IV

I went away hastily, down a cross-street, and at the first corner I saw

another tragedy. Two men of the working class had caught a man and a

woman with two children, and were robbing them. I knew the man by sight,

though I had never been introduced to him. He was a poet whose verses I

had long admired. Yet I did not go to his help, for at the moment I came

upon the scene there was a pistol shot, and I saw him sinking to the

ground. The woman screamed, and she was felled with a fist-blow by one

of the brutes. I cried out threateningly, whereupon they discharged

their pistols at me and I ran away around the corner. Here I was blocked

by an advancing conflagration. The buildings on both sides were burning,

and the street was filled with smoke and flame. From somewhere in that

murk came a woman's voice calling shrilly for help. But I did not go to

her. A man's heart turned to iron amid such scenes, and one heard all

too many appeals for help.

“Returning to the corner, I found the two robbers were gone. The poet

and his wife lay dead on the pavement. It was a shocking sight. The two

children had vanished--whither I could not tell. And I knew, now, why

it was that the fleeing persons I encountered slipped along so furtively

and with such white faces. In the midst of our civilization, down in our

slums and labor-ghettos, we had bred a race of barbarians, of savages;

and now, in the time of our calamity, they turned upon us like the wild

beasts they were and destroyed us. And they destroyed themselves as

well.

[Illustration: Now in the time of calamity they turned on us 108]

“They inflamed themselves with strong drink and committed a thousand

atrocities, quarreling and killing one another in the general madness.

One group of workingmen I saw, of the better sort, who had banded

together, and, with their women and children in their midst, the sick

and aged in litters and being carried, and with a number of horses

pulling a truck-load of provisions, they were fighting their way out

of the city. They made a fine spectacle as they came down the street

through the drifting smoke, though they nearly shot me when I first

appeared in their path. As they went by, one of their leaders shouted

out to me in apologetic explanation. He said they were killing the

robbers and looters on sight, and that they had thus banded together as

the only-means by which to escape the prowlers.

“It was here that I saw for the first time what I was soon to see so

often. One of the marching men had suddenly shown the unmistakable mark

of the plague. Immediately those about him drew away, and he, without

a remonstrance, stepped out of his place to let them pass on. A woman,

most probably his wife, attempted to follow him. She was leading a

little boy by the hand. But the husband commanded her sternly to go on,

while others laid hands on her and restrained her from following him.

This I saw, and I saw the man also, with his scarlet blaze of face, step

into a doorway on the opposite side of the street. I heard the report of

his pistol, and saw him sink lifeless to the ground.

“After being turned aside twice again by advancing fires, I succeeded in

getting through to the university. On the edge of the campus I came

upon a party of university folk who were going in the direction of the

Chemistry Building. They were all family men, and their families were

with them, including the nurses and the servants. Professor Badminton

greeted me, I had difficulty in recognizing him. Somewhere he had gone

through flames, and his beard was singed off. About his head was a

bloody bandage, and his clothes were filthy.

[Illustration: He told me he had been Cruelly Beaten 112]

“He told me he had prowlers, and that his brother had been killed the

previous night, in the defence of their dwelling.

“Midway across the campus, he pointed suddenly to Mrs. Swinton's face.

The unmistakable scarlet was there. Immediately all the other women set

up a screaming and began to run away from her. Her two children were

with a nurse, and these also ran with the women. But her husband, Doctor

Swinton, remained with her.

“'Go on, Smith,' he told me. 'Keep an eye on the children. As for me,

I shall stay with my wife. I know she is as already dead, but I can't

leave her. Afterwards, if I escape, I shall come to the Chemistry

Building, and do you watch for me and let me in.'

“I left him bending over his wife and soothing her last moments, while

I ran to overtake the party. We were the last to be admitted to the

Chemistry Building. After that, with our automatic rifles we maintained

our isolation. By our plans, we had arranged for a company of sixty to

be in this refuge. Instead, every one of the number originally planned

had added relatives and friends and whole families until there were over

four hundred souls. But the Chemistry Building was large, and, standing

by itself, was in no danger of being burned by the great fires that

raged everywhere in the city.

“A large quantity of provisions had been gathered, and a food committee

took charge of it, issuing rations daily to the various families and

groups that arranged themselves into messes. A number of committees were

appointed, and we developed a very efficient organization. I was on the

committee of defence, though for the first day no prowlers came near. We

could see them in the distance, however, and by the smoke of their fires

knew that several camps of them were occupying the far edge of the

campus. Drunkenness was rife, and often we heard them singing ribald

songs or insanely shouting. While the world crashed to ruin about them

and all the air was filled with the smoke of its burning, these low

creatures gave rein to their bestiality and fought and drank and died.

And after all, what did it matter? Everybody died anyway, the good and

the bad, the efficients and the weaklings, those that loved to live and

those that scorned to live. They passed. Everything passed.

“When twenty-four hours had gone by and no signs of the plague were

apparent, we congratulated ourselves and set about digging a well. You

have seen the great iron pipes which in those days carried water to all

the city-dwellers. We feared that the fires in the city would burst the

pipes and empty the reservoirs. So we tore up the cement floor of the

central court of the Chemistry Building and dug a well. There were many

young men, undergraduates, with us, and we worked night and day on the

well. And our fears were confirmed. Three hours before we reached water,

the pipes went dry.

“A second twenty-four hours passed, and still the plague did not

appear among us. We thought we were saved. But we did not know what I

afterwards decided to be true, namely, that the period of the incubation

of the plague germs in a human's body was a matter of a number of days.

It slew so swiftly when once it manifested itself, that we were led to

believe that the period of incubation was equally swift. So, when two

days had left us unscathed, we were elated with the idea that we were

free of the contagion.

“But the third day disillusioned us. I can never forget the night

preceding it. I had charge of the night guards from eight to twelve,

and from the roof of the building I watched the passing of all man's

glorious works. So terrible were the local conflagrations that all the

sky was lighted up. One could read the finest print in the red glare.

All the world seemed wrapped in flames. San Francisco spouted smoke and

fire from a score of vast conflagrations that were like so many active

volcanoes. Oakland, San Leandro, Haywards--all were burning; and to the

northward, clear to Point Richmond, other fires were at work. It was an

awe-inspiring spectacle. Civilization, my grandsons, civilization was

passing in a sheet of flame and a breath of death. At ten o'clock that

night, the great powder magazines at Point Pinole exploded in rapid

succession. So terrific were the concussions that the strong building

rocked as in an earthquake, while every pane of glass was broken. It was

then that I left the roof and went down the long corridors, from room to

room, quieting the alarmed women and telling them what had happened.

“An hour later, at a window on the ground floor, I heard pandemonium

break out in the camps of the prowlers. There were cries and screams,

and shots from many pistols. As we afterward conjectured, this fight had

been precipitated by an attempt on the part of those that were well

to drive out those that were sick. At any rate, a number of the

plague-stricken prowlers escaped across the campus and drifted against

our doors. We warned them back, but they cursed us and discharged a

fusillade from their pistols. Professor Merryweather, at one of the

windows, was instantly killed, the bullet striking him squarely between

the eyes. We opened fire in turn, and all the prowlers fled away with

the exception of three. One was a woman. The plague was on them and they

were reckless. Like foul fiends, there in the red glare from the skies,

with faces blazing, they continued to curse us and fire at us. One of

the men I shot with my own hand. After that the other man and the woman,

still cursing us, lay down under our windows, where we were compelled to

watch them die of the plague.

“The situation was critical. The explosions of the powder magazines

had broken all the windows of the Chemistry Building, so that we were

exposed to the germs from the corpses. The sanitary committee was called

upon to act, and it responded nobly. Two men were required to go out and

remove the corpses, and this meant the probable sacrifice of their own

lives, for, having performed the task, they were not to be permitted to

reenter the building. One of the professors, who was a bachelor, and

one of the undergraduates volunteered. They bade good-bye to us and

went forth. They were heroes. They gave up their lives that four hundred

others might live. After they had performed their work, they stood for

a moment, at a distance, looking at us wistfully. Then they waved their

hands in farewell and went away slowly across the campus toward the

burning city.

“And yet it was all useless. The next morning the first one of us was

smitten with the plague--a little nurse-girl in the family of Professor

Stout. It was no time for weak-kneed, sentimental policies. On the

chance that she might be the only one, we thrust her forth from the

building and commanded her to be gone.

[Illustration: We thrust her forth from the building 121]

“She went away slowly across the campus, wringing her hands and crying

pitifully. We felt like brutes, but what were we to do? There were four

hundred of us, and individuals had to be sacrificed.

“In one of the laboratories three families had domiciled themselves, and

that afternoon we found among them no less than four corpses and seven

cases of the plague in all its different stages.

“Then it was that the horror began. Leaving the dead lie, we forced the

living ones to segregate themselves in another room. The plague began to

break out among the rest of us, and as fast as the symptoms appeared, we

sent the stricken ones to these segregated rooms. We compelled them to

walk there by themselves, so as to avoid laying hands on them. It was

heartrending. But still the plague raged among us, and room after

room was filled with the dead and dying. And so we who were yet clean

retreated to the next floor and to the next, before this sea of the

dead, that, room by room and floor by floor, inundated the building.

“The place became a charnel house, and in the middle of the night

the survivors fled forth, taking nothing with them except arms and

ammunition and a heavy store of tinned foods. We camped on the opposite

side of the campus from the prowlers, and, while some stood guard,

others of us volunteered to scout into the city in quest of horses,

motor cars, carts, and wagons, or anything that would carry our

provisions and enable us to emulate the banded workingmen I had seen

fighting their way out to the open country.

“I was one of these scouts; and Doctor Hoyle, remembering that his motor

car had been left behind in his home garage, told me to look for it. We

scouted in pairs, and Dombey, a young undergraduate, accompanied me. We

had to cross half a mile of the residence portion of the city to get

to Doctor Hoyle's home. Here the buildings stood apart, in the midst of

trees and grassy lawns, and here the fires had played freaks, burning

whole blocks, skipping blocks and often skipping a single house in a

block. And here, too, the prowlers were still at their work. We carried

our automatic pistols openly in our hands, and looked desperate enough,

forsooth, to keep them from attacking us. But at Doctor Hoyle's house

the thing happened. Untouched by fire, even as we came to it the smoke

of flames burst forth.

“The miscreant who had set fire to it staggered down the steps and out

along the driveway. Sticking out of his coat pockets were bottles of

whiskey, and he was very drunk. My first impulse was to shoot him, and

I have never ceased regretting that I did not. Staggering and maundering

to himself, with bloodshot eyes, and a raw and bleeding slash down one

side of his bewhiskered face, he was altogether the most nauseating

specimen of degradation and filth I had ever encountered. I did not

shoot him, and he leaned against a tree on the lawn to let us go by.

It was the most absolute, wanton act. Just as we were opposite him,

he suddenly drew a pistol and shot Dombey through the head. The next

instant I shot him. But it was too late. Dombey expired without a groan,

immediately. I doubt if he even knew what had happened to him.

“Leaving the two corpses, I hurried on past the burning house to the

garage, and there found Doctor Hoyle's motor car. The tanks were filled

with gasoline, and it was ready for use. And it was in this car that I

threaded the streets of the ruined city and came back to the survivors

on the campus. The other scouts returned, but none had been so

fortunate. Professor Fairmead had found a Shetland pony, but the poor

creature, tied in a stable and abandoned for days, was so weak from want

of food and water that it could carry no burden at all. Some of the men

were for turning it loose, but I insisted that we should lead it along

with us, so that, if we got out of food, we would have it to eat.

“There were forty-seven of us when we started, many being women and

children. The President of the Faculty, an old man to begin with, and

now hopelessly broken by the awful happenings of the past week, rode

in the motor car with several young children and the aged mother of

Professor Fairmead. Wathope, a young professor of English, who had a

grievous bullet-wound in his leg, drove the car. The rest of us walked,

Professor Fairmead leading the pony.

“It was what should have been a bright summer day, but the smoke from

the burning world filled the sky, through which the sun shone murkily,

a dull and lifeless orb, blood-red and ominous. But we had grown

accustomed to that blood-red sun. With the smoke it was different. It

bit into our nostrils and eyes, and there was not one of us whose eyes

were not bloodshot. We directed our course to the southeast through the

endless miles of suburban residences, travelling along where the first

swells of low hills rose from the flat of the central city. It was by

this way, only, that we could expect to gain the country.

“Our progress was painfully slow. The women and children could not walk

fast. They did not dream of walking, my grandsons, in the way all people

walk to-day. In truth, none of us knew how to walk. It was not until

after the plague that I learned really to walk. So it was that the pace

of the slowest was the pace of all, for we dared not separate on account

of the prowlers. There were not so many now of these human beasts of

prey. The plague had already well diminished their numbers, but enough

still lived to be a constant menace to us. Many of the beautiful

residences were untouched by fire, yet smoking ruins were everywhere.

The prowlers, too, seemed to have got over their insensate desire to

burn, and it was more rarely that we saw houses freshly on fire.

“Several of us scouted among the private garages in search of motor cars

and gasoline. But in this we were unsuccessful. The first great flights

from the cities had swept all such utilities away. Calgan, a fine young

man, was lost in this work. He was shot by prowlers while crossing a

lawn. Yet this was our only casualty, though, once, a drunken brute

deliberately opened fire on all of us. Luckily, he fired wildly, and we

shot him before he had done any hurt.

“At Fruitvale, still in the heart of the magnificent residence section

of the city, the plague again smote us. Professor Fairmead was the

victim. Making signs to us that his mother was not to know, he turned

aside into the grounds of a beautiful mansion. He sat down forlornly on

the steps of the front veranda, and I, having lingered, waved him a last

farewell. That night, several miles beyond Fruitvale and still in the

city, we made camp. And that night we shifted camp twice to get away

from our dead. In the morning there were thirty of us. I shall never

forget the President of the Faculty. During the morning's march his

wife, who was walking, betrayed the fatal symptoms, and when she

drew aside to let us go on, he insisted on leaving the motor car and

remaining with her. There was quite a discussion about this, but in the

end we gave in. It was just as well, for we knew not which ones of us,

if any, might ultimately escape.

“That night, the second of our march, we camped beyond Haywards in the

first stretches of country. And in the morning there were eleven of us

that lived. Also, during the night, Wathope, the professor with the

wounded leg, deserted us in the motor car. He took with him his sister

and his mother and most of our tinned provisions. It was that day, in

the afternoon, while resting by the wayside, that I saw the last airship

I shall ever see. The smoke was much thinner here in the country, and I

first sighted the ship drifting and veering helplessly at an elevation

of two thousand feet. What had happened I could not conjecture, but even

as we looked we saw her bow dip down lower and lower. Then the bulkheads

of the various gas-chambers must have burst, for, quite perpendicular,

she fell like a plummet to the earth.

[Illustration: She fell like a plummet to the earth 132]

“And from that day to this I have not seen another airship. Often and

often, during the next few years, I scanned the sky for them, hoping

against hope that somewhere in the world civilization had survived. But

it was not to be. What happened with us in California must have happened

with everybody everywhere.

“Another day, and at Niles there were three of us. Beyond Niles, in the

middle of the highway, we found Wathope. The motor car had broken down,

and there, on the rugs which they had spread on the ground, lay the

bodies of his sister, his mother, and himself.

“Wearied by the unusual exercise of continual walking, that night I

slept heavily. In the morning I was alone in the world. Canfield and

Parsons, my last companions, were dead of the plague. Of the four

hundred that sought shelter in the Chemistry Building, and of the

forty-seven that began the march, I alone remained--I and the Shetland

pony. Why this should be so there is no explaining. I did not catch the

plague, that is all. I was immune. I was merely the one lucky man in

a million--just as every survivor was one in a million, or, rather, in

several millions, for the proportion was at least that.”

V

“For two days I sheltered in a pleasant grove where there had been no

deaths. In those two days, while badly depressed and believing that my

turn would come at any moment, nevertheless I rested and recuperated. So

did the pony. And on the third day, putting what small store of tinned

provisions I possessed on the pony's back, I started on across a very

lonely land. Not a live man, woman, or child, did I encounter, though

the dead were everywhere. Food, however, was abundant. The land then

was not as it is now. It was all cleared of trees and brush, and it was

cultivated. The food for millions of mouths was growing, ripening, and

going to waste. From the fields and orchards I gathered vegetables,

fruits, and berries. Around the deserted farmhouses I got eggs and

caught chickens. And frequently I found supplies of tinned provisions in

the store-rooms.

“A strange thing was what was taking place with all the domestic

animals. Everywhere they were going wild and preying on one another. The

chickens and ducks were the first to be destroyed, while the pigs were

the first to go wild, followed by the cats. Nor were the dogs long in

adapting themselves to the changed conditions. There was a veritable

plague of dogs. They devoured the corpses, barked and howled during the

nights, and in the daytime slunk about in the distance. As the time went

by, I noticed a change in their behavior. At first they were apart from

one another, very suspicious and very prone to fight. But after a not

very long while they began to come together and run in packs. The dog,

you see, always was a social animal, and this was true before ever he

came to be domesticated by man. In the last days of the world before the

plague, there were many many very different kinds of dogs--dogs without

hair and dogs with warm fur, dogs so small that they would make scarcely

a mouthful for other dogs that were as large as mountain lions. Well,

all the small dogs, and the weak types, were killed by their fellows.

Also, the very large ones were not adapted for the wild life and bred

out. As a result, the many different kinds of dogs disappeared, and

there remained, running in packs, the medium-sized wolfish dogs that you

know to-day.”

“But the cats don't run in packs, Granser,” Hoo-Hoo objected.

“The cat was never a social animal. As one writer in the nineteenth

century said, the cat walks by himself. He always walked by himself,

from before the time he was tamed by man, down through the long ages of

domestication, to to-day when once more he is wild.

“The horses also went wild, and all the fine breeds we had degenerated

into the small mustang horse you know to-day. The cows likewise went

wild, as did the pigeons and the sheep. And that a few of the chickens

survived you know yourself. But the wild chicken of to-day is quite a

different thing from the chickens we had in those days.

“But I must go on with my story. I travelled through a deserted land. As

the time went by I began to yearn more and more for human beings. But I

never found one, and I grew lonelier and lonelier. I crossed Livermore

Valley and the mountains between it and the great valley of the San

Joaquin. You have never seen that valley, but it is very large and it is

the home of the wild horse. There are great droves there, thousands and

tens of thousands. I revisited it thirty years after, so I know. You

think there are lots of wild horses down here in the coast valleys, but

they are as nothing compared with those of the San Joaquin. Strange to

say, the cows, when they went wild, went back into the lower mountains.

Evidently they were better able to protect themselves there.

“In the country districts the ghouls and prowlers had been less in

evidence, for I found many villages and towns untouched by fire. But

they were filled by the pestilential dead, and I passed by without

exploring them. It was near Lathrop that, out of my loneliness, I picked

up a pair of collie dogs that were so newly free that they were urgently

willing to return to their allegiance to man. These collies accompanied

me for many years, and the strains of them are in those very dogs there

that you boys have to-day. But in sixty years the collie strain has

worked out. These brutes are more like domesticated wolves than anything

else.”

Hare-Lip rose to his feet, glanced to see that the goats were safe,

and looked at the sun's position in the afternoon sky, advertising

impatience at the prolixity of the old man's tale. Urged to hurry by

Edwin, Granser went on.

“There is little more to tell. With my two dogs and my pony, and riding

a horse I had managed to capture, I crossed the San Joaquin and went on

to a wonderful valley in the Sierras called Yosemite. In the great hotel

there I found a prodigious supply of tinned provisions. The pasture was

abundant, as was the game, and the river that ran through the valley was

full of trout. I remained there three years in an utter loneliness that

none but a man who has once been highly civilized can understand. Then

I could stand it no more. I felt that I was going crazy. Like the dog,

I was a social animal and I needed my kind. I reasoned that since I had

survived the plague, there was a possibility that others had survived.

Also, I reasoned that after three years the plague germs must all be

gone and the land be clean again.

[Illustration: With my horse and dogs and pony, I set out 144]

“With my horse and dogs and pony, I set out. Again I crossed the San

Joaquin Valley, the mountains beyond, and came down into Livermore

Valley. The change in those three years was amazing. All the land had

been splendidly tilled, and now I could scarcely recognize it, 'such was

the sea of rank vegetation that had overrun the agricultural handiwork

of man. You see, the wheat, the vegetables, and orchard trees had always

been cared for and nursed by man, so that they were soft and tender. The

weeds and wild bushes and such things, on the contrary, had always been

fought by man, so that they were tough and resistant. As a result, when

the hand of man was removed, the wild vegetation smothered and destroyed

practically all the domesticated vegetation. The coyotes were greatly

increased, and it was at this time that I first encountered wolves,

straying in twos and threes and small packs down from the regions where

they had always persisted.

“It was at Lake Temescal, not far from the one-time city of Oakland,

that I came upon the first live human beings. Oh, my grandsons, how can

I describe to you my emotion, when, astride my horse and dropping down

the hillside to the lake, I saw the smoke of a campfire rising through

the trees. Almost did my heart stop beating. I felt that I was going

crazy. Then I heard the cry of a babe--a human babe. And dogs barked,

and my dogs answered. I did not know but what I was the one human alive

in the whole world. It could not be true that here were others--smoke,

and the cry of a babe.

“Emerging on the lake, there, before my eyes, not a hundred yards away,

I saw a man, a large man. He was standing on an outjutting rock and

fishing. I was overcome. I stopped my horse. I tried to call out but

could not. I waved my hand. It seemed to me that the man looked at me,

but he did not appear to wave. Then I laid my head on my arms there

in the saddle. I was afraid to look again, for I knew it was an

hallucination, and I knew that if I looked the man would be gone. And so

precious was the hallucination, that I wanted it to persist yet a little

while. I knew, too, that as long as I did not look it would persist.

“Thus I remained, until I heard my dogs snarling, and a man's voice.

What do you think the voice said? I will tell you. It said: '_Where in

hell did you come from??_'

“Those were the words, the exact words. That was what your other

grandfather said to me, Hare-Lip, when he greeted me there on the shore

of Lake Temescal fifty-seven years ago. And they were the most ineffable

words I have ever heard. I opened my eyes, and there he stood before me,

a large, dark, hairy man, heavy-jawed, slant-browed, fierce-eyed. How I

got off my horse I do not know. But it seemed that the next I knew I was

clasping his hand with both of mine and crying. I would have embraced

him, but he was ever a narrow-minded, suspicious man, and he drew away

from me. Yet did I cling to his hand and cry.”

Granser's voice faltered and broke at the recollection, and the weak

tears streamed down his cheeks while the boys looked on and giggled.

“Yet did I cry,” he continued, “and desire to embrace him, though the

Chauffeur was a brute, a perfect brute--the most abhorrent man I have

ever known. His name was... strange, how I have forgotten his name.

Everybody called him Chauffeur--it was the name of his occupation, and

it stuck. That is how, to this day, the tribe he founded is called the

Chauffeur Tribe.

[Illustration: Everybody called him Chauffeur 149]

“He was a violent, unjust man. Why the plague germs spared him I can

never understand. It would seem, in spite of our old metaphysical

notions about absolute justice, that there is no justice in the

universe. Why did he live?--an iniquitous, moral monster, a blot on the

face of nature, a cruel, relentless, bestial cheat as well. All he

could talk about was motor cars, machinery, gasoline, and garages--and

especially, and with huge delight, of his mean pilferings and sordid

swindlings of the persons who had employed him in the days before the

coming of the plague. And yet he was spared, while hundreds of millions,

yea, billions, of better men were destroyed.

[Illustration: Vesta the one woman 150]

“I went on with him to his camp, and there I saw her, Vesta, the one

woman. It was glorious and... pitiful. There she was, Vesta Van Warden,

the young wife of John Van Warden, clad in rags, with marred and scarred

and toil-calloused hands, bending over the campfire and doing scullion

work--she, Vesta, who had been born to the purple of the greatest

baronage of wealth the world had ever known. John Van Warden, her

husband, worth one billion, eight hundred millions and President of the

Board of Industrial Magnates, had been the ruler of America. Also,

sitting on the International Board of Control, he had been one of the

seven men who ruled the world. And she herself had come of equally noble

stock. Her father, Philip Saxon, had been President of the Board of

Industrial Magnates up to the time of his death. This office was in

process of becoming hereditary, and had Philip Saxon had a son that son

would have succeeded him. But his only child was Vesta, the perfect

flower of generations of the highest culture this planet has ever

produced. It was not until the engagement between Vesta and Van Warden

took place, that Saxon indicated the latter as his successor. It was, I

am sure, a political marriage. I have reason to believe that Vesta never

really loved her husband in the mad passionate way of which the poets

used to sing. It was more like the marriages that obtained among crowned

heads in the days before they were displaced by the Magnates.

[Illustration: There she was, boiling fish-chowder 153]

“And there she was, boiling fish-chowder in a soot-covered pot, her

glorious eyes inflamed by the acrid smoke of the open fire. Hers was a

sad story. She was the one survivor in a million, as I had been, as

the Chauffeur had been. On a crowning eminence of the Alameda Hills,

overlooking San Francisco Bay, Van Warden had built a vast summer

palace. It was surrounded by a park of a thousand acres. When the

plague broke out, Van Warden sent her there. Armed guards patrolled the

boundaries of the park, and nothing entered in the way of provisions or

even mail matter that was not first fumigated. And yet did the plague

enter, killing the guards at their posts, the servants at their tasks,

sweeping away the whole army of retainers--or, at least, all of them who

did not flee to die elsewhere. So it was that Vesta found herself the

sole living person in the palace that had become a charnel house.

“Now the Chauffeur had been one of the servants that ran away.

Returning, two months afterward, he discovered Vesta in a little summer

pavilion where there had been no deaths and where she had established

herself. He was a brute. She was afraid, and she ran away and hid among

the trees. That night, on foot, she fled into the mountains--she, whose

tender feet and delicate body had never known the bruise of stones nor

the scratch of briars. He followed, and that night he caught her. He

struck her. Do you understand? He beat her with those terrible fists of

his and made her his slave. It was she who had to gather the firewood,

build the fires, cook, and do all the degrading camp-labor--she, who had

never performed a menial act in her life. These things he compelled her

to do, while he, a proper savage, elected to lie around camp and look

on. He did nothing, absolutely nothing, except on occasion to hunt meat

or catch fish.”

“Good for Chauffeur,” Hare-Lip commented in an undertone to the other

boys. “I remember him before he died. He was a corker. But he did

things, and he made things go. You know, Dad married his daughter, an'

you ought to see the way he knocked the spots outa Dad. The Chauffeur

was a son-of-a-gun. He made us kids stand around. Even when he was

croaking he reached out for me, once, an' laid my head open with that

long stick he kept always beside him.”

Hare-Lip rubbed his bullet head reminiscently, and the boys returned to

the old man, who was maundering ecstatically about Vesta, the squaw of

the founder of the Chauffeur Tribe.

“And so I say to you that you cannot understand the awfulness of the

situation. The Chauffeur was a servant, understand, a servant. And he

cringed, with bowed head, to such as she. She was a lord of life, both

by birth and by marriage. The destinies of millions, such as he, she

carried in the hollow of her pink-white hand. And, in the days before

the plague, the slightest contact with such as he would have been

pollution. Oh, I have seen it. Once, I remember, there was Mrs. Goldwin,

wife of one of the great magnates. It was on a landing stage, just

as she was embarking in her private dirigible, that she dropped her

parasol. A servant picked it up and made the mistake of handing it to

her--to her, one of the greatest royal ladies of the land! She shrank

back, as though he were a leper, and indicated her secretary to receive

it. Also, she ordered her secretary to ascertain the creature's name and

to see that he was immediately discharged from service. And such a woman

was Vesta Van Warden. And her the Chauffeur beat and made his slave.

[Illustration: And her the Chauffeur beat and made his slave 158]

“--Bill--that was it; Bill, the Chauffeur. That was his name. He was

a wretched, primitive man, wholly devoid of the finer instincts and

chivalrous promptings of a cultured soul. No, there is no absolute

justice, for to him fell that wonder of womanhood, Vesta Van Warden. The

grievous-ness of this you will never understand, my grandsons; for

you are yourselves primitive little savages, unaware of aught else but

savagery. Why should Vesta not have been mine? I was a man of culture

and refinement, a professor in a great university. Even so, in the time

before the plague, such was her exalted position, she would not have

deigned to know that I existed. Mark, then, the abysmal degradation

to which she fell at the hands of the Chauffeur. Nothing less than the

destruction of all mankind had made it possible that I should know her,

look in her eyes, converse with her, touch her hand--ay, and love her

and know that her feelings toward me were very kindly. I have reason to

believe that she, even she, would have loved me, there being no other

man in the world except the Chauffeur. Why, when it destroyed eight

billions of souls, did not the plague destroy just one more man, and

that man the Chauffeur?

“Once, when the Chauffeur was away fishing, she begged me to kill him.

With tears in her eyes she begged me to kill him. But he was a strong

and violent man, and I was afraid. Afterwards, I talked with him. I

offered him my horse, my pony, my dogs, all that I possessed, if he

would give Vesta to me. And he grinned in my face and shook his head. He

was very insulting. He said that in the old days he had been a servant,

had been dirt under the feet of men like me and of women like Vesta, and

that now he had the greatest lady in the land to be servant to him and

cook his food and nurse his brats. 'You had your day before the plague,'

he said; 'but this is my day, and a damned good day it is. I wouldn't

trade back to the old times for anything.' Such words he spoke, but they

are not his words. He was a vulgar, low-minded man, and vile oaths fell

continually from his lips.

“Also, he told me that if he caught me making eyes at his woman he'd

wring my neck and give her a beating as well. What was I to do? I was

afraid. He was a brute. That first night, when I discovered the camp,

Vesta and I had great talk about the things of our vanished world. We

talked of art, and books, and poetry; and the Chauffeur listened and

grinned and sneered. He was bored and angered by our way of speech which

he did not comprehend, and finally he spoke up and said: 'And this is

Vesta Van Warden, one-time wife of Van Warden the Magnate--a high and

stuck-up beauty, who is now my squaw. Eh, Professor Smith, times is

changed, times is changed. Here, you, woman, take off my moccasins,

and lively about it. I want Professor Smith to see how well I have you

trained.'

“I saw her clench her teeth, and the flame of revolt rise in her face.

He drew back his gnarled fist to strike, and I was afraid, and sick at

heart. I could do nothing to prevail against him. So I got up to go,

and not be witness to such indignity. But the Chauffeur laughed and

threatened me with a beating if I did not stay and behold. And I sat

there, perforce, by the campfire on the shore of Lake Temescal, and

saw Vesta, Vesta Van Warden, kneel and remove the moccasins of that

grinning, hairy, apelike human brute.

“--Oh, you do not understand, my grandsons. You have never known

anything else, and you do not understand.

“'Halter-broke and bridle-wise,' the Chauffeur gloated, while she

performed that dreadful, menial task. 'A trifle balky at times,

Professor, a trifle balky; but a clout alongside the jaw makes her as

meek and gentle as a lamb.'

“And another time he said: 'We've got to start all over and replenish

the earth and multiply. You're handicapped, Professor. You ain't got no

wife, and we're up against a regular Garden-of-Eden proposition. But I

ain't proud. I'll tell you what, Professor.' He pointed at their little

infant, barely a year old. 'There's your wife, though you'll have to

wait till she grows up. It's rich, ain't it? We're all equals here, and

I'm the biggest toad in the splash. But I ain't stuck up--not I. I do

you the honor, Professor Smith, the very great honor of betrothing to

you my and Vesta Van Warden's daughter. Ain't it cussed bad that Van

Warden ain't here to see?'”