His Majesty himself dropped the curtain on the earth-play of the
spirit-girl.
“The only real value of a story is its effect upon yourself,” he said.
“I must have an interval in which to judge the worth of yours.”
At the time Dolores felt relieved, although he had not confused her
with the interruptions and insistence of the previous séance. He had
allowed her to tell her story her own way, swiftly and simply, and
showed a positive gravity of attention over the ecclesiastic incidents.
Not until the next night came and went without the call for a third
installment, did she suspect that he had been merely bored.
When a second night passed with the same significant omission and,
after that, a third, fear possessed her.
Had she, then, fallen short of his expectations? Had she done what he
had warned her not to do--had she failed?
She took to staying in her chamber and hoping for his summons more than
previously she had dreaded it. Over her babe she would hover the hours
away, brooding rather than rejoicing at each cooed assurance that the
infant-shade was content. Would the price of the respite be paid in
part by the blameless soul of her soul?
To her here, through the guarded gossip of the proud Adeline, came
reports of a direful activity on the part of the King. Never had he
been more exacting, more merciless in his reversal of punishment for
reward. His disposition of that first evening during which she had
waited in vain seemed directly inspired by her reminiscences of the
parson person. In an open-air camp-meeting, “His Damnity” had preached
the first of seven announced “sermons” to a vast concourse. Seven,
it seemed, was the perfect number--a royal superstition. Hadn’t she
counted his seven courtiers, the seven windows of the throne-room,
seven courses at dinner, seven days in his week?
Adeline admitted herself to have been a unit of the congregation of
fiends. The first sermon had been, to say the least, impressive.
Satan’s text had been orthodox: “_A star fell from Heaven unto the
earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit._” He had
attacked the letter of The Law. To be saved by “believing”--how vain a
promise when to that Star of Heaven was given the key to the pit into
which all eventually would be hurled who had been born heirs to sin!
Over Omnipotent Egotism he had ranted himself into a rage which had
made his audience tremble. Fire flashed from his nostrils, his eyes,
his finger-tips, as he compared his own indefatigable assertiveness
with the retirement into the Light of the Great-I-Am. How dare He sit
back, smug over his one noteworthy achievement--the Creation?
The Law of Redemption, pah! What were laws that were not enforced--mere
vague threats of a future state? He asked consideration of the
handling of his own first law as keeper of the pit key. Did he ever
delay collection of the wages of sin? Angel worship was forbidden and
he didn’t expect them to worship him. But they could fear him and,
fearing, must serve him. He advised them to hitch their hope-wagons to
that fallen star--“their archangel in eclipse and the excess of glory
obscured.”
Truly this departure in infernal propaganda must have been fearsome.
Also fearsome was Dolores’ wonder over why she alone had not been
bidden to attend. Adeline was inclined to attribute the omission to
stage fright. M’lord, remembering the standard to which his entertainer
had been educated, feared to fall short. Having successfully tried out
his “delivery,” however, he probably would ask her to the second sermon
of the seven.
But what of the two intervening nights? Why this surcease of interest
in the griefs which so had diverted him?
Dolores was forced to the conclusion that she had ceased to entertain.
Perhaps, even then, the evil eye was sighting her fate and the fate of
her babe.
Desperation shook her from the stupor of waiting. He had preached
action in his sermon, according to report. She must _do_ something to
re-arouse his curiosity. In the late afternoon, as she knew, he often
strolled in his favorite garden of Bad Luck. She dared not ask for an
appointment; no. Yet why not “happen” to meet him?
In selecting the rays in which to dress, she remembered his preference
for purples and scarlets, rather than the more delicate half-lights in
which she would have clothed herself. But even while thanking Adeline
for a grudging compliment over the blend of her robe with the purplish
shadows of her eyes, she realized the depths to which she was sinking.
For the first time she understood those women of earth who adorned
themselves to enslave men whom they had come to hate. Those they feared
most, they must charm. Poor, _poor_ women of Earth!
In the lower reaches of the garden she came upon an illustration of her
thought--a fountain effect whose central figure was the sculped, naked
body of a woman bent beneath the club of her man and master, on her
lips a seductive smile, from her eyes spouting twin founts of electric
spray--tears of terror.
Hearing footsteps behind, Dolores stopped, as if in admiration of the
ghoulish conceit. The throb of her temples was not cooled by the hot
winds with which the tropical foliage illusions of the garden were
artificially fanned. The sinking sensation at her heart was no sickness
from the too-intense odors of the lavish-looking bloom. The hurt of
her ears could not be blamed on shrieks of the peacocks, parrakeets
and tanagers which soundlessly strutted and winged about. No winds of
Gehenna might discomfort her, except in her own acknowledgment. No
odors, except from memory, might penetrate her senses from poinsettias
or rhododendrons. No sound, except as she imagined it, might swell the
throats of the birds. From the rubber plants grouped at the entrance
gate, through the lane of Spanish bayonets whose barbs were a menace to
one who strolled, to the fountain called “Fate of the Fair,” the garden
was one vast stage set, a master chimera. Bad luck, then--that too must
be hallucination.
Courage came to Dolores with the thought. She, an immortal woman soul,
would not bow the neck to an undeserved club. She must lift her head
believing that even the winds of Hell would cool her brow; must delight
in fragrances, strong from her own expectation; must open wide her ears
to the Seraphs’ song of hope.
Ready to meet His Majesty, she turned. Her disappointment was keen
as her courage to see in him who was approaching the lame old
soldier-soul, Samuel Cummings. At first only his face and crutch were
recognizable, so resplendent was he in the uniform of an officer of the
Hadean Hordes. When he drew up before her with his old-time salute, she
counted on his forehead, branded blood-red, the stars of a general.
Her maid had told him he’d find her out here, the old chap explained.
He had come to tell her the news. His Majesty had called him to an
interview night before last and promoted him because it was beneath the
Royal dignity to confer in private with a corporal.
So Old Sam, then, had supplanted her as entertainer.
As if in answer to Dolores’ thought, he motioned with his crutch toward
a bench of opalesque stone that stood beneath an arbor of purple
bourgainvillae. The honor paid him, he declared, was only the preface
to his news. When seated beside her, however, he seemed loathe to
proceed; glanced uneasily among the flowers of an oleander bush which
changed color with alternating currents of red and white.
His “news,” he at last confessed in guarded tones, concerned herself.
Dangerous though a report might be, he felt one his duty. His
summons into The Presence had been to discuss her. His Highness had
reintroduced the subject of “Grief to Men” and asked the veteran’s
opinion on a number of her points. Did Sam think her the most beautiful
woman he ever had seen? Did he consider her deep or just dumb? In what,
according to a recent earthling, lay her chief charm?
On the whole, declared the old new general, Satan had acted a good deal
as would some human swain who was getting interested in a girl. With
men, he wasn’t such a bad sort as Sam had expected. But with women----
There never was any telling what---- She--she understood?
At his embarrassed glance, she nodded. What woman had better reason to
understand than she?
“One question he asked was why I thought you never smiled,” the simple
soul continued solemnly. “That stumped me. As I told him, Mary Gertrude
used to be one laugh from morn till eve. ‘Odd,’ said he, ‘when she’s
caused all those griefs.’”
“I never learned to smile,” said Dolores. “My father never did. He used
to laugh sometimes. It was terrible to hear him. But he never smiled.”
The wag of Old Sam’s head was rueful. “I don’t want to worry you, but
I feel I should tell you what he called you--his ‘latest flame in the
land of such.’ And he asked me if I thought that a woman who had ruined
so many humans could be of any use to an immortal--some real bad one,
say, who had a good thing to offer her. I reminded him of the Littlest
Devil. ‘Oh, the B. B.,’ says he. ‘Likely she did make one of them happy
for a while. That isn’t what I mean. My thoughts of her are pure--pure
as Hell.’ Ma’am, I can’t figure it out any other way than that he’s got
a weakness for you.”
“Please--_please_ don’t say that!”
Dolores shuddered as though shaken by the torrid breeze, then withdrew
from his side to the outmost end of the bench. Some unseen force had
moved her. Grateful though she felt for his effort to forearm her, she
found herself unable to reassure him. A hateful reluctance stayed her
tongue.
Came startling interpolation: “_All has been overheard._”
The words were spoken in a voice which both recognized. There
materialized to their vision the superb face and figure of His Satanic
Majesty. He was seated between them.
“Eavesdropping is old stuff, I know,” he remarked easily, “but it never
ceases to be.”
“It was you who forced me aside?” Dolores struggled with her
indignation. “I didn’t know you could make yourself invisible.”
“Surest thing you _didn’t_ know, then. Turning oneself on or off is
a trick that our late angel did not lose in his fall. Fancy one of
the Cherubim reduced to turning himself off and on in lowlands like
Gehenna!”
With angry intolerance, he faced toward General Sam. “What’s this you
were saying about me? A weakness--_I_?”
“A man’s weakness for his woman is his strength,” the soldier-soul
contended.
“Your tongue tangles when you measure my strength by that of men.
I am----” and Satan’s glance slashed out like a sword--“I am the
Destroyer. Fool, fear me!” Irritably he added: “Who do you think you
are--Prometheus unbound? Why do you suppose I promoted you if not
to get rid of you without breaking my pact with Dame Dolores? Get
yourself to the nearest army camp, and make believe you’ve earned your
commission. See you stay there, too, until I send for you.”
“But what about my appointment in the palace? Who will hold the bowl
for Your Highness’ tears?”
The King arose as though further enraged by the reminder, then
succumbed to a sort of paroxysm so violent that his utterance was
impeded.
“Tears--and over Dolores’ griefs to men? Now I know you are a fool.
To have taken me seriously when I called myself a crocodile! I to
weep--and over human nature? Excuse me, folks. Let me enjoy myself
while I’m young. Honestly, I near injure my sides every time I think
of what she put over on that high-priest of the Great-I-Am!”
Too preoccupied was he to return his new-made general’s salute. Not
until the sound of Old Sam’s peg-leg had ceased to punctuate the pause
did he reseat himself upon the bench.
“As for you, designing jade----”
In the very midst of his address, he became lost in contemplation
of the royal toes. The girl-shade beside him realized that not once
to-day had he looked directly at her. She was reminded painfully of an
earthling who had been strong toward all his world, yet weak toward
her. He _must_ not have that sort of weakness for her--Satan. He must
look at her. She leaned toward him and tried to smile. But he would not
meet her eyes. Hideous it was that he should ape the mannerism toward
her of that one she had cared for most on earth.
Long it seemed before he completed his remark.
He had her at last, he declared; had preferred not to see or hear her
again until he had her. Now he was ready to take up with her the matter
of her status in Shadow Land. Had she wondered why she was the only
soul about the court not more or less tormented? The answer was easy.
Torment wasted power. He chuckled; then, on noting that he chuckled
alone, frowned. Had she no sense of humor?
At her ingenuous acknowledgment of her lack in that respect, the
Satanic brow cleared. To know that she had not humor was humor in
itself. Positively the most comical thing about the story of her
life was that she could be so serious over it now that she was dead.
Henceforth he should not expect anything in her but soul. He had a
beautiful soul himself. But he didn’t let it interfere with his daily
pleasures.
At first he had attributed his interest in her to the correlative facts
that she was a fallen woman and he a fallen angel. When, later, he had
come to realize her desirability to devils in general, he had searched
for a more comprehensive reason.
To his way of looking, she was pleasant to the eye. But beauty was a
matter of taste. To a Zulu she wouldn’t compare with his thick-lipped,
black-hued mate. The Cabot’s housekeeper, Mrs. Morrison, might be right
in accrediting her with a sweet disposition. Yet weren’t unattractive
girls usually called “sweet” and “good-natured”? She appeared to be
unselfish--and where was there an attribute so tiresome in women as
unselfishness? The fact that she boasted no brilliancy was a point in
her favor. The suggestion of an ardent nature in those dear little
wrinkles around her mouth might be either pro or con.
In what, then, lay her lure?
He had felt he should lose respect for his intelligence if obliged
to hear to the end of her story to know. He had found the clue in
the least important of her conquests--in him she called the “city’s
choice.” Why had that young Irishman’s blood gushed to his face at the
cling of her hand upon his arm, only to recede at the look of eyes
so like those of his year-old babe? Why had he calmed into a fine
protectorate from one of those sudden physical excitements peculiar to
mortal men?
He had got her, had got her at last. And with her he had got the secret
of her power--a secret of inestimable value to herself. Oh, she need
not look so helpless and perturbed! She need not maintain that pose
with him, now that he understood.
“Exactly what is it in me----” the dark head drooped--“that you
understand?”
He slashed out at an oleander until it blazed at him its bi-colored
fire.
“You were red and white--a human flower more attractively charged than
any in my garden of Bad Luck.” He rose to bow before her, low and
with no trace of irony. “You were an effect unique among womankind, a
combination of unconscious lust and seductive innocence. You appealed
with equal force to the bad and the good in that creature as near devil
as angel--everyman. _I_ know. Am I not the limit in both?”
From gay to grave his manner again changed when he squared around and
at last faced her.
“Never have I destroyed any force that works for me,” he stated.
“You have powers for evil which, if developed, might rival my own.
It remains with you whether that power increases in you or, through
duress, is destroyed. Come, what do you say?”
“What can I say, when I don’t know----”
“Allow me to say it for you, then. As I have explained in part, I
need--and need in a hurry--more men souls than I have been able to
draft since the conception of my Great Intention. Although I’ve
never been above taking any outside help I can get, I always have
despised the retroaction upon men of women. Since Eve, the fair have
been a sickly lot, more given to good influences than bad. Even the
experts developed by modern sex and social problems have shown chiefly
stupidity. Not the worst of them but have ideas of _bona fide_ reform
back of the rows they’re raising. As for the vampires, real ones
always have been rare. That Catherine Cabot, to whom you’ve called my
attention, is exceptional.”
“Yes. Dr. Shayle used to say that Catherine couldn’t be ‘reached’.”
“Shayle--is that the name of the ruined healer on your passport?”
“Oh, the world was mistaken about him, Your Majesty. Dear Clarke
Shayle--he said I saved him.”
“Let us hope not, you slave to tradition!” His Highness snapped. “If
you knew the deplorable failure I’ve made trying to get bad results
from women, you’d agree that I’d best stick to my last--and first--the
men. However, since you’ve been séancing with me evenings, certain
possibilities of making your sex serve my purposes have opened up
before me. In the past my idea has been that the more I could keep
women under, the worse the world would be. You have changed my slogan
to ‘Turn ’em loose’.”
“_I?_”
For a moment Satan enjoyed the admixture of humbleness and indignation
in her query.
“Nice work,” he commented. “Such feminism may be made the most dynamic
evil in the universe by one who masters it. De Maupassant thought he
had, but his ideas of women were limited to types of his time. I have
the one mind that can look at your sex unbiased by sentiment. As I had
no mother, all women are before, none behind me. The male may go on
and on indefinitely with sex villainies. But the female is likely to
learn from one indecency, her Swan Song, as it were. Yet her lamentable
limitations need not discourage us, since wars have made the fair
population exceed--shall I say, the foul? ‘By their works ye shall know
them.’ Your works I know. Ergo, I know you. Unlike your friend of the
employment agency, I fit the position to the applicant. Here is the job
I had created for you.”
He would make her manager, accountable only to himself, of the woman’s
department of the mortal world; would teach her the psychology of
spiritual communication, so that she might personally direct important
cases, as did he in his own field; would place under her charge a
school of female fiends whom she might entrust with missions on earth
as soon as she deemed them sufficiently proficient in her subtleties,
even as he did his demon sleuths.
To appeal, to obtain, to destroy--was not that the mission of her sex?
And yet so long had women been burden-bearers, deprived of initiative
by the master’s rein and hoppled by the ultimate of man-made laws,
that even he who so sorely needed them, had failed to appreciate their
suppressed power. Never would they come into their own until they
learned that their capability lay, not in trying to be what they were
not, but in being essentially and ruthlessly what they were.
“Ah, wrigglier than a she-cobra’s wriggle is the female of my dreams!”
Glowing from that ruddy mist of concentration which once before Dolores
had seen, His Highness warmed to his thought. “If all the anarchists in
my incubators were matured, they’d be a puny menace to society and the
State as compared with women let loose. Take the punitive laws from any
class and what is the result? Riot, bestiality, sin. Fear is what has
held women down. Take away fear and what will they do? They’ll master
the men. Once give ’em license and they’ll soon make up for their
enforced virtue of the past. The fact that they do not originate is
their best-worst trait--saves a lot of energy. Why, when I contemplate
their daring, their imperviousness to pain, their concentration through
heredity upon the meaner issues; when I allow myself to imagine the
deafening pop of the bottled-up indignities poured upon them in the
past--_Whew!_ I, the First and Last, shudder in humility over my
virtues. This I give you as a prophecy: To the female of the species is
the victory of vice.”
Dolores was lifted above fear for herself by fear for womankind.
“For shame!” she cried.
“Shame? What is that?”
“What I feel for you, Your--Your Lowness.”
“Good! I _must_ be getting bad. It is well that you pay me an out-loud
compliment now and then, when I’m paying you with the utmost of my
unlimited power. You encourage me to proceed. Although I don’t wish
you to doff your gentle ways--they’ll serve as a model for your
she-destroyers--you must keep clearly in mind that our chief emotion
down here is hate--immortal hate.”
“Hate immortal? I find it hard to think of such a thing. I am sure that
I never could hate for long. On Earth, I might stay angry with some one
through the day, but I couldn’t go to sleep until I forgave.”
His Majesty scowled down at her, evidently disturbed. “It’s all right
to look that idea. Of course you don’t feel it. You certainly must hate
these earthlings you’re telling us about.”
“You are wrong. I don’t hate them. Somehow I can’t hate any of them.”
With a catch of breath, she added: “If you said immortal love, now----”
“Tut, tut, my child. Isn’t it hot enough down here? Don’t heat up my
imagination.”
“But didn’t you ever feel love for anybody?”
“No, nor wouldn’t if I could. Love is weakening--orangeade for
temperance fools like General Sam. What is it anyhow? Some old
scientist has defined it as ‘merely the attraction of billions of
atoms, electrically charged in the system, corresponding to the same
number of the same sort of atoms in a person of the opposite sex.’
There you have it. What is so marvelous about that--what to make such a
to-do over?”
“That definition doesn’t sound right to me.”
Dolores’ eyes gazed out over the garden with a waiting look. It was as
if, within their shadows of a purple that shamed the bourgainvillae
bloom, hope was hiding in the arbor.
The King watched her in his considering way. His arm stretched along
the back of the bench. When convinced that she had forgotten his
presence, he suddenly snapped his strong, long fingers around the nape
of her neck.
With a smothered scream, Dolores tried to shake off his clutch. Never
from a mortal man had she felt a touch so offensive, yet so loathsomely
attracting.
“Please release me. You are so--so intense!”
“Quite too intense”--Satan drew back his lips over his teeth in a
bestial smile--“and in the imperative tense. Remember, Dame Dolores,
that what I want, I do not ask. I take.”
Sliding his hand down her arm, he drew her to her feet.
“Considering that, how do you like the prospect of this High Priestess
job?”
“I simply couldn’t do such things as you propose,” she dared his
displeasure to protest. “I should fail dismally, for I am not at heart
the sort you think. You say that love weakens one, but my spirit
would die, I know, if I cast love out and tried to hate. You would be
disappointed in me and your plans planned in vain. If success is what
you demand, choose some one stronger in hate than I--some one who----”
“Playing in form to the last!” he commented. “You are wise. There
really is no comparison between this appointment and one to the
Wanton’s Well or, say, the Traitors to Mothers. You, by the way, are a
native daughter to the last-named state. Did that strike you the other
day? According to your own account, you killed your mother before the
poor thing could so much as say ‘top o’ the morning.’”
“At least let me think it over. Let me finish the séances first,”
Dolores plead, under the iron of his reminder. “I am exhausted each
night when they are over and busy all the next day planning how best I
may continue to entertain Your Lowness. A new undertaking might make me
a failure in both.”
“There is something to that, unless----” He peered down at her
suspiciously. “You’re not aspiring to outwit me by dragging out that
life story indefinitely? The new job _will_ tax your concentration, no
doubt of it. And you do look all in after your regular evening stunt.
All right. You may have one week after the end of the séances in which
to make up such of your mind as I have not made up for you. But I
say----”
“Yes, Your---- Yes, Pluto?”
“Aren’t you the dearest of griefs?” Although he laughed at the guile
with which she had thanked him for his concession, he finished the
warning sternly. “See you make your story snappy to-night. Don’t let
these days of grace--or disgrace--make you as profuse of unessential
details as you’ve been chary of the essentials past nights. If you
do, you’ll find yourself talking against time with a vengeance. A
vengeance--get that?”
Yes, she assured him, her voice a minor chord. And she would try to
make it “snappy.”
A weakness for her? As compared with the strength he was showing to
bend or break her to his will, that dread now seemed a hope.