Morning in a land of endless twilight!
The spirit-girl lay late abed after that first awakening in Gehenna,
as she realized with the switching off of the mauve curtains which had
shut sunrise from her chamber. On her show of weariness after last
night’s ordeal, she had been told how King Satan, after his preference
for the customs of Earth, had time apportioned into periods of day and
night, with eventide and dawn, midnight and noon exactly fixed. By
means of his electric sun, moon and attendant stars, supplied from the
power accumulators on the eastern and western fringes of the Gehennan
desert, the semi-light shed from the eternal radiance of the Elysian
Fields was made to seem negligible.
Dolores had been grateful for the respite. The shades about the
court, she had noted, looked more or less material according to
their naturalization into Shadow Land. She herself had been declared
unusually visible, even for a new-comer, and was expected to have the
habits of her late estate. She had not slept the sleep of Earth, any
more than she had tasted the suggestion-foods of last night’s banquet,
except as a reminiscence of taste. And yet, with eyelids closed against
sight of what was, and her inner vision limited to only the dearest of
what had been, she had passed into a sort of soul-rest--into memories
and imaginings that were one fond, commingled dream of John Cabot.
Further aroused by a subservient voice, she sank an elbow into the
damask-sheened pillow; lifted herself; opened eyes and mind to the now.
“Your shower is turned on, m’lady.”
The repetition was in English. Before, the same words had been
spoken in French. Such perfect intonation in two languages piqued
her interest. She glanced around to see standing beside her couch a
woman-shade in the black and white of service.
“Madame’s hair is so black, perhaps she is Italian. I trust I have not
startled you. His Majesty ordered that your bath be of cold cathode
rays. They are very exhilarating if one can stand the shock.”
Although this third offering came in the honey-sweet language of love,
a look of hate was on the serving woman’s face.
“Who are you?” Dolores asked in the tongue of first choice.
“You may call me Adeline. I am your maid.”
Somewhat disconcerted by the unservile gesture with which a robe of
rainbow lights was held out for her convenience, Dolores put another
question.
“How do you come to speak three languages? And doesn’t the name Adeline
mean of noble birth?”
“Ah, Madame also is French. She will the better understand.” A smile
less pleased than bitter stiffened the patrician lips. “I am of noble
birth and on earth was treated according to my rank. But the judgment
that consigned me to the Realm of Reversals has changed all that. Here
we who were ladies serve our former maids. And hard taskmistresses they
are, given thus the power to equalize their past humiliations.”
A thought of the fate awaiting Catherine Cabot made Dolores shudder. “A
grim conceit, that--I suppose the King’s own?”
The demoted noblewoman nodded. “Not Lucretia Borgia herself could have
conceived so cruel a sentence. It is not the tasks from which I suffer,
but the thought of doing them. My first position was to serve the
creature whom I had treated with all consideration in my household, she
who afterward cost me my husband, my position in society and my life.
Madame understands? I killed her. Madame’s shower is turned on.”
She who never had been served sought to refuse the offices of this
quondam great lady. On Earth no one had drawn up the morning shades for
her, she declared; had brushed the cobwebs of dreams from her lashes
with dampened cloths; had proffered the steaming beauty cup, perfumed
her bath, placed her mules, held her robe. No need was there for
Adeline to suffer while under assignment to her.
She was ill-repaid for her kindly intent.
“It is, then, as I feared. Madame is but one of them herself.”
With contemptuous manner, m’lady-who-was insisted upon performing those
duties which she knew so well from having exacted them.
“I must serve you,” she explained, “whether you wish to be served or
not. I must work out my sentence. None dares tamper with the Rule of
the Realm of Reversals. My husband warns me----”
“Your husband? Are you so fortunate as to have his company here?”
A moment the maid contemplated the eagerness on her new mistress’ face,
then gave a vicious twist to the mass of dark hair she was arranging.
“That he received a red ticket is the one bit of justice I have found
in Greater Gehenna. He bungled the trick of obtaining that verdict in
man’s favor usually granted gratis by the world.”
“You speak, Adeline, as though you hated him.”
“Hate him?” Fury shook the cultured voice. “Is it not because of
him that I am here? And he--always he seeks me at the fête of
servant-fiends to complain of the humiliations forced upon him by his
ex-valet, for well he knows that his only chance of reversal will come
through me. Since Madame is so good as to inquire, I do hate the man
I loved. I hate him the more, perhaps, for controlling his hate of
me--for his pretense of continued love.”
To Dolores, the strange creature’s will to hurt her by twisting her
hair was kind compared with this unintentional squeezing of the
hope-drops from her heart. Would every one about the court have power
to make her suffer for her past? When he whose companionship the lost
soul of her craved so unutterably should one day be sentenced to this
realm for their common social crime, would he also hide hate in a
pretense still to love?
But no. Although on Earth John had not sought her as had other men and
at the last had seemed to desert, she dared not believe that the great
heart of him could change when he came through the gate into the Lower
Land--when, one day, he joined her.
The mother-soul’s good-morning to her babe was interrupted by a message
from the King. She was to attend him at once in the Garden of Bad Luck.
Dismay possessed Dolores. Probably His Majesty meant to probe deeper,
with his knife-like cynicisms of last night, into the wounds of her
former state. But a thought of the folly of foreboding soon steadied
her. She had no choice.
“I shall go at once,” she told the maid. “I feel quite rested and
strong.”
“I should suggest to Madame that she omit to mention her restful
night,” Adeline said. “Otherwise he will not permit that it happen
again. He awaits beside the Hard Luck fountain.”
Dolores in turn offered advice. “While I am gone, doff that cap and
apron and imagine you are a lady again. He’ll never know, for I won’t
tell and the babe can’t.”
“Never know, _he_?” The French soul smiled briefly. “Madame perhaps
will excuse, but evidently she is not yet acquainted with m’lord of
reversals. _Know?_ I myself should tell him if none else did. He would
compel me to do so.”
To Dolores’ relief, the King seemed to have forgotten her regrettable
history when she found him awaiting her at the spot of his
appointment. At any rate, he made no reference thereto.
“I am going to show you around my place,” he informed her. “I take
a pleasant shame in it. Guess I’ve got what real-estaters call ‘the
property sense’--a brand of nonsense.”
He led her through an avenue-like effect of lime trees to a lawn of
dwarfed red-top, where stood a winged vehicle, as much an improvement
over the planes of Earth as was the motor-car over Grimes’ one-horse
shay.
“My aeromobile,” he announced with prideful gesture.
Although of a mind given to taking for granted all mechanical details,
Dolores could not but wonder at this craft. Its wings looked more like
those of a huge hawk than the rigid spread of the aeroplanes she had
seen flying low over Central Park. Instead of standing upon wheeled
running-gear, bird feet of a proportionate size clawed into the ground.
In its head glittered a constantly moving pair of eyes.
“How ever do you rise in that?” Dolores asked. “And once you do get up,
how make it go? And up and off, how do you land?”
He was frankly gratified by her interest.
“They call me,” he exulted, “‘Prince of the Power of the Air.’ From its
essence I create whatsoever I will.”
“Then this, too, is only illusion?”
“But illusion realer than the Rock of Ages. Effects made by electricity
are indestructible. You can switch them off, as you can transfer
existence from one state to another, but you cannot destroy them.” His
look intensified: “This element and the immortal soul are the only two
absolutely steadfast quantities.”
“Except--” she hesitated--“except good in the heart.”
“Except evil in the mind, you mean.”
He snapped the correction at her, evidently displeased, but soon
returned to the subject of his “Hell Hawk.” In a round of the machine,
he showed her a propeller placed beneath the fuselage by which it
might be lifted straight or lowered on reverse; explained the encased
“pusher” at the stern and “puller” at the bow which furnished silent,
horizontal speed; described the shock absorbers with which the talons
were equipped and the practicability of reflecting scenes below in the
moving, mirror-like eyes.
“Experience is the best demonstrator. May I hand you in?”
Dolores sank into the double seat that swung like a hammock across the
roomy cock-pit. Satan placed himself beside her, seized the “stick” by
which his super-bird was directed and pressed the starting button.
Like an elevator the aeromobile shot upward, with an utter lack of
vibration that gave the effect of hella-firma receding, while their
craft stood still. Soon, however, he released the lofting button to
press that which gave power to the drivers. Forward through space they
started at a speed which would not have seemed speed at all, except for
the mounting figures finder-pointed upon a dial set into the invisible
air-screen before them. They seemed to hover above, while Gehenna raced
past them below.
“It is--is wonderful,” breathed the Apollyon guest, pauperized in
expression by the emotions that accompany a first flight.
He nodded. “Consider this morning’s air-joying one of your rewards for
being, although a factory girl, _somewhat_ different from the rest.”
She turned to him. “You must have some object in treating me so well.
What is it?”
“Ha, you are like the rest, after all--curious!” His Highness
exclaimed. “Must every she-soul know the end of the story first?
Suppose my object is to acquaint you with myself through my works. ‘By
their works ye shall know them.’ So look and know. Apply what mind you
have to getting a panoramic conception of the extent of my kingdom.
Notice the estates surrounding the palace park. I have given them over
to vari-villains so fortunate as to have merited my approval.”
When Dolores gripped the edge of the swinging seat and leaned to peer
over the side of the fuselage, he objected.
“Why must you earthlings do everything the hardest way? Let the Hawk
see for you.”
He indicated an artfully arranged series of mirrors which reflected
through the eyes of the bird a moving picture of scenes beneath.
“It looks like--like a picture postal-card of some tropical city, only
not so bright and more squat,” she observed after a moment. “It is
neatly laid out.”
“It _is_ neat,” Satan admitted. “Our perpetual heat-without-rain does
fade the colors, though. The only moisture we get down here is when the
angels weep over some new triumph of mine. Hell knows I try to make
them open the ducts more often. If ever I learn to weep myself, I’ll
likely irrigate a lot of suffering.”
“And why do you wish to weep?”
“People seem to enjoy it so. As for the squatness of the bungalows,
what can you expect in the most tropical of climates? Assume a little
imagination if you have it not. You should have seen the place before I
took hold of it. At first, after my sudden fall into utter desolation
from the Paradisian comforts of home, I couldn’t see any possibilities
in Gehenna. But I never was one to let bad enough alone.”
“Oh, I didn’t say I thought it bad,” Dolores hastened to insert.
“No, you didn’t, but you’d better! Of course, it’s not what it might
be, even now, but it was a perfect chaos when I began, a sort of
peaceful haze, with not so much as a suffering gnat for me to vent my
disposition on.”
“It’s so different from anything that----” Dolores puzzled.
“Did you expect to find Pluto wallowing in a lake of fire, _á la_
Milton?”
“Gehenna is a place of torture, isn’t it? I wasn’t taught what they
call religion in my childhood, but I typed the sermons of a minister
for a while and I know what----”
She hesitated, regretting her persistence. Satan’s facial expression,
always mobile, had altered for the worse.
“A minister, eh?” he asked fiercely. “I suppose he ranted the regular
hell-fire stuff? Let me tell you that keeping the realities of my place
from the preach-praters of Earth is the hardest thing I do. If they
conceived a fraction of my achievements in the torture line, even in
this vestibule to the real hell farther on, I’d never have a chance to
hang out the S. O. S. sign--never. Earthlings _would_ be good and The
Great Intention foiled.”
“The Great Intention, sir? What can you mean?”
He glared at her; snarled his reply: “Greater than you have gone to the
chair of perpetual voltage for the impertinence of asking that. None
knows my Great Intention save myself. It is ‘closed up and sealed until
the time of the end.’ But woe betide the red soul in Gehenna that does
not work toward its fulfillment!”
So threatening was his manner that the girl-shade shrank away; as soon
as she dared, returned her attention to the topographical features of
the world infernal.
Back whence they had come, over incalculable miles of couchant
dwellings, Apollyon Palace and its gardens glittered in the rays of
the artificial sun. On either side, taxing to the eye as the illusive
distances of a boundless desert, detail merged into mirage-like
suggestion of detail, until nothing more could be imagined--quite
nothing more except infinitude of space.
As they sped through the high-tempered air, shafts of fire-flecked
smoke reached up as if to devour them. Directly below, for sections
which might have been miles or tens of miles each, huddled a series of
convex structures with the round chimneys of pottery kilns. Massed here
and there were what looked to be warehouses and factories.
The tension of the royal mood relaxed in a free gesture. “Object to my
furnaces smoking? I have to burn some fire and brimstone to satisfy
the preconceived mortal idea of damnation. The old-timers would think
less of me if I didn’t. At that, I’m sparing of it. Am bagging the
gases for future needs. You look surprised. Do earthlings really
believe that the idea of poison gas was made in Germany? Why, my child,
I’ve looked forward for ages to the destructiveness of the fumes thrown
off by burning fiends incarnate--the real thing, you know, made in
Hell!”
Irritation again nettled his voice at the look on the face bent low to
gaze through the rising heat-hazes.
“You work as hard as a Cook’s tourist at sight-seeing. Don’t make the
mistake of supposing you can get more than an illustrative idea of
Greater Gehenna in a day, a week or a year. Just a cursory glance this
morning. To the East stretch our fire-proof picture storage warehouses,
where we stow millions a minute of the life-films of important
earthlings. Below is the Devil’s Own Play-House. Make a guess at its
capacity.”
Dolores, however, made no guess. Her interest had centered in a small,
incredibly luminous lake that attracted even as it hurt the eye.
“What is yonder pool and the great gleaming ball that floats above,
like the soap-bubble of a god?”
“That is the one biggest bubble of _the_ god. Chief thing I wanted
you to see. You _have_ a germ of intelligence--only don’t bother to
cultivate it, for it’s not to be compared with your other attractions.
What I want of you is--But I digress.”
He declared the “bubble” his latest and greatest invention, the last
blow, so to speak, in motion picture photography, by which events on
Earth might be pictured simultaneously with their occurrence.
Just then the Ball of Life, not being in use, was uncovered that it
might absorb atmospheric vitality. The countless prisms of spirits
of mercury which composed the pool acted as one glass in reflecting
distant Earth-scenes caught by the whirling bubble, which ignored
distances as it did materialistic interference. The vast stadium when
filled, was enclosed with adjustable electric walls of dark green.
There, from under eye-shields, the doings of Earth might be watched as
they were done.
“If ever you get homesick, fair house-guest, I’ll give you a look-in on
the conduct of the dear detained.”
“Oh, if you only----”
Dolores smothered her wish in the midst of its expression.
“If I only wouldn’t!” Rather disagreeably the King laughed at her
obviousness. “Now for a dip below the sun. I abhor this pale, abiding
light. Makes me blind as a bat.”
As they bolted downward, he volunteered to correct her assumption that
already she had arrived in Hell. Greater Gehenna was only the starting
station.
“We haven’t reached the bottomless pit or the lake of fire yet, not by
a world-full. And perhaps----” His coherency slackened. “Just _perhaps_
we never shall. That depends upon who is stronger when the test comes,
the cast-out near-angel or---- It is a strange thing if bad won’t
overcome good in the Universe--if ruthlessness and preparedness----”
He checked himself, as though self-accused of disclosing too much to
such a neophyte. After a suspicious scowl around at her, he continued:
“That hell-fire idea is only figurative. Why threaten the spirit with
physical duress? You have an expression on Earth, ‘so near and yet so
far,’ that has taught me the refinement of torture. I want to show you
close-ups of some specials of my invention.”
Skimming low, he pointed her attention ahead to the Cage of In-Law
Relatives, “absolutely the most vicious spirits ever caught in the
toils of durance vile,” as he described them, “and the only extant
bipeds never tamed.”
What had looked a low mountain proved to be a dome-shaped enclosure
of such size that the curve on its either side sloped gradually into
the perspective. Through the interstices of its barbed wall thousands
upon thousands of _manes_, more female than male, could be seen moving
within. From it blew a wind so malignant that Dolores’ eyes smarted
and her ears roared--a wind of whispers from countless tongues all
breathing forth hate at once. Not one of the “in-laws” spoke out. All
whispered.
“Blood egotists!” Satan chuckled. “As all the world is more or less
eligible for the Cage, I have space only for a few of the most horrible
examples. Seems an awful fate to inflict them upon each other, but I
discovered early that they are a race unto themselves. There is nothing
to equal their viciousness, not even professional jealousy. After all,
it is the mean little emotions that people Hell.”
The lettered designation of a barrack-like structure Satan read:
BASTARD BABY WARD
“There lie the infant-shades along endless aisles. Their cribs are
lined with electro-cacti-spines. Their coverlets are of satiny
_bisnaga_ petals sewed together with their own needles.” His Highness
fixed a side glance on the mother-soul’s face as he enthused: “Although
a virtuous bachelor, I know that their whimpers mean they want milk.
So I feed that ‘so near and yet so far’ rule unto ‘even the least of
these.’ I have their nursing bottles filled with scalding, opaque air.”
“But how can a baby deserve an evil fate?” Dolores demanded. “I was
not taught the Scriptures, but does the Great-I-Am, as you call Him,
countenance such a law?”
“My favorite author, Deuteronomy, answers that. ‘A bastard shall not
enter into the congregation of the Lord. Even to his tenth generation
shall he not enter in.’ The sins of fathers being visited upon their
children is an unjust law that particularly appeals to me.”
At her sob he offered pseudo-consolation. “Be of good cheer. Your
bastard is not consigned to the Ward--that is to say, not yet.”
Low over a subdivision more dusty than any passed they sailed. Here the
scraggliest effect of vegetation ceased. Lizards moved languidly, if at
all, and snakes lolled their forked tongues.
Satan, apparently gratified by his proselyte’s nervousness, apologized:
“Sorry I cannot spare time this morning to take you through Serpent’s
Tooth Valley. I quite anticipate your pleasure in the antics of my
snakes--a sharp-tooth pursuing every thankless well-begot. It’s a
lively place. You really should get in sympathy with the serpent. He
was my first agent and cannot be excelled for loathsomeness. Can you
see that rattler--that cobra? From Arizona to the Indies they are
feared, hated--_and_ respected. By an arbitrary edict, which I cannot
at present veto, they’ve been forced to crawl upon their bellies since
early days. But one of my first acts of reward to the unrighteous after
I have come into my own shall be to set them up again. ‘When snakes
shall rise on their tails!’ A more inspiring line never was writ.”
The tourist-by-command shuddered, but did not speak. He followed her
gaze toward a barren dune in the distance over which a vapor hovered
high as could be seen.
“Nits pestering the Traitors to Mothers, among whom I threatened last
night to throw my chef. Although they are an assorted bad lot, we can
afford to pass them, as I had no mother and you next to none. Got the
scheme of the chuck-hole from the Book of Revelations: ‘Where they
shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.’ It is not that
anything in particular is so unendurable. It’s the way I keep it up.
In rotation I visit all the old-fashioned plagues upon them, murrain,
boils and blains, frogs--But imagine the rest. There is one special
side-show that will have a personal appeal to you to which I feel I
should take you before we return. Look out. I’m going to land.”
Again the Hawk had acted like an elevator. Its spreading claws clutched
the sanded soil, their shock absorbers functioning without jar. The
spirit-girl, once again upon hella-firma, gazed dazedly about.
From the rim of a monstrous, crater-like cup nearby spilled a steam
like a giant’s breath, strong, noxious, horrific. When Dolores shrank
back, well-nigh overcome, her Satanic guide fanned aside the fumes and
drew her upward toward the edge.
“Merely the regrets of the sirens,” he insisted. “This is the one
all-woman department of Gehenna, the Wanton’s Well. Lean over. Look.
See them gasp. See them try to faint. They hope that they are dying,
but no chance of that. Not one ever thinks she deserves her fate or
acknowledges her own defiance of decency. Her own case, you see, is
always ‘different.’ Only when she is surrounded by others of her kind,
thousands of them worse than she, does she begin to comprehend that in
the judgments of men woman’s unpardonable sin may have no difference.
Think of that, O fair and famed Dolores Trent--that between you and
these, your sisters, there is no difference!”
Although the girl-shade felt about to collapse, she was held by his
mental dominance. Leaning, she looked.
Her tormentor continued: “It is hot down there--hot as the curse of
society. The wantons burn in a fever of lonely lust. They thirst for a
sip of the affection and poetry--even of the rashness which made the
passion-cup sweet. And all the endless hours until That Day they’ll not
get a drop to wet their lying lips and sin-blacked tongues.”
A tug upon the hem of the royal robe cut short the inquisition. An
aged female _manes_, sear-looking and fate-limned as would have been a
relief map of this Erubian Realm, had tottered up behind them unheard.
Her silvered hair writhed backward in the blast from The Well. Her
hands shook toward it as shake withered grasses over a dry creek bed.
“Sire, she cannot stand it much longer down there, my Millie,” the
crone-soul quavered.
“Ha, Grandma Nuisance again!” Unconventionally Satan introduced her
to Dolores. “An oldish lady who has seen better days. Ever notice that
most oldish ladies _have_ seen better days?”
“I am asking naught for myself, your gracious Majesty. I was old enough
to know better. But Millie wasn’t twenty yet and that high-strung and
sore-tempted.”
Ungraciously His Majesty continued to explain her: “That dame, after
an impeccable life on her own account, plunged a knife through the
licentious breast of an offspring who, despite frequent asseverations
that she’d rather be dead, lacked courage to perform the function for
herself. They sentenced the old girl for life, the judge and jury
having that weakness for mothers which is bred in the womb of the
world. Down here, I haven’t seemed to find the right berth for her,
so have left her to her own devices, which take the form of torturing
herself in this existence as in the last over the sins of her Millie
the Magnificent.”
With threatening manner he turned on the crone.
“I told you not to follow me again.”
“But I am driven. I failed to fetch her up right or she’d never have
gone wrong. It’s all my fault. Let her out of the well. Let me take her
place.”
The grief coursing from her faded eyes seemed again to change the
variable royal mood. Seizing her wisp of hair, he compelled her to the
edge.
“At least you may suffer with her,” he conceded. “Misery loves company,
they say.” He thrust forward her peaked face. When her eyes failed to
moisture at thought of the wrench he had given her neck, he essayed a
wrench at her heart.
“See Her Magnificence on the ledge just below, parching, burning, dying
an age-long death of thirst. Hi, there, Millicent, have you thought out
some new way you might have married him? Here’s mother dear, come to
bring you a drink. How her brilliant beauty is fading under drouth! You
who suckled her as a babe, you cannot deny her just one drop? But alas,
your bosoms are withered as your face. Surely, though, you’re not out
of tears?” Over the rim he called: “The drink, the _drink_, Millicent!
Mother’s tears--extra salt.”
Dolores understood that the struggles of the spirit-dame and the wail
that came from the depths were in resistance of his mental brutality.
Yet she, too, was moved to action by a thought.
Stepping close to the edge, she contested Satan’s clutch of the old
shade; drew her back; bade her begone.
“Lift your prayers upward, mother,” she breathed in a voice of the
night-winds. “I have heard that only God Himself can save.”
Her shoulders were seized in a fiendish clutch.
“Enough of that only-God drivel! You trying to checkmate _me_?”
As she was twisted around to meet the Mind-Master’s glare, she shook
at the clash of his will against her own; knew herself conquered;
realized that, without being dragged, she was returning to the rim of
the Wantons’ Well. She was going over ... over....
“Might as well end it now as later on,” Satan snarled. “How are you
going to like it down there, Dolores Trent--down where your world has
sent you--down where there is no difference?”
All was over then, thought the spirit-girl. And her baby----
* * * * *
She had heard his laughter quite a while before she began to
understand. Opening her eyes, she saw that she still stood on
hella-firma. In time she must have been willed back from the brink.
Nearby sat His Majesty, shaken by unholy mirth.
To Dolores this ebullition was more terrifying than his recent wrath.
After the emotional stress of the morning, she felt that she could not
endure it. Glancing in the direction taken by the crone-shade, she made
out the bent figure dissolving into the brume. She arose and faced her
tormentor.
“I wish you wouldn’t laugh that way,” she said, calmly as she could.
Satan wiped his eyes.
“I do get so amused at the rages into which I work myself to frighten
folks,” he commented when able to articulate. “Really, you can’t
imagine how much fun I have with myself. Pardon me, but I--I just can’t
get over your----”
“Won’t Your Highness oblige me by----”
“My Lowness.”
“Your Lowness. Please, Pluto.”
“‘Please, Pluto!’” Although mocking her, he settled into seriousness.
“When you get tricky like that--call me friendly names for favors, you
know--it is then that I have hopes of you. Didn’t you know I was only
fooling? Do you suppose I’d drop you over the rim before hearing the
rest of those griefs to men?”
* * * * *
They returned to the Hell Hawk by way of The Lane of Futile Labors.
Although the King seemed minded to hurry, Dolores’ steps lagged, so
absorbing were the illusory sights on either hand.
In a fenced plot a gardener was on his knees before a line of young
rose-plants. A stray weed he pulled with eager hand. The soil around
the roots, pulverized already from his diligence, he loosened yet
again. Anxiously he lifted his eyes toward the electric sun, the while
fanning with his trowel the drooping leaves.
“Soon the rain will fall. It must sometime,” he mumbled to this plant
and to that, as though addressing conscient things. “If you’d bear me
just one rose among you, even a half-blown rose----”
So the old dodderer was back to roses again! Thus Satan commented to
the girl-shade. Roses were the gardener’s specialty. He had begun with
them a thousand years before, trying between whiles to bring to bloom
every known flower, from shrubs to lowly blue-bells. Interesting to
keep count upon how often he would revert to the hopeless hope of that
one rose!
Over his bench an inventor twenty years dead was about to try out
a miniature airship over which he had spent the entire span of his
endless workdays. As the moment of the test approached his hands
twitched too spasmodically to turn the propeller. Glancing up into
the censorious smile of the royal bystander, his face contorted by an
expectancy painful to see, he gained control. Next moment the invention
which he had quitted earth too soon to see perfected lay on the ground.
At his touch the model had quitted the bench, hovered briefly in
mid-air, then dropped.
An artist mixed paints on her palette. Over an impressionistic study of
the lurid sky-scape she worked, inspired by sheer necessity. But the
colors faded to a monotone, no matter how thickly she laid them on.
Long before the end of the Lane, Dolores had begun to understand.
That one rose never would bloom. The model plane could not fly. No
paint squeezed from Avernian tubes might express the genius of the
artist-shade for even one short hour. It was too late for the most
ambitious spirit to achieve.
Shadows from her somber thoughts were in the glance uplifted to her
guide.
“You have the askingest eyes,” observed he. “Very well. I’ll give you
a lift through the Lane of Labors. Of course it is all illusion. The
gardener imagines the weeds, the inventor the crash of his plane, the
artist her chromatic pigments. And what we see in them is what they
believe of themselves. Just as well might they imagine success, except
for--For what now, do you suppose?”
“For fear?”
Satan nodded. “Thought you’d get the idea if I gave you time. A singer
fears that her voice will fail. It fails. A woman with child fears for
its inheritance. She bears a defective. A sea captain fears that he
cannot manage his crew. From his weakness springs their mutiny. Except
for fear in the heart you earthlings could become a race of gods.”
“Gehenna, then, is thwarted hope?”
“Gehenna is preconceived failure, built up on my revised theory,
where-there’s-hope-there’s-life! Diverts me how they try and try,
foredoomed by self-doubt. They don’t and won’t know before That Day
that they must fail. Absolutely to know would be----”
“Hell?” Dolores’ lips shuddered the word.
“Hell will be despair. There none will try.”
“And--and Heaven?”
With the query the girl-soul’s eyes were lighted by a vague gleam--a
suggestion that night is not so much the end of a day past as the
beginning of one to come.
“Heaven?” His Majesty scowled down at her. “Heaven, it is supposed,
will be progress--assured realization. Tell me, did you ever find
anything in realization?”
“No, not yet. But without faith----”
“A synonym for Heaven, that ‘not yet’!”--he said intolerantly. “As for
faith--bah! Faith is the fear of fools.”
* * * * *
Hurrying her toward the waiting Hawk, he broached: “I am going to fly
you back to Apollyon Palace over a section which I think will enlarge
your conception of my place. Everything is at a standstill down here,
_except_----”
The eager look which completed his sentence filled Dolores with
uneasiness greater than that aroused by the futile labors of the Lane.
Evidently he, master of these denizens of doom, believed in some
personal achievement. Did he also hope in vain? Last night she had
crucified her modesty of soul in the hope of saving herself and her
baby from punishment. Would her effort fail? And John Cabot--oh, surely
the faith with which she clung to that hope of one day seeing John
again was not the fear of a fool!
The apprehension seen in all faces that morning now looked from out
her own. She felt much as when told the nature of her employment in
Vincent Seff’s shop that long-ago day on Earth, after she had spent
the sum advanced her. What price was to be exacted of her in this new
position? What meant that studying regard of her--what the varied
encouragements which depressed her with sensations more heavy, if less
intelligible, than any of those proved prescience in her former state?
Until _when_?
If _what_?
_Except----?_
* * * * *
“Except me.”
Not until they were cleaving the air directly beneath the high-swung
sun did the King complete his suspended sentence. Like mere specks
behind and below them were the cages and huts, the caves and wells and
morasses of the lower bad-lands. On either side discernible objects
blended into the sand sites reserved for expansion. Ahead, farther than
the mind could think, stretched yet more distances. Truly a Cyclopean
panorama, this topographical review of the hope-hell of the lost!
Dolores could not regard merely the spectacle. Even as she gazed
forward and back, her heart ached over such few individuals as she had
seen and over the many she had not seen. Some, mayhap, deserved their
fate, although most, she felt sure, were as was she, victims of the
shallow judgments of men. Would they, _could_ they endure until the
Supreme Judge entered court? Could she?
At the burn of dry tears within her eyelids, she remembered Satan’s
exultation over the weeping angels. Even should she weep, her tears,
like the crone-soul’s, would be salt--would tantalize, rather than
refresh. She choked back her emotion.
“A pretended interest in one’s escort is more gracious than none at
all.”
As from a distance, she heard Satan’s reproach. Recalling her thoughts,
she concentrated on what he was saying.
“How they hate me, yet how much more they fear me, my fiends! Certainly
I have the advantage over rulers of Earth in needing no secret service
protectorate. Unfortunately for my subjects, I am immortal. They know
that they cannot kill the Master Mind, that mine is the only spirit in
Gehenna to which achievement is possible. That fact I prove to them
hourly through their sufferings. They call me The Destroyer, yet am I
their one great hope of salvation.”
The boast puzzled Dolores. “The Destroyer a saviour?”
He showed surprise at her surprise.
“You don’t like me, my dear shade, or you’d show a more credulous
interest in my small confidences about myself.”
“I _am_ interested, really.”
“Although you don’t like me? Never mind. I could make you do so--could
make you love me if I chose. But I don’t wish to _make_ you. Hell knows
I’ve got my pride!”
He gave up to an attack of his lonely chortles. Evidently he had
“amused” himself again. Next moment he seized the point of his Vandyke
and straightened his countenance to excessive length.
“Get behind me, ignoble impulse of pique! Mine other cheek, turn thou
for a blow!” Lowering his face to hers, he added, most unexpectedly: “I
don’t mind admitting that you make it hard for me to be mean. Except
that I have a reputation for meanness which I must deserve--Anyhow,
it’s your turn to tell me something nice.”
“But--why--” stammered Dolores. “I don’t understand----”
“Oh, yes you do. Something nice that you think about me.”
Despite what she knew of him, the girl-shade was caught by something of
his own amusement at himself.
“I think,” she offered, “that at times you seem a very good deal of a
human being.”
Clamping the plane’s “joy stick” between his knees, His Majesty threw
up both hands toward the glory of his imitation sky.
“As bad as that?” he exclaimed.
She could see, through his affected horror, that he was complimented.
“For the smallest of favors, even though forced, I thank you,” he said
with an appearance of sincerity. “That, my child, is what I’d like best
to seem to be--just a long-lasting man.”
“_My child!_” The unctuousness of his two words of address, emphasized
by his smug contemplation of her face, made Dolores turn away with a
new uneasy wonder. Some one on Earth had called her “my child” with
that same accent and gaze. _Who?_
Her distraction irritated him.
“Don’t sit there looking like a magazine cover. Your profile is
odiously seraphic. If I’d seen it first, I’d not have given you a
second thought.... That’s better.... When I compare that asking look in
your eyes with the dear little wrinkles around your mouth--those _dear_
little wrinkles----”
So long and so strangely did he continue to contemplate her that
Dolores risked his displeasure by covering her face with her hands.
Again he surprised her.
“Your methods are unlike those of any in the whole Well of Wantons. At
times it is hard to believe the worst of you. Looking straight into
your eyes, one sees----”
His pause she interrupted with an almost beseeching reminder.
“Does one--what?”
“Well, what has been your experience? Doesn’t one?”
His laugh was an insult.
Denied the eyes in whose royal purple shadows lurked “that look” which,
underscored by the lines about her smileless mouth, had got on his
imagination, he soon tired of the joke at her expense.
“You are a helliot for looks, no doubt of that,” he remarked crisply.
“What I want to know is--can you _fight_?”
“Fight, Your--Your Lowness? Why should I fight?”
He did not answer either himself or her. His manner changed. He
appeared chiefly impatient.
“You’d think I could manufacture time, the way I’m wasting it. With
the crimes of the mortal world awaiting my direction, I itinerate you
through this tour. Not that I think the education will be wasted on
you. My original conviction that it won’t be is strengthened. But I
must get back.”
“I am ready to return at once, sir.”
“You look more than ready. This is a case, however, where the longest
way round may prove the shortest home.”
He put The Hawk to its highest speed. It seemed that they might beat
the winds in any race, beat thought, beat even light. With the edges of
cleft air, Satan’s instructions cut into Dolores’ consciousness.
“The scenes we’re about to skirt will demonstrate why I’ve striven
through the ages for numbers. Look you toward the east.”
Urged by a certain hard-suppressed excitement in his voice, Dolores
strained her sight in the direction of his gesture. Approaching them
from the doubtful distances, came a vast company of uniformed shades.
On either side stretched countless tents.
“Can it be that you keep up--” she hesitated over the improbable
thought--“an army?”
“The Hordes of Hades.” The splendid head threw back until its red beard
stabbed the forward air. The steel-cold voice slashed like a sword.
“Focus what imagination you have on their probable numbers--unheard-of
billions strong. Try to conceive the ruthlessness possible to demons
freed from the fear of death. Consider the impossibility of the most
arrant coward’s desertion with my brand stamped on his brow.”
In her effort to obey, expression failed the spirit-girl.
Glancing around at her, Satan frowned. “Nothing to say, as usual?
You’ve not yet suspected, then, that the basic principle of Gehenna
is militaristic? Where would any autocrat be without defense for his
autocracy?”
“This army, of what race is it come?”
At the simplicity of her question, His Highness laughed. “Do you think
for a moment that a one-race army would be enough for me? I may have
been wrong since birth, but I’m right in the safety of numbers. The
hosts below are conscripted from the best bad men since Cain--Europeans
and Americans from Japheth; Arabs, Jews, _et al._, from Shem; Egyptians
and Africans from Ham. Not chosen by God, but by me, and on the
principle that in the heart of every man, be he white or black, red or
yellow, is the incipient germ of fratricide. Might is right--a slogan
of my coinage. Hell over all, say I!”
With face working and eyes blinded by their own flare, he applied
shaking fingers to the speed buttons of the aeromobile.
“Truth is _stronger_ than fiction,” he declared. “Down there you see a
suggestion of the truth about me. But I need more man-made demons to
demonstrate that truth. I must have more, more, and yet more.”
His intensity affected Dolores like the winds which had chilled her to
the soul on her recent trudge through the Valley of Death.
“I depend upon the beast that is in every man, as shown by the way the
most fanatic pacifist will fight when forced over the top. But how to
gain recruits in bulk, now that the World War has failed!”
As they soared directly over the first encampment, he leaned to the
mirror that reflected The Hawk’s revolving eyes and began to count in
numerals strange to his guest the units in that section. Her brain, so
recently finite, grew dizzy in the attempt to follow him.
Evidently he felt gratified by his computations. “Already a creditable
army. Nobody but the Great-I-Am knows the trouble I’ve had recruiting
them and He only because He has been kept so busy trying to block me.
From the first, I’ve counted on wearing Him out--getting Him so tired
that He’ll be willing to let Nature take its course. Looked recently
as though I’d succeeded, but I am beginning to fear--what with peace
blanketing all the bad old predatory instincts and temperance creeping
like a tidal wave over the mortal world--My time is getting short. I
must think--must concentrate.”
As he relapsed into what seemed urgent introspection, a ruddy mist
began to emanate, first from his head, then his body. Open as was the
air-scape and swift their flight, a noxious odor spread.
For a space they alternated tail-spins and nose-dives with loops in
the lurid altitudes. Dolores, from her earth-habit of fear, cried out
against such recklessness.
His Majesty’s dazed look suggested that her protest had recalled him
from some evil spell. The emanations from his body thinned and ceased.
“Too much joy in our ride, my child? You’d forgive my abstraction if
you realized how I am ulcering from the trick the teetotalers put over
on me--and only because I felt too strong to fear their weakness.”
A scorching glance he threw across at her, as though she had spoken
objection. “You’ve got to take what you get when you’re dead, you know.
_I_ am what most of you get. All I need to force the rookies of yonder
army to my will is their own consciences. The morale is the only thing.
They know what they deserve and I am their only chance of escaping it.
It means something to those Relicts of Right for me to remark, ‘To hell
with you!’”
The girl-shade’s eyes stung, not so much from the rush of torrid air as
the effort to face his blighting gaze. Her conceptions were overtaxed,
her mind fagged, her heart hurting with anxiety for the earthlings over
whom she still yearned. Realizing that some response was expected of
her----
“But why do you train so many millions of the lost?”
“Lost? Under my training they find themselves, just as you soon shall
be finding yourself and your powers for evil.” He eyed her yet more
tryingly. “Why do you suppose, now?”
“Is it--” Dolores shuddered--“to send their spirits in force to the
living world, to conquer all that are left? At the Mystery Gate I was
told that none might return who had crossed into Shadow Land.”
“You were told aright. The conflict for which my troops are training
will be in the Inter-World--an irresistible onslaught of fiendishness.
Do you suppose that I’ve been straining my inventiveness all these
centuries to arouse the beast in every man simply for amusement? I have
not yet begun to show my power. But it won’t be long now to wait.”
“And then?” Shaken by dread greater than her comprehension, she shrank
away from him. “Do you speak of your Great Intention?”
His look leaped after her, a devouring fire.
“I speak of a night far spent--of a day that is at hand. I speak of
earth and water and air that shall cleave together as component parts
of chaos, of heavens that shall stretch out ‘like a curtain,’ of hordes
that shall put on the ‘armor of light.’ No time to call on the gods
of men in my surprise. No pause for a thought of reprieve. If love
generates electricity, what of hate? Hate shall be the ammunition of
the great drive. A fanfare of poisoned thoughts shall open the fire.
Once the lapsing fear for mortality is burned to dross, my demands
shall be granted. You dare to probe the mystery of my Intention? Keep
those asking eyes of yours on me, Dolores Trent. _I_ am the mystery of
Mystery Land!”
Loud he hurled this declaration into the heated air. As though spoken
into some megaphone of surpassing conductive power, it reverberated
away and away, down and down. At its message, lightning licked the air,
to be gulped in turn by thunder. From below echoed tumult so great that
the atmospheric response rumbled as from volcanic eruptions. Shrieks
arose from the Hadean hordes.
His Majesty, slowing and steadying their craft as a bird holds poise,
pulled the girl-soul to her feet and with her leaned to watch,
first-sight, the troops rushing into formation. Soon sight of the units
was cut off by slashing swords of light. A fetid gas arose from the
on-rush.
In an ague of undefined terror, Dolores felt herself further shaken by
the clutch on her arm; heard the Prince of the Power of the Air again
give himself over to mirth.
“Fool fiends, they hear my voice and think it is That Day! Not bad for
an impromptu practice drive, eh? Once all fear is drilled out of them,
once their numbers are complete, once the full force of that gas is
turned on--Ah, nothing and none may stand against the hate of Hell!”
Skimming the upper air toward the palace, he centered his attention on
the cowering convert to his power.
“Whether you rise to the rôle in this new comedy divine for which I
am considering you, depends upon yourself,” he told her. “Your first
séance was one of fair success. But nerve yourself for to-night lest
you fail to entertain. After what you have seen to-day, you’d not wish
to fail?”
The weight of her responsibility crushed out her reply.
“I should not dare to fail.”
He nodded, his hope evidently strengthened, as hers had been weakened,
by the morning’s flight.
“That Day you ask about--I do not understand myself why it has been
postponed so long. Do you suppose----”
As if startled by his own thought, Satan caught her hand with a
touch that pained like a burn, yet left no mark. His voice sagged
superstitiously as he finished:
“Do you suppose it could have been ordained that I should wait--for
_you_?”