The following morning, after leaving the hotel on some trifling errand,
I returned to find Arthur awaiting me. He stood by my table, and
occupied himself in turning the leaves of one of my books. He was
looking with much interest at a picture in a work on paleontology, a
book which by some chance had accompanied a few selected works that I
had brought with me from England. The picture that so interested him, I
saw as I drew nearer, represented the skeleton of a prehistoric mammoth
with a man standing by its side, the latter figure placed in the
picture, no doubt, for the purpose of showing relations of size. As I
stepped up close to Arthur's side, he turned a page in the book and
disclosed a still more startling representation, that of a reconstructed
mammoth, wool, long coarse hair, enormous tusks, and the rest. Arthur,
with his usual curiosity, wanted to be told "all about it," and I with
my usual desire to teach the searcher after knowledge even of little
things--though a mammoth is scarcely a "little thing"--briefly gave him
some insight of the subject, running over the differences between the
mastodontine and the elephantine mammoth; and then remarked to him,
incidentally, that an American _mastodon giganteus_, found not far from
where we stood, over in Missouri, a third of a century before, was now
in our British Museum, where I had seen it. Of course Arthur had many
questions to ask concerning the "gigantic-cus" which I had actually
seen. I gave him, from memory, the best description possible, telling
him that it was more than twenty feet in length, about ten feet high,
and so on. He seemed very thoughtful for several moments, whilst I sat
down to look at my morning paper. After somewhat of a pause, he asked
permission to speak--for with all Arthur's lack of cultivation he was
not wanting in a sense of propriety, which he usually displayed in his
relations with those whom he liked. I gave the desired permission, when
he said,
"I just wanted to say, sir, that I wish't you'd let me come up of an
evenin' and sit off in the corner there on that chair, and hear Doctor
Bainbridge tell about Pym and Peters. I know you've been mighty good to
tell me the most of it so far, but to-night he'll tell how that
beautiful female loves Pym, like you said early this morning he was
goin' to; and I'm awful anxious to hear soon. Something big's goin' to
happen, and I pity the natives if they rouse up that orang-outang
Peters. You said I would disturb the flowin' of Doctor Bainbridge's
retorick by goin' out and in. But I won't go out. I just won't go out;
if the Boss don't like it he can lump it--I can quit. Right down the
street I can rent a little shop-room, and a feller and me has been
talking of startin' a ice-cream saloon for the summer--yes, I can quit
if the Boss don't like it. I work all day, and half the night; I can't
keep up my system with a single drink without there's a kick a-coming;
and now if I can't have a little literature when it's right in the
house, it's a pity. No: I'll not interrup' the retorick."
Well, the end of it was, I gave my consent; and Arthur went off
delighted. I mention these facts in explanation of my position. It has
been said by one who ought to know, and the statement has been often
enough quoted to evidence some general belief in its truth, that
consistency is a jewel. I had said, that, during Doctor Bainbridge's
recitations of Dirk Peters' story, Arthur should not be present; and now
that he will be seen in a corner of my room evening after evening, I
desire that the reader shall know all the circumstances.
That afternoon I accompanied Bainbridge on his visit to the aged sailor.
I was pleased to see the old _lusus naturæ_ sitting in a chair, and
seemingly quite strong. Bainbridge made himself agreeable, delivered to
Peters some small gifts of edibles, and then proceeded to ask a number
of questions--I presume, from their nature, concerning _minutiæ_
relating to the adventures under consideration. Then we returned to
town, and separated.
Promptly at eight o'clock Bainbridge entered, and, as he took his
customary seat, cast a glance at Arthur, who sat on a chair in the
corner of the room.
"Well," began Bainbridge, after a moment's thought, "we were remarking
that within our own knowledge and experience, true love has been
exceedingly likely to meet with obstructions to its complete
fruition:--and Lilama and Pym met with a similar experience in far-away
Hili-li. Peters took a great interest in Pym's love affair; in fact, he
had grown almost to worship the young fellow whose life he had many
times preserved, and who in less than a year had, under his eye, grown
from a careless boy to a thoughtful man. Pym returned the liking of his
old companion and benefactor; but Peters' sentiment was one of
infatuation, such as only those persons who are 'close to nature' seem
capable of feeling in its fullest development. When the feeling of which
I speak exists in its most intense form, it includes a devotion equal to
that of the dog for its master: it is wholly instinctive, and not even
the certainty that death stalks in the path between can keep it from its
object.
"One morning early, there was excitement in the ducal palace. Lilama was
missing. Search was diligently made. Pym was wild with excitement; and
as the morning wore on Peters grew almost mad. (I shall speak of
morning, afternoon, evening, and night. The degree of light in Hili-li
did not now vary in the twenty-four hours; but it is necessary that I
should in some manner divide the day, and our usual method seems the
best.) The Duke himself arrived at about ten o'clock, by which time the
search had ceased, and what to do next had become the question. The Duke
appeared surprised at something, and spoke a few words to his son, a
young man of twenty-two or twenty-three, by name Diregus, who thereupon
looked slightly foolish, as one does who has made some puerile mistake.
The Duke appeared to feel a real touch of pity for Pym, who sat
dejected, a picture of intense anguish, now and then casting a
beseeching look at the Duke--the only person who, to his mind, might be
able to assist him to regain his sweetheart. The Duke again spoke to his
son, who, turning to Pym, motioned him to accompany them. Then, followed
by Peters, they walked down to the shore, and entered a boat.
"From the moment of starting, every movement of the Hili-lites seemed as
if prearranged. It was a peculiarity of this people that a number of
them acting together talked very little, each of the party appearing to
know the wishes and intentions of the others, without a word spoken. And
so was it on this occasion. Scarcely a word was uttered, and each seemed
to comprehend the wishes of the others, mainly by glances and by
semi-involuntary movements. In the present instance, father and son did
not once glance at each other, yet the son was evidently aware of each
wish of the father. They finally came to a landing, across the bay, in
the suburbs of the city most distant from the locality in which stood
the ducal palace. There, some four hundred feet from the shore, amid
giant trees, in spacious and seemingly neglected grounds, stood a very
large residence, evidently many centuries old, and of a style of
architecture not seen by the Americans elsewhere in Hili-li. The
building had an eerie look, and as the party drew near to it Peters
observed that but one of its wings was inhabited, the remainder of the
mansion being in a state of almost complete decay. They all entered by a
side doorway into the inhabited wing. Pym and Peters were motioned to
seats in the hallway, the Duke remarking, in hushed tones, 'The home of
Masusælili,' as he and Diregus passed through a broken and decaying
doorway into apartments beyond. Soon Diregus returned, and, escorting
Pym and Peters through several disordered rooms, finally paused before a
large curtained doorway. Then Diregus spoke, but in a hushed voice, and
with an awed solemnity that chilled his hearers through and through.
"'Fear not,' he said; 'no harm will befall you. If the benign Fate is to
smile--well; if the Furies are to rage, we can but bow to the Will that
has held in its hand for countless cycles this petty planet--a grain in
the wastes of Eternity. Come!'
"He passed through the doorway, and the two followed him. The room they
entered was spacious--almost thirty feet square. It was crowded with
strange devices, and was lighted by six colored swinging globes. A
strange odor filled the atmosphere of the apartment. The room was
brilliantly enough illuminated, though the light was variously colored
and its shades and blendings were confusing; whilst the strange,
intoxicating perfume also helped to perplex the senses. If the apartment
had contained not more than several objects, the visitors might soon
have detected and observed all of them; but, as it was, Pym and Peters
stood gazing confusedly about them, momentarily beholding fresh objects,
all of them strange, many of them bizarre, some of them frightful. It
was apparently at the same instant of time that the sight of Pym and
Peters fell upon an object so awesome that their hearts almost ceased to
beat, and then bounded on with throbs that sent the cold blood leaping
down their spines and to their scalps in chilling waves that ceased only
when their terror reached the numbing stage. There before them, not six
feet away, among great cubes of crystal, and vast retorts, and enormous
vase-like objects on the floor, stood an aged man. How aged? He was old
when the antarctic barbarians were slain, and their remnant sent back to
its home on those dreary islands to live forever in blackness. None knew
how old he was--they, the rulers, knew not; or if they did, on that
subject they were silent. Some said that on the ship which brought the
nucleus of their race from Rome, came Masusælili with the others--an
aged man, the oldest on the vessel. There he stood before the visitors,
his white beard trailing on the tiling at his feet, his shrunken form
erect. But, whence the terror? Three times ere I could learn this fact
(and even then I learned it more by inference than by words) did Peters
sink into delirium, muttering, 'Oh, those eyes--the eyes of a god--of a
god of gods.' The aged man seated himself at a small Roman table, and,
turning to the Duke without a question, said in a voice unlike any other
voice in all the world--steady, but thin, high-pitched, sharp,
penetrating and agitating depths within the hearer never reached before,
"'You come for knowledge of The Lily. Behold!'
"He pointed to a cube of crystal near him, which, Peters will swear, was
a moment earlier perfectly transparent. But now it looked as if filled
with milk of purest whiteness. As they gazed at it, a fire appeared in
the centre; and soon around the fire there sprang into being a circular
range of mountains, and on the side of one of these--the nearest--stood
two persons.
"'Lilama--Ahpilus,' screamed Diregus; 'he has stolen her away!'
"Yes: for though Pym and Peters had never seen the exiled lover, they
recognized Lilama; and even they could surmise the rest.
"'The youth is mad,' said the Duke. 'We must rescue our darling from the
maniac.'
"Pym, in his impatience, was about to rush from the room; but the old
man beckoned for him to approach. He did as desired. Then the aged man
placed a hand upon Pym's head, and drew it down to him; and the man who
had lived thousands of years whispered some words into the ear of the
youth who had lived not yet four lustrums. As Peters described for me in
his homely way the change that came over the face of Pym as that human
millenarian spoke perhaps one hundred words into the young man's ear, I
was reminded of reading as a boy, some years ago, a description of the
burning somewhere in South America of a great cathedral. The fire
occurred during a morning service, and with the alarm the doorways of
the building were at once obstructed by a mass of struggling humanity.
Some two or three thousand persons were consumed in this terrible
holocaust. The correspondent who wrote the description of the fire of
which I speak said that for ten minutes he stood outside the cathedral
after the surrounding heat had become so intense that efforts at rescue
ceased, and from a raised spot he looked through the windows from which
the glass had crumbled--looked across the great window-sills raised
eight feet from the cathedral floor, looked into the faces of the
doomed. And as he gazed, he saw the faces of many maidens with their
lovers by their side--(it was a gala day, and all were in their best
attire). As he looked, within a brief ten minutes he saw horror-stricken
eyes gaze at the approaching fire, and at other victims sixty feet away
already burning; then quickly would the fire approach the owner of those
eyes, reach him, consume him: And in those fleeting moments the face of
a young girl would pass through every stage from youth to extreme age,
and then sink down in death. As the aged mystic whispered to Pym, the
young man's face turned ghastly, then worked convulsively, then settled
into firm resolve. And Peters never again saw on the face of the youth
whom he loved with the love of a mother and of a father in one--never
again saw the old, careless, boyish smile. Did the old man--shall we
call him a man?--did the old man whisper into Pym's ear the secret of
eternity? Would such a revelation have changed youth to manhood in a
hundred seconds?
"As Pym was led by Diregus from the room, Peters started to follow; but
the aged mystic motioned for him, too, to approach. Peters says that
after what he had just seen he felt much more like taking to flight than
he did like obeying the summons; but he obeyed it. The old man pointed
to one of the smaller crystal cubes, which would have measured some five
feet across. As Peters gazed upon it, it began to take on the milky hue
which he had before witnessed. Peters says that at first he thought
these cubes were of solid crystal, but after he witnessed the strange
alterations of which they were capable, he believed they were hollow. He
continued to gaze as directed, and soon he saw, sitting at a table, with
a lighted candle by her side, knitting, his poor old mother, from whose
side he had, fifteen years before, when a thoughtless, wicked boy, ran
away to sea. He had never seen her again--he has not seen her again to
the present day. As he gazed upon that aged, wrinkled face--that hard,
Indian face (his mother was a civilized Indian), he saw that look which
man sees nowhere else on sea or land save only in a mother's face. He
threw himself face-downward on the floor, and wrung in agony his hands,
and moaned out pleas for forgiveness; but the poor, old, fragile form
knitted on, and on, and the face was never raised. Alas! why must we all
feel the full force of a mother's love and sacrifices only when too
late? Why must it be that the deepest of all unselfish love goes ever
unrewarded?
"Peters scarcely knows how he got from the room. He staggered out into
the grounds, and saw that the remainder of the party were already seated
in the boat.
"But I must hasten on. Let me say in a few words, that the party
returned to the ducal palace, and immediately prepared to rescue Lilama
from the power of her discarded lover, the exiled Ahpilus. The rescue
party, on the advice of the Duke, was small. He explained to Peters that
so far as mere human force was concerned, a thousand men could never
rescue the maiden. Her return to them, alive and in health, would depend
upon strategy, or possibly might be accomplished as a result of some
superhuman individual effort. He was of opinion, he remarked--and he
judged from what he had been told by government officials lately
returned from 'Crater Mountains' and also from changes in the young man
observed by himself preceding the sentence of banishment--that Ahpilus
was a maniac. The Duke went on to say that he really felt but little
hope of ever again seeing, alive, his loved young 'cousin.' Then he
explained that, whilst there were spots on 'Crater Mountains,' from five
to eight miles from the central crater, on the far side of the nearer
hills, hot enough to roast a large animal, there were other spots on the
far side of the remoter mountain ranges where, protected from crater
radiation and exposed to antarctic air-currents, the temperature was
almost always far below the freezing-point, and sometimes so cold that
no animal life, even antarctic animal life, could endure it for an hour.
He said that poor Lilama was lost, unless some other exile should save
her--which was unlikely, even if possible--or unless we could invent
some plan of capture so peculiar as to baffle the madman--a man, by the
bye, of enormous physical strength, and with a madman's cunning. Peters
stood drinking in every word spoken by the Duke; whilst Pym listened as
if heartbroken, but in an impatient, anxious way, indicative of a
restless impulse to be gone. The Duke continued to instruct and advise
them, until a large sail-boat was provisioned and manned, when the
rescue party hastened away on its errand of love and mercy.
"The party consisted of the young man Diregus, Lilama's cousin; of Pym
and Peters; and of six boatmen, who might or might not be employed
directly in the attack and rescue, as should later seem best. The party
had no weapons other than a few peculiarly-shaped clubs, similar to
those mentioned by me in describing the fight of the early Hili-lites
against the invading barbarians, and a long dirk-knife in the possession
of Peters.
"By glancing at this map of Hili-liland, you will observe that the
sea-course to 'Crater Mountains' was almost direct, it lying in a
straight line out of Hili-li Bay and across the open sea for thirty
miles. They were to enter 'Volcano Bay,' which pursued a tortuous course
amid the mountains, until they should reach a certain pass between two
of the highest mountains in the whole range. In the centre of one of
these mountains was a peak some eight miles high, named by the founders
of Hili-li 'Mount Olympus.' It was possible to sail (or to push their
boat) to within seven miles of a point where the lavabed was still red
hot--about thirteen miles from the edge of the central, white-hot,
boiling lava. This, however, they did not do; first, because the pass
mentioned, which was the best course up into the mountains, began about
three or four miles short of the inner extremity of Volcano Bay; and
second, because within a mile or two of that extremity the water of the
bay sometimes actually boiled, and the heat would there be quite
unendurable."
Here Bainbridge paused for a moment, and then continued, "Well, my
attentive friend, 'the witching hour' approaches. We lost too much time
in discussion this evening--What! only ten o'clock?" he said, looking at
his watch. "Well, I am at a good resting-place in the story, anyway, as
you will to-morrow evening admit. Why, if I started you up into those
mountains to-night, we should get no sleep before daylight. No, no:
'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; more I would'--how does it
go? Well, it means that the evils of two days should not be crowded into
one day. The attempted quotation--as generally happens when I attempt
quotation from the Bible--is a double failure: not a success simply in
accuracy of repetition; and, at best, not appropriate. For I have more,
and a great deal more. But"--rising from his chair--"I must depart. So
adieu until the morrow--and good-night to you."
He had not been gone five minutes, and I was just complimenting Arthur
on his silence and otherwise commendable behavior, when Doctor Castleton
bounced into the room. He knew in a general way the drift of Peters'
story, up to the developments of the evening before. His curiosity to
hear what Doctor Bainbridge had so patiently and laboriously gleaned
from Peters did not seem intense, or it was wonderfully well suppressed.
Still, he liked briefly to learn from me the outlines of the story, and
had not failed to meet me at some period of each day, and to hint at a
desire for information. Therefore, I knew with what object he had this
evening come to see me, and I ran rapidly over the facts developed the
preceding evening, and then over those of that evening.
"Yes, yes," he said, "I see, I see. Rich people, but money no good; poor
people, but poverty no hardship. That's Bainbridge's nonsense--he never
got anything out of Peters along that line. Money, but money no value!
Oh, well; Bainbridge is young and full of theories. The next thing he'll
be saying that they've found a way in Hili-li to make life as valuable
and agreeable for the lazy and the vile as for the industrious and moral
classes. He's just philosophizing to suit himself. Why, a people would
have money if they had to make it out of their own hides, and the money
would have value, too--yes, and labor-purchasing value. No people will
ever have all they want, for they will invent new wants forever, and
more rapidly than the old wants can be gratified. They may get all they
require of food and clothing, and that, too, in exchange for next to no
work; but they will always want things that they are unable to procure.
So long as people do different kinds of work--supply the community with
different necessaries--they will trade; and when they trade,
common-sense will soon invent a circulating medium. And so long as one
man is the mental or the physical superior of another, and fills more of
the demands of the community than another, he will have the means of
gratifying more of his own wants than the other man; and as differences
increase, and different temperaments develop their varying
propensities--some anticipating their ability to expend, others desiring
to accumulate for the everlasting rainy day--there will, and necessarily
must, arise stable methods of preserving values. Oh, pshaw! Who wants to
make all men--and all women, too--in a single mental and physical
mould?--and a mighty insignificant mould at that? The world is not made
better by ease and plenty, but by hardship. Ease and plenty come not but
as a reward of striving. When every man is like every other man, and all
are too lazy to want anything, the reign of money will be ended.
"Why not enroll the whole world, and have a great army in civil life,
constantly under command, with the nature of its wants and their form of
gratification fixed or regulated by--well, by a majority of these dough
men? That's the only way I know for the people to get rid of a
circulating medium, and live."
He paused for a moment, both in his locution, and in his walk back and
forward across the floor. Then he resumed both:
"I do not know of anything quite so idiotic as is this howl directed
against the possession of wealth. I myself am a poor man: if I do not
earn a living each year, I go hungry or go in debt. But I would not
trade off my chances of a competency and of wealth--a reasonable
ambition for every man in England and America--no, not to see every rich
man on earth starve--or even sent to hell. This howl is the mark of a
plebeian, or at least of a wickedly childish cast of intellect. I know
of nothing quite so foolish, and of nothing half so brutal. The
Jew-baiting folly is a phase of the same nonsense. It is foolish,
because if the possession of capital is denied to the men who can best
acquire and hence best continue to employ it, then commercial
civilization must take a back seat--in fact, go, and go to stay; and
this means abject poverty for everybody but a handful of state and
church aristocrats. It is brutal, because it is unreasoning and
mistakenly vindictive. It is the howl of the mentally weak--of the mob;
and the mob is always brutal.
"If we are to suppress those whose possessions evidence a past or a
present performance of some service that the world demanded and paid
for, we cast aside the useful of the earth: we know that their
possessions were gained, not from the pauper, but from those who held
material wealth; and I know, and can most solemnly swear, from personal
experience, that in this world nobody gets anything for nothing.
"Oh, the first French revolution! The French revolution was all right.
The fight was not against commercial wealth, but against a corrupt
church, state, and social order. And nobody maintains that the
commercial class is immaculate: every class should come under the
regulation of good statutory law. I only claim that it would be wrong
and foolish to take away in whole or in part the accumulations of the
commercial class. With us the only wealthy citizens are commercial
people, and those who have acquired wealth through them, for with us
here, at this time, the wealthy owners of realty are commercial men who
have put their surplus money into land. Oh, yes: control them; but it's
not the business men of the world who need the most looking after."
And with that he shot out of the room and down the stairs; and I soon
after retired to rest.