CHAPTER XXVIII
THE KILLING OF DESIRE
We drove in Leonora's car through London. The streets were crowded. I donot think that much routine work was done that day. People formed littlecrowds on the pavements, and at Oxford Circus someone was speaking to alarge concourse from the seat of a motor lorry.
Leonora seemed extraordinarily apathetic. She leaned back in the car andseemed uninterested in the passing scene. Sarakoff, wrapped up in a furrug, stared dreamily in front of him. As far as I can recall them, myfeelings during that swift tour of London were vague. The buildings, thepeople, the familiar signs in the streets, the shop windows, all seemedto have lost in some degree the quality of reality. I was detached fromthem; and whenever I made an effort to rouse myself, the ugliness andmeaninglessness of everything I saw seemed strangely emphasized.
When we reached Harley Street we found my house little damaged, save fora broken panel in the green front door and a few panes of glass smashedin the lower windows. The house was empty. The servants had vanished.
Leonora said she wished to go home and she drove off in the car.Sarakoff did not even wave farewell to her, but went straight up to hisroom and lay down on the bed. I went into the study and sat in my chairby the fireplace.
I was roused by the opening of the door, and looking up I saw a facethat I recognized, but for the moment I could not fit a name to it. Myvisitor came in calmly, and sat down opposite me.
"My name is Thornduck," he said. "I came to consult you about my healtha few days ago."
"I remember," I said.
"Your front door was open so I walked in."
I nodded. His eyes, stained with blue, rested on me.
"I have been thinking," he said. "It struck me that there was somethingyou forgot to tell me the other day."
I nodded again.
"You began, if you remember, by asking me if I believed in miracles.That set me thinking, and as I saw your name in the paper, connectedwith the Blue Disease, I knew you were a miracle-monger. How did you doit?"
"I don't know. It was all due to my black cat. Tripped over it, gotconcussion and regained my senses with the idea that led up to thegerm."
He smiled.
"A black cat," he mused. "I wonder if it's all black magic?"
"That's what Hammer suggested. I don't know what kind of magic it is."
"Of course it _is_ magic," said Thornduck.
"Magic?"
"Of course. Have you even thought what kind of magic it is?"
"No."
"A big magic, such as you have worked, is just bringing the distantfuture into the present with a rush."
"Sarakoff had some such idea," I murmured. "He spoke of anticipatingour evolution by centuries at one stroke."
"Exactly. That's magic. The question remains--is it black magic?" Hecrossed his thin legs and leaned back in the chair. "I got the BlueDisease the day before yesterday and since then I've thought more than Ihave ever done in all my life. When I read in the paper this morningthat you said the Blue Disease conferred immortality on people I was notsurprised. I had come to the same conclusion in a roundabout way. But Iwant to ask you one question. Did you know beforehand that _it killeddesire_?"
"No. Neither Sarakoff nor I foresaw that."
"Well, if you had let me into your confidence before I could have toldyou that right away in the general principle contained in the sayingthat you can't eat your cake and have it. It's just another aspect ofthe law of the conservation of energy, isn't it?"
"I always had a doubt----"
"Naturally. It's intuitional. The laws of the universe are justintuitions put into words. You've carried out an enormous spiritualexperiment to prove what all religions have always asserted howeverobscurely. All religion teaches that you can't eat your cake and haveit. That's the essence of religion, and you, formerly a cut-and-driedscientist, have gone and proved it to the whole world for eternity.Rather odd, isn't it?"
I watched his face with interest. It was thin and the complexion wastransparent. His eyes, wonderfully wide and brilliantly stained by thegerm, produced in me a new sensation. It was akin to enthusiasm, but init was something of love, such as I had never experienced for any man. Ibecame uplifted. My whole being began to vibrate to some strangelydelicate and exquisite influence, and I knew that Thornduck was themedium through which these impulses reached me. It was not his words butthe atmosphere round him that raised me temporarily to this degree ofreceptivity.
"It is odd," I said.
He continued to look at me.
"You have a message for me?" I observed at last.
"Why, yes, I have," he replied. "You have done wrong, Harden. You haveworked black magic, and it will fail out of sheer necessity."
"Tell me what I have done."
"You have artificially produced a condition of life many ages beforehumanity is ready to receive it. The body of desire is being worked upby endless labour into something more delicate and sensitive--into atransmutation that we can only dimly understand. At present the wholeplot of life is based on the principle of desire and in this way peopleare kept busy, constantly spurred on to thought and activity byessentially selfish motives. It is only in abstract thought that theselfless ideal has a real place as yet, but the very fact that it isthere shows what lies at the top of the ladder that humanity is sopainfully climbing. As long as desire is the plot of life, death isnecessary, for its terrible shadow sharpens desire and makes the prizesmore alluring and the struggle more desperate. And so man goes on,ceaselessly active and striving, for without activity and striving thereis no perfecting of the instrument. You can't have upward progress inconditions of stagnation. All that strange incredible side of life,called the Devil, is the inner plot of life that makes the wheels goround and evolution possible. It is vitally necessary to keep the vastmachinery running at the present level of evolution. Desire is thefurnace in the engine-house. The wheels go round and the fabric isslowly and intricately spun and only pessimists and bigots fail to seeevidence of any purpose in it all. Now what has your Blue Disease done?It has taken the whole plot out of life at its present stage ofdevelopment at one fell swoop. It has killed Desire--put out the furnacebefore the pattern in the fabric is nearly complete."
"But I never could see that, Thornduck. How could I foresee that?"
"If you had had a grain of vision you would have known that you couldn'tgive humanity the gift of immortality without some compensatory loss.The law of compensation is as sure as the law of gravity--you ought toknow that."
"I had dim feelings--I knew Sarakoff was wrong, with his dream ofphysical bliss--but how could I foresee that desire would go?"
"As a mere scientist, test-tube in hand, you couldn't. But you'rebetter than that. You've got a glimmering of moral imagination in you."
He fell into a reverie.
"You are keeping something back. Tell me plainly what you mean," Iasked.
"Don't you see that if the germ lasts any length of time," he said, "themachinery will run down and--stop?"