When the World Shook

  Chapter XIX. The Proposals of Bastin and Bickley

  So far as my body was concerned I grew well with great rapidity, thoughit was long before I got back my strength. Thus I could not walk far orendure any sustained exertion. With my mind it was otherwise. I can notexplain what had happened to it; indeed I do not know, but in a sense itseemed to have become detached and to have assumed a kind of personalityof its own. At times it felt as though it were no longer an inhabitantof the body, but rather its more or less independent partner. I wasperfectly clear-headed and of insanity I experienced no symptoms. Yet mymind, I use that term from lack of a better, was not entirely under mycontrol. For one thing, at night it appeared to wander far away, thoughwhither it went and what it saw there I could never remember.

  I record this because possibly it explains certain mysterious events, ifthey were events and not dreams, which shortly I must set out. I spoketo Bickley about the matter. He put it by lightly, saying that it wasonly a result of my long and most severe illness and that I shouldsteady down in time, especially if we could escape from that island andits unnatural atmosphere. Yet as he spoke he glanced at me shrewdlywith his quick eyes, and when he turned to go away I heard him muttersomething to himself about "unholy influences" and "that confounded oldOro."

  The words were spoken to himself and quite beneath his breath, and ofcourse not meant to reach me. But one of the curious concomitants of mystate was that all my senses, and especially my hearing, had become mostabnormally acute. A whisper far away was now to me like a loud remarkmade in a room.

  Bickley's reflection, for I can scarcely call it more, set me thinking.Yva had said that Oro sent me medicine which was administered to mewithout Bickley's knowledge, and as she believed, saved my life, orcertainly my reason. What was in it? I wondered. Then there was thatLife-water which Yva brought and insisted upon my drinking every day.Undoubtedly it was a marvelous tonic and did me good. But it had othereffects also. Thus, as she said would be the case, after a course ofit I conceived the greatest dislike, which I may add has never entirelyleft me, of any form of meat, also of alcohol. All I seemed to want wasthis water with fruit, or such native vegetables as there were. Bickleydisapproved and made me eat fish occasionally, but even this revoltedme, and since I gained steadily in weight, as we found out by a simplecontrivance, and remained healthy in every other way, soon he allowed meto choose my own diet.

  About this time Oro began to pay me frequent visits. He always came atnight, and what is more I knew when he was coming, although he nevergave me warning. Here I should explain that during my illness Bastin,who was so ingenious in such matters, had built another hut in which heand Bickley slept, of course when they were not watching me, leaving ourold bed-chamber to myself.

  Well, I would wake up and be aware that Oro was coming. Then he appearedin a silent and mysterious way, as though he had materialised in theroom, for I never saw him pass the doorway. In the moonlight, or thestarlight, which flowed through the entrance and the side of the hutthat was only enclosed with latticework, I perceived him seat himselfupon a certain stool, looking like a most majestic ghost with hisflowing robes, long white beard, hooked nose and hawk eyes. In theday-time he much resembled the late General Booth whom I had oftenseen, except for certain added qualities of height and classic beauty ofcountenance. At night, however, he resembled no one but himself, indeedthere was something mighty and godlike in his appearance, something thatmade one feel that he was not as are other men.

  For a while he would sit and look at me. Then he began to speak in alow, vibrant voice. What did he speak of? Well, many matters. It was asthough he were unburdening that hoary soul of his because it could nolonger endure the grandeur of its own loneliness. Amongst sundry secretthings, he told me of the past history of this world of ours, and of themighty civilisations which for uncounted ages he and his forefathers hadruled by the strength of their will and knowledge, of the dwindlingof their race and of the final destruction of its enemies, although Inoticed that now he no longer said that this was his work alone. Onenight I asked him if he did not miss all such pomp and power.

  Then suddenly he broke out, and for the first time I really learned whatambition can be when it utterly possesses the soul of man.

  "Are you mad," he asked, "that you suppose that I, Oro, the King ofkings, can be content to dwell solitary in a great cave with none butthe shadows of the dead to serve me? Nay, I must rule again and be evengreater than before, or else I too will die. Better to face the future,even if it means oblivion, than to remain thus a relic of a gloriouspast, still living and yet dead, like that statue of the great god Fatewhich you saw in the temple of my worship."

  "Bastin does not think that the future means oblivion," I remarked.

  "I know it. I have studied his faith and find it too humble for mytaste, also too new. Shall I, Oro, creep a suppliant before any Power,and confess what Bastin is pleased to call my sins? Nay, I who am greatwill be the equal of all greatness, or nothing."

  He paused a while, then went on:

  "Bastin speaks of 'eternity.' Where and what then is this eternity whichif it has no end can have had no beginning? I know the secret of thesuns and their attendant worlds, and they are no more eternal than theinsect which glitters for an hour. Out of shapeless, rushing gases theygathered to live their day, and into gases at last they dissolve againwith all they bore."

  "Yes," I answered, "but they reform into new worlds."

  "That have no part with the old. This world, too, will melt, departingto whence it came, as your sacred writings say, and what then of thosewho dwelt and dwell thereon? No, Man of today, give me Time in which Irule and keep your dreams of an Eternity that is not, and in which youmust still crawl and serve, even if it were. Yet, if I might, I confessit, I would live on for ever, but as Master not as Slave."

  On another night he began to tempt me, very subtly. "I see a spark ofgreatness in you, Humphrey," he said, "and it comes into my heart thatyou, too, might learn to rule. With Yva, the last of my blood, it isotherwise. She is the child of my age and of a race outworn; too gentle,too much all womanly. The soul that triumphs must shine like steel inthe sun, and cut if need be; not merely be beauteous and shed perfumelike a lily in the shade. Yet she is very wise and fair," here helooked at me, "perchance of her might come children such as were theirforefathers, who again would wield the sceptre of the dominion of theearth."

  I made no answer, wondering what he meant exactly and thinking it wisestto be silent.

  "You are of the short-lived races," he went on, "yet very much a man,not without intelligence, and by the arts I have I can so strengthenyour frame that it will endure the shocks of time for three such livesas yours, or perchance for more, and then--"

  Again he paused and went on:

  "The Daughter of kings likes you also, perhaps because you resemble--"here he fixed me with his piercing eyes, "a certain kinglet of baseblood whom once she also liked, but whom it was my duty to destroy.Well, I must think. I must study this world of yours also and thereinyou may help me. Perhaps afterwards I will tell you how. Now sleep."

  In another moment he was gone, but notwithstanding his powerful command,for a while I could not sleep. I understood that he was offering Yva tome, but upon what terms? That was the question. With her was to go greatdominion over the kingdoms of the earth. I could not help rememberingthat always this has been and still is Satan's favourite bait. To me itdid not particularly appeal. I had been ambitious in my time--who isnot that is worth his salt? I could have wished to excel in something,literature or art, or whatever it might be, and thus to ensure thememory of my name in the world.

  Of course this is a most futile desire, seeing that soon or late everyname must fade out of the world like an unfixed photograph which isexposed to the sun. Even if it could endure, as the old demigod, ordemidevil, Oro, had pointed out, very shortly, by comparison with Time'sunmeasured vastness, the whole solar system will also fade. So of whatuse is this feeble love of f
ame and this vain attempt to be rememberedthat animates us so strongly? Moreover, the idea of enjoying meretemporal as opposed to intellectual power, appealed to me not at all.I am a student of history and I know what has been the lot of kings andthe evil that, often enough, they work in their little day.

  Also if I needed any further example, there was that of Oro himself. Hehad outlived the greatness of his House, as a royal family is called,and after some gigantic murder, if his own story was to be believed,indulged in a prolonged sleep. Now he awoke to find himself quitealone in the world, save for a daughter with whom he did not agree orsympathise. In short, he was but a kind of animated mummy inspired byone idea which I felt quite sure would be disappointed, namely, to renewhis former greatness. To me he seemed as miserable a figure as one couldimagine, brooding and plotting in his illuminated cave, at the end of anextended but misspent life.

  Also I wondered what he, or rather his ego, had been doing during allthose two hundred and fifty thousand years of sleep. Possibly if Yva'stheory, as I understood it, were correct, he had reincarnated as Attila,or Tamerlane, or Napoleon, or even as Chaka the terrible Zulu king.At any rate there he was still in the world, filled with the dreadof death, but consumed now as ever by his insatiable and most uselessfinite ambitions.

  Yva, also! Her case was his, but yet how different. In all this longnight of Time she had but ripened into one of the sweetest and mostgentle women that ever the world bore. She, too, was great in her way,it appeared in her every word and gesture, but where was the ferocityof her father? Where his desire to reach to splendour by treading on ablood-stained road paved with broken human hearts? It did not exist.Her nature was different although her body came of a long line of thesepower-loving kings. Why this profound difference of the spirit? Likeeverything else it was a mystery. The two were as far apart as thePoles. Everyone must have hated Oro, from the beginning, however much hefeared him, but everyone who came in touch with her must have loved Yva.

  Here I may break into my personal narrative to say that this, by theirown confession, proved to be true of two such various persons as Bastinand Bickley.

  "The truth, which I am sure it would be wrong to hide from you,Arbuthnot," said the former to me one day, "is that during your longillness I fell in love, I suppose that is the right word, with theGlittering Lady. After thinking the matter over also, I conceived thatit would be proper to tell her so if only to clear the air and preventfuture misunderstandings. As I remarked to her on that occasion, I hadhesitated long, as I was not certain how she would fill the place of thewife of the incumbent of an English parish."

  "Mothers' Meetings, and the rest," I suggested.

  "Exactly so, Arbuthnot. Also there were the views of the Bishop to beconsidered, who might have objected to the introduction into the dioceseof a striking person who so recently had been a heathen, and to one insuch strong contrast to my late beloved wife."

  "I suppose you didn't consider the late Mrs. Bastin's views on thesubject of re-marriage. I remember that they were strong," I remarkedrather maliciously.

  "No, I did not think it necessary, since the Scriptural instructions onthe matter are very clear, and in another world no doubt all jealousies,even Sarah's, will be obliterated. Upon that point my conscience wasquite easy. So when I found that, unlike her parent, the Lady Yva wasmuch inclined to accept the principles of the faith in which it is myprivilege to instruct her, I thought it proper to say to her that ifultimately she made up her mind to do so--of course this was a sine quanon--I should be much honoured, and as a man, not as a priest, itwould make me most happy if she would take me as a husband. Of courseI explained to her that I considered, under the circumstances, I couldquite lawfully perform the marriage ceremony myself with you and Bickleyas witnesses, even should Oro refuse to give her away. Also I toldher that although after her varied experiences in the past, life atFulcombe, if we could ever get there, might be a little monotonous,still it would not be entirely devoid of interest."

  "You mean Christmas decorations and that sort of thing?"

  "Yes, and choir treats and entertaining Deputations and attending otherChurch activities."

  "Well, and what did she say, Bastin?"

  "Oh! she was most kind and flattering. Indeed that hour will alwaysremain the pleasantest of my life. I don't know how it happened, butwhen it was over I felt quite delighted that she had refused me. Indeedon second thoughts, I am not certain but that I shall be much happier inthe capacities of a brother and teacher which she asked me to fill, thanI should have been as her husband. To tell you the truth, Arbuthnot,there are moments when I am not sure whether I entirely understand theLady Yva. It was rather like proposing to one's guardian angel."

  "Yes," I said, "that's about it, old fellow. 'Guardian Angel' is not abad name for her."

  Afterwards I received the confidence of Bickley.

  "Look here, Arbuthnot," he said. "I want to own up to something. Ithink I ought to, because of certain things I have observed, in order toprevent possible future misunderstandings."

  "What's that?" I asked innocently.

  "Only this. As you know, I have always been a confirmed bacheloron principle. Women introduce too many complications into life, andalthough it involves some sacrifice, on the whole, I have thoughtit best to do without them and leave the carrying on of the world toothers."

  "Well, what of it? Your views are not singular, Bickley."

  "Only this. While you were ill the sweetness of that Lady Yva and herwonderful qualities as a nurse overcame me. I went to pieces all of asudden. I saw in her a realisation of every ideal I had ever entertainedof perfect womanhood. So to speak, my resolves of a lifetime melted likewax in the sun. Notwithstanding her queer history and the marvels withwhich she is mixed up, I wished to marry her. No doubt her physicalloveliness was at the bottom of it, but, however that may be, there itwas."

  "She is beautiful," I commented; "though I daresay older than shelooks."

  "That is a point on which I made no inquiries, and I should advise you,when your turn comes, as no doubt it will, to follow my example. Youknow, Arbuthnot," he mused, "however lovely a woman may be, it would putone off if suddenly she announced that she was--let us say--a hundredand fifty years old."

  "Yes," I admitted, "for nobody wants to marry the contemporary of hisgreat-grandmother. However, she gave her age as twenty-seven years andthree moons."

  "And doubtless for once did not tell the truth. But, as she does notlook more than twenty-five, I think that we may all agree to let itstand at that, namely, twenty-seven, plus an indefinite period of sleep.At any rate, she is a sweet and most gracious woman, apparently in thebloom of youth, and, to cut it short, I fell in love with her."

  "Like Bastin," I said.

  "Bastin!" exclaimed Bickley indignantly. "You don't mean to say thatclerical oaf presumed--well, well, after all, I suppose that he is aman, so one mustn't be hard on him. But who could have thought that hewould run so cunning, even when he knew my sentiments towards the lady?I hope she told him her mind."

  "The point is, what did she tell you, Bickley?"

  "Me? Oh, she was perfectly charming! It really was a pleasure to berefused by her, she puts one so thoroughly at one's ease." (Here,remembering Bastin and his story, I turned away my face to hide asmile.) "She said--what did she say exactly? Such a lot that it isdifficult to remember. Oh! that she was not thinking of marriage. Also,that she had not yet recovered from some recent love affair which lefther heart sore, since the time of her sleep did not count. Also, thather father would never consent, and that the mere idea of such a thingwould excite his animosity against all of us."

  "Is that all?" I asked.

  "Not quite. She added that she felt wonderfully flattered and extremelyhonoured by what I had been so good as to say to her. She hoped,however, that I should never repeat it or even allude to the matteragain, as her dearest wish was to be able to look upon me as her mostintimate friend to whom she could always come for sympathy and coun
sel."

  "What happened then?"

  "Nothing, of course, except that I promised everything that she wished,and mean to stick to it, too. Naturally, I was very sore and upset, butI am getting over it, having always practised self-control."

  "I am sorry for you, old fellow."

  "Are you?" he asked suspiciously. "Then perhaps you have tried yourluck, too?"

  "No, Bickley."

  His face fell a little at this denial, and he answered:

  "Well, it would have been scarcely decent if you had, seeing how latelyyou were married. But then, so was that artful Bastin. Perhaps you willget over it--recent marriage, I mean--as he has." He hesitated a while,then went on: "Of course you will, old fellow; I know it, and, what ismore, I seem to know that when your turn comes you will get a differentanswer. If so, it will keep her in the family as it were--and good luckto you. Only--"

  "Only what?" I asked anxiously.

  "To be honest, Arbuthnot, I don't think that there will be real goodluck for any one of us over this woman--not in the ordinary sense, Imean. The whole business is too strange and superhuman. Is she quite awoman, and could she really marry a man as others do?"

  "It is curious that you should talk like that," I said uneasily. "Ithought that you had made up your mind that the whole business waseither illusion or trickery--I mean, the odd side of it."

  "If it is illusion, Arbuthnot, then a man cannot marry an illusion. Andif it is trickery, then he will certainly be tricked. But, supposingthat I am wrong, what then?"

  "You mean, supposing things are as they seem to be?"

  "Yes. In that event, Arbuthnot, I am sure that something will occur toprevent your being united to a woman who lived thousands of years ago. Iam sorry to say it, but Fate will intervene. Remember, it is the godof her people that I suppose she worships, and, I may add, to which thewhole world bows."

  At his words a kind of chill fell upon me. I think he saw or divined it,for after a few remarks upon some indifferent matter, he turned and wentaway.

  Shortly after this Yva came to sit with me. She studied me for a whileand I studied her. I had reason to do so, for I observed that of lateher dress had become much more modern, and on the present occasionthis struck me forcibly. I do not know exactly in what the change, orchanges, consisted, because I am not skilled in such matters and canonly judge of a woman's garments by their general effect. At any rate,the gorgeous sweeping robes were gone, and though her attire stilllooked foreign and somewhat oriental, with a touch of barbaric splendourabout it--it was simpler than it had been and showed more of her figure,which was delicate, yet gracious.

  "You have changed your robes, Lady," I said. "Yes, Humphrey. Bastin gaveme pictures of those your women wear." (On further investigation I foundthat this referred to an old copy of the Queen newspaper, which, somehowor other, had been brought with the books from the ship.) "I have triedto copy them a little," she added doubtfully.

  "How do you do it? Where do you get the material?" I asked.

  "Oh!" she answered with an airy wave of her hand, "I make it--it isthere."

  "I don't understand," I said, but she only smiled radiantly, offering nofurther explanation. Then, before I could pursue the subject, she askedme suddenly:

  "What has Bickley been saying to you about me?" I fenced, answering:"I don't know. Bastin and Bickley talk of little else. You seem to havebeen a great deal with them while I was ill."

  "Yes, a great deal. They are the nearest to you who were so sick. Is itnot so?"

  "I don't know," I answered again. "In my illness it seemed to me thatyou were the nearest."

  "About Bastin's words I can guess," she went on. "But I ask again--whathas Bickley been saying to you about me? Of the first part, let it be;tell me the rest."

  I intended to evade her question, but she fixed those violet, compellingeyes upon me and I was obliged to answer.

  "I believe you know as well as I do," I said; "but if you will have it,it was that you are not as other human women are, and that he who wouldtreat you as such, must suffer; that was the gist of it."

  "Some might be content to suffer for such as I," she answered with quietsweetness. "Even Bastin and Bickley may be content to suffer in theirown little ways."

  "You know that is not what I meant," I interrupted angrily, for I feltthat she was throwing reflections on me.

  "No; you meant that you agreed with Bickley that I am not quite a woman,as you know women."

  I was silent, for her words were true.

  Then she blazed out into one of her flashes of splendour, like somethingthat takes fire on an instant; like the faint and distant star whichflames into sudden glory before the watcher's telescope.

  "It is true that I am not as your women are--your poor, pale women,the shadows of an hour with night behind them and before. Because I amhumble and patient, do you therefore suppose that I am not great? Manfrom the little country across the sea, I lived when the world wasyoung, and gathered up the ancient wisdom of a greater race than yours,and when the world is old I think that I still shall live, though not inthis shape or here, with all that wisdom's essence burning in my breast,and with all beauty in my eyes. Bickley does not believe although heworships. You only half believe and do not worship, because memory holdsyou back, and I myself do not understand. I only know though knowingso much, still I seek roads to learning, even the humble road calledBastin, that yet may lead my feet to the gate of an immortal city."

  "Nor do I understand how all this can be, Yva," I said feebly, for shedazzled and overwhelmed me with her blaze of power.

  "No, you do not understand. How can you, when even I cannot? Thus fortwo hundred and fifty thousand years I slept, and they went by as alightning flash. One moment my father gave me the draught and I laid medown, the next I awoke with you bending over me, or so it seemed. Yetwhere was I through all those centuries when for me time had ceased?Tell me, Humphrey, did you dream at all while you were ill? I askbecause down in that lonely cavern where I sleep a strange dream came tome one night. It was of a journey which, as I thought, you and I seemedto make together, past suns and universes to a very distant earth. Itmeant nothing, Humphrey. If you and I chanced to have dreamed the samething, it was only because my dream travelled to you. It is most common,or used to be. Humphrey, Bickley is quite right, I am not altogetheras your women are, and I can bring no happiness to any man, or at theleast, to one who cannot wait. Therefore, perhaps you would do well tothink less of me, as I have counselled Bastin and Bickley."

  Then again she gazed at me with her wonderful, great eyes, and, shakingher glittering head a little, smiled and went.

  But oh! that smile drew my heart after her.