KARL’S FIRST MEETING WITH STEINDAL
Hooper turned up next evening armed with a note-book.
“I did not go to bed until long after sunrise,” he said. “When I began
to marshal my thoughts into some semblance of order, I was amazed to
find how far back into the twilight of human origins you carried me
with your cat language. Has it ever struck you how old this world is,
how long men have waited before they took their first sure step towards
knowledge?”
“Are you speaking of the evolution of matter in general, or of mankind
in particular?” asked Grier.
“Of our noble selves, to be sure. Geologically, there is practically no
limit backward, but we have been so fed up on individualism that we are
only now beginning to abandon useless speculations as to the eternity
of the future for a more definite study of the eternity of the past.
Now you, with your animal language and your genuine far-seeing, have
cleared the mist from a theory I have held nebulously for a year or
more. Let me state it in progressive theses: (_a_) Human inventiveness
is bounded only by the zone of human intelligence; (_b_) the capacity
of the brain extends far beyond our present scientific comprehension;
(_c_) every new discovery is, therefore, a mere quickening into
activity of some special attribute latent in all properly regulated
brains; (_d_) a time may come when man shall know all things, as
nothing can happen, nor can have happened, which the brain is not
capable of conceiving.”
“An old Indian acquaintance, Sir William Macpherson, has told me that
he has reached a similar conclusion. Nevertheless, your theorizing
vaults a long way in advance of my experiences.”
“Not a bit of it. You are merely a living testimony of faculties either
undeveloped or deemed dead owing to disuse. Oddly enough, you, my
friend, possess powers which we modern degenerates--beef-fed and stodgy
with misapplied civilization--coolly relegate to the lower animals or,
at the best, to savage tribes. Watch cattle in a field, birds in the
air--are they not skilled weather prophets, far more reliable than
any Meteorological Bureau? They don’t tap a glass cylinder of mercury
or write learnedly about cirrus clouds and convex cumuli. No, the
cows and horses just nibble the grass on the exposed hills, the birds
skate about unconcernedly, if the advancing gloom simply heralds a
passing shower; but see them all scoot for shelter before ever a leaf
is stirred if a real storm is about to break. That is pure, undiluted,
unquestioning knowledge. The power of transmitting news instantly
over long distances, possessed by certain human nomads, is of the
same type. Therefore, my dear Karl, you hark back in the centuries.
You are away down the social scale. I, an up-to-date demigod, to whom
the real meaning of nearly every word I use is unknown, tell you this
unblushingly.”
“Is that a part of your theory that the world is still in its infancy
in its search after truth?”
“Well hit, my prehistoric man, my vitalized fossil. You are old as many
of the hills. Oh, if only I could put a date on you! Say, have you ever
heard of Eridhu?”
“Do you mean the Chaldean city?”
“Yes. Well, six thousand years ago it was a seaport, and the sanctuary
of the Chaldean god, Eâ. Now, it is a dust-heap, miles inland. A
friend of mine, sorting among the rubbish last year, found a tomb. The
gentleman buried therein must have been an Akkadian antiquary, who
hated, even in death, to be parted from his treasures, because the
brick vault containing his remains also held a variety of objects
several thousand years older than himself.”
“Are the facts quite clear?”
“Clear. Just listen to the evidence. You, as a bloated Britisher, are
aware, no doubt, that the year when it first attained the dignity
of record began with the vernal equinox, and the opening month was
named after the ‘propitious Bull’? Thus, Bull headed the twelve
constellations of the zodiac, and was quite an important character.
Well, in the tomb aforesaid, the excavators found a small stone urn,
bearing, not Taurus, the Bull’s sign, but Aquarius, the water-carrier.
The sun, at the vernal equinox, has been in Aries since 2,500 B.C., and
it first entered Taurus somewhere about 4,700 B.C. Lots of centuries
must have been passed in observation before the astrologers formed the
calendar we use to-day, so the urn could claim, at the very least, a
venerable antiquity, unless it was a hoary Chaldean hoax. There is
a good reason to believe it was anything but a joke. It was brought
to Washington, eagerly examined by a gathering of archæologists, and
dropped by some trembling enthusiast on to a marble floor.”
“Good gracious!”
“Yes, the finder said something like that. Indeed, his language was
even more fluent. Yet the accident led to a discovery. The shattered
urn consisted of two vessels, one within the other. Between the two was
a thin slip of ivory, and on this was a cuneiform inscription, with
a lively drawing showing how one gentleman hammered a big nail into
another gentleman’s skull.”
“Do you propose to treat me in that way?”
“I have reached my point now. That record of a crime, probably a
murder of revenge, was kept secret for at least 7,000 years, and only
Schliemann or Haynes could tell us how much longer. So your peculiarly
constituted brain, my friend, has gone on repeating itself through many
a forgotten ancestor until the accident of environment enabled its
hidden recesses to burst their bonds. It took a great many clever men a
great many years to decipher the cuneiform characters of the Akkadians,
and you will probably be dead long before some genius yet unborn tells
an anxious world why you can see things that are taking place at a
distance of over three thousand miles. Meanwhile, behold in me your
patient observer and chronicler. To-night--”
“To-night we shall talk and smoke, and pursue vain conceits,” said
Karl, determinedly. “I think I ought to forego these glimpses into the
void. They are unpleasing in many ways. Of what personal benefit is
this unusual gift? I wish to qualify myself for a commercial career,
and the only practical use of such escapades as those of the two
preceding nights is somewhat in the detective line. I mean to resist
the impulse for the future.”
“Now you are indulging in banalities. You can no more resist the
occasional use of your splendid gifts than a duckling reared by a
hen could hold back from a pond. And do you really think that I have
written twenty pages of notes merely to fool away three hours? I guess
Maggie can’t be a nice girl, or it’s a sure thing you would want to see
her again.”
Karl smiled, and a very charming way he had of revealing his white
teeth with the kindliest and most good-natured expression of genuine
fun.
“Even if you are smugging at law, Frank,” he said, “you should spare
your friends the tricks of counsel. You fancy, and probably your belief
is justified, that if I allow my mind to dwell on Miss Hutchinson’s
appearance, such as I have recently discovered it to be, I shall wander
off hopelessly across the ocean to find her. I am sorry to disappoint
you, but I am firm in my resolution to discourage these influences as
much as possible.”
Hooper sighed. He put away his note-book and viciously bit the end off
a green cigar, a feat by no means so easy as the smokers of British dry
weeds may imagine.
“Then let us talk of ships and kings and sealing-wax,” he growled. “I
am rather strong on ancient Egypt. Would you like to hear my views on
Ka?”
Hooper was speaking with careless sarcasm. He was grievously annoyed
that Grier should cut off a highly interesting experiment in such a
summary fashion. Yet there is an unconscious art which is superior to
all intent, and Hooper had blundered on to a question which set his
hearer’s mind in a whirl.
“Ka!” he said softly. “Surely that is what we call the soul? It is
animism, the shadowy second self evoked from dreams. Yes, that is a
root word, direct from the earliest mint. Man, in his first speech,
described Ka.”
The American veiled the joy in his eyes by a cloud of smoke.
“If I can only plunk him near the window now, he will switch on to
Maggie with a jerk,” was the ready reflection. But the “plunking,”
whatever it may mean--for your good American, when not undergoing the
embalming process which finally fits him for Paris, can coin words
at will--was not necessary. Karl, without effort or volition, passed
through the umbra which separated his known senses from the sway of
their unknown congener. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes,
and was forthwith, to all appearance, sleeping lightly.
Hooper, whose nostrils quivered with repressed excitement, flung
away his cigar and applied himself to the task of recording all
external physical indications of the emotions his companion might be
experiencing. It will be remembered that this trance-like condition
was usually preceded by some slight disturbance of the blood-vessels
infringing on or adjacent to the brain. There was no such sign of
cerebral disorder on this occasion. Karl seemed to have yielded to a
desire for a pleasant and refreshing doze.
Again, when he saw Maggie Hutchinson and the Armenian at Manhattan
Beach, he had endeavored to approach nearer to them, and was only
prevented by the fortunate interposition of a window-ledge and a stick
stuck in a flower-pot, while his temporary flight to the storm-tossed
saloon of the _Merlin_ had caused him to sway in Hooper’s arms.
To-night he sat immovable, though he witnessed a series of really
remarkable events, the sight or hearing of which would assuredly
have evoked some reflex action or cry during any of his earlier
manifestations.
Luckily, there was present, in the young American, a sympathetic
watcher, who, notwithstanding his comparative youth, had all the
coolness and critical acumen of a hardened investigator. Hooper,
true to his own theory, was convinced that he was assisting in the
development of a hitherto unsuspected function in man’s brain. He
knew that the obscure sum of influences we call heredity affects the
adult man in a surprisingly small traceable degree as compared with
education. If it were possible to leave an infant, born of civilized
parents, wholly to its own devices, what direct characteristics of
human ancestry would it exhibit? It would possess no articulate
language, its knowledge would not extend beyond the limited recognition
of a few articles of food, its reasoning faculties would be a blank,
its highly convoluted brain a storehouse of potentialities as hidden
as the wonder of its nervous system or the chemical building of its
tissue. In a word, a child which, under tuition, might become the
discoverer of a new province in human thought, would sink instantly
to the condition of palæolithic man. Let the key be lost which should
unlock the treasury, and untold ages of horror and suffering, of
seemingly endless and unavailing effort, must be endured ere it could
be found again. Yet the treasure was there intact, as surely pent
within the protoplasmic ovum as displayed in all its splendor on the
printed page of the world-convincing treatise. That was the great
miracle of nature, and Hooper asked himself what phase of her manifold
powers was now unfolding itself before his intent yet uncomprehending
eyes.
He knew that mankind to-day can produce, in facsimile, types of
ancestors found in pliocene strata at least 500,000 years old. Stone
knives alone could make the intentional cuts found on the ribs of a
cetacean stranded on the shore of the pliocene sea, and what that meant
to a prehistoric tribe is clearly shown by Lord Avebury’s (Sir John
Lubbock’s) summary of a description by Captain Grey of a recent whale
feast in Australia:
“When a whale is washed ashore it is a real godsend to them (the
aborigines). Fires are lit to give notice of the joyful event. They
rub themselves all over with blubber and anoint their favorite wives
in the same way. Then they cut down through the blubber to the beef,
which they eat raw or broil on pointed sticks. As other natives arrive
they ‘fairly eat their way into the whale, and you see them climbing in
and about the stinking carcase, choosing tit-bits.... There is no sight
in the world more revolting than to see a young and gracefully formed
girl stepping out of the interior of a putrid whale.’”
Hooper had plenty of time to let his imagination run riot in this
wise. The light fell on Grier’s face, but the watcher looked in vain
for any indication of the sights or sounds in which the sleeper
was participating. Karl, to outward semblance, might be either
really asleep or brought to muscular rigidity by the influence of
an anæsthetic. He was calm, unmoved, the lips slightly parted, with
healthy color, and an easy rise and fall of the chest.
This late sitting broke the stringent college rules, but Hooper cared
little for penal ordinances. Yet even he grew anxious when Karl
failed to arouse himself after an hour had passed in utter silence.
He was very reluctant to disturb his comrade. This present flight
through space promised to transcend its predecessors in the prolonged
sequence of its events. Nevertheless, there was a limit to his friend’s
endurance if not to his own.
When the expiration of another fifteen minutes revealed no sign of
Grier’s return to consciousness, Hooper did not think he was justified
in permitting the trance to continue indefinitely without assuring
himself, at any rate, that Grier’s pulse was normal and his heart
beating regularly.
He stooped and caught Karl’s wrist gently. He noticed that the
breathing was slow and measured, and he had just succeeded in detecting
the pulse when Karl opened his eyes.
He gave one surprised, almost bewildered glance at Hooper, laughed
cheerfully when he looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, and said, in
the most matter-of-fact way:
“Have you ever heard of a man named Steindal in New York?”
“Y--yes.” Hooper nearly stammered, he was so taken aback by the
curiously commonplace question.
“Is he connected with the stage?” went on Karl, eagerly.
“Yes, in a sense. He is a dramatic agent, I think.”
“He is unquestionably a dramatic scoundrel. Why did you interfere? At
the very moment I quitted him he was giving his own precious character
to Constantine. Never mind! I will find the rascal and beat him to a
jelly.”
“Bully for you! Things have happened, then?”
“My dear Frank, I have not only seen but _heard_. Think what it means!
Three thousand miles of wireless telephony! And what a first-rate brute
that fellow Steindal is!”
“A regular son of a gun, I have no doubt. But say. I thought you had
rung up Maggie Hutchinson?”
“I did not see her, thank Heaven, but I heard so much concerning her
that I shall make it my business to meet the _Merlin_ at Liverpool and
warn her against that pair of beauties in New York.”
Hooper selected a fresh and extra green cigar.
“Now, indeed, I can smoke the calumet of peace while you talk,” he
said, curling up in an easy chair with the comfortable _abandon_ of one
who has faithfully kept a long vigil.