to duplicate your dreams, dreams without a hint of the sun. The painter
at least copies or interprets real life; while the composer dips his
finger in the air, making endless sound-scrolls--noises with long tails
and whirligig decorations like foolish fireworks--though I think the art
of the future will be pyrotechnics. Mad, mad, I tell you! But whether
mad or not matters little in our land of freedom, where all men are born
unequal, where only the artists are sad. They are useless beings, openly
derided, and when one is caught napping, doing something that offends
church or State or society, he is imprisoned. Mad, you know! No wonder
anarchy is thriving, no wonder every true artist is an anarch, unavowed
perhaps, yet an anarch, and an atheist."
"Not so fast!" interrupted Arved. "I'm an anarchist, but I don't believe
in blowing up innocent policemen. Neither do you, Quell. You wouldn't
hurt a bartender! Give an anarchist plenty to drink, and he sheds his
anarchy like a shirt. There are, I have noticed, three stages in the
career of a revolutionist: destruction, instruction, construction. He
begins the first at twenty, at forty he is teaching, at sixty he
believes in society--especially if he has money in the bank." Quell
regarded the speaker sourly.
"You are a wonder, Arved. You fly off on a wild tangent stimulated by
the mere sound of a word. Who said anything about dynamite-anarchy?
There's another sort that men of brains--madmen if you will--believe and
indirectly teach. Emerson was one, though he hardly knew it. Thoreau
realized it for him, however. Don't you remember his stern rebuke when
Emerson visited him in Concord jail: 'Henry, why art thou here?' meekly
inquired the mystic man. 'Ralph, why art thou _not_ here?' was the
counter-question. Thoreau had brave nerves. To live in peace in this
malicious swamp of a world we must all wear iron masks until we are
carted off to the _domino-park_; pious people call it the cemetery. Now,
I'm going to sleep. I'm tired of all this jabbering. We are crazy for
sure, or else we wouldn't talk so much."
Arved grumbled, "Yes, I've noticed that when a man in an asylum begins
to suspect his keepers of madness he's mighty near lunacy himself."
"You have crazy blue eyes, Arved! Where's that flask--I'm dry again!
Let's sleep."
They drained the bottle and were soon dozing, while about them buzzed
the noon in all its torrid splendour.
When they awoke it was solid night. They yawned and damned the darkness,
which smelt like stale india-rubber, so Quell said. They cursed life and
the bitter taste in their mouths. Quell spoke of his thirst in words
that startled the easy-going Arved, who confessed that if he could rid
himself of the wool in his throat, he would be comparatively happy. Then
they stumbled along, bumping into trees, feeling with outstretched arms,
but finding nothing to guide them save the few thin stars in the torn
foliage overhead. Without watches, they could catch no idea of the hour.
The night was far spent, declared Arved; he discovered that he was very
hungry. Suddenly, from the top of a steep, slippery bank they pitched
forward into the highroad.
Arved put out his hand, searching for his comrade. "Quell, Quell!" he
whispered. Quell rose darkly beside him, a narrow lath of humanity.
Locking arms, both walked briskly until, turning a sharp, short corner,
they beheld, all smiling in the night, a summer garden, well lighted and
full of gay people, chattering, singing, eating, drinking--happy! The
two fugitives were stunned for a moment by such a joyful prospect. Tears
came slowly to their eyes, yet they never relaxed their gait. Arriving
at an outlying table and seats, they bethought themselves of their
appearance, of money, of other disquieting prospects; but, sitting down,
they boldly called a waiter.
Luckily it was a country girl who timidly took their order for beer and
sandwiches. And they drank eagerly, gobbling the food as soon as it
came, ordering more so noisily that they attracted attention. The beer
made them brave. As they poured down glass after glass, reckless of the
reckoning, insolent to the servant, they began wrangling over the
subject that had possessed their waking hours.
"Look here, Quell!" Arved exclaimed crustily, "you said I had crazy blue
eyes. What about your own red ones? Crazy! Why, they glow now like a
rat's. Poets may be music-mad, drunk with tone--"
"And other things," sneered the painter.
"--but at least their work is great when it endures; it does not fade
away on rotten canvas."
"Now, I know you ought to be in the Brain-College, Arved, where your
friends could take the little green car that goes by the grounds and see
you on Sunday afternoons if weather permits."
His accent seemed deliberately insulting to Arved, who, however, let it
pass because of their mutual plight. If they fell to fighting, detection
would ensue. So he answered in placatory phrases:--
"Yes, my friend, we both belong to the same establishment, for we are
men of genius. As the cat said to Alice, 'We must be mad or else we
shouldn't be here.' I started to tell you why my people thought I had
better take the cure. I loved the moon too much and loathed sunlight. If
I had never tried to write lunar poetry--the tone quality of music
combined with the pictorial evocation of painting--I might be in the
bosom of my family now instead of--"
"Drinking with a crazy painter, eh?" Quell was very angry. He shouted
for drinks so rapidly that he alarmed the more prudent Arved; and as
they were now the last guests, the head waiter approached and curtly
bade them leave. In an instant he was dripping with beer thrown at
him--glass and all--by the irate Quell. A whistle sounded, two other
waiters rushed out, and the battle began. Arved, aroused by the sight of
his friend on the ground with three men hammering his head, gave a roar
like the trumpeting of an elephant. A chair was smashed over a table,
and, swinging one-half of it, he made a formidable onslaught. Two of the
waiters were knocked senseless and the leader's nose and teeth crushed
in by the rude cudgel. The morose moon started up, a tragic hieroglyph
in the passionless sky. Quell, seeing its hated disk, howled, his face
aflame with exaltation. Then he leaped like a hoarsely panting animal
upon the poet; a moment and they were in the grass clawing each other.
And the moon foamed down upon them its magnetic beams until darkness,
caused by a coarse blanket, enveloped, pinioned, smothered them. When
the light shone again, they were sitting in a wagon, their legs tightly
bound....
They began singing. The attendant interrupted:--
"Will you fellows keep quiet? How can a man drive straight, listening to
your cackle?"
Arved touched his temple significantly and nudged Quell.
"Another one of us. Another rebel of the moon!"
"Shut up or I'll gag you both!" imperiously commanded the doctor, as the
wheels of the ambulance cut the pebbly road. They were entering the
asylum; now they passed the porter's lodge. In the jewelled light of a
senescent moon, his wife and little daughter gazed at them curiously,
without semblance of pity or fear. Then, as if shot from the same vocal
spring-board, the voices of poet and painter merged into crazy
rhythmatic chanting:--
"Rebels of the moon, rebels of the moon! We are, we are, the rebels of
the moon!"
And the great gates closed behind them with a brazen clangour--metal
gates of the moon-rebels.
V
THE SPIRAL ROAD
There can be nothing good, as we know it, nor anything evil, as we
know it, in the eye of the Omnipresent and the
Omniscient.--_Oriental Proverb._
I
THE STRAND OF DREAMS
"I must see him if only for a minute. I can't go back to the city after
coming so far. Please--" but the girl's face disappeared and the rickety
door, which had been opened on a chain, was slammed after this
imperative speech, and Gerald Shannon found himself staring
exasperatedly at its rusty exterior. To have travelled on foot such a
distance only to be turned away like a beggar enraged him. Nor was the
prospect of returning over the path which had brought him to Karospina's
house a cheering one. He turned and saw that a low, creeping mist had
obliterated every vestige of the trail across the swamp lands. There was
no sun, and the twilight of a slow yellow day in late September would
soon, in complicity with the fog, leave him totally adrift on this
remote strand--he could hear the curving fall and hiss of the breakers,
the monotonous rumour of the sea. So he was determined to face
Karospina, even if he had to force his way into the house.
Two hours earlier, at the little railway station, they had informed him
that the road was easy flatland for the greater part of the way. He had
offered money for a horse or even a wheel; but these were luxuries on
this bleak, poverty-ridden coast. As there was no alternative, Gerald
had walked rapidly since three o'clock. And he had not been told the
truth about the road; where the oozing, green, unwholesome waters were
not he stepped, sometimes sinking over his ankles in the soft mud. Not a
sign of humanity served him for comfort or compass. He had been assured
that if he kept his back to the sun he would reach his destination. And
he did, but not without many misgivings. It was the vision of a squat
tower-like building, almost hemmed in by a monster gas reservoir,
fantastic wooden galleries, and the gigantic silhouettes of strange
machinery, that relieved his mind. But this house and its surroundings
soon repelled him. His reception was the final disenchantment.
He played a lively tattoo with his blackthorn stick on the panels of the
door. For five minutes this continued, interspersed with occasional loud
calls for Karospina. At last the siege was raised. After preliminary
unboltings, unbarrings, and the rattling of the chain, Gerald saw before
him a middle-aged man with a smooth face and closely shaven head, who
quietly asked his name and business.
"I have a letter for you, Mr. Karospina--if you are that gentleman--and
as I have put myself to much trouble in getting to you, I think I
deserve a little consideration."
"A letter, my worthy sir! And for me? Who told you to come here? How do
you know my name?" This angered the young man.
"It is from Prince K. _The_ Prince. Now are you satisfied?" he added, as
his questioner turned red and then paled as if the news were too
startling for his nerves.
"Come in, come in!" he cried. "Mila, Mila, here is a guest. Fetch tea to
the laboratory." He literally dragged Shannon within doors and led him
across a stone corridor to a large room, but not before he had bolted
and barred the entrance to his mysterious fortress. Seeing the other's
look of quiet amusement, he laughed himself:--
"Wolves, my dear sir, wolves, _human_ wolves, prowl on the beach at
night, and while I have no treasures, it is well to be on the safe side.
Mila, Mila, the tea, the tea." There was a passionate intensity in his
utterance that attracted Gerald from his survey of the chamber. He saw
that in the light Karospina was a much older man than he had at first
supposed. But the broad shoulders, the thick chest, and short, powerful
figure and bullet head belied his years. Incredulously his visitor asked
himself if this were the wonderful, the celebrated Karospina, chemist,
revolutionary, mystic, nobleman, and millionnaire. A Russian, he knew
that--yet he looked more like the monk one sees depicted on the canvases
of the early Flemish painters. His high, wide brow and deep-set, dark
eyes proclaimed the thinker; and because of his physique, he might have
posed as a prize-fighter.
He took the letter and read it as the door opened and the girl came in
with the tea. She wore her hair braided in two big plaits which hung
between her shoulders, and her bold, careless glance from eyes sea-blue
made the Irishman forget his host and the rigours of the afternoon. A
Russian beauty, with bare, plump arms, and dressed in peasant costume;
but--a patrician! Her fair skin and blond hair filled him with
admiration. What the devil!--he thought, and came near saying it aloud.
"My niece, Princess Mila Georgovics, Mr. Shannon." Gerald acknowledged
the introduction with his deepest bow. He was dazzled. He had come to
this dreary place to talk politics. But now this was out of the
question. And he began explaining to the Princess; Mila he had fancied
was some slattern waiting on the old fanatic of a prince. He told Mila
this in a few words, and soon the pair laughed and chatted. In the
meantime Karospina, who had finished the letter, began to pace the
apartment. Apparently he had forgotten the others.
"Tea, tea, where's the tea?" he presently shouted. As they drank, he
said: "The prince asks an impossibility, Mr. Shannon. Say to him, _no_,
simply no; he will understand, and so will you, I hope. I'm done with
all militant movements. I'm converted to the peace party. What's the use
of liberty to people who won't know what to do with it when they get it?
Tolstoy is right. Let the peasant be shown how to save his soul--that
and a little to eat and drink and a roof are all he needs in this life."
Gerald was startled. He had expected to find an "advanced" leader of the
Bakounine type. Instead, a man of the "vegetarian" order,--as he had
heard them called,--who talked religion instead of dynamite;--and after
all the bother of bringing the letter down to this remote country!
Decidedly the princess was more enjoyable than a reformed anarchist. She
was gazing at him seriously now, her society manner gone. Her nose,
rather large for the harmony of her face, palpitated with eagerness.
Evidently, thought Gerald, the young lady is the real revolutionist in
this curious household. He also ventured to say so to her, but she did
not meet his smiling declaration. Her uncle, irritated by his
interrupted discourse, exclaimed:--
"Never mind what the Princess Mila thinks, Mr. Shannon. Women change
their minds. The chief matter just now is that you cannot go away
to-night. You would lose your way, perhaps be drowned. Can you sleep on
a hard bed?" He was assured by Gerald that, if he had been turned away,
he would have slept in an outhouse, even under one of those windmills he
saw in such number on the strand. Karospina smiled.
"Hardly there--that is, if you expected to awaken." Then he left the
room, saying that some one must see to the supper. His niece burst into
laughter. Gerald joined in.
"He's always like that, fussy, nervous, but with a heart of gold,
Mr.--Mr. Shannon. Thank you. It's an Irish name, is it not? And you look
like an Irishman; a soldier, too, I fancy!"
Gerald blushed. "A soldier in the cause of humanity," he answered, "but
no longer a hireling in the uniform of kings." He felt so foolish after
this brave bit of rhetoric that he kept his eyes on the floor. In an
instant she was at his side.
"Give me your hand--_comrade_!" she said, with a peculiar intonation.
"Oh! if you only knew how I longed to meet the right men. Uncle is a
convert--no, hardly a backslider; but he swears by the regenerating
process instead of violence. Formerly the cleverest living chemist, he
now--oh! I shame to say it--he now indulges in firework displays instead
of manufacturing bombs with which to execute tyrants." She slowly
dropped his hand and her eyes wore a clairvoyant expression. He was
astounded.
"Fireworks! Doesn't the prince hold by his old faith--he, a pupil of
Bakounine, Netschajew, and Kropotkin?" Just then the prince came in,
bearing a tray. He seemed happy.
"Here, sit down, dear sir, and partake of a few things. We live so far
from civilization that we seldom get a good chicken. But eggs I can
offer you, eggs and ham, cooked by me on an electric machine."
"You have no servants?" Gerald ventured.
"Not one. I can't trust them near my--toys. The princess plays Chopin
mazourkas after she makes the beds in the morning, and in the afternoon
she is my assistant in the laboratory." Again the young man looked about
him. If the room was a laboratory, where were the retorts, the oven, the
phials, the jars, the usual apparatus of a modern chemist? He saw
nothing, except an old-fashioned electric fan and a few dusty books. The
fireworks--were those overgrown wheels and gaunt windmills and gas-house
the secret of the prince's self-banishment to this dreary coast? What
dreams did he seek to incarnate on this strand, in this queer tower,
locked away from the world with a charming princess--a fairy princess
whose heart beat with love for the oppressed, in whose hand he might
some time see the blazing torch of freedom? He, himself, was enveloped
by the hypnotism of the place. Mila spoke:--
"I fear I must leave you. I am studying to-night and--I go early to
rest. Pray dine as well as you can, with such a chef." She smiled
mischievously at her uncle, courtesied in peasant fashion to the
bewildered Gerald, who put out his hand, fain to touch hers, and
disappeared. The prince gazed inquiringly at the young man.
"Revolutionists soon become friends, do they not? The Princess Mila is
part Russian, part Roumanian,--my sister married a Roumanian,--hence her
implacable political attitude. I can't lead her back to civilized
thinking. She sees war in the moon, sun, and stars. And I--I have
forsworn violence. Ah! if I could only make the prince change.
Bakounine's death had no effect; Netschajew's fate did not move him; nor
was Illowski's mad attempt to burn down Paris with his incendiary
symphony an example to our prince that those who take up the sword
perish by the sword. Ah, Tolstoy, dear Leon Nikolaievitch, you showed me
the true way to master the world by love and not by hate! Until I
read--but there, it's late. Come with me to your room. You may smoke and
sleep when you will. In the morning I will show you my--toys." They
shook hands formally and parted.
His bed was hard, and his room cheerless, but anything, even a haymow,
rather than walking back to the station. After he went to his bed, he
rehearsed the day's doings from the three hours' ride in the train to
the tower. How weary he was! Hark--some one played the piano! A Chopin
mazourka! It was the princess. Mila! How lovely her touch!... Mila! What
a lovely name! A sleeping princess. A prince with such a sleepy head.
How the girl could play ... along the spiral road he saw the music glow
in enigmatic figures of fire....
II
THE PANACEA OF CORUSCATION
He seemed to be uttering her name when he awoke. It was daylight; the
sun poured its rays over his face, and he asked himself how he could
have fallen asleep leaving the lamp burning on the table near his bed.
He must have slept long, for he felt rested, cheerful--happy. As he
dressed he speculated whether it was the sunshine, or the prospect of
going back to life, or--or--Did he wish to return so soon? He wondered
what Mila was doing. Then he went into the stone corridor and coughed as
a hint that he was up. Not a sound but the persistent fall at a distance
of some heavy metallic substance. It must be Karospina in his workshop,
at his rockets, pinwheels, torpedoes, and firecrackers. What a singular
change in a bloodthirsty revolutionist. And how childish! Had he
squandered his millions on futile experimentings? What his object, what
his scheme, for the amelioration of mankind's woes? Gerald's stomach
warned him that coffee and rolls were far dearer to him than the
downfall of tyranny's bastions, and impatiently he began whistling. The
rhythmic thud never ceased. He noticed an open door at the back of the
house, and he went out, his long legs carrying him about the yard,
toward the beach. The air was glorious, a soft breeze blowing landward
from the ocean. He almost forgot his hunger in the face of such a
spectacle. The breakers were racing in, and after crumbling, they
scudded, a film of green, crested by cottony white, across the hard sand
to the young man's feet. He felt exhilarated. And his hunger returned.
Then Mila's voice sounded near him. She carried a basket and fairly ran
in her eagerness.
"Mr. Shannon, Mr. Shannon, good Prince Gerald--" he was amazed; where
could she have heard his Christian name?--"your breakfast. Wait--don't
swim the seas to New York for it. Here it is." She opened the basket and
handed him a jug of coffee and showed him the rolls inside. Without the
slightest embarrassment he thanked her and drank his coffee, walking; he
ate the bread, and felt, as he expressed it, like leading a forlorn
hope. They went on, the cutting sunshine and sparkling breeze alluring
them to vague distances. It was long after midday when they marched back
at a slower pace, Gerald swinging the basket like a light-hearted boy,
instead of the desperado he fancied himself.
Entering the house, Mila hunted up some cold meat, and with fresh tea
and stale bread they were contented. The formidable pyrotechnist did not
appear, and so the young people enjoyed the day in each other's company.
She conducted him like a river through the lands of sociology,
Dostoïewsky, and Chopin. She played, but made him sit in the hall, for
the piano was in her private room. And then they began to exchange
confidences. It was dusk before the prince returned, in the attire of a
workingman, his face and hands covered with soot and grease. A hard
day's labour, he said, and did not seem surprised to see Shannon.
After supper he asked Gerald if he would smoke a pipe with him in his
laboratory. Mila must have bored him enough by this time! They lighted
their pipes; but Mila refused to be sent away. She sat down beside her
uncle and put her elbows on the table--white, strong arms she had, and
Gerald only took his eyes from their pleasing contemplation to lift them
to hers. He was fast losing what little prudence he had; he was a Celt,
and he felt that he had known Mila for a century.
"Young man," said Prince Karospina, sharply, "you have the message I
gave you last night! Well--and you will say _no_, to my beloved friend
K., without knowing why. And you will think that you have been dealing
with a man whose hard head has turned to the mush of human kindness,--an
altruist. Ah! I know how you fellows despise the word. But what have
Kropotkin, Elisée Reclus, Jean Grave, or the rest accomplished? To
build up, not to tear down, should be the object of the scientific
anarch. Stop! You need not say the earth has to be levelled and ploughed
before sowing the seed. That suits turnip fields, not the garden of
humanity. Educate the downtrodden into liberty, is my message, not the
slaughtering of monarchs. How am I going to go about it? Ah! that's my
affair, my dear sir. After I read a certain book by Tolstoy, I realized
that art was as potent an agent for mischief as the knout. Music--music
is rooted in sex; it works miracles of evil--"
"Now, uncle, I won't hear a word against Chopin," said Mila, looking
toward Gerald for approval.
"Music, Mila, in the hands of evil men is an instrument dangerous to
religion, to civilization. What of Illowski and his crazy attack on
Paris and St. Petersburg? You remember, Shannon! Leave Wagner out of the
question--there is no fusion of the arts in his music drama--only bad
verse, foolish librettos, dealing with monsters and gods, and
indifferent scene-painting. Moreover, this new music is not understood
by the world. Even if the whole of mankind could be assembled on the
roof of the world and at a preconcerted signal made to howl the
Marseillaise, it would not be educated to the heights I imagine. Stage
plays--Shakespeare has no message for our days; Ibsen is an
anarchist--he believes in placing the torpedo under the social ark.
Painting--it is an affair for state galleries and the cabinets of
wealthy amateurs. Literature is a dead art--every one writes and reads
and no one understands. Religion! Ah! Yes, religion; the world will be a
blackened cinder or cometary gas before the love of God is stamped from
its heart. But religion and art must go hand in hand. Divorced, art has
fallen into the Slough of Despond; else has been transformed into an
acrid poison wherewith men's souls are destroyed as if by a virulent
absinthe. United with religion, art is purified. All art sprang from
religion. All great art, from a Greek statue to a Gothic cathedral, from
a Bach fugue to Michael Angelo, was religious. Therefore, if we are to
reach the hearts of the people, we must make art the handmaid of
religion." He stopped for breath. Gerald interposed:--
"But, dear prince, you say 'art.' What art--painting, sculpture,
architecture, music, poetry, drama--?"