with his hard fist. "One art, _my_ art, the fusion of all the arts. I,
Prince Igorovitch Karospina, tell you that I have discovered the secret
of the arts never dreamed of by Wagner and his futile, painted music on
a painted stage; I have gone, not to art, but to nature--colour, fire,
the elements. The eye is keener than the ear, vision is easier
comprehended than tone. Ah! I have you interested at last."
He began walking as if to overtake a missing idea. His niece watched him
cynically.
"I fear you are boring Mr. Shannon," she said in her most birdlike
accents. Her uncle turned on her.
"I don't care if I am. Go to bed! I am nearing the climax of a lifetime,
and I feel that I must talk to a sympathetic ear. You are not bored,
dear friend. I have pondered this matter for more than thirty years. I
have studied all the arts--painting particularly; and with colour, with
colourful design I mean to teach mankind the great lessons of the
masters and of religion."
"Ah, you will exhibit in large halls, panoramic pictures, I suppose,"
interrupted Shannon.
"Nothing of the sort," was the testy reply. "For thousands of years the
world has been gazing upon dead stones and canvases, reading dead words.
Dead--all, I tell you, all of these arts. And painting is only in two
dimensions--a poor copy of nature. The theatre has its possibilities,
but is too restricted in space. Music is alive. It moves; but its
message is not articulate to _all_. I want an art that will be
understood and admired at a glance by the world from pole to pole. I
want an art that will live and move and tell a noble tale. I want an art
that will appeal to the eye by its colouring and the soul by its
beautiful designs. Where is that legend-laden art? Hitherto it has not
existed. I have found it. I have tracked it down until I am the master
who by a touch can liberate elemental forces, which will not destroy,
like those of Illowski's, but will elevate the soul and make mankind one
great nation, one loving brotherhood. Ah! to open once more those doors
of faith closed by the imperious dogmas of science--open them upon a
lovely land of mystery. Mankind must have mystery. And beyond each
mystery lies another. This will be our new religion."
Gerald had caught the enthusiasm of this swelling prologue and rose, his
face alight with curiosity.
"And that art is--is--?" he stammered.
"That art is--pyrotechny." It was too much for the young man's nerves,
and he fell back in his chair, purple with suppressed laughter. Angrily
darting at him and catching his left shoulder in a vicelike grip,
Karospina growled:
"You fool, how dare you mock something you know nothing of?" He shook
his guest roughly.
"Uncle, uncle, be patient! Tell Mr. Shannon, and he, too, will become a
believer. I believe in you. I believe in him, Mr. Shannon. Don't sneer!
Tell him, uncle." Mila's words, almost imploring in their tone, calmed
the infuriated inventor, who left the room. He reëntered in a moment,
his head dripping, and he was grinning broadly.
"Whenever I encounter a refractory pattern in my fireworks--as you call
them--I am compelled to throw a bucket of water over it to quench its
too ardent spirits. I have just done the same to my own head, dear Mr.
Shannon, and I ask your pardon for my rudeness. Get some fresh tea,
Mila, strong tea, Mila." Pipes were relighted and the conversation
resumed.
"I forgot in my obsession, in what Jacob Boehme calls 'the shudder of
divine excitement,' that I was talking to one of the uninitiated. I
suppose you think by pyrotechny I mean the old-fashioned methods of set
pieces, ghastly portraits in fire, big, spouting wheels, rockets, war
scenes from contemporary history, seaside stuff, badly done--and flowery
squibs. My boy, all that, still admired by our country cousins, is the
very infancy of my art. In China, where nearly everything was invented
ages ago, in China I learned the first principles, also the
possibilities of the art of fireworks; yes, call it by its humble title.
In China I have seen surprising things at night. Pagodas blown across
the sky, an army of elephants in pursuit, and all bathed in the most
divine hues imaginable. But their art suffers from convention. They
accomplish miracles considering the medium they work in--largely
gunpowder. And their art has no meaning, no message, no moral principle,
no soul. Years ago I discovered all the aids necessary to the
pyrotechnist. I am not a chemist for nothing. If I can paint a fair
imitation of a Claude Monet on canvas, I can also produce for you a
colourless gas which, when handled by a virtuoso, produces astonishing
illusions. In the open air, against the dark background of the horizon,
I can show you the luminous dots planewise of the Impressionists; or I
can give you the broad, sabrelike brushwork of Velasquez, or the
imperial tintings of Titian. I can paint pictures on the sky. I can
produce blazing symphonies. I will prove to you that colour is also
music. This sounds as if I were a victim to that lesion of the brain
called 'coloured-audition.' Perhaps! Not Helmholtz or Chevreul can tell
me anything new in the science of optics. I am the possessor of the
rainbow secrets--for somewhere in Iceland, a runic legend runs, there is
a region vast as night, where all the rainbows--worn out or to be
used--drift about in their vapoury limbo. I have the key to this land of
dreams. Over the earth I shall float my rainbows of art like a flock of
angels. With them I propose to dazzle the eyes of mankind, to arouse
sleeping souls. From the chords of the combined arts I shall extort
nobler cadences, nobler rhythms, for men to live by, for men to die
for!"
Shannon was impressed. Through the smoke of his host's discourse he
discovered genuine fire. The philosopher took his hand and led him to
the window.
"Stand there a moment!" he adjured. Mila joined him and after turning
the lamp to a pin-head of light, their shoulders touching--for the
window was narrow--they peered into the night. They were on the side of
the water. Suddenly Gerald exclaimed:--
"What's that light out at sea--far out? It looks like the moon!"
"It is the sun," coolly replied his companion. They saw arise from the
waters a majestic, glowing sphere of light, apparently the size of the
sun. It flooded the country with its glare, and after sailing nearly in
front of the house it shrank into a scarlet cross not larger than a
man's hand. Then in a shower of sparks it ceased, its absence making the
blackness almost corporeal. Instinctively the hands of the two indulged
in a long pressure, and Mila quickly adjusted the lamp. But Gerald still
stood at the window a prey to astonishment, terror, stupefaction.
Karospina entered. His face was slightly flushed and in his eyes there
burned the sombre fire of the fanatic. Triumphantly he regarded his
young friend.
"That was only a little superfluous gas--nothing I cared to show you.
Read the newspapers to-morrow, and you will learn that a big meteor
burst off the north coast the night before, and fell into the sea." Then
he moved closer and whispered:--
"The time is at hand. Within three weeks--not later than the middle of
October--I shall make my first public test. 'Thus saith the Lord God to
the mountains and to the hills, to the rivers and to the valleys:
Behold, I, _even_ I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy
your high places.'"
His voice rose in passion, his face worked in anger, and he shook his
clenched fists at an imaginary universe. So this man of peace was a
destroyer, after all! Gerald aroused him. Again he asked pardon. Mila
was nowhere to be seen, and with a sinking at the heart new to his
buoyant temperament, Gerald bade the magician good night. It was
arranged that he would leave the next day, for, like Milton, he was
haunted by "the ghost of a linen decency." But that night he did not
sleep, and no sound of music came to his ears from Mila's chamber. Once
he tried to open his window. It was nailed down.
A gray day greeted his tired eyes. In an hour he was bidding his friends
good-by and thanking them for their hospitality. He had hoped that Mila
would accompany him a few steps on his long journey, but she made no
sign beyond a despairing look at her uncle, who was surly, as if he had
felt the reaction from too prolonged a debauch of the spirit. Gerald lit
his pipe, kissed the hand of Mila with emphasis, and parted from them.
He had not gone a hundred yards before he heard soft footsteps tracking
him. He turned and was disappointed to see that it was only Karospina,
who came up to him, breathing heavily, and in his catlike eyes the fixed
expression of monomania. He stuttered, waving his arms aloft.
"The time is at hand and the end of all things shall be accomplished.
You shall return for the great night. You shall hear of it in the world.
Tell K. that I said _no!_ He must be with us at the transfiguration of
all things, when mankind shall go up the spiral road of perfection."
Gerald Shannon fairly ran to escape knowing more about the universal
panacea. And when he turned for the last time the sea and tower and man
were blotted out by wavering mists of silver.
III
THE FIERY CHARIOT
The young man soon heard of Karospina's project. A week before the event
the newspapers began describing the experiments of the new Russian
wonder-worker, but treated the matter with calm journalistic
obliviousness to any but its most superficial aspects. A scientific
pyrotechnist was a novelty, particularly as the experimentings were to
be given with the aid of a newly discovered gas. Strange rumours of
human levitations, of flying machines seen after dark at unearthly
heights, were printed. This millionnaire, who had expended fortunes in
trying to accomplish what Maxim and Langley had failed in achieving,
was a good peg upon which to hang thrilling gossip. He promised to
convince the doubting ones that at last man would come into the empire
of the air, and by means of fireworks. In searching carefully all the
published reports Gerald was relieved not to encounter the name of Mila.
That celebrated afternoon he found himself, after the distressingly
crowded cars, in company with many thousands, all clamouring and
jostling on the road to the tower. This time there were vehicles and
horses, though not in any degree commensurate with the crowd; but the
high tax imposed by the speculators gave him an opportunity of securing
a seat with a few others in a carriage drawn by four horses. Gingerly
they made their way down the narrow road--time was not gained, for the
packed mass of humans refused to separate. Fuming at the delay, he was
forced to console himself with smoking and listening to the stories told
of Karospina and his miracles. They were exaggerated. Karospina here,
Karospina there--the name of this modern magician was hummed everywhere
in the brisk October air. A little man who occupied the seat with
Shannon informed him that he knew some one who had worked for Karospina.
He declared that it was no uncommon sight for the conjurer--he was
usually called by that name--to float like a furled flag over his house
when the sun had set. Also he had been seen driving in the sky a span
of three fiery horses in a fiery chariot across the waters of the bay,
while sitting by his side was the star-crowned Woman of the Apocalypse
clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet. Gerald held his
counsel; but the grandeur of the spectacle he had witnessed still shook
his soul--if he had not been the victim of a hallucination! The journey
seemed endless.
At last the strand came into view with the squat tower, the rusting
machinery, and the reservoir back of the house. There were, however,
changes in the scene. Within a quarter of a mile of the beach tents were
set and booths erected. Seemingly all the city had rushed to this place,
and the plain, with its swampy surfaces, was dotted by masses of noisy
men and women. Gerald, finding that approach to the house was impossible
from the land side, made a wide detour, and on reaching the shore he was
gratified to find it empty. The local constabulary, powerless to fight
off the mob near the house, had devoted their energies to clearing the
space about the gas retorts. After much bother, and only by telling his
name, did he pass the police cordon. Once inside, he rushed to the back
door and found, oh! great luck--Mila. Dressed in white, to his taste she
was angelic. He had great difficulty in keeping his arms pinioned to his
side; but his eyes shone with the truth beating at the bars of his
bosom, and Mila knew it. He felt this and was light-headed in his
happiness.
They greeted. Mila's face wore a serious expression.
"I'm very glad you have come down. I think uncle will be glad also. I am
_happy_ to see you again; I have missed you these past weeks. But my
happiness is nothing just now, Gerald! [He started.] My uncle, you must
speak with him. From brooding so much over the Holy Scriptures, and the
natural excitement of his discoveries--they are so extraordinary, dear
friend, that he means always to keep them to himself, for he rightly
believes that the governments of the world would employ them for wicked
purposes, war, the destruction of weaker nations--he has become
overwrought. You may not know it, he has a very strong, sane head on his
shoulders; but this scheme for lifting up the masses, I suspect, may
upset his own equilibrium. And his constant study of the Apocalypse and
the Hebraic revelations--it has filled him with strange notions.
Understand me: a man who can swim in the air like a fish in the sea is
apt to become unstrung. He has begun to identify himself with the
prophets. He insists on showing biblical pictures,--worse still,
appearing in them himself."
"How 'appearing in them'?" asked Gerald, wonderingly.
"In actual person. I, too, have promised to go with him."
"In a transparency of fire, you mean? Isn't it dangerous?" She hung her
head.
"No, in mid air, in a fiery chariot," she murmured.
"The Woman of the Apocalypse!" he cried. "Oh! Princess Mila, dearest
Mila Georgovics, promise me that you will not risk such a crazy
experiment." Gerald pressed his fingers to his throbbing temples.
"It is no experiment at all," she said, in almost inaudible tones;
_"last night we flew over the house."_ He stared at her, his hands
trembling, and no longer able to play the incredulous.
"But, dear friend, I fear one other thing; the gas which uncle has
discovered is so tenuous that it is a million times lighter than air;
but it is ever at a terrible tension--I mean it is dangerous if not
carefully treated. Last summer, one afternoon, a valve broke and a large
quantity escaped from the reservoir, luckily on the ocean side. It
caused a storm and water-spouts, and destroyed a few vessels. The
coruscating gas creates a vacuum into which the air rushes with
incredible velocity. So promise me that while we are flying you will
stay with the police at the gas machines and keep off the crowd.
Promise!"
"But I shan't permit you to go up with this renegade to the
revolutionary cause--" he began impetuously. She put warning fingers to
her lips. In the white flowing robes of an antique priest, Karospina
came out to them and took Gerald by the hand. He was abstracted and
haggard, and his eyes glared about him. He chanted in a monotone:--
"The time is at hand. Soon you will see the Angels of the Seals. I shall
show the multitude Death on the Pale Horse and the vision of Ezekiel.
And you shall behold the star called Wormwood, the great star of the
third angel, which shall fall like a burning lamp upon the waters and
turn them bitter. And at the last you will see the chariot of Elijah
caught up to heaven in a fiery whirlwind. In it will be seated the
Princess Mila--we, the conquerors of the wicked world."
"Yes, but only as an image, an illusion," ejaculated the unhappy lover,
"not in reality."
"As she is," imperiously answered Karospina, and seizing Mila by the
arm, said, "Come!" She threw a kiss to Gerald and in her eyes were
tears. He saw them and could have wept himself. He followed the
sacrificial pair as far as the reservoir, muttering warnings in which
were mixed the fates of Phaethon and Simon Magus--that heretic who
mimicked the miracles of the apostles.
* * * * *
It was now dark; the order to extinguish all lights on the moor had been
obeyed. Only a panting sound as if from a wilderness of frightened
animals betrayed the presence of thousands. As long as the sun shone
there had been a babel of sound; at the disappearance of our parent
planet, a hushed awe had fallen with the night. Gone the rude joking and
wrangling, the crying of children, and the shrill laughter of the women.
A bitter breeze swept across from the waters, and the stars were mere
twinkling points.
Then from the vault of heaven darted a ribbon of emerald fire. It became
a luminous spiral when it touched the sea of glass, which was like unto
a floor of crystal. This was the sign of Karospina's undertaking, his
symbol of the road to moral perfection. Gerald recalled Whistler's
pyrotechnical extravaganzas. Following this came a pale moon which
emerged from the north; a second, a third, a fourth, started up from the
points of the compass, and after wabbling in the wind like gigantic
balloons, merged overhead in an indescribable disk which assumed the
features of Michael Angelo's Moses. Here is a new technique, indeed,
thought Gerald; yet he could not detect its moral values.
A golden landscape was projected on land and sea. A central aisle of
waters, paved by the golden rays of a lyric sun high overhead, was
embellished on either side by the marmoreal splendours of stately
palaces. An ilex inclined its graceful head to its liquid image; men
moved the blocks that made famous in the mouth of the world Queen Dido's
Carthage. Clouds of pearl-coloured smoke encircled the enchanting
picture. And the galleys came and went in this symphonic, glittering
spectacle.
"Turner would have died of envy," said Gerald aloud. There was a
remarkable vibration of life, not as he had seen it in mechanical
bioscopes, but the vivid life of earth and sunshine.
The scenes that succeeded were many: episodes from profane and sacred
histories; simulacra of the great saints. A war between giants and
pygmies was shown with all its accompanying horrors. The firmament
dripped crimson. The four cryptic creatures of Ezekiel's vision came out
of the north, a great cloud of "infolding fire" and the colour was
amber. A cyclopean and dazzling staircase thronged by moving angelic
shapes, harping mute harps, stretched from sea to sky, melting into the
milky way like the tail of a starry serpent. Followed the opening of the
dread prophetic seals; but, after an angel had descended from heaven,
his face as the sun and at his feet pillars of fire, the people,
prostrate like stalks of corn beaten by a tempest, worshipped in fear.
These things were supernatural. The heavens were displaying the glory of
God.
Not knowing whether the signs in the skies might be construed as
blasphemous, and lost in fathomless admiration for the marvellous power
of the wizard, Gerald sought to get closer to Karospina and Mila. But
wedged in by uniformed men, and the darkness thick as an Egyptian
plague, he despairingly awaited the apotheosis. His eyes were sated by
the miracles of harmonies--noiseless harmonies. It _was_ a new art, and
one for the peoples of the earth. Never had the hues of the universe
been so assembled, grouped, and modulated. And the human eye, adapting
itself to the new synthesis of arabesque and rhythm, evoked order and
symbolism from these novel chords of colour. There were solemn mountains
of opalescent fire which burst and faded into flaming colonnades, and in
an enchanting turquoise effervescence became starry spears and scimiters
and sparkling shields, and finally the whole mass would reunite and
evaporate into brilliant violet auroras or seven-tailed,
vermilion-coloured comets. There were gleaming rainbows of unknown
tints--strange scales of chromatic pigments; "a fiery snow without
wind;" and once a sun, twice the size of our own, fell into the ocean;
and Gerald could have sworn that he felt a wave of heated air as if from
a furnace; that he heard a seething sound, as if white-hot metal had
come in contact with icy water. Consumed by anxiety for Mila's safety,
he wished that these soundless girandoles, this apocalypse of
architectural fire and weaving flame, would end.
He had not long to wait. A shrewd hissing apprised him that something
unusual was about to occur. Like the flight of a great rocket a black
object quickly mounted to the zenith. It did not become visible for
several seconds; Gerald's nerves crisped with apprehension. The
apparition was an incandescent chariot; in it sat Karospina, and beside
him--oh! the agony of her lover--Mila Georgovics. As the fiery horses
swooped down, he could see her face in a radiant nimbus of meteors,
which encircled the equipage. Karospina proudly directed its course over
the azure route, and once he passed Gerald at a dangerously low curve
earthward, shouting:--
"The Spiral! The Spiral!"
It was his last utterance; possibly through some flaw in the mechanism,
the chariot zig-zagged and then drove straight upon the reservoir. To
the reverberation of smashed steel and blinding fulguration the big
sphere was split open and Mila with Karospina vanished in the nocturnal
gulf.
Gerald, stunned by the catastrophe, threw himself down, expecting a
mighty explosion; the ebon darkness was appalling after the
scintillating rain of fire. But the liberated gas in the guise of an
elongated cloud had rushed seaward, and there gathering density and
strength, assumed the shape of a terrific funnel, an inky spiral, its
gyrating sides streaked with intermittent flashes. Its volcanic roaring
and rapid return to land was a signal for vain flight--the miserable
lover knew it to be the flamboyant ether of the pyromaniac transformed
into a trumpeting tornado. And he hoped that it would not spare him, as
this phantasm twirled and ululated in the heavens, a grim portent of the
iron wrath of the Almighty. In a twinkling it had passed him, high in
the dome of heaven, only to erase in a fabulous blast the moaning
multitude. And prone upon the strand between the stormy waters and the
field of muddy dead, Gerald Shannon prayed for a second cataclysm which
might bring oblivion to him alone.
VI
A MOCK SUN
Where are the sins of yester-year?
I
The grating of the carriage wheels awoke her from the dream which had
lightly brushed away the night and the vision of the Arc de
Triomphe--looming into the mystery of sky and stars, its monumental
flanks sprawling across the Place de l'Étoile. She heard her name called
by Mrs. Sheldam as their coachman guided his horses through the gateway
of the Princesse de Lancovani's palace.
"Now, Ermentrude! Wake up, dear; we are there," said Mrs. Sheldam, in
her kind, drawling tones. Mr. Sheldam sighed and threw away the
unlighted cigar he had bitten during the ride along the Champs Élysées.
Whatever the evening meant for his wife and niece, he saw little
entertainment in store for himself; he did not speak French very well,
he disliked music and "tall talk"; all together he wished himself at the
Grand Hôtel, where he would be sure to meet some jolly Americans. Their
carriage had halted in front of a spacious marble stairway, lined on
either side with palms, and though it was a June night, the glass doors
were closed.