing up his
ignorance as if it were wisdom. Germany has her finger on the spot--so
perhaps your stuff will come in useful. But don't forget that if you
make up your mind to use it you will ruin America, commercially
speaking. And many other countries besides. So think it well
over,--more than a hundred times! Lydia Herbert, whom perhaps you
remember, and perhaps you don't, has caught her 'ancient mariner'--that
is to say, her millionaire,--and all fashionable New York is going to
the wedding, including yours truly. I had expected Morgana Royal to
grace the function, but I hear she is quite engrossed with the
decoration and furnishing of her Sicilian palace, as well as with her
advising artist, a very good-looking Marquis or Marchese as he is
called. It is also whispered that she has invented a wonderful air-ship
which has no engines, and creates its own motive power as it goes!
Sounds rather tall talk!--but this is an age of wonders and we never
know what next. There is a new Light Ray just out which prospects for
gold, oil and all ores and minerals, and finds them in a fifty-mile
circuit--so probably nobody need be poor for the future. When we've all
got most things we want, and there's nothing left to work for, I wonder
what the world will be worth!"
Seaton left off reading and thrust the letter again in his pocket.
"What will the world be worth?" he soliloquised--"Why, nothing!"
Suddenly struck by this thought, which had not always presented itself
with such sharp and clear precision as now, he took time to consider
it. Capital and Labour, the two forces which are much more prone to
rend each other than to co-operate--these would both possibly be
non-existent if Science had its full way. If gold, silver and other
precious minerals could be "picked up" as on the fabled Tom Tiddler's
ground, by a ray of light, then the striving for wealth would cease and
work would be reduced to a minimum. The prospect was stupendous, but
hardly entirely pleasing. If there were no need for effort, then the
powers of mind and body would sink into inertia.
"What object should we live for?" he mused--"Merely to propagate our
own kind and bring more effortless beings into the world to cumber it?
The very idea is horrible! Work is the very blood and bone of
existence--without it we should rot! But one must work for something or
some one--wife?--children?--Useless labour!--for in nine cases out
often the wife becomes a bore,--and the children grow up ungrateful.
Why waste strength and feeling on either?"
Thus mentally arguing, the exquisite lines of Tennyson's "Lotus Eaters"
suddenly rang in his memory like a chime of bells from the old English
village where he had lived as a boy, when his mother, one of the past
sweet "old-fashioned" women, used to read to him and teach him much of
the best in literature,--
"Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast
And in a little while our lips are dumb,
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past,
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?"
An effortless existence would be the existence of such as these fabled
Lotus Eaters--moreover, it was not possible it could go on, since all
Nature shows effort without cessation. Roger Seaton knew this as all
know it--but his soul's demand remained unsatisfied, for he sought to
know the CAUSE of all the toil and trouble,--the "why" it should be.
And at the back of his mind there was ever a teasing reminder of
Morgana and her strange theories, some of which she had half imparted
to him when their friendship had first begun. For her Tennyson's
line--"Death is the end of life"--would be the statement of a foolish
fallacy, as she held that there is no such thing as death, only failure
to adapt the spirit to advancing and higher change in its physical
organisation. To-day he remembered with curious clearness what she had
said on this subject--
"Radio-activity is the chief secret of life. It is for us to learn how
to absorb it into our systems as we grow,--to add by its means to our
supplies of vitality and energy. It never gives out,--nor should we.
The Nature-intention is that we should become better, stronger, more
beautiful, more mentally and spiritually perfect--and that we do not
fulfil this intention is our own fault. The decimation of the human
race by wars and plagues and famines has always been traceable to human
error. All accidents happen through those who make accidents
possible,--diseases are bred through human dirt, greed, ignorance, and
neglect. They are no part of the divine scheme of things. The plan is
to advance and make progress from one point of excellence to
another,--not to stop half way and turn back on the road. Humanity
dies, because it will not learn how to live."
She had spoken these words with a quiet simplicity and earnestness that
impressed him at the time as being almost child-like, considering the
depth of thought into which she must have plunged, notwithstanding her
youth and her sex--and on this morning of all others, this morning on
which he had set himself a task for which he had made long and
considerable preparation, he found himself half mechanically repeating
her phrase--"Humanity dies because it will not learn how to live."
There was no fatalism,--no fixed destiny in this; only the force of
Will was implied--the Will to learn,--the Will to know.
"And why should not humanity die?" he argued within himself--"If, in
the long course of ages, it is proved that it will neither learn nor
know,--why should it remain? Room should be made for a new race! A
clever gardener can produce a perfectly beautiful flower from an
insignificant and common weed,--surely this is a lesson to us that it
may be possible to produce a god from a man!"
He bent his eyes lovingly on the case of small cylinders lying open
before him;--the just risen sun brightened them to a glitter as of cold
steel,--and for a moment he fancied they flashed upon him with an
almost sinister gleam.
"Power of good or power of evil?" he questioned his inward spirit--"Who
can decide? If it is good to destroy evil then the force is a good
force--if it is evil to destroy good WITH evil, then it is an evil
thing. But Nature makes no such particular discriminations--she
destroys evil and good together at one blow. Why therefore should I--or
anyone--offer to discriminate?--since evil is always the preponderating
factor. When the 'Lusitania' was torpedoed neither God nor Nature
interfered to save the innocent from the guilty--men, women and
children were all plunged into the pitiless sea. I--as a part of
Nature--if I destroy, I only follow her example. War is an evil,--an
abominable crime--and those that attempt to make it should be swept
from the face of the earth even if good and peace-loving units are
swept along with them. This cannot be helped."
He went into his hut, and in a few minutes came out again clothed in
thick garments of a dark, earth colour, and carrying a stout staff,
steel-pointed at its end something after the fashion of a Swiss
alpenstock. He brought with him a small metal box into which he placed
the case of cylinders, covering it with a closely fitting lid. Then he
put the package into a basket made of rough twigs and strips of bark,
having a strong handle, to which he fastened a leather strap, and slung
the whole thing over his shoulders like a knapsack. Then, casting
another look round to make sure that there was no one about, he started
to walk towards a steeper descent of the hill in a totally different
direction from that which led to the "Plaza" hotel. He went swiftly, at
a steady swinging pace,--and though his way took him among confused
masses of rock, and fallen boulders, he thought nothing of these
obstacles, vaulting lightly across them with the ease of a chamois,
till he came to a point where there was a declivity running sheer down
to invisible depths, from whence came the rumbling echo of falling
water. In this almost perpendicular wall of rock were a few ledges,
like the precarious rungs of a broken ladder, and down these he
prepared to go. Clinging at first to the topmost edge of the precipice,
he let himself down warily inch by inch till his figure entirely
disappeared, sunken, as it were in darkness. As he vanished there was a
sudden cry--a rush as of wings--and a woman sprang up from amid bushes
where she had lain hidden,--it was Manella. For days and nights she had
stolen away in the intervals of her work, to watch him--and nothing had
chanced to excite her alarm till now--till now, when she had seen him
emerge from his hut and pack up the mysterious box he carried,--and
when she had heard him talking strangely to himself in a way she could
not understand.
As soon as he started to walk she followed him, pushing through heavy
brushwood and crawling along the ground where she could not be
seen;--and now,--with dishevelled hair, and staring, terrified eyes she
leaned over the edge of the precipice, baffled and desperate. Tearless
sobs convulsed her throat,--
"Oh, God of mercy!" she moaned in suffocated accents--"How can I follow
him down there! Oh, help me, Mary mother! Help me! I must--I must be
with him!"
She gathered up her hair in a close coil and wound her skirts tightly
about her, looking everywhere for a footing. She saw a deep cranny
which had been hollowed out by some torrent of water--it cut sharply
through the rock like a path,--she could risk that perhaps, she
thought,--and yet her brain reeled--she felt sick and giddy--would it
not be wiser to stay where she was and wait for the return of the
reckless creature who had ventured all alone into one of the deepest
canons of the whole country? While she hesitated she caught a sudden
glimpse of him, stepping with apparent ease over huge heaps of stones
and fallen pieces of rock at the bottom of the declivity,--she watched
his movements in breathless suspense. On he went towards a vast
aperture, shaped arch-wise like the entrance to a cavern--he paused a
moment--then entered it. This was enough for Manella--her wild love and
wilder terror gave her an almost supernatural strength and daring,--and
all heedless now of results she sprang boldly towards the deep cutting
in the rock, swinging herself from jagged point to point till--reaching
the bottom of the declivity at last, bruised and bleeding, but
undaunted,--she stopped, checked by a rushing stream which tumbled over
great boulders and dashed its cold spray in her face. Looking about her
she saw to her dismay that the vaulted cavern wherein Seaton had
disappeared was on the other side of this stream--she stood almost
opposite to it--but how to get across? Gazing despairingly in every
direction she suddenly perceived the fallen trunk of a tree lying half
in and half out of the brawling torrent--it was green with slippery
moss and offered but a dangerous foothold,--nevertheless she resolved
to attempt it.
"I said I would die for him!" she thought--"and I will!"
Getting astride the tree, it swayed under her,--but she found she could
push one of the larger boughs forward to lengthen the extemporary
bridge,--and so, as it were, riding the waters, which surged noisily
around her, she managed by dint of super-human effort to reach the
projection of pebbly shore where the entrance to the cavern yawned open
before her, black and desolate. The sun in its full morning glory
blazed slanting down upon the darkness of the canon, and as she stood
shivering, wet through and utterly exhausted, wondering what next she
should do, she caught sight of a form moving within the cave like a
moving shadow, and ascending a steep natural stairway of columnar rocks
piled one on top of the other. Affrighted as she was by the tomb-like
aspect of the deep vault, she had not ventured so far that she should
now shrink from further dangers or fail in her quest;--the cherished
object of her constant watchful care was within that subterranean
blackness,--for what purpose?--she did not dare to think! But there was
an instinctive sense of dread foreknowledge upon her,--a warning of
impending evil,--and had she not sworn to him--"If God struck you down
to hell I would be there!" The entrance to the cavern looked like the
mouth of hell itself, as she had seen it depicted in one of her
Catholic early lesson books. There were serpents and dragons in the
picture ready to devour the impenitent sinner,--there might be serpents
and dragons in this cave, for all she knew! But what matter? If the man
she loved were actually in hell she "would be there"--as she had
said!--and would surely find it Heaven! And so,--seeing the mere
outline of his form moving ghost-like in the gloom, it was to her a
guiding presence,--a light amid darkness,--and when,--after a minute or
two--her straining eyes perceived him climbing steadily up the steep
and perilous rocks, seeming about to disappear altogether,--she
mastered the tremor of her nerves and crept cautiously step by step
into the sombre vault, blindly feeling her way through the damp, thick
murkiness, reckless of all danger, and only bent on following him.