CHAPTER XXIV
Day lifts from her couch of mists to awaken betimes the Sea, her slumbering lord.
Last evening he had ordered her from his presence, as usual ashamed that she should witness his embrace of that mistress of his passions, Night, who incites him to the blackest of his crimes. Yet this morning she tiptoes down to his vast chamber, pale and sleepy-eyed in her diaphanous peignoir, there to hover over him, eager and fearful to give the early call.
Will he arise blustering, splash about in his bath and growl forenoon complaints at her until she can no longer smile—until she further angers him with tears? Or will his mood be equable? Will he respond to her sunny smiles and the sweet-zephyred nothings which she best knows to whisper in his ear?
Amiable enough he looks. But then, amiability usually characterizes the sleep of his billowy sort of spouse. Subconsciously he must have heard her step, for he sighs, tosses restlessly and flings up shapeless arms as though to enfold her.
Forgiveness flushes Day’s cheeks, her finger-tips, her dainty toes. Forgiveness is the power by which, through the blisses and tribulations of æons of their marital state, she has remained his dearest love and inspiration. It has kept her face fresh as when, in their infancy, the Great Minister made them one. It has enabled her to forget his brutalities of yesterday in the hope of kindness to-day.
Never comes a morn without much for them to do. For him there are ships to be tided from shore to shore, flying things of the air to be cradled when in need of rest, myriads of monsters and minnows to be fed, shells, pearls and corals to fashion in his spare time. And she never rests from dawn to dark in her effort to keep the sky clear that she may smile something of her own vitality into all living things under her eye, be they fishes of the sea, fowl of the air, or man from the various islands which so irritate her irascible consort.
All looks well for her now, unless——
An over-shoulder glance she casts about the horizon. There is an ominous look over there, a somewhat darker speck against the banks of gray. Are her archest enemies, the trio of fire-eyed Cyclops, planning interference with the mercies of her upper air?
No matter what portends, she must awaken her lord. Usually he scowls for hours should she be late about his call. Forcing a smile, she droops over him until, with bride-like ardor, she kisses him on the lips. A moment his watery eyes gaze into hers. Then he gulps from pleasure at the desirable sight of her; lurches toward her; makes a clutch at her scant draperies.
But not for a moment does she allow herself to be caught to his moist, palpitant breast. Something immediate demands her attention. She makes excuse—a monster beetle without wings then appearing from the direction of land. With sweet-soft adjurations that her lazy old Sea fall not again into a doze, she hurries to meet and greet the gleaming thing.
Nothing had Dolores seen of the dirigibles of Earth, save far-up glimpses of those which occasionally passed over her New York. Now, with amaze, she noted the proportions of the air-liner which had intruded into the reflection of dawn at sea. In the wan light, it looked to surpass the largest ocean steamship she had seen and held its course steadily, as though its blunt nose were cleaving waves of water, rather than of atmosphere. Through the slow rise of the sun an idea of its speed was given.
Silver-jacketed it was, cigar-shaped and massively concrete on its atmospheric track. Her credulity was taxed, however, to realize that this at which she gazed was no vision, such as that dreamed by Kipling in “The Night Mail,” but a scene of the moment in the mortal world. Actual as though she were watching from some anchored ship nearby were the colors of the wingless beetle and the very vaguest tints of water and sky.
As the aluminum-painted envelope seemed about to pass from sight across the rim of the prismatic pool, some shift of the reflecting machinery refound it and gave a closer view. The deck was shown, studded with cabins and protected by shields of glass. Although lacking the width of the modern ocean vessel, it was comfortably roomy, to judge by the steamer chairs being placed about for late-sleeping passengers. As an assurance that this was no cinematograph picture, the sailor figures engaged did not move about with the artificial speed which so often discounts the realism of the film, but with that deliberation and casualness peculiar to the life which is realer than “reel.”
“Some jump from the day when they flew wooden kites over oil engines, isn’t it?”
At Sin’s question, the girl-shade glanced around into that map of malignity, his face. “Too wonderful almost to believe. In the air, truly, a man must feel like the monarch of all he surveys.”
“Untruly, he thinks he is.”
The interruption came from behind. Turning, they saw that His Majesty had entered the box. His frown suggested nerve tension, rather than ill temper. His voice was oiled with triumph over the demonstration of his most unique invention. Nevertheless the accented word of his comment aroused in Dolores the uneasiness which had kept pace with them through his personally-conducted tour of Greater Gehenna.
Directly on seating himself, he reached for the telephone. “Don’t waste all day on scenics. This is no travelogue. Get to the interiors!”
Tapping the box-rail so impatiently that sulphurous spots glowed from the points of contact, he watched the pool. Dolores and the iniquitous escort on her other side awaited with interest the result of his command.
Soon they were viewing a luxuriously appointed stateroom. The full-length brass bedstead was occupied by a sleeping man. His up-thrown, silk-clad arm concealed the lower part of his face, but his forehead and back-tossed hair showed clearly.
“John!” The muffled exclamation escaped the girl-shade, half a sob, half a croon of joy.
A vaguer male figure became discernible, seated near the head of the bed. Leaning over the pillow, he whispered to the man. Although his outlines developed somewhat to the gaze, he continued to lack the clarity of other objects about the cabin; impressed one more as a creature of the spirit than the flesh.
The sleeper seemed to feel this insinuating presence. He turned as if in troubled dreams; covered his ears with his hands; drew away so stressfully that his head bumped a bedpost. He awakened; dazedly looked about; glanced at his watch; decided to arise.
This evidently was a prefatory scene. There ensued an interval which Satan occupied with issuing detailed orders for the further manipulation of the great reflector. When the over-grown “blimp” again was mirrored in the pool, the lapse of time at once was manifest. Several passengers paced the deck and below breakfast was underway. In the lee of one of the cabins, a woman, richly clad in furs, was being tucked into her chair by a fur-coated man wearing a plaid cap.
“D’Elie still with Catherine!” exclaimed Dolores with resentment.
“And with John Cabot aboard. My latest in the infernal triangle,” His Highness pointed pridefully. “Note that they have foregone all pretense of the love-making that used to engage them, these two who are agreed to exchange a title for a dot when husband sees fit to dot the matrimonial dash.”
Distress widened the spirit-girl’s eyes. “But the sanctity of marriage—have they never a thought for that?”
“The sanctity of what?” He leered at Sin. “Our lady of many griefs to men to remind us of that! May she never lose her knack of amusing us!” He eyed her with an affectation of old-school sanctimony. “Alack, my poor child, the sanctity of marriage ain’t! And even if it were, these two wouldn’t wish their future relationship hampered by such an obsolete notion. He looks to be gassing about the gas of the dirigible, from the way he’s pointing above their heads. Manlike, he probably is trying to excite her admiration for his knowledge of how it is filled with helium contained in bags of gold-beater’s skin. Helium, permit me to inform you, is an idea that earthlings borrowed from the Sun. It is supposed to be an incombustible gas. Notice that the French bounder is smoking an after-breakfast cigar.”
“And is it really safe?” Anxiety quickened Dolores’ voice.
“Really? Hast never been struck by the comparativeness of reality? Nothing is really real except eternal life and that doesn’t even sound real.”
Certainly Satan knew the value of pause. In silence he watched with them the shift of scene to where John Cabot, alone as a celebrity can be in a crowd of sycophantic fellow passengers, paced the deck. With John’s eyes, their own lifted to the air-liner’s Milky Way toward Europe, where a bank of clouds darkened the course.
“Now for something doing”—Sin to Dolores. “Take a bet with me. Will they beat the storm or the storm beat them?”
She, however, was intent on a repeated question: “You are sure, Your Lowness, that they are safe in trusting to helium?”
“It is safe to say that they think they are.”
His reply was abstracted. After searching the scene intently, he turned again to the telephone. “I have keen long-distance eyes, trained to pierce the Plutonian shore, but I can’t see a blur of that imp Okeh. I must wireless him a reminder of where personal devils go that get too impersonal.”
He spared an apology to Dolores. “Don’t be hurt if I look a bit absent-minded at times. You are so unselfish that you won’t, I am sure, when you remember how much other, if less fair, fiends, often need an inspiriting thought from me.”
As the pilot drove the great dirigible straight at the sky-scowl contesting its right-of-way, the winds hurled at it bank after bank of inky clouds. Huddled against the blasts behind the forward wind glass, the fifty or more passengers showed with as many variations their heirship to the flesh. The beautiful Mrs. Cabot could be seen loosing the hold on her arm of her French suitor and staggering across the deck to where her husband stood apart. Despite his concerned look, he tried to reassure her. All showed relief when the captain appeared among them, his little daughter by the hand, and laughed at the idea of danger. His gestures pointed the fact that the storm was passing well over their trig craft.
“Confident little monarchs of the air, eh?”
Satan’s chuckle announced that his attention, too, was on the pool play. Before Dolores could formulate the plea commanded by her fears, he returned to the telephone with a curt command that increased her uneasiness.
“Now, Cyclops, blast them with a look! Strike at the heart of their conceit. Show them the noncombustibility of helium. Punish them for flaunting the control of the Prince of the Power of the Air! Strike—strike!”
He lurched back to the rail; with the interested minister and the dismayed girl-shade, leaned far out that he might miss no resultant detail of the electric storm due. And straightway, from out the tumbled mass of blackness flashed a three-forked streak of light. Directly at the great gas bag it struck; with each prong of the fork pierced the gold-beater’s skin. Next second, from three of the separated safety compartments, fluttered fiery flags.
Wounded, the great beetle strove on against the odds of flames licking its envelope body with avid tongues. Soon the captain realized the futility of any race against time along the unmarked course of the upper air. The powerful engines stopped. The propellers ceased to revolve. The liner wavered in mid-air, as shown when the streamers of smoke ceased to trail out behind and gradually straightened toward the cloud bank.
No slightest move was made to fight the fire above. Evidently an order to abandon ship had been passed. Officers and crew busied themselves with such life-saving apparatus as had been provided against so unlikely a contingency. Gas was turned into the baby blimps carried by the dirigible in lieu of life-boats. Outward they were swung.
On deck the hapless humans could be seen struggling toward posts of vantage, fighting back their dearest and best, forgetting to pray in the panic of this conflagration a thousand feet above the comparative safety of the sea. A refractory engine might have been coped with. An explosion of the hydrogen gas used in earlier ships of air would have been understood and the worst been over in one fatal blast. But this slow, gruesome bonfire of the helium on which they had relied, these æon-long minutes jeopardizing the primal, inalienable right——
The deck was beginning to sag. Two of the aërial life-boats had been swung downward and loaded with women and the ship’s only listed child—the captain’s motherless daughter. Like bubbles, they were given to the mercies of the air.
The observation spread that there would not be room in the basket of the last baby-blimp for all who remained. An under-officer started to pass out the suits which were parachutes and life-preservers combined—suits calculated to lower one through a quarter-mile of atmosphere and provide support upon the surface of the sea.
Came realization that there were not enough of the parachutes to go around. Self-first madness gained control. A battle for possession of the safety devices began.
The spirit-girl, watching this spectacle from the perspective of Gehenna, grew faint.
“Oh, I can’t endure to look a moment more!”
Shuddering, she sank back from sight of the catastrophe. But she felt the hands torn from her eyes and heard a sword-sharp command.
“Can’t? You’ve got to look to the end!”
The ferocity with which His Highness forced her to the rail ended in an anticipatory chuckle as he saw that the focus of the incredible reflectors had narrowed upon the imperiled passengers.
There was Catherine Cabot, already equipped with a parachute, crowding forward to board the last of the blimp-boats. There was the Marquis d’Elie, checked in his regardless struggle for a life-preserver and restrained in the grip of a couple of sailors by the captain’s orders. And there was John Cabot, standing to one side, calmer than the rest, despite the dread realization on his face of the fact that there would not be escape for all.
A place had been saved for Catherine in the boat. She did not need the parachute suit. John saw and his face showed inner contention. If he was to stand back from the boat, should he not have the chance of that superfluous life-preserver? A moment longer he stood irresolute, confusedly brushing a hand across his forehead. As if to shut out some sinister suggestion, he turned up his ulster collar.
Perhaps the super-acute imaginations of the spirit audience surpassed sight. Perhaps they actually saw an evil face lean to the ear of the mortal and heard the voice of the millionaire’s own of the personal devils that improve such moments to incite the worst in everyman.
John’s attempt to deny the disputation of fear and selfishness, although brief in point of time, was intense. While still in the throes he saw that another had noted Catherine’s double protection.
The Marquis d’Elie, abandoned by his guards, was rushing toward her, his object plain. His jaw hung lax as he reached and importuned her. His knees near failed him in the struggle to take the parachute by force.
And Catherine? With all her strength she fought off the abject beggar who so recently had played the nobleman. Yet when, as almost he had conquered her, she saw her husband bearing down upon them, a retroactive impulse controlled her. So John, too, was after the saving suit? If she must give up the second chance of life, which she had meant to hold in reserve, it should not be to John!
When the banker engaged d’Elie, she allied herself with the defense. No breath of the ignited helium was more fiery than the invective she spat at him who so long had supplied her with the luxuries of life.
When she saw that his strength was likely to worst the two of them, she suddenly drew out of the struggle and herself unfastened the contested parachute. As d’Elie was flung aside, she flung it to him. Turning swiftly, she then threw herself upon her husband and begged that he assist her into the overloaded baby-blimp, about to be cut away. Herself safe, she saw his attempt to follow forcibly prevented by the pilot and shrieked with mirthless spite. It would seem that in this hour when all loves were crowded out save that of self, hate was well remembered.
“Now watch the Cabot coward!”
His Majesty’s sharp suggestion stabbed the spirit-girl’s heart. She tried to turn from a sadder sight than the air craft’s consumption—the burning to ashes of her fondest ideal. Yet she might not turn; might not close her eyes. A control stronger than her own aversion was upon her. In trying not to look, she realized that she must look until the end.
The loudening laughter of the vast audience deadened her consciousness; seemed to be at her, rather than the spectacle that so diverted them. She sought to fortify herself. What though John did turn coward? The flesh was heir to the fear of death. At each apologetic thought, the mirth of the helliot crowd crackled louder. What could be happening on the doomed craft so to delight them? With a dread for the spiritual debasement of her loved one of Earth greater than had been her own dread of physical death, she looked and looked.
The baby-blimp of last resource was lowering toward the doubtful safety of the surface of the sea. The pilot stood on the bridge, idle for the first time since the gas-bag had been struck. Evidently he expected to go down with his ship as had so many captains before him. John Cabot clung to the deck rail as if contemplating a suicidal plunge. Forward, the Marquis d’Elie stood equipped with the parachute suit won by Catherine’s trick, but a lack of trust in it seemed to restrain him from the life-leap.
Too long he hesitated. John Cabot, maddened anew by sight of the Frenchman’s superior chance, leaped the space between them; from behind dragged him down on the blistering deck. There followed a brief struggle—an exchange of attacks, a roll en masse and the separation of a knock-out blow from John. As his fingers loosened the last buckle of the safety suit, the craft gave a violent lurch. The foreigner’s unconscious form, far heavier than air, was flung over the rail to a drop from which there could be no awakening.
As the air-liner straightened for the last time, John Cabot released the clutch that by a narrow margin had saved him from following d’Elie and got to his feet. A glance at the blazing bag above, their one support, convinced him that seconds were precious. His eyes, however, lowering, met the level, contemptuous gaze of the pilot.
The soul of Dolores shuddered with shame for the man she would have sworn to be brave. Then awoke in her that mothering, protective instinct which lives in women long after pride has been crucified. There still might be time to save John against himself. Remembrance of her own reluctance to turn on the jets that last evening on earth filled her heart with mercy. She would risk appeal to the Master Mind.
“I am sickened with this spectacle, sire. Human nature is strong, but not so strong as you. Show your power by throttling this Okeh devil and conquering the mortal’s mood. Come, I challenge you!”
When she turned to enforce the argument, she saw that His Highness had not heard. The visible of him was lurched back in his seat, enraged determination on the face, lips set in a snarl, fiend fingers clutching the high forehead. But that which had made him Prince of the Power of the Air—his dauntless determination—had gone from him.
Dolores did not need to be told what had happened. Impatient lest John Cabot’s personal devil should fail, Satan had projected his own spirit to take in charge the mortal’s fall. His will, not John’s, had incited that struggle for the life-suit. He would accomplish his worst. The conviction moved her mouth in a suppressed sob. Drawn by the ghoulish fascination that makes earthlings cling to the clay of their dead, she clung to the balustrade and strained her eyes toward the pool.
Death is the mortgage on life. John Cabot’s revolt against payment showed in his face. Craven impulses clutched him. At his ear were the lips of the Master Insinuator. Facile fingers seemed to aid his with the parachute buckles. Yet he had seen himself in the pilot’s contempt. He was putting up a fight. His life-long habit of self-respect was strong. The pilot was father to a motherless child—a girl. He should be saved.
With the Thing which had attacked him—the fiend called Fear—John grappled. His knees shook, his jaw sagged, his eyes bulged from the fetid suggestions which, evidently, were gassing his will. If the pilot went down with the air-craft, he never could tell.
Dolores, too, shook with fear. She knew what John did not know—just who was opposing him. Indignation over the unequal struggle steadied her; cleared her thoughts. Why was all the power given to sin and none to rightness? By what method had the Foul Fiend projected his spirit to Earth to slay the courage of the man she would have suffered any death to save? Surely, what could be done for evil purposes could be done for good! Why was will given to woman if not to augment the will of man—why her mite of strength if not to incite greater strength? John needed her.
From fear lest he fail was born determination that he win. He was a good and great man, John Cabot. He had lived aright and deserved so to die. The hate of Hell was not stronger than the love of her heart. What The Destroyer had done, she—John’s savior—also must do.
Moved beyond realization of the spaces between them, Dolores sprang to her feet and sounded into the upper spaces the vibrant chord of inspiration:
“John, be love-worthy!”
Regardless of the astonished stares directed her way, she saw in the mercurized pool that he bent his head as if listening—that his lips moved. She seized the telephone which Satan had used in communicating with the control platform. To the voice that answered she commanded:
“Get a record of what he said—I must know what he said!”
Lifted out of herself by her success, she leaned over the balustrade and willed that he should win.
And as she waited the battle on deck was fought to its finish. Self-mastered, John brushed from his ears the insinuations that had tempted him; controlled the fingers fumbling with the buckles; turned back the feet struggling toward the rail.
As the helium from the last compartments waved skyward the flames of the dirigible’s final support, he stripped off the life-saving jacket and forced it upon the pilot. His insistence clearly was in the name of that girl-child who would be orphaned should her father desert her for a scruple. He urged his protesting fellow-human to the rail; helped him over-side. In magnificent calm he watched the silken folds of the parachute spread open under their burden and begin a gentle, oceanward descent.
As the gas bag disintegrated, bits of burning embers became detached and dropped like spent rockets to the waves. John Cabot, left alone on the deck, stood ready for the end.
The while, his last utterance, demanded by her who had inspired him, was given to the vast throng through the annunciators connected with the master telephonograph. Deep, strong, triumphant, its first syllable silenced the orchestral Song of the Sea. A cry of victory, it shamed demon laughter and tortured the souls of the lost with regrets over the god-great powers they might have come to wield had they but won their fights. A requiem that rang through the crusts of two worlds was its single word:
“Dolores!”
Exactly how she made her descent from the royal box and reached the edge of the pool, the girl-shade never knew. The sound of John’s voice had moved her with but one wish—to join him.
He had, then, heard her cry—had answered her! So near he seemed to her that she could not endure to be so far from him.
Aspen-eager, she leaned far over the edge of the great bowl that held the mercury. But all she saw was the reflection of her own face. The dirigible must have gone sputtering into the sea while she was making her descent. Her lover must have met his mortal fate. The pool had finished its story.
So compelling had been the realism of its reflected scenes that she still was controlled by the emotion they had aroused. She felt lured almost beyond the strength of her intelligence to throw herself into the brilliant depths—to be clasped as she might have been in that realer sea in beloved arms. So low she bent that her whisper rippled the surface.
“John ... John.”
A satirical voice, even more than the clutch of withered, hands drew her back to the now of Gehenna. The minister had followed her and was blinking at her, a trace of responsibility mapped on the parchment of his face.
“Another second and Sin himself couldn’t have saved you to Hell,” he exclaimed. “Don’t you know that this swimming pool is bottomless? Are you trying to hang one of those griefs of yours on me?”
His reproach was a revelation to the girl. Even Old Original! Never, perhaps, had she felt more puzzled to meet overture of male. But she was spared reply. The aggressiveness slackened from his form. A look of craft wiped the reproach from his face. He stepped behind her.
Explanation came in the approach of The Tempter. His spirit, then, had returned from its projection to Earth to the shell of him left in the box. Impulsively she hurried to meet him. She had no consideration to spare for his chagrin over having failed in his personal attempt. Too exalted in pride was she to give thought to the effect on him of pride’s fall. Forward she stretched both hands, as if for the congratulation of a friend.
“That favor I asked of you—I’ve granted it myself!” she exclaimed. “There is no need for me to go to him. He will come now to me.”
She felt her fingers caught in a cruel grasp. Her joy-dewed glance was scorched by his malevolence.
Back drew the sneering lips over white, fang-like teeth. “You really think he’ll draw a ticket down here—that hero? Fool, you have too much faith in the judgments of men!”
With repression more ominous than any outburst could have been, he turned on his heel.
“Come home,” he said.
As has so many a submissive woman soul before her, Dolores tried to hide within her heart her blissful expectation. But she trod on air as she followed out of the stadium.
Splendidly John had gone through the formality of lifting the mortgage contracted at his birth—that debt of life put upon all, which may be paid only in the coinage of death.
Soon, now, he would come to her.