CHAPTER III
THE BUTTERFLIES
Two years passed by after my return to London without special incident,save that my black cat died. My work as a consulting physician occupiedmost of my time. In the greater world beyond my consulting-room doorlife went on undisturbed by any thought of the approaching upheaval,full of the old tragedies of ambition and love and sickness. Butsometimes as I examined my patients and listened to their tales ofsuffering and pain, a curious contraction of the heart would come uponme at the thought that perhaps some day, not so very far remote, all theendless cycle of disease and misery would cease, and a new dawn of hopeburst with blinding radiance upon weary humanity. And then a mood ofunbelief would darken my mind and I would view the creation of thebacillus as an idle and vain dream, an illusion never to berealized....
One evening as I sat alone before my study fire, my servant entered andannounced there was a visitor to see me.
"Show him in here," I said, thinking he was probably a late patient whohad come on urgent business.
A moment later Professor Sarakoff himself was shown in.
I rose with a cry of welcome and clasped his hand.
"My dear fellow, why didn't you let me know you were coming?" I cried.
He smiled upon me with a mysterious brightness.
"Harden," he said in a low voice, as if afraid of being heard, "I cameon a sudden impulse. I wanted to show you something. Wait a moment."
He went out into the hall and returned bearing a square box in hishands. He laid it on the table and then carefully closed the door.
"It is the first big result of my experiments," he whispered. He openedthe box and drew out a glass case covered over with white muslin.
He stepped back from the table and looked at me triumphantly.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Lift up the muslin."
I did so. On the wooden floor of the glass case were a great number ofdark objects. At first I thought they were some kind of grub, and thenon closer inspection I saw what they were.
"Butterflies!" I exclaimed.
He held up a warning finger and tiptoed to the door. He opened itsuddenly and seemed relieved to find no one outside.
"Hush!" he said, closing the door again. "Yes, they are butterflies." Hecame back to the table and gave one of the glass panels a tap with hisfinger. The butterflies stirred and some spread their wings. They were abrilliant greenish purple shot with pale blue. "Yes, they arebutterflies."
I peered at them.
"The specimen is unknown in England as far as I know."
"Quite so. They are peculiar to Russia."
"But what are you doing with them?" I asked.
He continued to smile.
"Do you notice anything remarkable about these butterflies?"
"No," I said after prolonged observation, "I can't say I do ... savethat they are not denizens of this country."
"I think we might christen them," he said. "Let us call them LepidopteraSarakoffii." He tapped the glass again and watched the insects move."But they are very remarkable," he continued. "Do they appear healthy toyou?"
"Perfectly."
"You agree, then, that they are in good condition?"
"They seem to be in excellent condition."
"No signs of decay--or disease?"
"None."
He nodded.
"And yet," he said thoughtfully, "they should be, according to naturallaw, a mass of decayed tissue."
"Ah!" I looked at him with dawning comprehension. "You mean----?"
"I mean that they should have died long ago."
"How long do they live normally?"
"About twenty to thirty hours. At the outside their life is not morethan thirty-six hours. These are somewhat older."
I gazed at the little creatures crawling aimlessly about. _Aimless_, didI say? There they were, filling up the floor of the glass case, movingwith difficulty, getting in each other's way, sprawling and colliding,apparently without aim or purpose. At that spectacle my thoughts mightwell have taken a leap into the future and seen, instead of a crowdedmass of butterflies, a crowded mass of humanity. I asked Sarakoff aquestion.
"How old are they?" I expected to hear they had existed perhaps a day ortwo beyond their normal limit.
"They are almost exactly a year old," was the reply. I stared,marvelling. A year old! I bent down, gazing at the turbulent restlessmass of gaudy colour. A year old--and still vital and healthy!
"You mean these insects have lived a whole year?" I exclaimed, stillunconvinced.
He nodded.
"But that is a miracle!"
"It is, proportionately, equal to a man living twenty-five thousandyears instead of the normal seventy."
"You don't suggest----?"
He replaced the muslin covering and took out his pipe and tobacco pouch.Absurd, outrageous ideas crowded to my mind. Was it, then, possible thatour dream was to become reality?
"I don't suppose they'll live much longer," I stammered.
He was silent until he had lit his pipe.
"If you met a man who had lived twenty-five thousand years, would you beinclined to tell me he would not live much longer, simply on generalconsiderations?"
I could not find a satisfactory answer.
As a matter of fact the question scarcely conveyed anything to me. Onecan realize only by reference to familiar standards. The idea of a manwho has lived one hundred and fifty years is to me a more realisticcuriosity than the idea of a man twenty-five thousand years old. But Icaught a glimpse, as it were, of strange figures, moving about in acolourless background, with calm gestures, slow speeches, silencesperhaps a year in length. The familiar outline of London crumbledsuddenly away, the blotches of shadow and the coloured shafts of lightstriking between the gaps in the crowds, the violet-lit tubes, thetraffic, faded into the conception of twenty-five thousand years. Allthis many-angled, many-coloured modern spectacle that was a few thousandyears removed from cave dwellings, was rolled flat and level, merginginto this grey formless carpet of time.
Next morning Sarakoff returned to Russia, bearing with him the wonderfulbutterflies, and for many months I heard nothing from him. But before hewent he told me that he would return soon.
"I have only one step further to take and the ideal germ will becreated, Harden. Then we poor mortals will realize the dream that hashaunted us since the beginning of time. We will attain immortality, andthe fear of death, round which everything is built, will vanish. We willbecome gods!"
"Or devils, Sarakoff," I murmured.