For minutes after the lights had flashed over The Devil’s Own, the two
in the royal box sat gazing at the flat silver surface so recently
deep with the shadows and high-lights of life as lived on Earth.
Neither noticed that the dead sea of faces below was enlivened by
recognition of the King’s favorite before it ebbed away beneath the
balcony. Neither heard the swish of whispers that passed from wave to
wave--gossip retailed from court, vilified innuendo, speculation over
the Belialic intent in entertaining the lately arrived star of the
piece with her death’s aftermath.
In truth, both host and guest were self-absorbed in emotion roused by
the play, but emotion quite antipodal. His shaved face showed plainly
his astonishment; worked with his darkling rage. Hers lifted roofward
a glory that so outshone the super-lighted dome as to suggest the
far-distant source of that radiance which no Avernian device might dim.
“It was not what I expected--the picture,” Satan remarked, with ominous
restraint. “The titling was good, but the plot didn’t fit. The damned
turn-turtle didn’t turn!”
Dolores was too charged with an inspired decision to realize his
displeasure. She turned to him; stretched out her hand; touched his arm.
“You said you could put me in spiritual connection with the women of
Earth,” she reminded him. “Could you also with men--with John?”
“And why, pray, with John?”
The cruelty of the smile which had been so charming awhile back should
have warned her, but she must have been blinded by that light from
within.
“Didn’t you see how he suffered from self-reproach? Don’t you realize
that he still is suffering?” She sighed in her voice of sad winds.
“Surely you gathered from the picture that all those age-long minutes
of the time I died from doubt, he still loved me--that he loves me now?
I want to implore his forgiveness.”
Her smile, timid from its rarity, strained to disappear, although she
tried to hold it.
“I’ve done my best to please you,” she wheedled nervously. “Won’t you
do this for me--just free my spirit for one short hour by the time of
Earth?”
“So! You’d rather go back to that puny mortal than on and on--with me?”
“Oh, but I’ll come back, and go on and on so cheerfully! I give you my
word,” she assured him. “I’ll do everything I can for you. Just grant
me the hour. It’s not the fraction of a second to you. You say that you
never have cared for anyone. Yet you boast of your imagination. Can’t
you imagine what it is really to care? Won’t you even try?”
“I might do that.” He eyed her. “I might try.”
All the drive home his manner was detached. He did not repulse her
gratitude for his grudging consideration of her request. Neither did he
explain that he was trying to imagine what “caring” would be like--but
trying through jealousy, its crudest mood.
“I will tell you--well, afterward,” he said, on bidding her “sleep
light” within Apollyon Palace.
“After what?”--she.
“That I don’t know myself as yet,” he snapped.
Afterward--if only we could know the afterward before!
She slept light. And through the next day her regret increased that
she had not dared his wrath and demanded a definite period to her
suspense. Feelings unwontedly rebellious filled her that she must wait
to know--rather, that John must wait.
Over the babe--their babe--she crooned her hope. To Adeline she
whispered her apprehension. Something in the hard, planning look of the
unfair fiend, in his superiority to any attempt at cleverness, in his
abstraction even while listening to compliments over his driving----
_When_ was afterward?
* * * * *
Satan, too, asked himself questions through that day.
A far busier leader than any king or president of Earth, since he
had the evil of all nations to direct, he yet found time from his
activities to remember the boomerang blow to himself of last night’s
“show.”
His chamber of state glowed as with St. Elmo’s fire, while he
lightning-flashed his orders through infinity, defying the “static” of
Earth and Heaven and the void between. Piteously he drove his Minions
of Malice toward the consummation of crimes unique or foul enough to
merit his supervision. No measurement exists to compute the watts of
energy required to transmit the royal will in this orgy of action. But
what did he care that the Gehennan sun was dimmed by the draught until
it looked a mere balloon?
As the artificial daylight went into eclipse, greener grew the color
of the Satanic mood--a hard green, mixed from the yellow of chagrin
and the blue-black of rage. He felt as mean as a son-in-law. It did
not help in the slightest to have Old Original commiserate him on the
projection of a picture which had shown his rival running true; no
more did that unworthy’s impious request that he be appointed royal
previewer of all future films. Even the minister’s report on the entire
success of a particularly contemptible political coup which he had
devised for the postponement of that good will toward men threatened in
the “Little Book” did not long divert him.
At length, consigning the rest of the day’s deviltry to various fiend
aides, the Author of Evil forced his mind to concentrate on the vital
question evolved from last night. How best might mortal pusillanimity
be revealed to the rose-goggled eyes of true love?
Through the mood which he had been suffering since the fiasco of his
“evening out,” he recognized violent tendencies within himself which
made him feel, more than ever before, his power to devise and inflict
suffering. In this case, however, violence would not do; would destroy
what he wished to create. With meticulous delicacy he must handle this
mind feminine if he hoped to pluck therefrom its dearest idealization.
What can the heart of woman not forgive? He asked himself and
considered, one by one, many answers.
“_I_ never could forgive infidelity!”
At that loudest and oftenest cry of the wives of the world the
malignant lips curled. “_Never?_” Yet most did forgive who found it
advisable so to do.
“Liquor? I _couldn’t_ endure that kind of a beast.”
But which martyr-wife exchanged her drunken lord except for a better
fate?
“Dishonesty? I _wouldn’t_ live with a man I didn’t respect.”
Wouldn’t she? Then why were the jail-gates draped with weeping faces
and stretching arms--why the late-life efforts to “live it down” of the
work-wasted woman and the husband who had served out his time?
Never? Couldn’t? Wouldn’t? What the heart of woman cannot forgive is
what she has not been called upon to forgive. The libertine’s lady
might just as well have learned to endure shame through ebriety, the
drunkard’s dupe through lechery.
What type of man, then, does the mind of woman most despise? A
villain? Scarcely, when the worst are loved the best. A traitor, a
weakling, a failure? For the lowest of these, pardons are plead. Upon
them, regenerating love is poured. What--_what_ to her is the sin
unpardonable?
With eyes closed against possible distractions, Satan rough-shadowed
the suspects of his thoughts. And just when his mind seemed emptied of
ideas, he had it.
Of course. _Of course._ A caught coward was what she could not forgive,
woman. He would star one earthling for benefit of his spirit-mate in
a play of cowardice. “Afterward”? After he was through, she scarcely
would press her request.
From their Limbian “Information” he inquired the name of the personal
devil of John Cabot. Upon learning that an imp named Okeh attended the
banker, he demanded instant connection by wireless telephone. This
he got with a promptness that might be commended to the attention of
mortal systematizers.
“That you, Okeh?” he asked. “I hear that you’re responsible for the
evil impulses of a Mr. John Calvin Cabot.... You speak as if you
were proud of the fact. You needn’t be.... What say?... But I have a
perfectly bad right to insult you.... A chance at me is just what I’m
going to give you--a chance to prove your efficiency. I want the Cabot
program for the immediate future. Quick, now. I am not used to waiting.”
Amid sulphuric anathemas at his informant, Satan noted the report.
Sailing for Europe in half an hour on a trans-Atlantic air-liner, was
he? And enemy wife, all unknowing as yet, was blimping it along? In the
old nick of time, as usual, was he to wish the undevoted couple _mal
voyage_. So the Marquis d’Elie, too, was to be on board? After all, the
“Turn Turtle” must think more of the Trent girl’s battered reputation
than of his own pleasure.
If the big blimp was to sail in a few minutes, what was Mr. Cabot
doing in the morasses of Brooklyn, only half way to the flying field?
The agate-eyed personal devil was ready with explanations. The
gentleman’s wife was reopening a suit for divorce on the strength of
an illegitimate child whom circumstantial evidence proved to be his.
The air trip was to celebrate all but the actual verdict in her favor.
Cabot had started late that he might board at the last moment, thereby
giving her an unhappy surprise. His car unfortunately had run into a
jam around an open-air evangelist--a sensational religionist who was
enthralling crowds everywhere, the Rev. Dr. Alexander Willard by name.
Scarcely could Satan restrain his risibilities. What a contretemps!
Here was the deposed divine, forced to the Free Church of Outdoors by
the siren Grief, with his eloquence delaying her last victim’s flight
from the scandal she had brought upon him. How delightfully diabolic!
For sake of his own recent experiment at popularizing the once tedious
sermon, His Augustness had Okeh short-mouth for him certain of
“Nimrod’s” shots.
“I used to hunt birds and beasts. Now I hunt the hearts of men. God
is my guide, Hallelujah! So what care I that I am shut out from the
temples of those who call themselves the righteous? The world is too
small a church for me. Through the tall timbers of humanity I hunt
immortal souls. Look out for me, you quaking quail of a woman! Look
out for me, you running rabbit of a man! You can’t escape me through
the underbrush of your hypocrisy. I don’t miss, once I take aim.
Hallelujah, I am gunning for _you_!”
Lest the imp mistake his dishonest amusement, Satan cut off the report.
“Enough of that irreverent stuff. Listen carefully now to instructions
from the First and Last. That liner likely will wait for a man of
Cabot’s importance. See that you get aboard with him. You’re to
closer-than-a-brother him through an opportunity for inciting cowardice
which will present itself. While he sleeps insinuate into his mind
a terror of death by falling and by drowning. Strengthen his primal
appetence of self-protection. This is the last chance you get with me.
If you fail to make an arrant coward of this man you’ll find yourself
out of a deviling job for death. I am busy now, as you’d better be. A
bad afternoon to you!”
The Regent of Reversals was “on terms” with the elements, as with all
forces for evil through good. On hearing that calm had been planned for
the high-seas, he discarded the idea of a marine storm.
Always had his worst results been obtained through natural causes.
Indeed, he had come to pride himself that no cause was _too_ natural
for him. Particularly did he dislike, for reasons of his own, to
interfere with a rainbow, it being a symbol to him that the Earth would
not be destroyed by water. Since he had only fire as a weapon he would
be in a bad fix if the coup ultimate should be sprung upon him with
water power. Of course, the coup wasn’t to be sprung, not if he could
forestall it, but even yet he was wracked by unrighteous rage every
time he recalled Noah’s Flood. That time, he had been about as powerful
as a case of dynamite--_soaked_. One decent thing about the Great-I-Am
was that He never forgot a promise. One could count upon a rainbow,
once one saw it. And Satan was “counting.”
Upon the single great indestructible under his control he must depend
to vary the monotony of a placid sea. Never had the three single-eyed
Cyclopeans of mythology failed to serve his purposes. Lightning Flash,
Thunderbolt and Rolling Thunder would advance his scheme.
Motivation and “natural causes” arranged, he sent a peremptory summons
for the Prime Minister and to him detailed instructions in the duties
of a proxy escort. An hour before dawn Sin was to awaken the Royal
Entertainer and conduct her straightway to the stadium of the Ball of
Life. That “best bubble” of infernal invention was to entertain her by
picturing some interesting Earth events as they occurred.
“I shall not fail Your Damnity,” the old toady assured him.
“Better not,” was all Satan said as he finger-flashed his First
Emissary of Evil out the royal suite.
His Master Crier was called; told to issue a general invitation to the
forthcoming spectacle; warned that the stadium must be filled to its
last seat, despite the unconventional hour. Not until this sop to his
vanity had been applied, did His Lowness close the “office” and himself
depart.
With the failure of his past-tense picture-play in mind, he betook
himself to the stadium and preparations for this greatest and latest
show under Earth. There must be no miscues about a performance upon
which depended the success of that “experiment” inspired by Dolores’
earth-tales of joys, as well as griefs to men. He would make his own
tests of the complicated apparatus, although the plant had not failed
him since installation.
To establish that the Ball of Life functioned properly was his first
concern. Giving it a turn, he watched the reflector pool for shadows.
When the shimmering prisms of the mercury-like pond had been quieted,
he was rewarded by an intimate look at a naval review somewhere on the
China Sea, within focus of which the overhung ball had chanced to stop.
The finder he next put to test. This instrument, of graduated tubes
like those of a monster telescope, controlled the lenses of the
all-seeing ball. At will, he caused it to pick up this scene and that,
finally locating the dirigible which was to be the central figure of
the forthcoming event, as it tossed on waves of air above the Atlantic.
Closer attention did he give to the aurograph, a practicable
device worked out to supplement the spectroscope, which combined
on an enormous scale the principles of the radio-telephone and the
phonograph. Back of the stadium, well out of way of the suspended
ball, the antennæ--an elaborate network of wires--were suspended by
metal-like balloons. These were insulated from Gehenna, except for the
central converging wires, which led to multi-power generators. Upon a
huge sounding board were the messages received, thence communicated to
the stadium by annunciators. The tuning of this masterpiece of etheric
control occasioned Satan some concern, but finally was accomplished to
his satisfaction.
Back on the control platform, surrounded by his technical chiefs, His
Highness watched the stadium fill. As the appointed hour approached,
he ran up the green walls which surrounded the terraced seats and from
the pool flashed an order that all spectators adjust the small dynamos
of the eye-shades with which they were provided on entering. He wished
none to fail to see to the end the abasement of John Cabot.
A moment he hesitated, then took up the telephone connected with the
royal box. The lackadaisical voice of Old Original responded.
“Dame Dolores in her place?”
On being assured of that important fact, he turned to the Master
Mechanic.
“Step on the music!”
Upon all ears burst an orchestration, The Song of the Sea. As surely
did they hear it as though it had been carried hellward by the wind
through shells, crevasses and metallic splinters. As by lutes and
æeolean harps it was played, with crashes and staccato rumblings for
bass.
The drama of mortal cowardice, destined to turn into contempt a
too-long-lasting love, was on.