BETWEEN TWO LIVES.
Six weeks after he had made his speech in the House of Lords,
Tremayne was sitting in his oak-panelled library at Alanmere, in deep
and earnest converse with a man who was sitting in an invalid chair
by a window looking out upon the lawn. The face of this man exhibited
a contrast so striking and at the same time terrible, that the most
careless glance cast upon it would have revealed the fact that it was
the face of a man of extraordinary character, and that the story of
some strange fate was indelibly stamped upon it.
The upper part of it, as far down as the mouth, was cast in a mould
of the highest and most intellectual manly beauty. The forehead was
high and broad and smooth, the eyebrows dark and firm but finely
arched, the nose somewhat prominently aquiline, but well shaped, and
with delicate, sensitive nostrils. The eyes were deep-set, large and
soft, and dark as the sky of a moonless night, yet shining in the
firelight with a strange magnetic glint that seemed to fasten
Tremayne's gaze and hold it at will.
But the lower portion of the face was as repulsive as the upper part
was attractive. The mouth was the mouth of a wild beast, and the lips
and cheeks and chin were seared and seamed as though with fire, and
what looked like the remains of a moustache and beard stood in black
ragged patches about the heavy unsightly jaws.
When the thick, shapeless lips parted, they did so in a hideous grin,
which made visible long, sharp white teeth, more like those of a wolf
than those of a human being.
His body, too, exhibited no less strange a contrast than his face
did. To the hips it was that of a man of well-knit, muscular frame,
not massive, but strong and well-proportioned. The arms were long and
muscular, and the hands white and small, but firm, well-shaped, and
nervous.
But from his hips downwards, this strange being was a dwarf and a
cripple. His hips were narrow and shrunken, one of his legs was some
inches shorter than the other, and both were twisted and distorted,
and hung helplessly down from the chair as he sat.
Such was Natas, the Master of the Terror, and the man whose wrongs,
whatever they might have been, had caused him to devote his life to a
work of colossal vengeance, and his incomparable powers to the
overthrow of a whole civilisation.
The tremendous task to which he had addressed himself with all the
force of his mighty nature for twenty years, was now at length
approaching completion. The mine that he had so patiently laid, year
after year, beneath the foundations of Society, was complete in every
detail, the first spark had been applied, and the first rumbling of
the explosion was already sounding in the ears of men, though they
little knew how much it imported. The work of the master-intellect
was almost done. The long days and nights of plotting and planning
were over, and the hour for action had arrived at last.
For him there was little more to do, and the time was very near when
he could retire from the strife, and watch in peace and confidence
the reaping of the harvest of ruin and desolation that his hands had
sown. Henceforth, the central figure in the world-revolution must be
the young English engineer, whose genius had brought him forth out of
his obscurity to take command of the subjugated powers of the air,
and to arbitrate the destinies of the world.
This was why he was sitting here, in the long twilight of the June
evening, talking so earnestly with the man who, under the spell of
his mysterious power and master-will, had been his second self in
completing the work that he had designed, and had thought and spoken
and acted as he had inspired him against all the traditions of his
race and station, in that strange double life that he had lived, in
each portion of which he had been unconscious of all that he had been
and had done in the other. The time had now come to draw aside the
veil which had so far divided these two lives from each other, to
show him each as it was in very truth, and to leave him free to
deliberately choose between them.
Natas had been speaking without any interruption from Tremayne for
nearly an hour, drawing the parallel of the two lives before him with
absolute fidelity, neither omitting nor justifying anything, and his
wondering hearer had listened to him in silence, unable to speak for
the crowding emotions which were swarming through his brain. At
length Natas concluded by saying--
"And now, Alan Tremayne, I have shown you faithfully the two paths
which you have trodden since first I had need of you. So far you have
been as clay in the hands of the potter. Now the spell is removed,
and you are free to choose which of them you will follow to the
end,--that of the English gentleman of fortune and high position,
whose country is on the brink of a war that will tax her vast
resources to the utmost, and may end in her ruin; or that of the
visible and controlling head of the only organisation which can at
the supreme moment be the arbiter of peace or war, order or anarchy,
and which alone, if any earthly power can, will evolve order out of
chaos, and bring peace on earth at last."
As Natas ceased, Tremayne passed his hand slowly over his eyes and
brows, as though to clear away the mists which obscured his mental
vision. Then he rose from his chair, and paced the floor with quick,
uneven strides for several minutes. At length he replied, speaking as
one might who was just waking from some evil dream--
"You have made a conspirator and a murderer of me. How is it possible
that, knowing this, I can again become what I was before your
infernal influence was cast about me?"
"What you have done at my command is nothing to you, and leaves no
stain upon your honour, if you choose to put it so, for it was not
your will that was working within you, but mine. As for the killing
of Dornovitch, it was necessary, and you were the only instrument by
which it could have been accomplished before irretrievable harm had
been done.
"He alone of the outside world possessed the secret of the Terror. A
woman of the Outer Circle in Paris had allowed her love for him to
overcome her duty to the Brotherhood, and had betrayed what she
could, in order, as she vainly thought, to shield him from its
vengeance for the executive murders of the year before. He too had on
him the draft of the secret treaty, the possession of which has
enabled us to control the drift of European politics at the most
crucial time.
"Had he escaped, not only would hundreds of lives have been
sacrificed on suspicion to Russian official vengeance, but Russia and
France would now be masters of the British line of communication to
the East, for it would not have been possible for Mr. Balfour to have
been forewarned, and therefore forearmed, in time to double the
Mediterranean Squadron as he has done. Surely one Russian's life is
not too great a price to pay for all that."
"I do not care for the man's life, for he was an enemy, and even then
plotting the ruin of my own country in the dark. It is not the
killing, but the manner of it. England does not fight her battles
with the assassin's knife, and his blood is on my hands"--
"On your hands, perhaps, but not on your soul. It is on mine, and I
will answer for it when we stand face to face at the Bar where all
secrets are laid bare. The man deserved death, for he was plotting
the death of thousands. What matter then how or by whose hands he
died?
"It is time the world had done with these miserable sophistries, and
these spurious distinctions between murder by wholesale and by
retail, and it soon will have done with them. I, by your hand, killed
Dornovitch in his sleep. That was murder, says the legal casuist. You
read this morning in the _Times_ how one of the Russian war-balloons
went the night before last and hung in the darkness over a sleeping
town on the Austrian frontier, and dropped dynamite shells upon it,
killing and maiming hundreds who had no personal quarrel with Russia.
That is war, and therefore lawful!
"Nonsense, my friend, nonsense! There is no difference. All violence
is crime, if you will, but it is a question of degree only. The world
is mad on this subject of war. It considers the horrible thing
honourable, and gives its highest distinctions to those who shed
blood most skilfully on the battlefield, and the triumphs that are
won by superior force or cunning are called glorious, and those who
achieve them the nations fall down and worship.
"The nations must be taught wisdom, for war has had victims enough.
But men are still foolish, and to cure them a terrible lesson will be
necessary. But that lesson shall be taught, even though the whole
earth be turned into a battlefield, and all the dwellings of men into
charnel-houses, in order to teach it to them."
"In other words, Society is to be dissolved in order that anarchy and
lawlessness may take its place. Society may not be perfect,--nay, I
will grant that its sins are many and grievous, that it has forgotten
its duty both to God and man in its worship of Mammon and its slavery
to externals,--but you who have plotted its destruction, have you
anything better to put in its place? You can destroy, perhaps, but
can you build up?"
"The jungle must be cleared and the swamp drained before the
habitations of men can be built in their place. It has been mine to
destroy, and I will pursue the work of destruction to the end, as I
have sworn to do by that Name which a Jew holds too sacred for
speech. I believe myself to be the instrument of vengeance upon this
generation, even as Joshua was upon Canaan, and as Khalid the Sword
of God was upon Byzantium in the days of her corruption. You may hold
this for an old man's fancy if you will, but it shall surely come to
pass in the fulness of time, which is now at hand; and then, where I
have destroyed, may you, if you will, build up again!"
"What do you mean? You are speaking in parables."
"Which shall soon be made plain. You read in your newspaper this
morning of a mysterious movement that is taking place throughout the
Buddhist peoples of the East. They believe that Buddha has returned
to earth, reincarnated, to lead them to the conquest of the world.
Now, as you know, every fourth man, woman, and child in the whole
human race is a Buddhist, and the meaning of this movement is that
that mighty mass of humanity, pent up and stagnant for centuries, is
about to burst its bounds and overflow the earth in a flood of
desolation and destruction.
"The nations of the West know nothing of this, and are unsheathing
the sword to destroy each other. Like a house divided against itself,
their power shall be brought to confusion, and their empire be made
as a wilderness. And over the starving and war-smitten lands of
Europe these Eastern swarms shall sweep, innumerable as the locusts,
resistless as the pestilence, and what fire and sword have spared
they shall devour, and nothing shall be left of all the glory of
Christendom but its name and the memory of its fall!"
Natas spoke his frightful prophecy like one entranced, and when he
had finished he let his head fall forward for a moment on his breast,
as though he were exhausted. Then he raised it again, and went on in
a calmer voice--
"There is but one power under heaven that can stand between the
Western world and this destruction, and that is the race to which you
belong. It is the conquering race of earth, and the choicest fruit of
all the ages until now. It is nearly two hundred million strong, and
it is united by the ties of kindred blood and speech the wide world
over.
"But it is also divided by petty jealousies, and mean commercial
interests. But for these the world might be an Anglo-Saxon planet.
Would it not be a glorious task for you, who are the flower of this
splendid race, so to unite it that it should stand as a solid barrier
of invincible manhood before which this impending flood of yellow
barbarism should dash itself to pieces like the cloud-waves against
the granite summits of the eternal hills?"
"A glorious task, truly!" exclaimed Tremayne, once more springing
from his chair and beginning to pace the room again; "but the man is
not yet born who could accomplish it."
"There are fifty men on earth at this moment who can accomplish it,
and of them the two chief are Englishmen,--yourself and this Richard
Arnold, whose genius has given the Terrorists the command of the air.
"Come, Alan Tremayne! here is a destiny such as no man ever had
before revealed to him. It is not for a man of your nation and
lineage to shrink from it. You have reproached me for using you to
unworthy ends, as you thought them, and with pulling down where I am
not able to build up again. Obey me still, this time of your own free
will and with your eyes open, and, as I have pulled down by your
hand, so by it will I build up again, if the Master of Destiny shall
permit me; and if not, then shall you achieve the task without me.
Now give me your ears, for the words that I have to say are weighty
ones.
"No human power can stop the war that has now begun, nor can any
curtail it until it has run its appointed course. But we have at our
command a power which, if skilfully applied at the right moment, will
turn the tide of conflict in favour of Britain, and if at that moment
the Mother of Nations can gather her children about her in obedience
to the call of common kindred, all shall be well, and the world shall
be hers.
"But before that is made possible she must pass through the fire, and
be purged of that corruption which is even now poisoning her blood
and clouding her eyes in the presence of her enemies. The overweening
lust of gold must be burnt out of her soul in the fiery crucible of
war, and she must learn to hold honour once more higher than wealth,
and rich and poor and gentle and simple must be as one family, and
not as master and servant.
"East and west, north and south, wherever the English tongue is
spoken, men must clasp hands and forget all other things save that
they are brothers of blood and speech, and that the world is theirs
if they choose to take it. This is a work that cannot be done by any
nation, but only by a whole race, which with millions of hands and a
single heart devotes itself to achieve success or perish."
"Brave words, brave words!" cried Tremayne, pausing in his walk in
front of the chair in which Natas sat; "and if you could make me
believe them true, I would follow you blindly to the end, no matter
what the path might be. But I cannot believe them. I cannot think
that you or I and a few followers, even aided by Arnold and his
aërial fleet, could accomplish such a stupendous task as that. It is
too great. It is superhuman! And yet it would be glorious even to
fail worthily in such a task, even to fall fighting in such a Titanic
conflict!"
He paused, and stood silent and irresolute, as though appalled by the
prospect with which he was confronted here at the parting of the
ways. He glanced at the extraordinary being sitting near him, and saw
his deep, dark eyes fixed upon him, as though they were reading his
very soul within him. Then he took a step towards the cripple's
chair, took his right hand in his, and said slowly and steadily and
solemnly--
"It is a worthy destiny! I will essay it for good or evil, for life
or death. I am with you to the end!"
As Tremayne spoke the fatal words which once more bound him, and this
time for life and of his own free will, to Natas the Jew, this
cripple who, chained to his chair, yet aspired to the throne of a
world, he fancied he saw his shapeless lips move in a smile, and into
his eyes there came a proud look of mingled joy and triumph as he
returned the handclasp, and said in a softer, kinder voice than
Tremayne had ever heard him use before--
"Well spoken! Those words were worthy of you and of your race! As
your faith is, so shall your reward be. Now wheel my chair to yonder
window that looks out towards the east, and you shall look past the
shadows into the day which is beyond. So! that will do. Now get
another chair and sit beside me. Fix your eyes on that bright star
that shows above the trees, and do not speak, but think only of that
star and its brightness."
Tremayne did as he was bidden in silence, and when he was seated
Natas swept his hands gently downwards over his open eyes again and
again, till the lids grew heavy and fell, shutting out the brightness
of the star, and the dim beauty of the landscape which lay sleeping
in the twilight and the June night.
Then suddenly it seemed as though they opened again of their own
accord, and were endowed with an infinite power of vision. The trees
and lawns of the home park of Alanmere and the dark rolling hills of
heather beyond were gone, and in their place lay stretched out a
continent which he saw as though from some enormous height, with its
plains and lowlands and rivers, vast steppes and snowclad hills,
forests and tablelands, huge mountain masses rearing lonely peaks of
everlasting ice to a sunlight that had no heat; and then beyond these
again more plains and forests, that stretched away southward until
they merged in the all-surrounding sea.
[Illustration: "You have seen the Field of Armageddon."
_See page 149._]
Then he seemed to be carried forward towards the scene until he could
distinguish the smallest objects upon the earth, and he saw, swarming
southward and westward, vast hordes of men, that divided into long
streams, and poured through mountain passes and defiles, and spread
themselves again over fertile lands, like locusts over green fields
of young corn. And wherever those hordes swept forward, a long line
of fire and smoke went in front of them, and where they had passed
the earth was a blackened wilderness.
Then, too, from the coasts and islands vast fleets of war-ships put
out, pouring their clouds of smoke to the sky, and making swiftly for
the southward and westward, where from other coasts and islands other
vessels put out to meet them, and, meeting them, were lost with them
under great clouds of grey smoke, through which flashed incessantly
long livid tongues of flame.
Then, like a panorama rolled away from him, the mighty picture
receded and new lands came into view, familiar lands which he had
traversed often. They too were black and wasted with the tempest of
war from east to west, but nevertheless those swarming streams came
on, countless and undiminished, up out of the south and east, while
on the western verge vast armies and fleets battled desperately with
each other on sea and land, as though they heeded not those locust
swarms of dusky millions coming ever nearer and nearer.
Once more the scene rolled backwards, and he saw a mighty city
closely beleaguered by two vast hosts of men, who slowly pushed their
batteries forward until they planted them on all the surrounding
heights, and poured a hail of shot and shell upon the swarming,
helpless millions that were crowded within the impassable ring of
fire and smoke. Above the devoted city swam in mid-air strange shapes
like monstrous birds of prey, and beneath where they floated the
earth seemed ever and anon to open and belch forth smoke and flame
into which the crumbling houses fell and burnt in heaps of shapeless
ruins. Then----
He felt a cool hand laid almost caressingly on his brow, and the
voice of Natas said beside him--
"That is enough. You have seen the Field of Armageddon, and when the
day of battle comes you shall be there and play the part allotted to
you from the beginning. Do you believe?"
"Yes," replied Tremayne, rising wearily from his chair, "I believe;
and as the task is, so may Heaven make my strength in the stress of
battle!"
"Amen!" said Natas very solemnly.
That night the young Lord of Alanmere went sleepless to bed, and lay
awake till dawn, revolving over and over again in his mind the
marvellous things that he had seen and heard, and the tremendous task
to which he had now irrevocably committed himself for good or evil.
In all these waking dreams there was ever present before his mental
vision the face of a woman whose beauty was like and yet unlike that
of the daughter of Natas. It lacked the brilliance and subtle charm
which in Natasha so wondrously blended the dusky beauty of the
daughters of the South with the fairer loveliness of the daughters of
the North; but it atoned for this by that softer grace and sweetness
which is the highest charm of purely English beauty.
It was the face of the woman whom, in that portion of his strange
double life which had been free from the mysterious influence of
Natas, he had loved with well-assured hope that she would one day
rule his house and broad domains with him. She was now Lady Muriel
Penarth, the daughter of Lord Marazion, a Cornish nobleman, whose
estates abutted on those which belonged to Lord Alanmere as Baron
Tremayne, of Tremayne, in the county of Cornwall, as the _Peerage_
had it. Noble alike by lineage and nature, no fairer mistress could
have been found for the lands of Tremayne and Alanmere, but--what
seas of blood and flame now lay between him and the realisation of
his love-ideal!
He must forsake his own, and become a revolutionary and an outcast
from Society. He must draw the sword upon the world and his own race,
and, armed with the most awful means of destruction that the wit of
man had ever devised, he must fight his way through universal war to
that peace which alone he could ask her to share with him. Still much
could be done before he took the final step of severance which might
be perpetual, and he would lose no time in doing it.
As soon as it was fairly light, he rose and took a long, rapid walk
over the home park, and when he returned to breakfast at nine he had
resolved to execute forthwith a deed of gift, transferring the whole
of his vast property, which was unentailed and therefore entirely at
his own disposal, to the woman who was to have shared it with him in
a few months as his wife. If the Fates were kind, he would come back
from the world-war and reclaim both the lands and their mistress, and
if not he would have the satisfaction of knowing that his broad acres
at least had a worthy mistress.
At breakfast he met Natas again, and during the meal one of his
footmen entered, bringing the letters that had come by the morning
post.
There were several letters for each of them, those for Natas being
addressed to "Herr F. Niemand," and for some time they were both
employed in looking through their correspondence. Suddenly Natas
looked up, and said--
"When do you expect to hear that Arnold is off the south coast?"
"Almost any day now; in fact, within the week, if everything has gone
right. Here is a letter from Johnston to say that the _Lurline_ has
arrived at Plymouth, and that a bright look-out is being kept for
him. He will telegraph here and to the club in London as soon as the
air-ship is sighted. Twenty-four hours will then see us on board the
_Ariel_, or whichever of the ships he comes in."
"I hope the news will come soon, for Michael Roburoff, the
President's brother, who has been in command of the American Section,
cables to say that he sails from New York the day after to-morrow
with detailed accounts. That means that he will come with full
reports of what the Section has done and will be ready to do when the
time comes, and also what the enemy are doing.
"He sails in the _Aurania_, and as the Atlantic routes are swarming
with war-ships and torpedo-boats, she will probably have to run the
gauntlet, and it is of the last importance that Michael and his
reports reach us safely. It will therefore be necessary for the
air-ship to meet the _Aurania_ as soon as possible on her passage,
and take him off her before any harm happens to him. If he and his
reports fell into the hands of the enemy, there is no telling what
might happen."
"As nearly as I can calculate," said Tremayne, "the air-ship should
be sighted in three days from now, perhaps in two. It will take the
_Aurania_ over four days to cross the Atlantic, and so we ought to be
able to meet her somewhere in mid-ocean if she is able to get so far
without being overhauled. Unfortunately she is known to be a British
ship and subsidised by the British Government, so there will be very
little chance of her getting through under the American flag. Still
she's about the fastest steamer afloat, and will take a lot of
catching."
"And if the worst comes and she falls into the hands of the enemy, we
must fight our first naval battle and retake her, even if we have to
sink a few cruisers to do so," added Natas; "for, come what may,
Michael must not be captured."
"Arnold will almost certainly come in his flagship, and if she is
what he promised, she should be more than a match for a whole fleet,
so I don't think there is much to fear unless the _Aurania_ gets sunk
before we reach her," said Tremayne.
Natas and his host devoted the rest of the forenoon to their
correspondence, and to making the final arrangements for leaving
Alanmere. Tremayne wrote full instructions to his lawyers for the
drawing up of the deed, and directed them to have it ready for his
signature by two o'clock on the following day. After lunch he rode
over to Knaresborough himself with the post-bag, telegraphed an
abstract of his instructions in advance, and ordered his private
saloon carriage to be attached to the up express which passed through
at eight the next morning.