When the World Shook Part 42

"Be thankful that you also are not turned to stone. But, because your courage pleases me, I will spare you, yes, and will advance you in my New Kingdom. What shall you be? Controller of Religions, I think, since all the qualities that a high priest should have are yours--faith, fanaticism and folly."

"It is very strange," said Bastin, "but all of a sudden my arm and hand are quite well again. I suppose it must have been 'pins and needles' or something of that sort which made me throw away the pistol and pull the trigger when I didn't mean to do so."

Then he went to fetch that article which had fallen beyond the dais, and quite forgot his intention of executing Oro in the interest of testing its mechanism, which proved to be destroyed. To his proposed appointment he made no illusion. If he comprehended what was meant, which I doubt, he took it as a joke.

"Hearken all of you," said Oro, lifting his head suddenly, for while Bastin recovered the revolver he had been brooding. "The great thing which I shall do tomorrow must be witnessed by you because thereby only can you come to understand my powers. Also yonder where I bring it about in the bowels of the earth, you will be safer than elsewhere, since when and perhaps before it happens, the whole world will heave and shake and tremble, and I know not what may chance, even in these caves. For this reason also, do not forget to bring the little hound with you, since him least of all of you would I see come to harm, perhaps because once, hundreds of generations ago as you reckon time, I had a dog very like to him. Your mother loved him much, Yva, and when she died, this dog died also. He lies embalmed with her on her coffin yonder in the temple, and yesterday I went to look at both of them. The beasts are wonderfully alike, which shows the everlastingness of blood."

He paused a while, lost in thought, then continued: "After the deed is done I'll speak with you and you shall choose, Strangers, whether you will die your own masters, or live on to serve me. Now there is one problem that is left to me to solve--whether I can save a certain land--do not ask which it is, Humphrey, though I see the question in your eyes--or must let it go with the rest. I only answer you that I will do my best because you love it. So farewell for a while, and, Preacher, be advised by me and do not aim too high again."

"It doesn't matter where I aim," answered Bastin st.u.r.dily, "or whether I hit or miss, since there is something much bigger than me waiting to deal with you. The countries that you think you are going to destroy will sleep quite as well tomorrow as they do tonight, Oro."

"Much better, I think, Preacher, since by then they will have left sorrow and pain and wickedness and war far behind them."

"Where are we to go?" I asked.

"The Lady Yva will show you," he answered, waving his hand, and once more bent over his endless calculations.

Yva beckoned to us and we turned and followed her down the hall. She led us to a street near the gateway of the temple and thence into one of the houses. There was a portico to it leading to a court out of which opened rooms somewhat in the Pompeian fas.h.i.+on. We did not enter the rooms, for at the end of the court were a metal table and three couches also of metal, on which were spread rich-looking rugs. Whence these came I do not know and never asked, but I remember that they were very beautiful and soft as velvet.

"Here you may sleep," she said, "if sleep you can, and eat of the food that you have brought with you. Tomorrow early I will call you when it is time for us to start upon our journey into the bowels of the earth."

"I don't want to go any deeper than we are," said Bastin doubtfully.

"I think that none of us want to go, Bastin," she answered with a sigh.

"Yet go we must. I pray of you, anger the Lord Oro no more on this or any other matter. In your folly you tried to kill him, and as it chanced he bore it well because he loves courage. But another time he may strike back, and then, Bastin--"

"I am not afraid of him," he answered, "but I do not like tunnels.

Still, perhaps it would be better to accompany you than to be left in this place alone. Now I will unpack the food."

Yva turned to go.

"I must leave you," she said, "since my father needs my help. The matter has to do with the Force that he would let loose tomorrow, and its measurements; also with the preparation of the robes that we must wear lest it should harm us in its leap."

Something in her eyes told me that she wished me to follow her, and I did so. Outside the portico where we stood in the desolate, lighted street, she halted.

"If you are not afraid," she said, "meet me at midnight by the statue of Fate in the great temple, for I would speak with you, Humphrey, where, if anywhere, we may be alone."

"I will come, Yva."

"You know the road, and the gates are open, Humphrey."

Then she gave me her hand to kiss and glided away. I returned to the others and we ate, somewhat sparingly, for we wished to save our food in case of need, and having drunk of the Life-water, were not hungry. Also we talked a little, but by common consent avoided the subject of the morrow and what it might bring forth.

We knew that terrible things were afoot, but lacking any knowledge of what these might be, thought it useless to discuss them. Indeed we were too depressed, so much so that even Bastin and Bickley ceased from arguing. The latter was so overcome by the exhibition of Oro's powers when he caused the pistol to leap into the air and discharge itself, that he could not even pluck up courage to laugh at the failure of Bastin's efforts to do justice on the old Super-man, or rather to prevent him from attempting a colossal crime.

At length we lay down on the couches to rest, Bastin remarking that he wished he could turn off the light, also that he did not in the least regret having tried to kill Oro. Sleep seemed to come to the others quickly, but I could only doze, to wake up from time to time. Of this I was not sorry, since whenever I dropped off dreams seemed to pursue me.

For the most part they were of my dead wife. She appeared to be trying to console me for some loss, but the strange thing was that sometimes she spoke with her own voice and sometimes with Yva's, and sometimes looked at me with her own eyes and sometimes with those of Yva. I remember nothing else about these dreams, which were very confused.

After one of them, the most vivid of all, I awoke and looked at my watch. It was half-past eleven, almost time for me to be starting. The other two seemed to be fast asleep. Presently I rose and crept down the court without waking them. Outside the portico, which by the way was a curious example of the survival of custom in architecture, since none was needed in that weatherless place, I turned to the right and followed the wide street to the temple enclosure. Through the pillared courts I went, my footsteps, although I walked as softly as I could, echoing loudly in that intense silence, through the great doors into the utter solitude of the vast and perfect fane.

Words can not tell the loneliness of that place. It flowed over me like a sea and seemed to swallow up my being, so that even the wildest and most dangerous beast would have been welcome as a companion. I was as terrified as a child that wakes to find itself deserted in the dark.

Also an uncanny sense of terrors to come oppressed me, till I could have cried aloud if only to hear the sound of a mortal voice. Yonder was the grim statue of Fate, the Oracle of the Kings of the Sons of Wisdom, which was believed to bow its stony head in answer to their prayers. I ran to it, eager for its terrible shelter, for on either side of it were figures of human beings. Even their cold marble was company of a sort, though alas! over all frowned Fate.

Let anyone imagine himself standing alone beneath the dome of St.

Paul's; in the centre of that cathedral brilliant with mysterious light, and stretched all about it a London that had been dead and absolutely unpeopled for tens of thousands of years. If he can do this he will gather some idea of my physical state. Let him add to his mind-picture a knowledge that on the following day something was to happen not unlike the end of the world, as prognosticated by the Book of Revelation and by most astronomers, and he will have some idea of my mental perturbations.

Add to the mixture a most mystic yet very real love affair and an a.s.signation before that symbol of the cold fate which seems to sway the universes down to the tiniest detail of individual lives, and he may begin to understand what I, Humphrey Arbuthnot, experienced during my vigil in this sanctuary of a vanished race.

It seemed long before Yva came, but at last she did come. I caught sight of her far away beyond the temple gate, flitting through the unholy brightness of the pillared courts like a white moth at night and seeming quite as small. She approached; now she was as a ghost, and then drawing near, changed into a living, breathing, lovely woman. I opened my arms, and with something like a sob she sank into them and we kissed as mortals do.

"I could not come more quickly," she said. "The Lord Oro needed me, and those calculations were long and difficult. Also twice he must visit the place whither we shall go tomorrow, and that took time."

"Then it is close at hand?" I said.

"Humphrey, be not foolish. Do you not remember, who have travelled with him, that Oro can throw his soul afar and bring it back again laden with knowledge, as the feet of a bee are laden with golden dust? Well, he went and went again, and I must wait. And then the robes and s.h.i.+elds; they must be prepared by his arts and mine. Oh! ask not what they are, there is no time to tell, and it matters nothing. Some folk are wise and some are foolish, but all which matters is that within them flows the blood of life and that life breeds love, and that love, as I believe, although Oro does not, breeds immortality. And if so, what is Time but as a grain of sand upon the sh.o.r.e?"

"This, Yva; it is ours, who can count on nothing else."

"Oh! Humphrey, if I thought that, no more wretched creature would breathe tonight upon this great world."

"What do you mean?" I asked, growing fearful, more at her manner and her look than at her words.

"Nothing, nothing, except that Time is so very short. A kiss, a touch, a little light and a little darkness, and it is gone. Ask my father Oro who has lived a thousand years and slept for tens of thousands, as I have, and he will say the same. It is against Time that he fights; he who, believing in nothing beyond, will inherit nothing, as Bastin says; he to whom Time has brought nothing save a pa.s.sing, blood-stained greatness, and triumph ending in darkness and disaster, and hope that will surely suffer hope's eclipse, and power that must lay down its coronet in dust."

"And what has it brought to you, Yva, beyond a fair body and a soul of strength?"

"It has brought a spirit, Humphrey. Between them the body and the soul have bred a spirit, and in the fires of tribulation from that spirit has been distilled the essence of eternal love. That is Time's gift to me, and therefore, although still he rules me here, I mock at Fate," and she waved her hand with a gesture of defiance at the stern-faced, s.e.xless effigy which sat above us, the sword across its knees.

"Look! Look!" she went on in a swelling voice of music, pointing to the statues of the dotard and the beauteous woman. "They implore Fate, they wors.h.i.+p Fate. I do not implore, I do not wors.h.i.+p or ask a sign as even Oro does and as did his forefathers. I rise above and triumph. As Fate, the G.o.d of my people, sets his foot upon the sun, so I set my foot upon Fate, and thence, like a swimmer from a rock, leap into the waters of Immortality."

I looked at her whose presence, as happened from time to time, had grown majestic beyond that of woman; I studied her deep eyes which were full of lights, not of this world, and I grew afraid.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Yva, you talk like one who has finished with life."

"It pa.s.ses," she answered quickly. "Life pa.s.ses like breath fading from a mirror. So should all talk who breathe beneath the sun."

"Yes, Yva, but if you went and left me still breathing on that mocking gla.s.s--"

"If so, what of it? Will not your breath fade also and join mine where all vapours go? Or if it were yours that faded and mine that remained for some few hours, is it not the same? I think, Humphrey, that already you have seen a beloved breath melt from the gla.s.s of life," she added, looking at me earnestly.

I bowed my head and answered:

"Yes, and therefore I am ashamed."

"Oh! why should you be ashamed, Humphrey, who are not sure but that two breaths may yet be one breath? How do you know that there is a difference between them?"

"You drive me mad, Yva. I cannot understand."

"Nor can I altogether, Humphrey. Why should I, seeing that I am no more than woman, as you are no more than man? I would always have you remember, Humphrey, that I am no spirit or sorceress, but just a woman--like her you lost."